My AM386

So today I have spent the entire day playing with an AMD 386 SX/SXL - 25. I obtained it several years ago and since has been sat in a box doing nothing.

So I figured, hey, lets get it out and see what's what and maybe see if I can sell it or something. I saw recently that they are classed as something called Vintage Computing. To someone like me this is a nice little computer, I wouldn't want to sell it. But I know I'll never use it. My days of tinkering with PC Hardware are all but gone.

So looking at it, what do I have? Its a really small computer, built obviously as a space saver. It runs a 25 mhz cpu with 1 and a half mb ram... Not sure the specific of that one as I didn't look enough.

But the big issue here is that it is missing a hard drive, I have the original floppy disk drive but no cable for it, as it has a different socket which converts into the standard format for the board. This is a problem, as a regular floppy disk drive is too long to fit in the case, also a regular floppy disk cable takes up space.

The other issue is that the front of the machine is missing, so no plastics making it look nice, its just a metal shell. This causes a problem because I can't identify what the actual computer is. I have been searching the net all day for what could be an ECS Book PC, but I can only find Book 2s and 3s. Which is annoying.

The BIOS string is 30-0100-D01131-0111111-070791-HT18C-F which only matches manufacturer and no boards listed online. I can't find it anywhere. There is a number on the board BP1000 which to what I found is the model number of some UPS Battery.

It seems impossible to find, but not only that it has a major major issue. Its CMOS Battery is a Dallas Real Time Clock chip with an inbuilt battery, which is flat. It means finding a new one which could prove impossible, or hacking it down the side and attaching a more modern battery. I'm not sure I want to start taking it apart because I have shaky hands and don't belong near a soldering iron.

One thing I will note before I finish this blog, If you have any idea what I'm talking about... IE what the board could be or what computer it was for, please let me know I would be very grateful.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Dwarfy Mountain

So for the last couple days I have been spending time in Cinema 4d to produce something a little bigger than the Pig mount I designed a while ago.



But as you can tell I'm not very experienced in 3d work, after this I went on and produced another similar picture for a friend of mine which used the same grass and looked the same apart from it was her character riding a snail.

Now I moved onto my next project and its got slightly more detail than the last one, the last one took 15 minutes to render and I thought that was over the top, until this one took 5 hours to render. I hope you like it.



Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

I Appear To Have An Issue

I appear to have a Dwarf Issue

-Professor Clutch

More Downtime and SOPA

So its 5:45pm and I just get to my pc to play some tor. And I get the message above. Wow really?

1.1.0a Patch Notes - 1/19/2012


Operations


Karagga’s Palace

Fixed an issue that caused assigned loot bags in Karagga’s Palace to distribute items with class inappropriate stats.

PvP


Ilum

Players can no longer enter the opposing faction’s safe base area, thus preventing players from continually "camping" the other faction's base.
Turrets inside faction bases were not intended to be destroyed and are now immune to damage.
The population cap for instances of Ilum has been reduced to improve performance.
Implemented optimizations to improve performance on Ilum.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

Loading screens no longer appear when other players spawn nearby.

Was this really worth several hours of downtime? I feel like I'm paying for a game which is never available to play. Not only is this not worth patching on a day that isn't the usual patch/maintainableaintinence day (which google still doesn't correct for me) but until 8:30pm gmt? you have to be having a laugh?

SOPA
As you may know there was a blackout yesterday in protest of SOPA, I know not many people visit this blog but I put in my effort by blacking out for the day.

For those of you who don't know, SOPA is bad and will destroy the internet as we know it, go to http://americancensorship.org/ for more info.


Powertech

Back to tor, I re-rolled Powertech, I cant be bothered with my marauder any more, I have too much fun as a Powertech. I've gone shield tech so will be a tank, and currently level 23.

Here is a picture of a pretty boat I took on Balmora while levelling my PT.


Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

NASA Finds Double Star Planet Systems

So for someone like me this is really interesting, a planet orbiting two stars, being described as "like Tatooine from Star Wars" which is awesome.

I have always wondered what a system with two stars would be like for a planet, I would imagine very hot.

You can read more about it over on Space Fellowhip

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Rest XP And Broken Strings

So I took a couple days off Star Wars this week in order to save up some rest xp. As I found myself too low for my content I figured taking a break would help me out. So I have spent the last couple days doing a mixture of things like...

Tidying up... Which didn't last too long.

Watching Only Fools and Horses, my brother bought the box set and has been lending me the dvds to watch, I'm now on series 7.. Or I just finished series 7, I missed the whole of series 5 so going back for that.

Playing Slide Guitar. My dad threw a steel bottleneck thing at me, so I have been having a play on that today and a bit last night, its quite fun. Although its not so fun being that I have a string missing... Yes I am an idiot and tuned it the wrong way and now haven't had the time to replace it.

Rest XP
So today I logged back onto SWTOR and I've got a nice healthy bar of rest. It seems to be about 2/3 of a level if I look at how much extra over my level I have, which is Ideal. It means that I wont be suffering much longer when I start to catch up with the content again.



I thought I had reached the content but upon getting sent here, it was quite clear that I hadn't. I'm currently on Belsavis at level 39, I was half way through 38 when I arrived and this is a 41+ planet. Oh well...

IRC

On another note, I got all my IRC channels back this week. It's been a very long time since I was on IRC, since I left my old house in fact. But I'm back on it, all the same people are there, doesn't seem like anything's changed much. Upon arriving back in some of my channels I was given my old rights back even though I wasn't even logged into the servers (accounts expired). But if anyone wants to chat to me I'm on a mixture of servers (Quakenet, MIXXnet, Stratics, GeekShed, Coldfront) and I'll be named Cubedout. Just do a whois and it will tell you where I am :)

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

SWTOR: Disco Bubble and Captain Bryn

As you know this week I started a Sith Sorcerer after being told it had Disc Priest similarities.

Disco Bubble

Well today I reached level 14 and got what seems to be my alternative to my disco bubble Power Word: Shield. Well from what it seems it is a shield of electrickery and is named Static Barrier. From what I can tell it also has its similar Weakened Soul effect of which the name escapes me right now... I like this though, I'm looking forward to more levels.

Captain Bryn

So while levelling my marauder a week or two back, I stumbled across this NPC who had a Welsh accent, I loved this guy so much that when I went back levelling my Sorcerer I had to get it on video, its in two parts, first part is picking up the quest, second is handing it in. Although I did things slightly differently this time, last time I didn't know much about my choices for dark side and light side, this time he didn't shout at me which wasn't quite as entertaining.

But here he is in all his glory, Captain Bryn.

Part 1 - Collecting the mission.



"Mad scientist type. Likes weapons. Cyborgs. Droids. Ergonomic Chairs..." epic just epic.

Part 2 - Returning after the mission.




If you value time, skip this paragraph, I don't want any "well there's 30 seconds of my life I wont get back"
Well off to bed with me, spent another several hours waiting for server maintenance today... And OH MY GOD GOOGLE CHROME! I admit I cannot spell the word "maintenance" and the amount of times I have tried to type it yet its spell checker gives me maintained, impertinence, maintainable and daintiness... Just... Forget it... Stress over my own incompetence. Now I just wait for the two youtube videos to upload that I intend to put above before posting this... This piece of text is basically me bored waiting... Includes lots of pointless dots... COME ON!!!

On a final note my Marauder is currently level 38, and my Sorcerer 15. I plan on leaving the Marauder for a couple days maybe, I need some rest xp. Turns out I skipped a bunch of quests at low level and have been 3 levels behind for the whole duration. Now I must go to some planet where all my quests are Red and I can't be bothered with it again. So I'm saving rest then going to try some Flashpoints. Will see.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch
Do or do not, there is no try.

SWTOR: European Maintenance

I originally made this blog to rant about blizzard, but now I have a reason to rant about Bioware.

Server Maintenance

Yes they are doing a good job keeping the patches flowing and I can respect that, but this strikes me as annoying...

We are aiming for this weekly maintenance period to take place in an off-peak time for both North American and European players.

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Time: 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) to 10AM CST (8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM GMT/5PM CET)

All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours.

Now, In the US this I would consider a time when less people will be playing. But 8am-4pm in the UK is silly. Not everyone works during this time, and from playing WOW I know a lot of people play at this time of the day.

The situation comes down to them dropping all servers at the same time. This isn't really acceptable seeing as though every other MMO are fairly capable of dropping EU and US servers at separate hours, even at game launch. I'm paying for a game I cannot play during the day, do they wan't me to watch Jeremy Kyle when I could be killing some innocent people because they have outgrown their usefulness?

Today isn't Wednesday, so yes this was yesterday... But today its gone down again, it went down at 9pm today to apply a patch, sure yes again I'm happy they are doing their best to keep the game up to date, but really still why do them together please? For the sake of your player base, if you wish to keep subs I would suggest changing this, what about people who only have Tuesdays off to play? you loose all those players because 8 hours of their days are spent waiting for your servers to come up.

Now that's out of the way...

Sith Inquisitor

During the early hours of the morn, I thought to myself "I wonder what class would be most like Disc Priest as I loved Disc PVP" followed by asking in guild. I got the response that Sith Sorcerer Corruption was similar. I'm told they have a bubble and a penance like spell. I don't know if this is right or not, but I certainly am interested. So today I started my Inquisitor and started leveling, All these starter abilities and the sheer amount of damage I do to mobs really makes me think I rolled the wrong class.

When I tried my first character(warrior), it took effort to kill, its still taking effort to kill. When I started Bounty Hunter stuff died, and now I started this, stuff dies again. But ill be going healer, people spoke about going healer, using their companions to tank and dps, and to dps/heal along with them. Apparently its efficient. Ill hope to spam more flashpoints really. I haven't been doing them, I should have... We shall see.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch
KEEP FIRING ASSHOLES!

Hoth

Today I woke up at 12:30am. The last couple of days I have spent watching the Star Wars movies starting with the original films, then the more modern films. I figured as I'm playing the game I should at least catch up on the films, I had only seen the first one and part of the second and third. I'm glad I have watched them.

Last night I landed on Hoth, I'm now a level 37 Sith Marauder, It got me thinking the moment I arrived I was given a stim to protect me against the cold, so if the original star wars was 3500 years in the future why didn't Luke Skywalker have one when he almost froze to death? Not saying I'm better than Luke Skywalker but I haven't froze yet.

On another note, I want a Tauntaun mount please, thanks.

-Professor Clutch