Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 August 31

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August 31

replace the motherboard on old computer

Is it feasible to replace the motherboard on a computer from 8-9 years ago with a modern motherboard and CPU? Is the hard drive likely to work with the new motherboard? What about the video card, etc? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:56, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

For a computer 8-9 years old which I take to mean ~2003-2005, there is a slight chance it could have a PCI Express video card, but it's much more likely it will be AGP (and a slight chance it will be PCI). PCI may work, PCI Express should work, AGP will be suppored by probably no recent motherboards. Similar for the hard drive, there's a slight (perhaps higher) chance it will be Serial ATA and a much greater chance it will be Parallel ATA. If it's SATA, it should just work; if it's PATA some motherboard recent motherboards may support it, alternatively you can probably use a simple cheap active converter to enable you to plug the PATA drive in to a SATA port (although you may have to disable AHCI), or alternatively you could use a PCI express card with native PATA support. However in both cases there's the question or what for? The video card is next to useless, it will almost definitely be far worse than even the crappiest SoC graphics like on one of the recent Atoms. There's a fair chance it won't support Windows Aero Glass. There's a chance it won't even have DVI and even if it does, it almost definitely won't support audio so using it with HDMI will be annoying. There's even a chance it might have problems with 1920x1080. The HD will likely be under 200GB, perhaps even something ridiculously small like 40GB which is barely even enough to install Windows 7 or Windows 8. You didn't mention other components but the RAM will very likely be DDR, or maybe DDR2, either way not something a recent motherboard will support and probably a tiny amount like 1GB or less. They keyboard and mouse may work and the monitor probably also. There's a slight chance the power supply is usable but a fair chance it's not and for something getting that old I'm not sure if it's really worth trusting it anyway unless it was a very good one at the time. If it's a standard ATX or microATX case the case should be fine with an appropriate motherboard although will probably not have proper front audio, obviously won't have front USB3 (although even many more recent ones don't). That seems to be about it. To put it a different way, with such an old computer, there's little that's really worth salvaging if you're planning to build a new one with a modern motherboard and CPU. (If you know what you're doing, it may be worth it if you've got other old stuff sitting around and want to make a working comp using them all for some limited OS or function, but that's not what you asked.) Nil Einne (talk) 01:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I've decided that it isn't even worth trying. "However in both cases there's the question or what for?" We are replacing my wife's computer, and I thought with a new motherboard I could use this as a minimal computer to run some math problems (a limited function). HD size and video are not an issue (but using them is). The old one still works, and there is a charity that will take it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:43, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

I intended to make this clear which I neglected to do but I think you're missing the point that when it comes to the video card at least, buying a CPU with an integrated GPU and an appropriate motherboard adds almost nothing to the cost so saving the video card serves no purpose except to waste time. The HDD is more complicated but the cheapest new HD on NewEgg appears to be a 2.5" for $45 which is a little expensive but not that bad considering with CPU+mobo+RAM+trustworthy PSU you're looking to spend at least $200 I would expect. Really at this level though and particularly in the US, if you don't have specific requirements and don't know much about what you're doing it's worth just buying a ready made PC (the alternative is to get a working second hand). Ignoring of course the possibility the HDD will be so small that you'll have trouble finding enough space to install the OS or whatever programme you want to use to solve maths problems, a HD that old is probably even more likely to die at any time, not to mention while HDs are slow compared to SSDs, having tried to use one recently (well not quite that old), I was reminded or how much slower old ones are. In fact if you really don't care about the size (do you actually realise how quickly 20-40GB can disappear nowadays?), you can easily get a 32GB SSD for about that price. My main point is as I said at the end, that ultimately if you want to buy a new mobo and CPU sticking them with such old components is rarely a good idea. This is not to say these old components aren't any use, but rather if you want to reuse them it makes far more sense to stick them with other older components (perhaps not that old, perhaps older depending on the components and other factors) than to stick them with completely new components. Nil Einne (talk) 03:47, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'd have to buy a 64-bit OS too. Anyhow, I bought a factory-refurbished i5 with a warranty tonight on eBay for $289, including shipping, that will do the job. At that price, replacing parts on the old one just doesn't make sense (not even close). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:54, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Yeah that's my point. I'm currently using a Celeron 900mhz with SDRAM for my router and not that long ago was using a similar vintage computer for my download computer (and my router was even older) and something in the vintage of what you're talking about in your original post for my PVR, and until very recently was using a CRT as my main monitor, so I have nothing against older computers and components myself, it's simply a matter or know what they're good for and what they're not good for and I just wanted to make clear that in my experience, what you're suggesting wasn't worth it regardless of whether the stuff would work (and this is even in NZ where stuff tends to be a lot more expensive) for many reasons (I included a few obvious ones but had to be broad because I wasn't sure where you were going with the idea). Nil Einne (talk) 03:59, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Reason for difference of location of X11 include directory

On my Ubuntu machine, the directory X11 which has, among other things, Xlib.h, is located at /usr/include, thus not requiring any additional -I flags on the compile line. On my OpenBSD machine, however, the X11 include directory is at /usr/X11R6/include, which isn't known by default (to my compiler, at least). Why the difference in location? 75.75.42.89 (talk) 13:16, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

X11 was traditionally installed in /usr/X11R? - it's still there in OpenBSD and Solaris. This meant that the whole X11 distribution (and nothing but) was all mounted in one location. That made sense, particularly on old machines, if you had a disk dedicated to just the X11 distribution. It also makes life easier on an older unixalike without a decent package manager (like pkgadd or apt), where you had to manage third-party stuff like X11 manually by pulling it off a distribution tape. The LSB docs says KDE and GNOME always put their stuff straight into the main /usr hierarchy ([1]); at some point it seems Linux distributors just started putting X11 in there too (this posting opines as to why). LSB now mandates that if there's a real /usr/X11R6 then its important children should be symlinked from /usr. At least between Linux and BSD, using pkg-config (e.g pkg-config --cflags x11) rather than explicit paths can make your build files more tractable, as you don't need to know (or to define) where includes, libraries etc. are. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:46, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

(ec) It's UNIX. If all UNIX variants did things the same way, UNIX would have taken over the world 30 years ago. Then we would have no competition between operating system families, and hence no progress. UNIX hackers, in their infinite wisdom, have foreseen this dire possibility, and hence have added pointless little incompatibilities at every opportunity. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

That setup also allows you to have multiple versions of X on the same machine and switch between them, simply by changing paths. Looie496 (talk) 15:21, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Web browser engines of TVs with Internet functionality

Which/what rendering engines (including HTML, JavaScript engines, and so on) do Internet-accessing TV sets (Samsung Smart TV, Sony Internet TV, LG Smart TV,...) use? _{If possible, please list specific configurations for every brand/model.} --Czech is Cyrillized (talk) 15:09, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

From [2]:

"Rendering is done with the Samsung proprietary Maple browser, which supports CSS1 and CSS2, a subset of CSS3 plus the CSS TV profile 1.0. It has a JavaScript engine built-in that supports JavaScript 1.6. The BMP, JPEG, PNG and GIF image formats are supported. Applications are written in HTML+CSS+JavaScript. In addition, the platform supports both Flash and Adobe AIR."

this thread may also be of interest. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 18:11, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

How to make a searchable online database.

Hello there, everyone:

Until a few months ago, I used a collaborative website to host my dictionary, the online interface of which allowed me to add words to a database that anyone with the link could search through. One of the boons of the software used on the website was that one could search instantly (search results would appear upon typing, no need for entering). Unfortunately, the owner of this website decided to not pay the annual fees and it went down for months. It went up again recently, but with most of the data very out of date.

Luckily, I saved a .doc version of my lexicon a few weeks before the site went down, so lost around 1,500 words rather than the entire lexicon. I'm now faced with the task of making a searchable online database on my own domain, because I don't want to have to go through what I'll have to do now (input several thousand words, again) again. What is/are the best option/s for creating a searchable online database? My computing skills are generally ok, but I'm not very adept at coding, so hopefully there is a relatively straightforward solution.

All the best,

--94.197.122.86 (talk) 16:23, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like you may need something less than a full database, but we need more info to be sure. For example, would they know the full word they want to search for and type it exactly, or do you need support for when they type in something close and it brings up a list of possible matches ? Also, do you want to produce a list of matches each time they add a letter, or wait until they are done ? The minimum solution would just be to put everything on a single web page, and have them use <CTRL> F to search for a word. StuRat (talk) 21:17, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, StuRat. Support for possible matches would be good, but I can cope with not having such a feature if it is particularly cumbersome. I'd rather a list of matches appear each time they add a letter, preferably anyhow, but again, if that is very difficult to program, I am flexible with regards to the requirement. I'm currently using CTRL+F with a single page at the minute, and with a lexicon of tens of thousands of words, many of which in the other source language being similar, it is a very cumbersome process, and can sometimes take a minute or two to find the word, so I'll need something quicker than that. I appreciate your help. All the best,

--94.197.122.84 (talk) 22:28, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Any ideas? -- 94.197.122.75 (talk) 17:21, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

With that many words, it would be good to break them down a bit. One method is by first letter. So, have 26 pages, one for words starting with each letter. Or you could get a bit fancier and try to make each page about the same length, say by putting X-Z on one page, and maybe splitting the B's up to BA-BE and BF-BZ. This approach will take more time up front, but should make searches quicker. Once they jump to the right page, they can still do a <CTRL> F from there. StuRat (talk) 00:38, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Text files/documents on my PSP?

Hello everyone! This time I'm wondering about reading text files/documents on my Sony PSP. Basically I'd like to read stories on it that I'll download off the internet (not copyrighted works, I'm interested in fanfiction that's all.) So is there a way I can do this? Or is a more convoluted way required (ie. turning each page into a picture though that wouldn't really work for a .txt file since there's really no way to discern one page from another...) though I think my main concern here is word documents... I'd really be fine with any format. Thanks! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 17:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

If taking screenshots of the text document, you would want at most one pic per page, although breaking a page down into 2-3 pics might make sense, if it starts out in a printable "portrait" format, to make the text larger and fit the wide-screen format better. If the PSP supports slideshows which you can manually page through, then making one of those out of the pics would be the way to go. Of course, they might also support some text format, say for help files. StuRat (talk) 19:18, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Here are two forum threads that offer a few solutions [3] [4]. I don't have a psp, but I'd guess pointing a browser at "file:/PSP/COMMON/document.txt" would easy and reliable (if it works). SemanticMantis (talk) 20:54, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. Looks like those forum pages are full of trial and error and several conflicting anecdotes... but are still worth a try, for sure; I'll try the the browser thing. If I can't get that to work I'll probably just turn them into pictures and view them that way - a little labour intensive but at least it's straightforward (and I'll pretty much definitely have to do that for the 2 PDF stories I have.) Thanks again! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 17:39, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Grr I just tried the pathway method in multiple variations... all I got was "content could not be displayed". Then I found a document viewer and it looked promising, only to discover that it only works on an ancient firmware version (and still didn't boot on my custom one...) Oh well I guess it's pictures for me! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 18:34, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Solved!

Update: I've finally solved the problem! For future reference, I found a program called jpegbook (site is in Japanese) that converts .txt files to many JPEGs. It's certainly not perfect (quotation marks turn into Olde English letters, and words are sometimes split between lines without a hyphen!); but it works and is readable, and that's all that matters... I'll try to mess with it to see if I can make the output a little better, though. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 17:32, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. I could actually write a program to do that (although I'd create an animated GIF). What's it worth to you ? :-) StuRat (talk) 08:46, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure about an animated GIF - wouldn't I lose control over flipping the pages however often I wanted? Though if you could write a program to do that with Microsoft Works Word Processor (or, if not possible, even something free like Open Office I'd be willing to download), that would be great (because all the formatting errors associated with notepad wouldn't happen.) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 15:57, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Monitor Connection Problem

how can i connect a VGA monitor to motherboard? The motherboard is Intel DH77EB — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.59.101.136 (talk) 19:01, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

It appears you cannot directly plug a VGA monitor into this mother-board (MB). According to THIS page on the Intel website, it has connectors on the MB for "DVI-I, HDMI, and DisplayPort", so many(most?) recent flat screen computer monitors, or flat screen televisions can be connected directly. It does also have "One PCI Express 3.0 x 16 discrete graphics card connector" so you appear to need a PCI Express graphics card, or cable adaptor for VGA to HDMI, DVI-I or DisplayPort. If you go HERE you can actually see the connectors on the MB (Adobe Flash Player browser plug-in required)--220 of ^Borg 20:09, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

To expand on 220's response, your simplest solution is to purchase the DVI to VGA adapter like this. Your motherboard's DVI-I output include VGA compatible analog signals, so you just need the adapter (DVI male to VGA female) and a standard VGA cable. If you have an DVI cable, but no VGA cable, you will need the less common DVI female to VGA male adapter to place at the monitor end of the cable. The display port and HDMI outputs supply digital signals only. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 02:19, 1 September 2013 (UTC)