Adam says not too much grease ...

[Alex2507]

Make sure not to use very much grease. You want as thin of a layer as possible.

Look, what you, Rick and Doug want to do is up to you guys but I always heard grease is the word.

I keep linking this but nobody cares. He talks about prep in a previous write up that's he links but in that one there is a tutorial on application. I got to do mine twice so I saw the spread pattern of the 2 small lines and it was perfect.

Going in I took the following pics in order of dis-assembly.

Now here is the chip. I had that puppy out and thought that was maybe why nothing would work. I had given up completely but Craig got me to try something and it got my hopes up. Then a little reformatting magic and violin! ... computer like new.

I pretty much stopped taking pictures there because I was kind of nervous about my chances for success. I lost everything I had on it but that amounts to some pics that I probably have copies of and links to a bunch of audio/video related stuff that I probably wasn't going to read anyway.

Just one last pic to demonstrate that the uses for Peal&Seal are never ending.

 

[Alex2507]

That computer is ancient. The fact it's still running is a miracle.

Yes but this is being posted with the ancient miracle so I'm just going to hope that you haven't jinxed it. The reformatting cleaned it up pretty good and the memory I added a ways back is making it basically better than ever.

yep, even the smilies work. It just won't keep me logged in here at AH. Still have to figure that out. It has taken me hours and hours to get it set back up but at least I now have the benefit of lots of experience with it where before everything was my first time around.

This has been a test. Return to your regularly scheduled puppy making.

 

[GO-NAD!]

Holy cr*p - you really do need a job! I've blown the dust out of my computer maybe twice in the last 7 years and that's about all the maintenance I've done, besides adding RAM a couple of months ago. I'd never heard of thermal paste before you brought it up. Hope it works for you. Meanwhile, I think I'm just gonna make sure all my important stuff is backed up and wait for the inevitable...

 

[Adam]

...but I always heard grease is the word.

That's like eating steak with vaseline on your tongue. I'll never do that again. Well...

Then a little reformatting magic and violin! ... computer like new.

That's awesome! I didn't realize that it was back up and running.

 

[adk highlander]

Good job on cleaning it up and getting it working. Why won't it let you stay logged in? Is the browser closing or dropping your login status? What browser are you using?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Adding an fast SSD to my old computer and mirroring os partition to ssd really woke it up big time. Windows 7 from crawling begun actually running, well the cpu bound tasks were still limited, but in overall responsiveness - it was night and day

any aftermarket TMI works fine, but why change it on stock cooler ?

 

[Alex2507]

I think I'm just gonna make sure all my important stuff is backed up and wait for the inevitable...

Whenever I ask for info on backing stuff up the advice of 'don't wait' is always the first and last word. The cost and confusion has always left me doing nothing and ignoring that one golden piece of advice.

Why won't it let you stay logged in? Is the browser closing or dropping your login status? What browser are you using?

Firefox is dropping my login status. It was doing it whenever I closed it but somehow I think I got around that only to have it drop it when I turn off the computer. It's the latest version because I just downloaded it yesterday. I have the Vista laptop to compare it to for settings but the formerly problematic desktop is XP.

Adding an fast SSD to my old computer and mirroring os partition to ssd really woke it up big time. Windows 7 from crawling begun actually running, well the cpu bound tasks were still limited, but in overall responsiveness - it was night and day

any aftermarket TMI works fine, but why change it on stock cooler ?

SSD? Really? CPU bound tasks? Mirroring os partition? Are you f^%&in' with me ?!?

The difference between silicone and silver based TIM's is pretty substantial. Out of the 80 tested TIM's the commonly available Artic Silver 5 is a good performer and is non conductive according to product labeling. There are some TIM's that are corrosive to certain metals IIRC so as little as I do know I disagree with you about any aftermarket TIM working fine.

The wiki page on thermal grease says it has a life span and my heat sink had become clogged leading to overheating necessitating a reformatting, TIM replacement and another reformatting in it's second year. Now five years later I wasn't sure what was up with it really but that was the only tool in my tool box for computer problems. I was already thinking about how life was going to be with just the laptop.

I'm installing the drivers for the Sound Blaster Audigy sound card that Adam had me get but didn't help me understand. I think he's f^%&in' me too. It's all good because if the situation was reversed I'd have you guys fetching left handed hammers and buckets of steam. You gotta be able to pee in the tall grass if you wanna hang with the big dogs.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

SSD? Really? CPU bound tasks? Mirroring os partition? Are you f^%&in' with me ?!?

Let me help you out a bit:

Windows feels and works much faster if windows is running from good ssd, but it doesn't help with games or converting video - as they more depend on the processor

 

[Alex2507]

Let me help you out a bit:

Windows feels and works much faster if windows is running from good ssd, but it doesn't help with games or converting video - as they more depend on the processor

What you're not understanding is that I have no idea what an ssd is. That's what I was trying to get across in my prior response. I don't know what you are talking about. Think of me in terms of a dog trying to understand investment banking.

 

[its phillip]

Solid-state drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

ssd = in general it's like a hard drive, but much faster and more expensive
120 GB SSD cost about same as 1000 to 1500 GB Hard drive

Sorry dumb it down any further

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Alex - you are really confusing me
paragraphs like this one

The difference between silicone and silver based TIM's is pretty substantial. Out of the 80 tested TIM's the commonly available Artic Silver 5 is a good performer and is non conductive according to product labeling. There are some TIM's that are corrosive to certain metals IIRC so as little as I do know I disagree with you about any aftermarket TIM working fine.

make you sound really smart, BUT

WTF is SSD

do the exact opposite

 

[Alex2507]

Alex - you are really confusing me ...

Love is like that.

... but we're not here to judge.

EDIT:

So I get just the drivers downloaded for Sound Blaster Audigy like lsiberian once said to do (oh, I do pay attention when I can) and figure out how to make it the default player ... non of which went smooth but what baffles me is that only the right channel would play for like 45 seconds and then all the sudden both channels. How can this be? Anyway I'm cooking with gas now.

Just because I wanted sound I ripped Foo Fighters into Windows Media Player 9 (that's what was there). I need something smart to do for ripping music and burning CD's but this is where I'm not so smart.

ssd = in general it's like a hard drive, but much faster and more expensive
120 GB SSD cost about same as 1000 to 1500 GB Hard drive

Sorry dumb it down any further

That's not something I'm getting anytime soon.

 

[Alex2507]

Okay, here's where I'm at. I've got WMP 11 now and I've ripped and burned a few CD's. I even figured out how to do that mix thing and that's pretty cool. Now what I'm wanting is to get the song info on these discs that I burn so that it's displayed on my Sony CDP-CX355.

I have some burned discs that do that and they were presumably made with iTunes but for the life of me that isn't something that I've been good with. Is there something inherently wrong with iTunes being used with a PC? A friend of mine tried to show me how to do that with my laptop and it worked in the Sony the way that I wanted but that disc would not play in my car.

I guess if I played with iTunes I'd figure some of it out like I did with WMP 11 but if somebody wants to give me the scoop on any of this I am all ears.

 

[MDS]

Okay, here's where I'm at. I've got WMP 11 now and I've ripped and burned a few CD's. I even figured out how to do that mix thing and that's pretty cool. Now what I'm wanting is to get the song info on these discs that I burn so that it's displayed on my Sony CDP-CX355.

I have some burned discs that do that and they were presumably made with iTunes but for the life of me that isn't something that I've been good with. Is there something inherently wrong with iTunes being used with a PC? A friend of mine tried to show me how to do that with my laptop and it worked in the Sony the way that I wanted but that disc would not play in my car.

I guess if I played with iTunes I'd figure some of it out like I did with WMP 11 but if somebody wants to give me the scoop on any of this I am all ears.

The song info comes from various databases on the net such as CDDB (now GraceNote), freedb.org, all music guide (AMG), etc. The ripping program calculates a CRC of the tracks and uses that number as a key to retrieve the track info from one of the databases. If you are encoding to a format that supports tags, that info gets put in the tags. If playing a CD, the same database lookup is used by the player; if playing a digital audio file players read the song info from the tags.

If you burn a 'mix' disc with different songs from different discs, the CRC will not match any known CD in any database. Some CD burners support CD-Text and that can be used as a workaround in some cases, but not many players read CD-Text.

 

[Alex2507]

The song info comes from various databases on the net such as CDDB (now GraceNote), freedb.org, all music guide (AMG), etc. The ripping program calculates a CRC of the tracks and uses that number as a key to retrieve the track info from one of the databases. If you are encoding to a format that supports tags, that info gets put in the tags. If playing a CD, the same database lookup is used by the player; if playing a digital audio file players read the song info from the tags.

If you burn a 'mix' disc with different songs from different discs, the CRC will not match any known CD in any database. Some CD burners support CD-Text and that can be used as a workaround in some cases, but not many players read CD-Text.

So a store bought CD doesn't have the text? I figured CRC must be this as opposed to Costa Rican colon (top Google result) ... I can't help it that stuff like that follows me around. Anyway that's really interesting and this Sony 300 CD changer does read CD Text. Now the trick is finding a burner that supports it aside from the dreaded iTunes. I may as well embrace it like a smelly relative.

Thanks very much for explaining that.

It just occurred to me that my car probably doesn't play CD-R's so that's another strike taken away from iTunes. Let me get something else asked while I'm here. My rips are WMA Lossless. Would there be an advantage to having them as WAV? When I burn them to a disc any player that can read a CD-R will be capable of playing them back? WMA and WAV are ways of 'encoding' the music to be stored on a computer? I'll likely Google that stuff to but the short sweet answers are why I'm here.

EDIT: I just realized I had Nero. Is anybody familiar with that for making burns with CD Text?

 

[GO-NAD!]

So a store bought CD doesn't have the text? I figured CRC must be this as opposed to Costa Rican colon (top Google result) ... I can't help it that stuff like that follows me around. Anyway that's really interesting and this Sony 300 CD changer does read CD Text. Now the trick is finding a burner that supports it aside from the dreaded iTunes. I may as well embrace it like a smelly relative.

Thanks very much for explaining that.

It just occurred to me that my car probably doesn't play CD-R's so that's another strike taken away from iTunes. Let me get something else asked while I'm here. My rips are WMA Lossless. Would there be an advantage to having them as WAV? When I burn them to a disc any player that can read a CD-R will be capable of playing them back? WMA and WAV are ways of 'encoding' the music to be stored on a computer? I'll likely Google that stuff to but the short sweet answers are why I'm here.

EDIT: I just realized I had Nero. Is anybody familiar with that for making burns with CD Text?

I have Nero as well, but mainly to burn DVDs. I have copied CDs with it, but I haven't bothered with track listings. I just plug a keyboard into the CDP-CX355, add the album title and call it a day. I keep a printed index of all the CDs I have in both CD players. Otherwise, I'd never find what I'm looking for.

I understand that if you're making mixed CDs, you want to know all the tracks on them. I don't know if Nero can do that for you, but it's a pretty good program, so I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

I just realized something - you didn't think you had offered much useful advice with my bass issues. I think I just outdid you by offering pretty much no advice at all.

 

[lsiberian]

I have Nero as well, but mainly to burn DVDs. I have copied CDs with it, but I haven't bothered with track listings. I just plug a keyboard into the CDP-CX355, add the album title and call it a day. I keep a printed index of all the CDs I have in both CD players. Otherwise, I'd never find what I'm looking for.

I understand that if you're making mixed CDs, you want to know all the tracks on them. I don't know if Nero can do that for you, but it's a pretty good program, so I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

I just realized something - you didn't think you had offered much useful advice with my bass issues. I think I just outdid you by offering pretty much no advice at all.

Why not just load your songs to the cloud and then pull whatever you need down to your iphone? Seriously people it's time to join the new decade.

 

[Alex2507]

I have Nero as well, but mainly to burn DVDs. I have copied CDs with it, but I haven't bothered with track listings. I just plug a keyboard into the CDP-CX355, add the album title and call it a day. I keep a printed index of all the CDs I have in both CD players. Otherwise, I'd never find what I'm looking for.

Jeff gave me a keyboard just for that but I didn't bother reading the manual and figuring out how to do that. Crap, now I can't remember where I put the keyboard. I keep a hand written list but I need to reorganize all that because the alphabetical order took a hit after the initial installment of CD's. I actually don't have a good way of doing that either ... Wordpad? I'd like to somehow organize a folder on the computer with album info but I don't know of an efficient way to do so. Any ideas?

I understand that if you're making mixed CDs, you want to know all the tracks on them. I don't know if Nero can do that for you, but it's a pretty good program, so I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

I'll get it figured out nice and slow like everything else I figure out. When I played with it last night I found that I could copy an album from it's file location in WMP and paste it in Nero but it did something weird to the text and song order. It would probably work better if I copied the songs individually but that would be way slow. I mean I know I'm not quick at any of this but damn, I gotta be able to do better than that.

I just realized something - you didn't think you had offered much useful advice with my bass issues. I think I just outdid you by offering pretty much no advice at all.

That was just false modesty. If you listened to me more your system would sound like one costing 5 times more ... like a Bose Wave Radio!

I should find that extra key board. I should call Jeff and get the iTunes cult indoctrination speech again. It might mean that I have to genuflect to Regan 5 times a day during lent but I'm confident he could get me from here to there.

So, my objectives:

1. Writing CD Text
2. Choosing between WMA Lossless, WMA (VBR), WAV
3. Choosing between Windows Media Player, iTunes, Nero
4. Finding a way to keep an ordered list of what is in the 300 CD changer

 

[JohnA]

Try Songbird:

Songbird - Welcome

Also, why are you using the 300 disc when you can just use the PC????