Give us your feedback: http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964072 +--+--+--+--+--+--+--What's Up Today--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ ALL THE LINKS FROM TODAY'S SHOW http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964073 RAM DISK 101 Step-by-step instructions on how to build a RAM disk to increase performance. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964074 JOIN OUR PRODUCTION MEETING You can voice your opinions and ideas via chat. We're meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 31 from 3pm to 5pm EST. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964075 THE FUTURE OF THE SHOW, PART I A full report from the January 29 production meeting. We discuss your ideas and what to do with the show. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964076 DAILY DIARY OF STUDIO B Our daily diary of the behind-the-scenes happenings during the set move. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964077 VIRTUAL SUGGESTION BOX Got an idea for the show? Post it in our message board. Registration required. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964078 VOICE YOUR OPINION ABOUT FRESH GEAR Should the Fresh Gear segment on the show Stay, leave, or changed? Take the poll on our main page. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964072 MEET THEM IN ST. LOUIS Leo and Patrick will be visiting the gateway to the West on February 3. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964079 HELP & HOW-TO ZONE Go to TechTV's library for tips and trick for Windows, Linux, Macintosh and more. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964080 ***************************Advertisement*************************** Memory PC - Memory prices have fallen substantially, and Outpost.com is passing that savings on to you! With FREE DELIVERY. OVERNIGHT. http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964081 ******************************************************************* +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ SHOW NOTES for Monday, January 30, 2001 (repeat of 01/16/01)... * A basic PC for web design Joshua from Cedar Bluff, Virginia is taking a college web design class and wants to know what kind of computer is best suited for it. He already has a 450 MHz Pentium II with 128 MB of RAM. Frankly, Joshua, that's more than enough PC to code HTML with! Basic html editing doesn't require a lot of power. It's 'content creation,' such as audio, huge photo files, video editing, and (especially) video compression that can really tax a system. For those purposes, you'll want tons of memory and the fastest machine you can get. We just revamped one of the computers on our set specifically for Josh, our web associate producer, to post information live during the show. Here are the basics on what we put in it: Processor: 600 Mhz Pentium III Main board: ABIT w/ 815 chipset RAM: 128 MB PC 133 Video: Matrox G400 Hard Drive: 30 GB Maxtor We'd probably go for a 800 MHz Athlon processor today... much better price! Anyhow, keep working with what you have until you start to feel constrained by its performance. Then, even when you get a new computer, keep the old one along with a modem and use it to test out your website "creations." That way you'll see just how it'll work for the vast number of the people who will see it! * Do I need a software Firewall with my new router? Donna from Wyandotte, Michigan just got a new Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL router. It's up and running fine. Does she still need to run ZoneAlarm, our fave software firewall? Not really... the hardware box should be enough. But, hey, if you're reallllly paranoid, you could take the belt and suspenders approach and run both. (We don't.) * PCI devices: Can't they all just get along?! Lyle from Mesa, Arizona wants to get both is fax/modem and his cable modem to run at the same time. He currently has to pull out the Ethernet card to get the regular phone line modem to work. If not, when folks try to fax him, they get a busy signal. Its called a cable modem, but its not really a modem. You are connected to a LAN via your Ethernet card. Leo says you shouldn't have any trouble trying to send and receive a FAX. You might have an IRQ conflict between your modem card and the Ethernet card that connects your PC to the cable modem. To resolve this, go into the system control panel and select the device tab. Look for a red x or a yellow exclamation point. Then it's time to troubleshoot. You could run the Hardware Conflict Troubleshooter. We'd check the Device Manager, then we'd move one of the PCI boards to a different slot. You should also try Kate and Leo's all purpose plug 'n play solution. Whatever your BIOS selection for plug 'n play OS is, yes/no or on/off, reverse it and see what happens. It's a voodoo trick, but it has a funny habit of fixing these types of problems. * Can I add more RAM to my mobo? John from Haverford, Pennsylvania has an older IBM with an Intel 430VX chipset. It only allows him to run 64 MB of RAM total, and he wants more. Bad news, John. While the VX chipset might let you move up to 128 MB of RAM, it could slow down your system performance a touch, since the VX can only cache 64 MB of that memory. Frankly, since you're also interested in upgrading the hard dive, we'd advise you to purchase a new system, or upgrade your current system with a new processor, mobo and RAM. Even the least expensive Celeron (400MHz $41) or Duron (600 MHz for $45) chips will show you a HUGE boost in performance. An Intel 810 or 815 based board offers built in graphics; not the best for 3D gaming, but then again, we doubt you're doing much of that on the system you have now. For a nifty list of the capabilities of different chipsets, check out: http://users.erols.com/chare/chipsets.htm * What's up with all the traffic on my home network? Jonathan from York, Pennsylvania has 4 Win98 workstations running on his home network. One of the PC's constantly dumps traffic on his network. That causes the other computers to slow down because they are answering! He Only has TCP/IP and NetBEUI protocols. He's check the machine for a virus. He's tried a fresh install of the OS on that box (on a different hard drive) and that does stop the traffic. But he wants to sleuth it out. You can try and isolate what program is causing the traffic on that particular machine. It's a slow processo of shutting down each process one by one and checking for traffic. Or you can look for a program called LMANNOUNCE. One of our faithful viewers, Anthony, who has a ton of MS certs in networking says that LMANNOUNCE list the computers and file shares available on the network. You can disable it by going into the properties for the NetBEUI protocol, selecting the advanced tab, and deactivate LMANNOUNCE. Hope that fixes it. Thanks, Anthony! * Tales of woe with a Multi-boot system Tom from Arlington, Virginia is having a touch of trouble with a multi-boot system. He wants to run Win98, Win2K and Linux, all on the same box with one bootloader. Leo says that's probably not going to work; you end up needing to use both the NT loader plus LILO. And you'll definitely need to install Win2K last since it always replaces the boot partition. Franky, we need an article that describes this in detail on the website! * MAC Address problems Chris from Bangor, Maine wants to know if he can change the MAC address in his router. Nope: the Mac address is a unique hardware identifier that is built into the firmware. It is designed so that there is no other device in the world with the same MAC address, even though there are MILLIONS of Ethernet cards, routers and more that all have a MAC address. Tuns out he wants to change the MAC address so his cable modem doesn't know he's swapped out his Ethernet card with a router. Leo says there's an easy solution for this: unplug the cable modem. Let it sit for a few minutes, then plug the new hardware into it, and plug it back into the wall. As it starts, it should memorize your new MAC address. Hope ya'll learned something new! Patrick +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ ***************************Advertisement*************************** Can't remember where that great Web site was? Now you don't have to! Access your favorite sites from any computer, anywhere. Click here! http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=117655168&i=298147&d=964083 ******************************************************************* That's all for today-- keep visiting our site, and keep watching The Screen Savers-- it's good for you! You are subscribed to this newsletter with the following email address: cts-newsletters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx If you would like to unsubscribe at any time, please reply to this message with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line. Or send an email to: screen_savers_today-off@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx