[S9, J3, X7] Cheetah XT - Discussion

[rick.hughes]

Originally Posted by Kizune

okay, now it started, but it still doesn't boot. I mean, only the lights went on and that's it.

Even if you really just want a new desktop, it might still be worthwhile to revive your notebook if it's not too old (no such thing as too many computers). If you can get into the BIOS and get it to boot Linux or something from USB then you probably just have a bad hard drive that you could replace.

[Enzyme]

should run a full disk check and data recovery (can get all that free), it'll probably boot again unless it's fried properly.

it could still be very useful to you for running a virtual desktop if nothing else, i use that setup with an ipad2 and win7, let the pc do the grunt work and use the pad for portability.

[Kizune]

Umm, I can't run anything at all. The notebook doesn't reach the BIOS (which is what I mean by "booting"), there's not even the start signal. The lights switch on, the CPU fan starts and that's it.

I might not know what hardware is appropriate for what purpose, but believe me, I know how to recognize certain errors. (My first computer was crap and I had to re-install Windows weekly and had to replace several hardware components)
There's no error signal on startup, no signal at all actually, thus the BIOS isn't executed (properly). If there was a bad hardware problem, an error signal would be played or an error message would be shown. I even checked my thesis and removed my hard drive which would have caused an error signal, but nope...

[lupu_de_balta]

hm...this problem sounds pretty bad... A LOT worse than i thought.... maybe, it is because of a very bad virus.... in this case, you cannot do anything....

about your ideea or purchasing a new computer(desktop)... get your first option... with it, you will be able to play games, even after 5 years, from this moment on!....

or, get a cheap one... but for photo editing and hd videoplay smotthly, you need a 1gb video card, at least, and 4GB RAM... in fact, these are the average things needed fo your operations... if you can fiind something like this, with an i5 processor, it would be much more than enought.... and, and, it will cost you aroound 400 EUR,. probably 500.

but, if you are not going to play, assasin's creed, crysys, battlefield, heroes 6, starcraft2, or some of these much loved games, with a rrealistic game experience, then you would be getting something that, at most you will not use.... i mean, >4gb RAM is for games, and for some applications, like cubase, video editing, audio editing, and such >i5 processor, is for speed, and multiasking, like doing a video conversion, while listening to WMA, and downloading AVATAR, and extracting an 50GB archive, and having a game of left 4 dead 2, running all of these in the same time >1GB video card is only for games. ONLY... 1 GB should be enough for any HD video... i am able to watch even the latest 1280 hd's.... >2.4ghz on any processor, would be good, but i never had one, that was over2.4ghz, but never really needed one... 64 bit operating system is absolutley necessary, for everything...if it is a desktop computer, take a little care of the audio card, and put something good in it... (an audio card that will modify your price from 400 eur to 500 eur, is surley to totally change your experience with music... and this is about to all....

[da1writer]

Woah, woah, woah...
Playstation Vita has taken my time away from this forum for quite a bit and when I return, I find out Kizune's laptop crapped out on him, wth !

I really need to get back on here more often - anyway, here's my two cents in the laptop website I plan on going to buy from once I wake up from the tablet world sooner or later ( comfortably 6 months owning a slim keyboard tablet hybrid [Transformer Prime] still hasn't made me want to jump back to a bulky laptop).

http://www.xoticpc.com/

Very customisable, Prices are reasonable too!

[HeartOfHate]

@kizune:
do you know if a laptop/notbook has a battery on the mainboard?
i am asking because i had this problem before on my desktop before (couldn't access the bios at all). i was totally desperate but the solution for it was quite simple: i only had to exchange the battery on the mainboard.

[Kizune]

Is that battery called "CMOS battery"? If so, then there is one.

[lupu_de_balta]

yes, there is a battery round, and smaller than a coin, on the main board... if it drains, your computer/laptop will not start bios... as far as i know, in some crude situations you have to re-write bios...

[Kizune]

Hmm, that sucks. Also, disassembling my notebook will be very complicated, there are ~40 screws... o.o
But hey, if anything goes wrong, I haven't lost anything (because I consider it dead and I already purchased the computer)... and if it works, I'll have a notebook I can use for university.

[RedlanceEQ]

While it does sound like the CMOS battery has drained for some reason it would be the first time I actually see it happen as it usually only is used by the computer when it is not plugged in.

You might want to see if replacing it fixes the problem, although I doubt it. Oh and, I would not worry about having to re-write you bios, last I checked, the bios is hard coded in the motherboard, thus it does not just go "poof" if there is not more juice on the board...

The reason I doubt that it is the reason for the problem is that the battery is there only to keep the internal clock of the BIOS (and computer) and the CMOS RAM (settings) (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMOS_battery#CMOS_battery). Removing the battery while the computer is plugged off will do two things: reset you clock and the BIOS to its default settings, at least in my experience is dealing with computers.

[Enzyme]

a dead cmos battery wont cause it not to boot, thats there to save any settings you apply while the system is powered off, if it's run out it'll still load defaults, or it should do.

and you'd notice your main battery dying a while before it gives up totally, seems more like a general power supply failure on one of the rails or whatever notebooks have.

to add to lupa's bit,
dont get too sucked into the large amounts of ram and win7 64 setup, ive been running an i7 9gigs rig with pagefile totally wiped out on my system (as in purposfully destroyed with much effort, win7 is a bitch).

i run a few high end games such as the dirt series as well as occasionally having conversions going on in the background and i cant ever remember my ram usage going over 6gb, left me finding other uses for the other 3 gigs such as lil cache drives, it is a waste tbh :\ it seems win7 is pretty efficient with ram usage and recycling.

and a big warning, most win7 x64 rigs have terrible latency (especially with the new usb package).
to the point where microsoft themselves recommend in the system whitepapers that it should never be used for accurate, time critical work such as in hospital equipment (includes audio editing).
that info is available on the microsoft site, but you wont ever get them admitting issues with it unless confronted with there own webpage.

be very careful what you buy in that respect, some manufacturers have managed to get the latency right down to near xp levels via clever hardware usage, others such as gateway failed bigtime.
i have a 4gb i7 lenovo rig meant for office use that really outperforms the gateway i7 gaming one with the 9gb.
not gonna go into the latency monitoring but the gateway sucks massively and randomly jumps to over 20ms in response times due to poor pci-e design.

also i run a gtx570 card with just under 1gb, i know high end games suck card ram but ive not felt the need to go over the 800+mb, in fact a lot of the high end card makers dropped back from 2gigs+ to 1gb in recent releases, i think about 1.25 is the standard for solid performance.
although unreleased games might ask for more in the future.

for gaming\audio work i'd probably go with an older quad core cpu with higher cycles and xp.
the i7 uses 4 real and four virtual cores, so you've really got a quad core that splits itself in half whenever needed, (or whenever it feels like unless controlled with third party apps like process lasso).

the truth is ...its not ever needed in normal use, it may be good for offices with a great many low usage apps running 24\7, however most apps will run much better and with more stability using the four real cores at full power and the virtual cores disabled.

using xp you will get the stability and low latency needed for gaming\audio work at the cost of a few gui improvements and the 4gb ram limit, but hey thats what shell replacements are for.
ive tweaked xp systems to run perfectly well with stupid amounts of ram like 128mb, win7 has a 4gb min spec (for all those background tasks), currently mine loads at under 1.5gigs with all the usual apps running like firewall\antivirus\mouse tools and some of the more useless ms stuff disabled.


so yeah, win7 does have terrible latency and usb issues, ones that cannot be fixed until windows releases some huge mofo'ing patch which replaces half the system (which they wont), not to mention some utter hogs of background tasks hidden away.

sorry for my long winded 2cents ><
xp is still king of the ms releases, win8, ...its a gui patch for smallscreen devices.
not sure whats next in the pipeline although i have heard theres something planned to replace win8 already.

[GregVDS]

hi all and Kizu,

long time since I wrote here. How are the things going? Cheetah is advancing? I just read you had new ideas for extensions? What is the development status currently?

All the very best,

Greg

[Kizune]

Well, the progress was very nice until my notebook died (it's definitely dead now, it starts to make frightening noises when I plug in the charger; it does still start, though, but now it immediately turns off after a second).

I added a slideshow mode and settings to Falcon (the picture app, I posted two videos about it here) and everything worked very well. In Cheetah itself I didn't change much... now I can't do anything and I have to learn for my exams anyway. But I'll receive my new computer tomorrow (Amazon Prime = fast as hell (in Germany at least)) and then I'll be able to finalize Falcon which isn't much work... maybe I'll give you an early beta of Cheetah XT next week.

[RedlanceEQ]

Originally Posted by Kizune

Well, the progress was very nice until my notebook died (it's definitely dead now, it starts to make frightening noises when I plug in the charger; it does still start, though, but now it immediately turns off after a second).

I added a slideshow mode and settings to Falcon (the picture app, I posted two videos about it here) and everything worked very well. In Cheetah itself I didn't change much... now I can't do anything and I have to learn for my exams anyway. But I'll receive my new computer tomorrow (Amazon Prime = fast as hell (in Germany at least)) and then I'll be able to finalize Falcon which isn't much work... maybe I'll give you an early beta of Cheetah XT next week.

Early beta?!?! Oh hell yeah!!!

One thing I'm really looking forward to then for that week (apart from my wedding getting closer).

[WAI]

give me the early beta Kizune

btw, what model is your current (Dead) Notebook?

i read back and you didn't give much detail as to what you were doing before the shut-down issue. my guess could be the battery. my bro's notebook even plugged into AC couldn't even charge it was so old and out of charge cydcles