My Fisrt AH Post- (MAC)

[Minotaur]

Computor Gaming World's (The magazine) "Power Rig or The Lean Mean Machine" is also an excellent example for the "Build It Yourself'er".  I have built my last two computors using their formula.

Good Luck, Hope to See You Up!  

------------------
Mino
The Wrecking Crew

"If you little boys don't behave I'm going to send you to your rooms without supper!
by John "SUPERFLY" Guytan - Art Director

[Apache]

Dadman! It would really be nice to see you here. Anymore of the 305th considering it? Hope so. I used to enjoy flying woth you in WB, although you don't know me as Apache. I was ??????? in WB  



------------------
Apache
The Blue Knights

[Karnak]

Here's my self built system:

CPU:................ AMD Athlon 700
Video:.............. LeadTek GeForce256 DDR
Motherboard:..... Abit K7M
Memory:........... Micron 128Mb PC133
SCSI Controller:. Diamond Fireport (soon to be replaced)
Hard Drive 1:..... 18Gb Seagate Baracuda SCSI3
Hard Drive 2:..... 4Gb Seagate Baracuda SCSI3
DVD-ROM:......... Pioneer 5xDVD, 32xCD SCSI2
CD-ROM:........... Plextor 40x SCSI3
Sound Card:...... Soundblaster Live! Platinum
DVD Decoder:.... REALmagic Hollywood+
Network Card:... Intel PC100+ 10/100
Mouse:............. Logitech Mouseman Wheel
Joystick:.......... ThrustMaster F22 Pro with StickWorks Digital chip
Throttle:.......... ThrustMaster TQS with StickWorks Digital chip
Monitor:........... MAGinnovision DX700T 17" Trinitron
OS:................. Windows98 SE
DirectX:............ DX7a
Internet:........... 1.5 Megabit ADSL via LAN

Stability:.......... Excellent    

Sisu

[This message has been edited by Karnak (edited 06-06-2000).]

[Macboy]

Ve haf vayz off finding out who you vere in varbirds you now. You can run, but you cannot hide. Ya know, if you change your handle and not identify your old handle, it is very bad thing around here, donchya know? And Pyro will reveal it if ya cause any trouble there apache. So keep it civil.

[Superfly]

LOL  mino  

------------------
John "SUPERFLY" Guytan - Art Director
HiTech Creations
"Happiness is a warm gun momma" - The Beatles
-=HELLFIRE=- SQUAD

[Vermillion]

I just built a very similar system to Karnaks.

Right now the Athlons are giving alot of bang for the buck, and the 700mhz area is the price/performance break point.

If your wanting to keep the price down, I would reccommend going with non SCSI drives, since they are much more expensive.

You can also get either a SDR Geforce or a TNT2 Ultra, on the video cards as another price cutting area.

------------------
Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"

[Camel]

Dadman

I got a custom built jobby from www.Mwave.com

Pick out all the items, and they will build and test for 50$. Its been 7 months now with no problems.

I pretty much hit all the places that build custom puters on the web, and no one could match Mwaves prices for the same components.

[Sorrow[S=A]]

Keep in mind guys, that B-17 II with all the tumminess turned on will have a minimum requirement of 800 mhz cpu to be played properly. The E3 demo was runing on an 800 mhz Pentium III with 256 megs of ram and was _chugging_ in spots with alot of planes in the frame. Assuming they clean it up a bit so it doesn't swallow as much smooth play whould be possible with an 800 mhz system.  (scary eh?)

[Cmala]

Hi,

I don't really fly AH but I am in SBM with Nash and thought I'd post about the PC's.

I too was on a mac a few years ago but made the switch to PC.

I have been using the Celeron CPU's and I love them.  Right now I have a Celeron II 566 but I am running it faster than what it is rated (overclocked) and I am running at 850 mhz.  I bought the CPU, Fan/Heatsink for $200.

ABIT BX6 Motherboard
Creative Labs TNT 16 MB video card (old)(a better video card will dramatically increase performance)
Creative Labs AWE 64 Value Sound Card (old and cheap)
Maxtor Hard Drives 6 MB and 13 MB
100mhz SDRam 64 MB (128MB recommended and good, fast Ram is a must for overclocking)
Cheap network card provided by my cable company.
Cheap Floppy Drive
Creative Labs CDRW Drive but any cheap CD Drive will work


I'm not sure if/how you can connect a Mac monitor to a PC.  I know that a PC monitor will connect to a mac with an adapter but maybe they make an adapter to go the other way also.

If you want, you can email me and I'll provide some links to the places that I like to buy hardware from.  I have built my computer and 3 other ones for my friends.

I recommend reading up on the hardware and also overclocking.  Overclocking is not very difficult (no jumpers or soldering anymore) and the risks are minimal.  You will have to decide if you have any moral objections for yourself.

Hope this helps....
Cmala
screamin' blue messiahs

[Exile]

As far as sharing your monitor, a KVM switch is what you need. Here's a couple of links ...

Belkin's OmniCube is a nice choice if you don't need USB (http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatSectionView.process?IWAction=Load&Merchant_Id=1&Section_Id=56)

For USB I'd try IOGEAR (http://www.iogear.com/products/kvm/miniviewusb.htm)

I've used both and they're great. Completely OS independent.

Hope to cya flying soon  

Ex ...................

[easymo]

 Not to get into a flame war. WB is a fine sim. But i suspect that AH has gotten some of the best players from all the prop sims. If you like a good fight. this place will never disappoint you. It really might be worth gettin a PC for.

 OH. and theres a bunch of us old ACA dweebs around. So there s some easy kills too.

[This message has been edited by easymo (edited 06-07-2000).]

[Lephturn]

Reccomendation:
 http://www.pcnut.com/systems/stealthf.htm

Several squaddies have dealt with these guys with good results.  One guy just ordered that exact system.  That machine rocks, and the price is great.



------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
 http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/


"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
 - Steve Earl

[MrBill]

 http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1232&p=17

There are a wealth of system combos out there
this is a example of a good cross section.

As a retired pc "whatever" consultant (25 years in the silly con vally) I would be happy to help you turn the screws (by email of course or RW) if you wish to go that route.

then there are a plethora of guides on the web also.

I used to dabble in mac's  alphas and sun's also.  Golf is cool  
 

------------------
OhNooo
smile awhile

[This message has been edited by MrBill (edited 06-07-2000).]

[Macboy]

Dadman,

You can't even figure out how to do Macintosh. How the hell are you going to figure out how to figure out the mess-of-an-OS  Windows.

LOL

Have fun Dadman
and have fun all you trying to help him.  LOL

[Skuzzy]

Dadman, here are some links of reputable dealers we have used here at AppLink.
 http://www.microx-press.com/
  http://www.compuplus.com/
  http://www.a2zcomp.com/
  http://www.techstore.com/
  http://www.crucial.com/

The last one os primarily for ram.  Some have better prices than others, so check out each component you want.

One note, when you pick the case for your system, try to get at least a 300W power supply, but nothing less than 250W.  High end graphics cards require a lot of power and if you use a really fast HD, you will need the extra power.

For a modest system that will do the job and won't cost an arm and a leg to build here is what we use:

Motherboard: Super Micro P6SBA
Processor: Intel Pentium III 550Mhz (Slot 1)
Ram: 128MB SD100
Ethernet Card: Netgear FA-310TX
Sound Card: Sound Blaster AWE64
Joystick: MS Sidewinder Pro
Video Card: ATI Rage Fury PRO

The ATI card is not as fast as the GeForce DDR card, but does the job nicely for AH and is quite a bit cheaper than the GeForce and, unlike the Voodoo cards, runs happily at 32bit color depths.  It is a good compromise between the Voodoo and GeForce.

Now for the disk subsystem, while SCSI is not as cheap as an IDE drive, you will find some nice advantages with it.  Fewer interrupts are used for one thing.  The PC based systems have limited interrupts, and that is usually what most folks run into when building out fully loaded systems.
I have a HP Scanner, CD-ROM and 2 hard disks attached to my SCSI card, which only needs the one interrupt.

SCSI Card: Adaptec AHA-2940AU (stay away from wide cards)
SCSI Disk: Seagate Cheetah 9GB (the Barracuda is cheaper, but both are good drives)  Quantum also makes some good drives and are a bit cheaper than Seagate.  Be sure to get at least a 9GB drive!  Windows is a disk hog.
SCSI CD-ROM: Toshiba XM-6201B (40X)

Floppy Drive: Mitsumi or Teac
Mouse: MS Intellimouse
Keyboard: IBM PS/2 (This is an expensive keyboard at $75.00, but it will be the last keyboard you will ever need for your system and you can only get it from http://www.ibm.com/
.....ask HiTech about this keyboard    ).

Speakers: Labtec LCS-1030 (not the best around, but they have a small footprint)


For the monitor, Belkin makes some great KVM switches.  See http://www.warehouse.com/  for these.  In the search box, look for "Omnicube".  Great product and you can get a MAC adapter for it as well.  Although the MAC adapter is more expensive than the switch itself    .

Hope this helps.


------------------
Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp. http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net


[This message has been edited by Skuzzy (edited 06-09-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Skuzzy (edited 06-09-2000).]