T-2692 Lessons - Learned lessons, that is...

Codegen.. not realy top of the range, not realy bottom.. you should be fine with that for a bit.. wifi card internal or external? or through router?

laptop hardware are much harder to replace so extended warranty's fine..

Please help

I really do not know what to buy now. I plan to buy the following for my DSL connection.

Buy router and connect to DSL Modem.

Buy Wireless Internal LAN For PC

Connect network and use the laptop (has wireless already built in)

Does this work?

ANy ideas on how to minimize costs (like buying router plus lan modem into one for PC that can be used by laptop wireless to conenct)?

Please give your ideas? I am not familiar with modes(like 802.11g etc) and ideas. Please everything you can. Thanks a lot

Forgot to add

Forgot to add
I do *NOT* move my PC a lot but laptop, yes we move it around the house.

Any suggestions for wireless connection? Thanks

well lets see.. your getting a wifi router yes?

does your DSL modem has an ethernet port? that is your first thing you need to check.. some do, some only use USB, others have both. you'll need to check..

since the pc's not going to move much, and your modem is (i assume) usualy next to the pc.. so therefore, (also assuming your pc uses an ethernet port as well) just put the router between the pc and the modem and you save yourself $30-50 from buying an internal wifi card for the pc .

That is, unless your pc is way far from the modem or your laptop goes out of range.. which will be unlikly considering todays technology, minus a few gyprock and lead walls

802.11g is one of the standards of wifi, and is faster and better than the 'b' modes (the old one). two speeds available - 54MBps or 108MBps.. pretty obvious..

whats your planned budget? any other questions?

Any links?

OK thanks a lot. Any links to the router that can be connected to PC? If I understand correctly you are telling me to buy a router that can be connected to PC's LAN. I think my DSL modem has LAN and not USB type. Not sure but will check though.

If I connect my router to DSL modem, does it also go to PC LAN?

Any links to the router that will work this way?

Budget? How about $50? Or is it worth spending more (for the cheapo PC and cheapo PSU? LOL)

yep. thats it. You'd find all routers, if not all uses standard Network Ethernet ports to connect stuff to and fro, therefore checking for a ethernet connection on your DSL modem is a good thing. Heck even the modem manual says to conect via ethernet if available...

to give example of such, this is one i have at home, Dlink DL524 http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=316
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...i_7240353&cpncode=10-13970863&CMP=OTC-channel

although a bit outdated by today's standard, but still works nonetheless. This one has 1 WAN port, in which you plug in your modem to, and then it got 4 Ethernet LAN ports, which you can plug in a pc, laptop, server - anything that is LAN compatible, including the XBOX and PS2

But who knows, there may be another one that suits you better, has better functions and cheaper . Just take a look around thats all i can say, and read reviews on them. I'd be wary of generic brands, but trusted brands i'd recomend any day would be DLink, Linksys, Netgear, Belkin among a few..

Some routers are just routers, others also serve double duty as a network switch, like this one, and even some others have options of using as print server, file server etc.. lots of them are popping up.

$50.. assuming you were in the USA, Newegg.com prices:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0410000&minPrice=&maxPrice=55&Go.x=17&Go.y=35
Assuming you were elsewhere, Google .

As for spending more or less is up to you, you just have to justify paying a bit more because this thing has that extra or that etc. Just make sure that the router you get has at least a basic inbuilt firewall to filter out any unwanteds, and is WPA encryption compatible. Unless you want your neighbours using your internet expenses lol..

Thanks

Ok. thanks a lot for the pain. Will check for these and try.

T-2692 - Lessons (NEW)

So I go home on Friday and the sytem is dead AGAIN! Huh? Did I not replace the power supply and the cpu fan just the last Saturday? OK after several attempts to get it started failed, I decided that mobo could be faulty. I bought the mother board from local store again for $60. Got it tested on desk and took it home to install it. The salesman threw the thermal paste free when I asked him for one. Good going to save a dollar (his price for paste).

I come back home and install the mobo and try restarting. XP tries to boot but keeps failing. So I insert the original XP pro and reinstall everything (another one hour and the tea in microwave went cold). Next is drivers installation for devices not recognized by XP. I put the CD provided by mobo and it was done (another 20 min). The system is back up and running fine. No other software was lost despite emachines guy assuring me that hdd will be formatted. All other software is intact.

Now I take out the mobo manual to read after dinner yup I am the guy who reads manuals *if* everything fails It says - the mobo will shut down if temp of cpu goes over xx. Hmm.. so the emachines was doing the same then because last week when I remvoed mobo and reinstalled with new power supply it worked for one week. Did I waste $100 for psu, new mobo and all this and could I have been better off with just $1 thermal paste? :-((

So I google on Sunday and found that there is a program from Everest (http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Everest-Home-Edition.shtml) and then see the CPU temperature. It is standing betwee 33 deg C to 36 deg C after several hours of power ON state.

Not sure it this is OK or not.

SO the lesson learned now is, do not jump to conclusion that all is well. Next week it could be CPU. If my CPU were dead it could have failed even this week. Boy, it could fail next week. So what? When a low life PC like emachines is bought, one has to go through this hell. Let us see what happens next week. Will update again. In the meantime does anyone know what is an ideal CPU temperature for home PC use? We use it about 4 hours a day maximum - just for email check and some word and excel and SPSS programs. But not more than 4 hours at one stretch. Rest is for just email and such office use.

Work so far:

PSU (23.xx) - Codegen brand 400W
CPU fan (7.xx) - do not remember brand
(Both of the above worked for one week on emachines board)
new mobo - asrock.com brand (how good is this? I bought it becoz it was the only one the local store had. Mail orders usually take more than 5 days time and I went to local store to buy thus). $60

So far about $93 on an original $299 emachines cheapo.

Next week - new cpu? Any ideas where I can buy one? Thanks a lot.

Wish me good luck - in *NOT* buying a CPU. BTW I cleaned the thermal paste on cpu and fan with rubbing alcobol and applied new paste on fan before inserting into the socket. Even paste could be cheapo brand since I got it free from store.

Thanks a lot for reading

Hi Milwaukean.

Just to let you know, I have merged your new thread into this one.

This is because it`s still dealing with the same problem and will save any confusion, for the members who have been helping you.

Regards Howard

Added new HDD

So my saga continues. The PC is still fine no CPU problems. Since I had an old PC with 4.01 GB hdd (win 98), I removed that and added it to my 80GB disk PC as a secondary HDD. XP prof can recognize it but formatting (right click, format from Windows explorer) was not well. So I put the "quick format" and used NTFS method. It did format in a jiffy and the HD works fine.

So that'z where I stand. I hope it continues to work w/o any problems. Thanks for reading..