Graphics card question

[Der Cute]

RS 232...9pin, yes? same shape as the VGA, just 5 and 4 on the bottom. Black colored.
LSD?LDS escapes me.

agp, isa, sisterboards, PCI omg it's brilliant, USB1, parallel still god..scsi...
But I didn't have to use carrier pigeons for token ring mainframes.

[wolfie]

Is this device an LSD or LDS... Save the whales!

Did the device come from Utah, is it wearing a suit, and politely talking about a branch of Christianity? Probably LDS. Did it come from Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, and talking about Woodstock? Probably LSD.

[dalesys]

RS 232...9pin, yes? same shape as the VGA, just 5 and 4 on the bottom. Black colored.

Back in the bog old days, when the Centronics parallel printer interface was suspiciously new, RS232 connectors were *usually* DB25 (Gender depending on manufaturers whim) , but could be *anything*... from a quarter inch stereo phone jack/plug to phone RJ jacks/plugs to some proprietary monstrosity.

Signal lines used ranged from 2 on up to 20+ depending on if the data was unidirectional and what handshaking. I had a 9 x 12 x 1 hardbound book that covered several hundred common implementations to give the poor tech a starting point on buliding the custom cable to connect device A to device B so as to fake the handshaking each end wanted to see

And then there was configuring the serial ports on each end. Baud rate. 6,7 or 8 bit data. Odd, Even, None, Mark, or Space parity. 1, 1.5 or 2 stop bits. Wait time after sending a carriage return or line feed...

On and on and on.

RS232 was/is a standard in a similar sense to the concept that the latin alphabet is a "standard"... but what language + dialect + custom smileys.

[/old fart]

LSD?LDS escapes me.

Star Trek ref riffing off the RS232 DCE/DTE nomenclature.

[Chromatix]

Even today some of that gunge still exists. It's mostly settled down to one data line each way with optional RTS/CTS handshaking, 8N1 signalling and the D9 port - but open your average router/modem and you'll find a debug port inside which is "almost" RS232 but often won't even tolerate TTL levels (nominally 5V and ground), let alone +-12V as the standard says, so good luck interfacing it to something else without frying it. And then it's not D9 but an utterly minimal 4-pin header with a pinout that is effectively randomised per design or at least per manufacturer. I've even recently seen RJ45 used as a serial port, on a device that had a dozen other identical RJ45 ports for purposes more conventionally associated with that plug type.

BTW, there *is* a TTL version of RS232, called RS423. It saw some use on home microcomputers. When you don't need to send the signal all the way across an arbitrary sized building, it made a lot of sense to eliminate the level shifters.

[lordlundar]

Did the device come from Utah, is it wearing a suit, and politely talking about a branch of Christianity? Probably LDS. Did it come from Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, and talking about Woodstock? Probably LSD.

OWOWOWOWOW!

Ice tea through the nose HURTS!

[Eireann]

Someone has this card for sale:

http://www.alza.cz/EN/gainward-210-5...r3-d254811.htm

Yea, or nay?

[lordlundar]

Someone has this card for sale:

http://www.alza.cz/EN/gainward-210-5...r3-d254811.htm

Yea, or nay?

Not for gaming. I had an 8600 chipset and tried to "upgrade" to a 210 (both are Nvidia Chipsets btw). It performed worse than the older card.

The x10 group of Nvidia cards are for basic use machines (email, internet, office stuff, etc) If you want to do any gaming, skip that one and look for an x50 or higher.

[Eireann]

I'm not into gaming, so that doesn't matter. I do watch DVDs fairly often on my computer, and I'm tired of the actors appearing Smurf blue with the card I'm using now.

[Chromatix]

The 210 is pretty basic, but it's infinitely better than "Intelgrated" graphics. I have an equivalent in my nettop, which is able to play at least some old games, and also video.

The model shown is PCI Express x16 (ie. will fit those black slots) and has a full-height bracket (ie. not Low Profile, see the pic for the difference).

[Eireann]

I got the new graphics card!

It's from the same guy I dealt with earlier. He gave me instructions on how to install it, download the driver, etc. I downloaded the right driver (well, on the second try), and restarted the computer.

It works, and it's full-screen. There are some things that I'm not sure about, such as the fact that YouTube is smaller in the play screen, and the fact that when I have more than one window open and I put the cursor over these windows, rather than seeing a thumbnail of each window, I get a description of the contents of each window. This happened with the old graphics card I borrowed, but it never occurred before.

Still, things are better!

[RichS]

The description instead of the thumbnails sounds like you don't have Aero effects enabled in Windows. It's very common upon installing a new graphics card. To enable the effects, you just have to re-run the Windows Experience Assessment tool.

1. Click the start button, then click on 'Control Panel'.
2. In the search box in the top right corner, type 'Performance'.
3. Under the first topic that comes up, 'Performance Information and Tools', click on the 'Check the Windows Experience Index' link.
4. You should be on a window entitled 'Rate and improve your computer's experience'. There should be a link near the bottom right with an Administrator symbol entitled 'Re-run the assessment'. Click on that, and that will start the assessment tool. Do not do anything with your computer while this tool is running.
5. After the assessment runs, you'll get a revised Windows Experience score, and should have your Aero effects back in Windows.

Hope this helps!

[Eireann]

It works! I'd like to have YouTube look different, though.

[Der Cute]

Still... WOOO! And thank you Computer Part Guy!

[Eireann]

Yep, now it's all set up! I haven't tried anything like video editing yet, though. I returned the borrowed graphics card with profuse thanks, and now I'm enjoying the new one - and it is new, at least according to the guy who sold it to me.

[Chromatix]

There should be a set of three buttons in the bottom right of the YouTube widget which control how big it is. One is for small, one for large, and one for full-screen. Try them all.