I often see "Refurbished" hard drives being sold on ebay. What do they refurbish? As far as I know, once a HDD has problems with the platters or heads, they are trash. About the only part that can be repaired or replaced is the circuit board, but how often do they go bad? (probably very seldom). So...

Where can I get extra Hard Drive jumpers for IDE/PATA drives that need them? I've boughten drives from ebay, and they rarely include these jumpers. I'm constantly having to borrow them from other drives that are not in use. I'd like to just buy 10 or 20 of them to have on hand, and be done with it....

I bought a US Robotics 56K USB External Fax-modem V.92 Model 5633A on ebay without the USB cable. The plug on the rear of the modem is NOT a standard USB connector. It's almost square and fairly large. I will need to buy a cable on ebay for this, but I am not sure what to look for. Is there a name...

I was told that the IDE hard drives work better with the 80 wire cables than with the 40 wire ones. I know a guy who has a lot of this stuff and he gave me a few of the 80 wire cables. But there is a problem. All of the ones he gave me, have about 2.5 or 3 inches between the two plugs on the drive...

I have an old 17 year old computer running Win98se. I have a bootable 120gb drive for C: with 3 more partitions. C: thru F:. That works fine. Recently I replaced my slave drive, with a Western Digital 160gb drive. That drive was setup with Fdisk, set for Extended partition at 100% of drive, with...

Does anyone really use FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394. Or is that old technology? One of my computers had a card in it for this, and I never knew what it was for. It just said IEEE 1394 on it. I finally looked it up. Yet, I have never seen anything with those kind of plugs on it. Maybe this is just...

I bought a floppy drive on ebay, intending to replace the dead one in my old Win98 desktop computer. I did not know what I was getting as far as the cables. The drive itself is very thin, and I knew that when I bought it, but it's wide enough to fit in the drive bay, so I only thought there would...

It seems that since the beginning of computers, everything had Molex plugs and they worked fine. To use a SATA drive, I need an adaptor to convert to those tiny pins on the drive. I almost wonder how enough current can get thru those tiny pins. What gets me most, is why all those pins are needed....

Greetings all! I am going crazy trying to figure out an issue with the following hardwa * Windows 2000 Server SP4 (Intel-based) * DEC DLT 7000 Drive Fast-Wide, HVD (High Voltage Differential) with SCSI-2 Internal Connector * Adaptec AHA-2944UW HVD SCSI controller * Internal 68pin...

Both the pc & mac are connected to the monitor via hdmi; no idea what DAC the monitor is using at its headphone out. The Mac mini is getting sound from the monitor while the pc is still using the HT Claro as primary sound out. For the Mac, the monitor headphone out is connected to the M-audio 30...

Is there any thing unique in a usb kvm vs a powered usb hub, other than the vga port? The hub should send all signals to the computer. And isn't a kvm just a "hub" with a switch?

Does a reverse usb hub exist? i.e. 1 signal in, 2 places out. Or an usb splitter. The purpose is to have the trackball connected to a pc & mac mini so that the trackball need not be disconnected/connected as need arises. Found that the wireless don't do the job as the mac seem to trap all the...

Never thought I'd ever ask, but what do people use for backing up large drives, like the 1 or 2 terabyte drives or larger? Hope not a "cloud/mainframe". Just installed a 2T onto the router for media (music) & will be doing a project to rip my CDs to the drive for access via DLNA. I'll...

The "old PCs" thread got me into trying overclocking on my 2007 Gigabyte GA-P35-DSR3 rev 2 with the Intel E6550 & 8 gigs of Corsair ram. Looked up "howtos" & did it, sortof(?). The cpu freq is at 400 mhz & the multiplier at 7x; had the cpu vcore set to 1.400. Now the bios shows cpu speed of 2.8...

I just saw an interview/demo on Fox Business News regarding an 112 in tv for $55,000. The most interesting thing is that it weighed only 75 lbs & is 1 in thick; the tv was VERY flexible as in like a sheet of paper; can be WRAPPED around a column/post. For gamers, a smaller size like 20-30 in,...

Searching is fruitless... hits upon hits upon hits for "kits" of two 1 GB DIMMs, even when doing a -kit in froogle.

looking to build a new PC and am trying to decide on getting an AMD 64 or 64 X2 chip? i know the first is for pure horsepower and the other is for multitasking. any other advantages/disadvantages of one over the other?? i have heard that gaming with the X2 is a little tricky requiring some...

Hello. I am thinking of getting a $100 MSI P43 NEO3-F (http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=P43_Neo3-F&class=mb ) since I am upgrading my current Windows XP Pro. SP3/gaming system (see http://alpha.zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/computers.txt for the full details) to a faster...

Hello, A few days ago, I noticed powering on my computer showed MSI splash screen (had this disabled) and then it went to BIOS screen to say "CMOS Checksum error. Defaults loaded." I was hoping it was a hiccup. I powered off the machine off and on to see if it remembers my settings, nope. I...

Hello! I am thinking of replacing my current motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc. to an Intel i7 950 CPU, its motherboard, and new RAM. I am still going to use my old, updated Windows XP Pro. SP3 (don't need 64-bit and newer Windows at this time since my old softwares still work). Is this going to be...