Foo - do you put lights in your computer?

Im just curious

No, I used to though. Just now I'm into the silent PC thing, and windows to show those lights are defeating the purpose of silence as you can't put damping material on a window and have it do what it's supposed to.

For what it's worth, this computer is so quiet that my mouse moving on it's pad is audible....significantly audible.

Nope. What a waste of time and money that is.

No. The bugger produces enough heat as is, and chicks don't generally dig super-nerds

I have lights on my commuter. Close enough? :D

What? Waste money on a computer that could be spent on my bike? Are you crazy? :)

I'd rather have my PC case be as quiet as possible, so I don't want acrylic panels or anything. It's insulated, but I have lots of fans running undervolted creating a nice wind tunnel - stays nice & cool, but it's much less audible than most PCs.

What? Waste money on a computer that could be spent on my bike? Are you crazy? :)
Agreed.

No... I almost did just to further solidify my "supergeek" status, but in the end I was just lazy and didn't feel like it. Besides....I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night and walk out to think I was suddenly in the belly of a flying saucer (I've had ENOUGH of those nightmares already).

Yeah, I have lights. One for each of the drives.... tahat coffee holder thing wot plays music has two lights. But I can't see them 'coz it's dark where my computer is.

No, I was going to because hot chicks love computer case lights. Then, I remembered I'm married, and it hardly seems worth it.

I have 2 fans that glow blue. They cost just as much as the regular fans so I thought, why not?

I have two lights that run down the front corners of my PC. They change colors independent of each other. My PC also has a chrome on off/button :D

Nope. Although I will admit to ordering a TV card

Which card, I have a pinnacle PC-TV pro, and an ATI TV-wonder (pci).

Sadly the ATI has some serious sound synch issues that make it pretty much unusable, the pinnacle is nice, but the software interface is craptacular.

Funny part is they are based off the same tuner, and the boards are very similar...only a few minor differences....such as the pinnacle has an FM radio tuner.

I have 2 fans that glow blue. They cost just as much as the regular fans so I thought, why not?
Power, heat, more things that can go wrong. Even if LEDs are rather trusty.

There's enough blinken-lights in my office as it is so I haven't added any additional lights to my machines. I have however added additional fans to my drive array.

http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/albums/home-office/SSA_2.jpg

And as I figure it, if you can't go all the way and make the lights functional such as showing the message passing between processor elements like on the Intel Paragon then it's not worth the bother... :D

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/talk/paragon.gif

Now the real geek thing to do with those things was to submit a job of vectorised code that would queue up in the processors in such a way so that the message routing would cause the lights to form words that would scroll across the front panels. :D

Power, heat, more things that can go wrong. Even if LEDs are rather trusty.
LEd's take very little power. Cold cathodes, or LED's in this case, produce almost no heat.

my case has two lights running down the sides in the front.. and I have a few LED fans. :p They were Antec fans and cost about the same as the regular ones.. plus they put out the most air of any of the fans compusa carried at the time. Either way, I could easily live without them. I've not gone so far as to put cold cathodes in my PC.

Which card, I have a pinnacle PC-TV pro, and an ATI TV-wonder (pci).

Sadly the ATI has some serious sound synch issues that make it pretty much unusable, the pinnacle is nice, but the software interface is craptacular.

Funny part is they are based off the same tuner, and the boards are very similar...only a few minor differences....such as the pinnacle has an FM radio tuner.

I ordered a Hauppauge WinTV-GO TV Tuner/ Video Capture Card

Sweet, hope its nice. I knew a few years back they rebadged pinnacle cards, and use their own software instead, but I have no idea if they do that anymore.

Sweet, hope its nice. I knew a few years back they rebadged pinnacle cards, and use their own software instead, but I have no idea if they do that anymore.
No clue. I don't even know which chipset I'm getting. The 881 or an earlier model. For <$20 I'm not going to complain either way

Do you guys find that you have to do anything special to shield the tuner? My wife's computer came with a built-in TV tuner but it produced fuzzy pictures. I'm thinking Sony didn't do due dilligence in the shielding department. The tuner on my machine is located externally and feeds to a video capture board and thus I don't have the same issues.

Do you guys find that you have to do anything special to shield the tuner? My wife's computer came with a built-in TV tuner but it produced fuzzy pictures. I'm thinking Sony didn't do due dilligence in the shielding department. The tuner on my machine is located externally and feeds to a video capture board and thus I don't have the same issues.
I don't know yet. I have a whole slew of PCI slots open - which one would you suggest I install it to? How would I go about sheilding it if needed?

I don't know yet. I have a whole slew of PCI slots open - which one would you suggest I install it to? How would I go about sheilding it if needed?

I would suggest you position it in the furthest slot from the PS but that's about it. I don't even know if that's enough distance or if it is even required for your particular setup. As far as shielding goes, I'm not sure. Aluminum foil around the card? Of course that might introduce heat problems. Then again, maybe the cards are nicely preshielded. I just know that whoever designed the Sony systems with the integrated tuner didn't do a good job of it.

I would suggest you position it in the furthest slot from the PS but that's about it.
My case is pretty big 2'H x 7.5" W. x 16.5" D I estimate it's about 8 inches from the bottom of the power supply to the PCI slots on the motherboard. I'm guessing that you wife's Sony isn't anywhere near that size? The Joys of Homebuilts :lol:

My case is pretty big 2'H x 7.5" W. x 16.5" D I estimate it's about 8 inches from the bottom of the power supply to the PCI slots on the motherboard. I'm guessing that you wife's Sony isn't anywhere near that size? The Joys of Homebuilts :lol:

Yeah. It's a minitower case and is fairly well packed. It's a nice system actually but someone didn't pay too much attention in their physics class or something because they located the tuner (it's not a card... it's a "multimedia" module which goes into special proprietary bay that has its own PCI interface) right above the PS.

Yeah. It's a minitower case and is fairly well packed. It's a nice system actually but someone didn't pay too much attention in their physics class or something because they located the tuner (it's not a card... it's a "multimedia" module which goes into special proprietary bay that has its own PCI interface) right above the PS.
"But it's so small and sleek looking!" :lol: I have no idea what to tell you on yours.

"But it's so small and sleek looking!" :lol: I have no idea what to tell you on yours.

Well, it's what she wanted and she says she can live with the fuzziness. It's not too bad but I know I personally would have been annoyed. She doesn't really watch TV on it that much anyways. BTW, if you don't already know about it, check out VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org/). If you have multiple machines and once you get that tuner card up, this really takes advantage of them.

http://www.videolan.org/images/documentation/global-diagram.jpg

I've got the one box and it's plenty for us. I am intrigued by that VLC player however

Do you guys find that you have to do anything special to shield the tuner? My wife's computer came with a built-in TV tuner but it produced fuzzy pictures. I'm thinking Sony didn't do due dilligence in the shielding department. The tuner on my machine is located externally and feeds to a video capture board and thus I don't have the same issues.

Both the cards I have already have shielded tuners.

...however the line out for sound on both needs some serious help...I'd do some tweaking if I wasn't already on a dozen odd projects.

Both the cards I have already have shielded tuners.

...however the line out for sound on both needs some serious help...I'd do some tweaking if I wasn't already on a dozen odd projects.
Mainly I'm doing it because I have a habit of watching TV and being on BF at the same time. I figure this will lower the power bill a bit. :D

Heh sounds like me...I'd do IRC chat, forums, surfing for misc computer/home theater/bike stuff, and watching TV at the same time.

...however I'm working on another answer to this....it's called LCD projector! Imagine bike forums on a 100' screen, with TV! :D

...sadly finding one I can afford without robbing a bank (snap...all out of ski masks...) is a whole other story....it has to do a native 1280x1024 or greater....most in the <$2000 range only do 1024x768 or that weird widescreen version of it.

OK Now I have an issue. I'm using the TV card and surfing at the same time and occasionally the display totally freezes (the audio continues unabated as if to mock me. ) I've tweeked a few things (edited my animated cursors) but the problem continues (although its doesn't happen as often) I can provide whatever info about the system needed. Ideas?