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more computer stuff
Nov. 23rd, 2006 01:00 amWell, the tower system is looking better. But I definitely need to put different RAM in it. The RAM is only running at 166 MHz, and the motherboard can drive it at 400.
Probably the *old* stick of 256 meg RAM I've got in it. I checked and it can use up to 3 gig, so if I can get it cheap enough that's what I'll put in.
As it is, it plays the videos I've been downloading with no trouble at all. Between having half again as much RAM as the laptop, and a processor almost 3 times as fast there's a *huge* improvement.
I installed a copy of Nero 7, and wondered why it didn't see the blank DVD in the drive. Then I (after an embarrassingly long time) remembered that the drive was a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo.
So I grabbed the Sony external DVD burner I picked up a while back and hooked it up. That's the one with the A/V inputs so you can burn directly from a video source.
While installing the drivers (it came with an older version of Nero, and some of the other software is going to take time t figure out) I discovered a feature they hadn't listed on the box. It'll let you capture video to the computer. This may prove useful.
The instructions that came with it are a couple of *large* sheets of paper folded many times. They cover *only* using it standalone, and how to do a couple other things. They don't cover installing it on the computer at all. I had to guess.
I seem to have gotten it right as it burned a DVD from some AVI files in only 2.5 hours. Which is about 1.5 times as long as the play time of the DVD. But *much* better then the 8-9 hours my laptop required with the other burner (and *everything* but the burning software had to be shut down on the laptop).
Hopefully, added RAM and a still faster processor will improve things even more.
I'm going to see if I can get one more DVD burned before I go to bed. This one is one that I extracted from an ISO file and my other software wouldn't do it. But I have hopes for this setup. It should go faster as most of the time when burning from AVIs and the like is format conversion.
Probably the *old* stick of 256 meg RAM I've got in it. I checked and it can use up to 3 gig, so if I can get it cheap enough that's what I'll put in.
As it is, it plays the videos I've been downloading with no trouble at all. Between having half again as much RAM as the laptop, and a processor almost 3 times as fast there's a *huge* improvement.
I installed a copy of Nero 7, and wondered why it didn't see the blank DVD in the drive. Then I (after an embarrassingly long time) remembered that the drive was a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo.
So I grabbed the Sony external DVD burner I picked up a while back and hooked it up. That's the one with the A/V inputs so you can burn directly from a video source.
While installing the drivers (it came with an older version of Nero, and some of the other software is going to take time t figure out) I discovered a feature they hadn't listed on the box. It'll let you capture video to the computer. This may prove useful.
The instructions that came with it are a couple of *large* sheets of paper folded many times. They cover *only* using it standalone, and how to do a couple other things. They don't cover installing it on the computer at all. I had to guess.
I seem to have gotten it right as it burned a DVD from some AVI files in only 2.5 hours. Which is about 1.5 times as long as the play time of the DVD. But *much* better then the 8-9 hours my laptop required with the other burner (and *everything* but the burning software had to be shut down on the laptop).
Hopefully, added RAM and a still faster processor will improve things even more.
I'm going to see if I can get one more DVD burned before I go to bed. This one is one that I extracted from an ISO file and my other software wouldn't do it. But I have hopes for this setup. It should go faster as most of the time when burning from AVIs and the like is format conversion.
