Be Excellent To Each Other

Hint, don't hack your bios. It makes you have no computer for over a week

FTFY

Are you now over your bios fear?

Just flashing a bios (with another bios for the same thing, from the manufacturer) makes me nervous enough. Dicking about editing one and then sticking one in takes a special kind of bravery, I feel.

Unless it isn't your main machine, or is something you aren't bothered about 'experimenting' on.

I didn't get it wrong. I took the bios, used a program to insert a logo, ran it through 3 checks and it passed checksum

Fuck only knows what went wrong, but Error 88 on your diag segs means RMA lmao.

Over time there's one thing I've learned - if your PC works, leave it the hell alone.

A mantra I repeated at work every day. My erstwhile colleagues felt differently, so them fucking about with the servers normally meant a massive panic at least once a month to reinstall one when they broke it. Unpaid overtime ahoy! Fuckers.

The worst offenders are people who read those computer magazines, the ones that constantly run articles with "ten top tips to optimise Windows" and have coverdisks with crappy bits of software that seem to randomly delete system files to speed things up. I'm thinking of my other half's dad here, mainly.

Well it's not done any harm to anything or caused any real problems. Bit of a PITA removing the mobo and having to put this one back in temp but nothing more than an hour's aggro. It'll be more hassle reassembling the water cooling etc but it'll be the last time for a while.

What sucked is they have a 10 day wait for a replacement. I'd like to know why, I mean they have my new mobo sitting there and I have scansure any way. Wouldn't normally care tbh, the time away from the PC has been nice but I have a friend coming from the USA in about 9 days and it's obs pretty much impossible to stay in contact to keep the plans rolling with no net.

Checked today, 27 emails to one acc. 17 to another and 59 facebook notifications. Madness.

At least they have offered to flash the bios and test it all out before sending the next one so I don't have to. I had to do it before any way as the CPU support hadn't been added for the 45nm Phenom 2's so you get an unknown single core CPU.

Get a Mac?

I flashed a beta-grade BIOS to my main machine once, trying to fix an incompatibility with my graphics card. It didn't work, so I flashed back to the previous BIOS but it went wrong and killed the board dead. This was a week before my undergrad dissertation was due and I hadn't done any work on it yet. Fun times!

Once I finished the diss, I had to buy a freshly programmed EEPROM chip from a bloke in the Netherlands. You just swap the chip out with the one on the board. I still have it, with its "badflash.com" sticker.

Suspicions confirmed.

Even more annoying however is how Scan have repeatedly fucking emailed me the status of my RMA even though I basically said I have no PC and no way to get the emails so basically to cut the crap and simply phone me when the new one had been shipped.

Good thing I rebuilt the old bits today or I would have had no idea when it was being sent (3-4 days apparently).

Their RMA thing deffo sucks ass though. When I dared to ask how long it would take for the replacement parts she seemed to get all irate before I had even had a go. All I said was "ah ok thanks, any idea when my new one will ship?" and she immediately got all pissy and said it would be 7-10 days from recieved and there was nothing she could do about it etc.

I guess she gets it in the neck all day from customers. Thing is, they have my mobo, they have tested it so why I am waiting 7 fucking days for another one? I mean FFS if they made you wait that long when you actually first ordered it (like before they had your cash) noone would ever buy from them. So what should be different when they have your board back, have tested it dead and know they have to send another one?

Shit CS IMO. Will deffo make me think twice about going back for more shit, especially as the failure rate on brand new hardware is actually quite high (DOA more than anything thanks to modern rushed building techniques in cheap factories.

Ah well, would have been a nightmare had I sold my old shit. I so nearly sold my raptor off too, which would have cost me a new install of Vista. Thankfully I left it all intact so had all the bits I needed for a speedy duct tape like ghetto rig to get me back on the net etc.

Deffo wouldnt sell the parts after this. Not worth it for the peanuts people think they can get them for and the shit of being stuck without a PC.

FTFY.

KC, I'll post that fiver.

To be fair, you broke it. In your situation I'd be probably quite pleased with any response that wasn't "Get bent."

That's pretty much what happened tbh. I had to flash any way to support the new Phenom so I figured I would do the logo too. I've done loads of logos before going all the way back to the QDI days in the mid to late 90s. Usually the main problem with logo flashing is getting the bmp format wrong which would simply fail to display your logo.

This time though I used an app to convert the image back to it's raw strange bmp type and even viewed the bastard (the logo) in a bios disassembler and saw the logo in there being displayed correctly.

Know what's funny? if you go to the DFI forum and ask about logo replacement the cunts actually tell you to do exactly what I did saying it's safe and dandy. LOL.

What they should do is write a logo replacing app like Foxconn have. I mean if a £26 mobo maker (their amd mini board) can knock up a free app to replace your boot logo then why can't DFI who charge a fortune for theirs? instead being lazy and telling you to do it with some crude tools.

Idjits.

Ah well, definitely won't faff with it when it comes back. I'm hoping I don't lose my Vista install over raid as that took a bit to get my head around.

I am still wondering what DFS are going to think when they check the bios and find an alienhead has invaded. Will they call Mulder n Scully?

Interesting point though, who has *only one* means of basic email and web access in this day and age?

I have 3 computers (albeit sharing one connection), the iPhone which can use GPRS and my work PC which is obviously on work's internet.

I can't remember the last time any of the hardware broke down (touch wood) but I certainly wouldn't want to be down to just one working computer, and then start dicking about with it!

Oh, you didn't?

Firstly dude the board was not fit for purpose seeing as it was advertised to support the cpu I brought but had an old bios on that did not. So ner, basically. So that meant I had to flash the bios any way. Hence why I paid £3 for scansure (insurance on installation fuckups).



You know dude? the other day I read an article that showed how m$ had basically fucked the PC gaming market up. Simply as when they write a 360 game they get to charge £50 for it and, when someone else codes a game for the 360 they make cash out of that too.

They could not get away with that on PC so they have basically brainwashed silly gamers into thinking the 360 really is fucking wonderful so they can keep the till bells ringing. Hence they don't even bother to release on the PC any more (last time they did was 2007) and are talking more and more game companies into cancelling PC versions and just releasing on the console so they can make cash on games they didn't make.

And, sadly it seems loads have people have fallen for it (snot dick pussy & shit, as Eddie Murphy once said) and the PC gaming market is suffering for it.

So, again, you can keep your console games that are over priced poorer versions of their PC games and I'll stick to playing PC games.

I'm impressed they are replacing it at all. You'll have almost certainly voided the warranty.

If this was my house I would have a PC in every room like I did in the USA. Sadly it's not and I have to respect that which leaves me one room to set one up in. I had to sell one before xmas because it was getting in the way.

Doesn't help that I live in the middle of nowhere with no cyber cafes/libraries/fuck all.

And I don't do cellphones, they're penis extensions.

I couldn't care a toss about how much money Microsoft are making out of gaming, to be honest. It's no different than Nintendo or Sega have done through the years, so blaming Microsoft for ruining a completely different sector by tapping into that market is madness.

Not when DFI basically told me to do what I did. As I say, wasn't fit for purpose in the first place and the manual tells you to flash the bios.

Either way that's why I got scansure as I had a feeling the board would need flashing and as has been said it's dodgy.

It's true, though.

How? How is it true even in the slightest way?

Fuck me Whisper bars aren't selling well. It's probably because Cadbury's started selling hot chocolate!

Oh right. I got confused with the 'hacking' part.

Things I have available to check my email: Desktop, laptop, other desktop, netbook, ps3.

Of course, I wouldn't bother flashing my bios for the sake of a logo you see only for a few seconds on bootup in the firrst place, but each to their own.

Really? Wow. I've just been using mine for talking to people and sending them text messages. I'll try it out in the bedroom later and report back.

But wait, you don't need lots of space - one of my machines is a tiny Medion sub-notebook thing, which is so small that it occasionally slides behind a sofa cushion and I have to look for it. I thought you had loads of Alienware laptops lying about anyway?


Me too - 11 miles to the nearest "public computer", in the library, and frankly I'd go to a shop and buy another laptop before I got desperate enough to use that.



Just

Quite handy for checking email too though, I find.

They have basically talked lots of gaming companies into not releasing on the PC at all.

Alan Wake is the most recent example. M$ talked them out of releasing it on the PC. And when asked Peter Zetterberg, a business development manager for MGS (Microsoft game studios) said this -



When asked what it was supposed to mean he said



So they have basically talked gaming companies into treating the PC gaming sector as a ginger step child so that they can make money on every sale.

Well...

For a phallic enhancement, my phone does an awfully good job of connecting me to the interwebs and letting me read email and that.

Does it vibrate?

Right. Right, okay. So Microsoft have talked companies out of making money. Right. Nowt to do with the fact it's more profitable to develop for consoles due to the relatively low pirating options on them. Of course. It's a conspiracy maaaaaan. Like, Microsoft had this big meeting with loads of developers and forced them to stop a lucrative business where people were like totally buying loads of their games.

If only they'd forced Llamasoft to release GR+++ on the 360! Instead of doing basically the exact opposite, through making the barriers to releasing an XBLA game unnecessarily arduous.

I've just flashed my cheb end to show a picture of Mr Dave on startup.

I've flashed the inside of my eyelids to show a picture of myp while I'm asleep. Unfortunately I got an infection, so I'm waiting for new eyelids to be delivered. I'm using grape skins until they are.

They told you to open up the bios and change things with a hex editor before flashing it?

I advise not hacking your eyes unless you have a spare set.

Or at least a properly trained Golden Retriever to fall back on in the meantime.

Most amusingly, for me, it seems that my suggestion of "Angle Grinder" would have had the same effect.

I've just showed my neighbour my willy & now she's phoning the popo. Does this mean my flash failed?

Depends. Was your willy a telephone?

Explain that it was just your cellphone, honest.

[edit] Damn that Craster

I have one half working computer (fucked GPU) and a broken laptop... and xbox (but that can do msn if need be)... so me!

No, Microsoft have talked gaming companies into only releasing on the console so that they/m$ make more money. It's a simple philosophy really. What you do is create a game console out of an old PC and cram it all into a small white box, then you brainwash people into thinking it's actually better than playing games on a PC. Then, you can release those console games for much more cash than you could ever get away with on a PC AND control the games on it making money out of every single one.

Read those statements I posted. They are from my latest gaming mag. If they're not true that would be libel, but m$ have openly admitted how they would rather people not release PC versions of their games along side the console ones as they will lose money.

It's only a conspiricy when the company doesn't come out and admit it, leaving people to speculate over it. They have openly admitted it.

Christ, yes. My mum's partner seems to spend most of his time on the computer attempting to make it run quicker, inevitably involving the installation of tonnes of shit or defragmenting the hard disk over and over. Trying to explain the error of his ways is so fruitless everybody's stopped bothering.

This I don't doubt. The ludicrous bit is your assertion that people are buying these games because they've been brainwashed into something, rather than because they find it a more enjoyable gaming experience.