The new home server for the new entertainment center I recently set up has made itself out to be quite a nuisance. I am unsure as to whether I will keep using it or not, but fortunately, I have not yet taken down my old home server, as I wanted to do some break in testing on the new one first.

Setting up new computers is almost always a pain in the ass, what with installing and configuring all the software from scratch (which always includes a format and new OS), and making sure all the hardware works properly and finding drivers for it (sometimes when you don’t even have the proper information on what that hardware is). But sometimes, computers can go above and beyond the normal setup nuances and annoyances and be downright evil. I have long proclaimed to people that computers have personalities and minds of their own and they decide when and where they want to be accommodating or uncooperative. Besides all the normal computer setup problems (including not knowing what the hardware was and having to figure that out), this one also had a few more doozies.

The first big problem started with the fact that I wanted to use this computer for video output, and it does not have an AGP slot. As I contemplated in the previous post on this topic, I went ahead and bought a PCI Geforce 5200 for $27.79 including shipping. The card did not fit properly in the new case, so I had to unscrew a few things, which were fortunately designed for just that reason. Then the big problem came up in that video outputted from the s-video port on the card showed up on the TV at a 50% over zoom, so I couldn’t see half the screen. I couldn’t test the monitor output port either because it is DVI, and I have no DVI monitors, alas. After 2 or 3 hours of tinkering with it and throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at the problem, including trying a different s-video cable, I finally stumbled on the solution and got it working, yay. That is... until after I rebooted and it wasn’t working again x.x;. Another 20 or so more minutes of tinkering got it fixed again, and I was able to quickly hone down on a procedure to fix the problem on the next reboot, optimizing it with each successive reboot over the next few days. The procedure is as follows: (The TV over s-video starts as the primary monitor, and I have a second monitor connected to the VGA port to the onboard graphics card)

• Open “Display Properties” [Right click Desktop > Properties] > Settings
• Attach second monitor so I can see what I’m doing
• Open NVidia Control Panel
• Rotate screen to 90 degrees. It only wants to rotate the screen at 1024x768, which is too high a resolution for the TV, so it kicks the resolution down to 640x480 while rotating
• Keep setting the screen to no rotation (0 degrees) until the scaling is correct [usually twice]. The NVidia control panel doesn’t want to allow going back to normal rotation now due to the 1024x768 required resolution thing, and will keep the setting set as 90 degrees, so the process can easily be repeated until it works.
• Now that the screen is at the correct scale (at 640x480), all that’s left is to get the rotation back to normal. To do this, immediately after accepting the rotation process in the NVidia Control Panel, it has to be closed out (alt+f4) so that it saves the rotation setting at 0 degrees but doesn’t try to set it back after all the resolution changes.
• Raise the resolution back to 800x600
• Detach secondary monitor now that it is no longer needed

The screen still unfortunately has about 100-200 “pixels” (monitors don’t have pixels, technically) on the top and bottom of the screen that are unused, but eh, NBD. At least this graphics card lets me properly pan and scan (zoom/scale and move) the s-video output around unlike my Geforce4 Ti 4600! The next problem with the video card is that some video outputted from it is just too slow. Though most content is watchable, the choppiness makes it unbearable. The problem with this might just be that the PCI bus doesn’t have the required throughput, which is why most video cards are used over AGP (or nowadays PCI express).

There are even two more final problems with it, one a possible deal killer, the other rather insignificant. The unimportant problem is that XP refuses to install updates. I believe this to be a problem with SP3. The final problem is that the computer seems to randomly compltely freeze up every now and then for no particular reason, requiring a reboot. This has happened 2 or 3 times so far, so I’m waiting to see how often it happens, if anymore. I know it’s not overheating as I currently have the case open; and I see no blown capacitors... hmmmm...