Unauthorized - Parent Directory - Support

ASK LOYD
SATA AND PATA HARD DRIVES
QI am adding a SATA hard drive to a
computer with an existing parallel
ATA hard drive. Do I leave the PATA
hard drive on IDE 0, or should I actually
remove the PATA drive and
use the SATA drive exclusively? —Robert Cammack
NEED ANSWERS?
ExtremeTech.com’s
editor, Loyd Case, tackles
your toughest hardware
problems each issue.
Send him yours at
askloyd@ziffdavis.com.
Disables DHCP
AYou can use a SATA drive alongside an existing
parallel ATA (PATA, often referred to as IDE)
drive. This is a good option if the PATA drive is
still worth using. If it’s an older drive with a small capacity
(by today’s standards), it may be best to remove it,
but I’ve successfully run large PATA and SATA drives
simultaneously. One system was configured to boot
from a single PATA drive, and it had two SATA drives
configured as a RAID 1 array for the secondary drive.
Microsoft Windows booted from the PATA drive, but
critical data was stored on the SATA RAID 1 array.
You can set up the system to boot off either drive. If
you add a PATA drive to a system with an existing SATA
boot drive, you may need to go into the system BIOS
and reconfigure the SATA drive as the primary boot
drive. Many PCs will assume that a new PATA master
drive on the primary IDE controller is the boot drive,
even if you’ve been booting from a SATA drive.
A DISCONNECTING
WIRELESS NETWORK
QI have a combination
wireless/wired network
at home. One PC is
connected to a Linksys Wireless
802.11b router’s built-in
Ethernet switch. The other PC
is connected wirelessly via a
Linksys WMP11 card. When the
wireless PC goes to sleep, or
even just goes to the screen
saver, the wireless network disconnects.
I lose e-mail and Web
connectivity, though when I
wake up the PC, the tray icon
tells me I have an excellent connection.
I’ve tried updating the
router firmware, and I’ve disabled the hardwired
Ethernet port on the Asus P4P800 motherboard,
but that doesn’t help. I always have to perform a
“repair” on the wireless card.—Andy Craig
Specify your PC’s
IP address
Typically the same
YYePG Proudly Presents, Thx for Support
ADespite all the work on ACPI and other powermanagement
technologies, power management
for desktop systems still tends to trail the
abilities of laptop computers in this area.
In standard home router setups, the PC automatically
picks up an IP address from the router through a
mechanism called DHCP (dynamic host configuration
protocol). The router maintains a pool of IP addresses.
When a system disconnects, it needs to issue a DHCP
request to obtain a new IP address. When you use the
“repair” function, the system re-establishes a connection
to the router and requests a new IP address.
What you might try to do is to allocate the IP address
permanently from the PC. You need to do this in
the Internet Protocol control panel, which is reachable
from the Network control panel.
INTEL VS. AMD
QAfter reading the article on building a PC
(go.pcmag.com/buildyourownpc; March 7,
page 97), I was curious as to why one
would choose one processor over another. It
would appear that AMD has faster, more advanced,
and less expensive chips than Intel does.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of
one chip over another? —Mark
AYou ask a question that’s been argued for years
on Internet chat rooms and Web sites. Each
processor has different strengths and weaknesses.
For example, an Intel Pentium 4 will often perform
software rendering on 3ds Max much faster than
an AMD Athlon 64 will. On the other hand, the AMD
CPUs generally beat Intel’s at PC games.
Recently, since dual-core processors became common,
AMD dual-core processors have tended to outpace
their Intel equivalents, and the Intel CPUs also
run very hot. It looks as if this will probably change as
soon as Intel shifts to its new architecture later this
year. But for now, AMD’s dual-core CPUs tend to be
a bit faster and put out less heat than Intel’s, and they
cost about the same.
It’s not just the CPU that comes into play. For example,
you may require a flexible, high-performance
disk subsystem. In that case, Intel chipsets often
outperform the chipsets used on AMD-compatible
motherboards. But if you want to run dual graphics
cards for gaming, an AMD is better.
In the end, the average office computer user may
not be faced with these issues. The raw performance
of the CPU isn’t as important as the overall responsiveness
of the system, which often depends on the
memory, hard drive, and other factors.
MAY 9, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 117