Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

[Turner]

You're misunderstanding how it works. Routers are for network traffic, and HDDs are obviously for disk storage.

You don't need a mobo for a RAID, just a housing unit and controller.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

So assume you havce five hard drives for backup, and you put them all in a case and attach them with controllers to your "home" computer, that would do it?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Question: How much of the printer stuff can I keep?

Spoiler :

I want to keep the "all-in-one software", the "imaging device functions" and the "solution center", but how much of the other stuff is actually needed to keep it from breaking?

(P.S. About the OEM Paint Shop Pro, I got that at a yard sale without knowing it was OEM, it didn't say on the CD. Figures, lol.)

 

[Turner]

So assume you havce five hard drives for backup, and you put them all in a case and attach them with controllers to your "home" computer, that would do it?

It doesn't quite work that way. And the controllers aren't exactly cheap either. It's more geared towards businesses, because quite honestly you don't need to RAID your Tom Petty Collection.

You could probably do it on a home computer with multiple open ports, but you really wouldn't need more than two volumes in a RAID1 setup if you're looking for redundancy.

This is something that you could wiki and get a pretty good idea of what it is.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Okay, thanks. I think I'll just stick with my external drive for now.

EDIT: A discovery. I'm reinstalling some of my games, and I found out that Civ IV wouldn't uninstall properly (spat out an error) until I removed the BtS addon. Then it worked.

There's a few games in the Games Explorer which I KNOW have boxart (seen them before) but it refuses to download. How do I force download of boxart?

P.S. The two are unrelated. I'm not reinstalling Civ because I'm too lazy to manually re-add the boxart!

 

[GoodGame]

Is it possible to rip the music from videogame CD/DVDs? E.g. if I want to rip Baba Yetu from my Civ4 disc to say WMV.

 

[Ulyaoth]

I wouldn't think so, I think game cds have copy protection things on them to keep you from copying things from them.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Is it possible to rip the music from videogame CD/DVDs? E.g. if I want to rip Baba Yetu from my Civ4 disc to say WMV.

Video game music isnt stored like traditional music is on audio cd's. Its stored as a data file, most often in a cabinet file on the cd ( those big .cab files)
You'd need a way of opening up the game files after they're installed.

 

[lndm]

How about disconnecting the speakers and plugging a personal recorder into the sound out jack, then transfer to your computer?

 

[GoodGame]

How about disconnecting the speakers and plugging a personal recorder into the sound out jack, then transfer to your computer?

That's an idea, though more involved than I'd like.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Thats not ripping from the DVD/CD per se, its more or less just recording the output, which, while it may work, is a lot more busywork.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Why not copy it from the game directory?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Because the game might not necessarily store them in any format easily readable. Company of Heroes for instance uses archive files for all the different game assets, and in order to get at them, you need to be able to open the archives. Same goes for a lot of other games.

 

[lndm]

That's an idea, though more involved than I'd like.

OK, then I won't mention the one about plugging the sound card back into itself

 

[Genocidicbunny]

(Which is essentially doing the same thing?)

 

[Turner]

Video game music isnt stored like traditional music is on audio cd's.

You've obviously never tried to put your Civ2 disc into a cd player. That music is stored as straight cd-audio files playable by any cd player. Of course, I think that's more the exception than the rule.

I don't know about Civ4, but Civ3 stores the music as MP3s in a music folder. I'd check and see if it's a MP3 in your install directory.

 

[lndm]

That music is stored as straight cd-audio files playable by any cd player. Of course, I think that's more the exception than the rule.

If memory serves, iD popularised that method with Quake. Of course back then CD-ROMs were effectively so big that no-one could fill them.

 

[Turner]

Quite possibly you're right. Civ2 is the one example I'm aware of.

It used to frustrate me....700mb CDs, two and a half times more storage than the 250mb hard drives.....

 

[lndm]

I think when Quake was released I was using a 50MB drive.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Werent there smaller capacity CD's back then too? I quite distinctly remember seeing 250mb and even 150mb CD's.