Awesome

If you knock me up a neat outdoor area I'll light it, howsat?

I would say that's an offer I can't refuse :) I'll definately have something ready at some point for my D3 "Tharsis" project - can't give an ETA right now though :{ 

cool 

quick! quickly! 

computer are shit.

My computer overheated (by the looks of things) the other day and now some important element (either the cpu or gpu) seems to be completely fucked. Actually, I've no idea what really happened, but the damn thing has always run ridiculously hot and it's currently the middle of a hot summer in Japan so I'm assuming it overheated. Basically I was just browsing the web and suddenly the screen went corrupt so I turned it off and left it. The next day I tried to use it and it made some normal sounding noises but it never seemed to start up. The hdd light was flashing and the fans were on, but the monitor never displayed an image.

It's a 3 year old dell xps2 with a pentium-m 2ghz and nvidia gf6800 go ultra. Still a reasonable machine that I could use for what I need if it hadn't just bust. SO glad I didn't burn money on the 3 year extended warranty, as it would have just expired :)

Anyway, if anyone knows what the problem might be or has had any previous experience with this kind of crap, please help. I haven't yet tried calling dell customer service because it's expensive and I can't use skype anymore. Pretty sure there is no email helpline, but I'll have a look. 

I've had the same problem with my Dell on and off for almost a year now. I would get decent performance for a few weeks and then I out of nowhere the screen would start blinking, and then it would either freeze up or give a Blue Screen of Death warning (Paged in unpaged area, IRQ conflict with video driver). However, I have good reason to believe the problem has been solved. I cashed in a favor my bro owed me, and got him to work on it.

He found the power supply box to be barely adequate for the requirements of the machine. A small slip in its performance would be enough to effect the stability of the machine.

He replaced the box; unfortunately, Dells boxes are slightly non standard. There is no slot in the outer plate for the (0 -) button that is standard with boxes that come off the shelf. So it's necessary to keep the machine open, with the power supply outside of it.

Last winter I had to give up on my Radeon AGP 9700 because the computer simply would not run with it installed, but now I have reinstalled
it with no performance problems, testing it with Far Cry, Fear, Doom III and Quake IV.

Before the power supply replacement, I used an old Geforce 4 MX PCI card and I didn't even dare to run Quake III with it because of the certitude it would cause a lock up.

I hope the problem you are having is as simple a fix as this. I chased down a number of possibilities, but the instable power supply was causing false flags to be spat out. 

GPU => Power Supply => Motherboard => CPU.

In that particular order, are the most likely causes of your problem. These days, you have to try really really hard to actually fry a CPU before it manages to autoshutdown. 

bolt cutters would fix that right up! 

I had a similar situation and managed to work out it was the GPU.

If you have onboard video, try disabling video card and see if the MB video loads up? 

"a 3 year old dell xps2 with a pentium-m 2ghz and nvidia gf6800"

Instead of troubleshooting (unless you are lucky and get the problem nailed down fast), I would just go and buy a new PC. 600 euros will easily get you a PC twice as fast as your current one (assuming you hand-pick components instead of buying outrageously overpriced brand PCs). 

http://www.pcoption.co.uk/

These guys are the guys I got mine from. Which was problematic, but they did eventually deliver. I only bring this up because they really do offer fantastic value for money!!

On another note, I hear thay the new ATI card is the dogs bollocks, the 4870 I think?

Supposed to be on par with the new NVidia GTX260 (or was it even the 280!?) but for a lot less money INDEED. As in they now will own the market share... 

I'm getting horrible input lag in fitzquake/winquake/glquake which makes them all unusable. The lag time varies but can be up to a second or more. This is on a laptop running windows XP that didn't use to have this problem in the past, using "-dinput" makes no difference.

SDLfitzquake and ezquake works fine so I at least can play quake but with a limited engine choice.

Any ideas to what might cause this? 

a little far fetched, but have you tried disabling any antivirus software you have running in the background and checking whether that makes any difference? 

If you're on Windows, try using -dinput or its equivalent in NQ engines. The D stands for Direct, I think it's a Microsoft thing. 

Me has un brain farte. 

https://visualvm.dev.java.net/docindex.html

I thought this style of documentation was windows help (nobody uses, ever) only :(

They only describe the GUI, not what the application is actually doing. 

It's a notebook pc so there wasn't really any self-build option around and the dell seemed like the most affordable machine of the spec I wanted at the time. If I get a desktop or mini-desktop, I'll probably just build it myself.

Anyway, I can't get into Windows to disable any AV software and I'm 100% sure AVG is not causing the problem. The machine turns on, the monitor backlight turns on with it, the HDD whirs, no bios beep errors occur, the HDD seems to work as normal, but after a few seconds the monitor backlight turns off as if there is no signal whilst HDD activity continues as if it were botting. I unplugged the HDD to see if it would make any beep when I booted and there were two beeps. I think the gpu is borked, though whether it overheated I don't know - the max operating temperature of the machine is a pathetic 35C so I don't have any trouble believing overheating could have caused the problem since it's consistently about 35C at the moment outside and the machine has always run ridiculously hot.

I've sent a mail off to dell customer support, but I have a strong feeling they are going to be completely useless bastards. 

Can we please all stay honest, bad mouthed and unfiltered? The 'wow, that's great' attitude Ricky and some others are spreading sucks. Read q3w or d3w for a while to see why.

I want honest people. This is about the only place where most people care enough to complain. If i'm shitmouthed every time i'm honest, i will stop being honest and lie to you how great your stuff is. 

getting 

somebody has to be the nazi

fuck you megaman you suck there see happy now i've told you so? feel obliged to master yourself? do you feel your creative output is ready to be expanded, innovated?

you seem very sinical. do you have a miserable time? maybe just a rough lifestyle. full of pure grit and an omniscient ressiliance to lifes labours.

who am I to say. just out of curiousity though, what is this "q3w" and "d3w" of which you speak? forgive me but I'm unfamiliar with your shorthand. it might help your case a little if you perhaps relay some sort of example of this evidence of which you speak

If i'm shitmouthed every time i'm honest

if you take "artistic journalistic libertys" everytime you're honest, at someones expense.
it should be possible to be honest without causing an argument, or I bid thee rise above it 

I like you but would you calm the fuck down already 

Love?

"Ricky I like you but"

love is in the air

la la la la

love is in the air

la la la la

roulfffff

and ricky say to me rocket in arse? :) hehe 

need to go back to being retired 

true i�m getting real old :( 

You're too pissy
You're not pissy enough
You're too nice
You're not nice enough

It's like a soap opera cycle of prima donna bullshit. 

I'm starting loving you all....ready?

I was watching a docu about Spartacus and how he honourfull tried to lead the slaves against the Romans, but as he had no clear politics he had to loose it afterall. Saw him die his tragic death and the Romans sculptured their way to Rome with scornfull crosses with tortued slaves.

Then I went to bad and had tis strange dream.
I was in the land of Quake with some of my best friends. In some strange way I knew, although I was dreaming, that it couldn't be real... the land of Quake...hah! So I told my friends they don't had to be serious with the craetures they would met.
And as example I went to the first one I met. someone that looked like an army officer and the look-a-likes of carmack, took a big stone from the ground and started beating it on his head. To my surprise his head became like a bublegum, clunching up all sides and slowly I lost the fun in doing so. Then I saw my friends getting killed and I really got scared, because I was the one who told them not to be frightened.
Suddenly another army agent came up to me with a big stone aiming to my head, and the only thing I could feel was his groaning question:

H� farmerboy, have you seen that armyofficer?

which I know is an old greece parabel about te god Mercurious trying to see how faithfull the
slave would be.