Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

[PeteAtoms]

I would just be careful about lag, especially if your playing video games.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

What exactly is a "bus"? I vaguely understand it, it's the connectors to transfer data, is that correct?

Also, a few months ago, occasionally when playing games, it would freeze up and the picture turn funky colors, and eventually the screen would go black and require a hard boot. What exactly is this called? I'm trying to google it.

 

[Turner]

I understand it as being more of a pathway, but that's essentially correct.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Such as USB being "Universal Serial Bus." And I think there's also PCI and....whats the other one....SATA? No, that's the HDD thing.
EDIT: Maybe I'm thinking of SCSI.

 

[Turner]

There's a bunch of them. North end, south end.... basically it's any pathway designed to move data from one part of the computer to the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_(computing)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Or from one computer to another. Or from a computer to external devices. Or.... well you get the idea.

 

[Turner]

Or from one computer to another.

Not really. It's an internal thing. Outside the computer is more networking than bussing.

Or from a computer to external devices.

Attached to the computer, and more a peripheral than another computer.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

What would happen if you put two mobos into the same computer? Or is that even possible?

 

[Turner]

Where do you get all these questions from?

That would be a waste of resources, because if you have two mobos then you have two computers, and that's better than having two mobos in the same chassis.

Really, it would be more like having two computers trying to share the same hard drive space and/or memory. And really, the only computers that use those are mainframes.

Some servers have more than one computer on the same mobo, but not really two mobos in the same chassis.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I dunno where I get my questions from. I'm kinda weird like that.

Thanks.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

its entirely possible, if you get a power supply that has two ATx 20/24-pin plugs and any other necessary secondary ones. You'd run into a lot of problems with it, so as Turner said, what the hell is the point?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Just to see what would happen? LOL.

 

[lndm]

IMO a bus (buss) is how you refer to a group of (usually related) connections at "block level". In other words you want to refer to what their function is rather than how they work. I would only use the term when talking about how they work, how they have developed etc (the engineers point of view). I wouldn't use it when talking about how to install a drive or fix a computer (the technicians point of view). Technicians do use the term it's just that computers these days don't present the opportunity at that level.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

You mean you say "Plug the HDD into the IDE thingy"? Or am I mistaking things here...

 

[Turner]

I would say "Plug the hard drive into the motherboard" or simply "Plug the hard drive in".

 

[Cutlass]

Just to see what would happen? LOL.

There is a use for that, and it's a fail-safe file server. Mostly it's 2 computers sharing one RAID array of hard drives, and the purpose for it is that both computers can access anything on the drives, so that if the main one fails, the second one is picking up the workload immediately.

If you aren't doing that, just build one more powerful computer.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That's cool. So are both mobos in use at the same time, or just one as a "backup"?

 

[Cutlass]

Pretty much. You could set up a system of parallel processing or distributed processing. That's what the "folding at home" and SETI at home" things are, the processes just broken down into many calculations and each separate computer just taking bits of it at a time and sending their answers back to a central computer that resembles them. And there are "supercomputer arrays" which are just a large number of computers linked together and sharing workloads to get the work of a supercomputer done.

But the thing about those arrangements is that ordinary software simply cannot take advantage of that. So if you wanted that kind of processing power, and that kind of speed, you are simply better off building a single, stronger, computer. If you have the money you can build a home PC with the power beyond the servers this site runs on. And the simpler arrangement will be easier to use.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've heard about people making "folding farms" where they connect a bunch of computer components to the same PSU, or something like that, then networked it over to the "home computer". I can't remember exactly how it worked.

Another question: What on earth is my mom on that she would reinstall Windows to avoid uninstalling one program? She was having trouble with MSN messenger (it automatically upgraded on her or something), so I suggested to her to put in an older version, but the version she grabbed was too old, so instead of uninstalling it all she just reinstalled Windows (and made me install all her programs -- and I snuck in Pidgin on her, as well as Foxit Reader and VLC Media Player.)

 

[Cutlass]

That's just because she doesn't understand what she's doing