I replaced the power box, er, sorry anything more technical alludes my cranium at the moment, fan, chord hook up area, well anyway. I replaced that and everything was swell from there on forward. 

Graphics card: I'll have to see if I can borrow one from somewhere and try that

Monitor: I'll get one of My Babies to take it to work and test it there

Could always make this the excuse to buy a new, more modern, computer? 

I thought buying a new, more modern computer was the excuse to buy a new, more modern computer. 

You are quite right - I wasn't thinking straight. Pish and be damned, a new computer it is then. 

I suggest a non-ATI (ie NVIDIA), especially if you are into Quake. But I guess that you already considered that obvious now, heh. 

What country are you in Mike? 

Pretty sure it's a video-card dying. I had the same thing when my video memory got messed up. Sometimes unavoidable, sometimes due to overheating, from what I remember. 

I have always been an ATI fan and this is the first problem I have encountered - excluding settings and figuring them out.

It's just that everytime I bone up on the latest cards, ATI impresses me more. Part of the problem is that I am a tinkerer and always build my own. Perhaps I just need to walk into a store and say, "Gimme that one before I change my mind", and accept whatever I get.

RickyT123: I am English but spend time in US and Scandinavia (especially in the skiing season - Colorado was good in January, and Sweden and Norway are both looking good at the moment) 

I used to own an ATI 9500 Pro, and it was a great card until it just became outdated. Then I got my 7900 which was a great card until it died. Now my 9800 GTX is fantastic and I would love to get SLI.

I would really love to build another rig just so I can play with the new ATI cards (I hear they are quite good for the price.) 

http://www.pcoption.co.uk/pcbaseunits/index5.htm

Pros: Cheep. Very nice and cheep. You can pick your own mobo and build it from there and they build it for you :) They gave me a 750watt PSU and I only paid for a 450watt one.

Cons: They use budget carriage and mine got here busted. The heat sink was broken and had come off the mobo and was dangling inside. Nothing else seems to have been broken though. They sent me a replacement heat sink free of charge but I managed to fix the stock intel one.

Pay by Direct Debit, lets not go there :|

Must admit that ATI do have some very attractive features at the moment : DirectX 10.1 is ATI only. So you need ATI if you want directX 10.1.

But the GTX285 and GTX295 do both look very sexy. 

but about six months ago I got so tired of not being able to blame my computer problems on tech support drones, I decided to order a prebuild and just carry out a few simple upgrades. Best decision I ever made. Prebuilds are a lot more reliable and a lot more customisable than they were a decade ago.

I might even buy a console one day. HAHAHAHA. 

i updated the "active" status of review sites to include dates.

also, talon's strike link now works (goes to archive.org) 

What about the MPQ archive?

http://mpqarchive.pauked.com/ 

yeah, i should add that. 

Having a talk with a friend of mine about compile times, the subject of quake 1 level compile times come up. Anyone know what the record compile time is for a level on a fairly modern machine? 

What machine was it again JPL? 

Yeah !
CDA has still (AFAIK) the world record for the evil-ish worst fullvis runtime ever: 1218 hours / 50 days and 18 hours. You need to be patient man :P
It was on an AMD Athlon 2600+ with 768MB RAM... that I still currently using ;)
I used aguirRe's vis tool v2.30 

interesting article on lovecraft and the cthulhu mythos:

http://www.epberglund.com/RGttCM/nightscapes/NS04/hplnf3.htm 

That's the standard understanding - Derleth was good for bringing Lovecraft's work more into the mainstream but his understanding of the concept was basically flawed.

He missed the whole nihilistic aspect that was Lovecraft's strongest theme. 

is that i have had no exposure to Derleth's work, or any of the people that came afterwords, and haven't played any "Call of Chtulhu" or similar RPG games.

My exposure to Lovecraft is entirely reading his original stories, so I'm actually not totally familiar with the ways in which the Mythos has been corrupted.

Of course, I see movies like Hellboy and Ghostbusters and recognize the basic influences there, but I don't consider them "corruptions" because they were merely inspired by Lovecraft, not directly trying to add to his universe. Same with Quake, I don't think id software was trying to say "this is set in Lovecraft's universe." 

I thought the basic principe of ID was the freudian guesture human beings primitive behaviour is only perceived in the basic of search of new environement and willing to fight to obtain that area.
You can interprent that in all kinds of directions, sexually or the deep need of ancient people to protect or conquer new land.
Lovecraft suggest more the demonic thread of the human mind, as with HellBoy.., wasn't he walking with he corps of Raspoutin? Also a strange personality in world's history. 

Same with Quake, I don't think id software was trying to say "this is set in Lovecraft's universe."

Pentagrams, crosses and Hellknights, plus level names like Satan's Dark Delight or Hell's Atrium, tell a different story, yes. 

Blame Peterson 

http://www.train2game.com/

I just filled in the form.
I'd like to hear a third party opinion on this. 

Do you give your details to anyone that easily? Search for "Scheidegger scam" for a start. That took me 5 minutes to find.