DD_Brando

Everywhere I look I see people saying "these sounds are porked" and all the rest of the gamut that I'm too lazy to write down. I just thought I'd throw in another aspect that may clarify or confuse. Heh heh. I was stood on my balcony one fine day when I heard a low but unmistakable sound coming from up the coast. Merlins! Pretty soon I could see the source of the sound - two aircraft, one large, one small, and I recognised a Lancaster and a Hurricane flying line astern towards me. When they were practically overhead the wings came down and they executed a steeply-banked turn right over us and returned the way they had come, back over Dawlish. The Hurri stayed so tight it was as if he was rigidly attached to the old bomber, and aurally it was like standing outside through a tropical shower. Incredible, like an orgasm even. (Or so I'm told ) Compare that description with an actual recording of a Lancaster in flight then, but taken from inside the same plane. Turn the volume way up, you may even hear a Merlin. B

Well, the 160 gig Velociraptor arrived today and took all of 10 minutes to place into the anti-vibration mount in the Hiper case. I do love the ease of SATA cabling and attachment; so much better than those flipping ribbon cables and the multi-pin plugs and the slave/master jumpers on the hard-drives. The new drive was recognised in the BIOS and installed by Windows but didn't show up in My Computer. Time for Acronis to show off its abilities......... I'm using an old copy of Acronis True Image (version 8 ) which includes the option of adding a new disk to the computer. This option will allow you to create as many partitions as required on your new disk and synchronise your choice into the operating system. You can also pick the file system such as FAT 32 or NTFS or Linux for each partition, specify which should be logical, active or primary, and also name the partitions if required. This makes the loading of different operating systems onto a single hard-drive into a walk in the park. It takes 5 minutes from start to finish, very neat. In order to do what I wanted I selected cloning. This option allowed me to transfer the contents of one hard-drive to another, including the operating system, and also works as smooth as silk. The adjustment of partition size is built in to the software, enabling the transfer of a small disk onto a larger one easy to facilitate. The GUI is pretty well foolproof too, and easy to understand. Once the desired changes have been selected the PC gets rebooted - and the operation proceeds during the space between BIOS finish and desktop commencement. Again, once I'd made the selections it took five minutes for the process to complete. One more reboot is necessary in order to change the selected boot disk in BIOS. Once I got back to the desktop I was pleased to see that Windows was totally functional, along with all its peripherals, and located on the new Velociraptor. The old disk was completely wiped and ready to be used for whatever purpose I choose - and I have all the required partitions for my game installations on the new one. Before closing Acronis I decided to carry out one more useful function, and set up the "Acronis Security Zone" on my large storage drive. This is where I will store the back-up images of my crucial data from any drives on the system or the home network. The security zone is undetectable to scans or intrusions, and my 500Gb Caviar shows up as a 400Gb drive once I had allocated 100 gigs for the backup space. Once the main image has been created it can be updated incrementally, and the imaging process can be automated if chosen. Fantastic! Acronis ftw. B

There are some good points raised here. Hopefully we can at least decide that 4.09m is the state of the official (i.e. Maddox) game at the moment and therefore lose 4.08 and the 4.09beta out of the mix. This gives us one solid and un-modded basis for team-play. As far as the mods are concerned there is a more confusing situation which I/we have seen developing, both here and in the AAA forums. It splits along the lines of those people who want to mod in a responsible manner and preserve the on-line fairness/equality which has made the game such a winner since 2001 - and those who want everything now and don't particularly care how they get it. Anyone who has been following the recent threads at AAA since the official 4.09m was announced will get the picture. Huge howling and whining from people who expected that v 1.2 would combine with 4.09m, and a rush to download any other version that promises to make 4.09m moddable. Result: more disintegration of the user-base as people load the ultra-pack and/or the SAS package, even though it's been made clear that these versions don't work on-line! My take on this nonsense is that, if we want to continue flying the mod versions on-line, we should throw in our lot with the most reliable modding team out there. In my book that's the AAA mob, who are at least offering a certain continuity in their developments. Whether the squad should move to 1.2, and then 1.3 and a combination with the 4.09m, is moot. That's the nature of Pandora's Box - more alternatives than one can cope with. Of one thing I'm sure. Oleg Maddox is somewhere having a bloody good laugh and who can blame him? This is the chaos and uncertainty that he predicted when modding started and he was right all along. B

's funny. Our last two cars were Renaults and they both suffered the blown head gasket. Then we discovered that we'd each had a Renault that died of the same causes before we met. You'd think we'd have learned!

Just a pic from way back

I wouldn't want to be the one who has to wrap it

D'you want me to bang it on a coupla CDs for you? It'll just be a matter of postage and a beer if we ever get to meet. B

I don't reckon the mods/official version thing will ever be truly rectified as time goes by. Version 1.3 will be compatible with 4.09m, but the next release from Team Daidalos (4.10, or whatever they call it) will mean a further revision for the AAA version, and so on. Pandora's Box Syndrome as you might say. The cure for PBS remains multiple installations, or a consensus as to which version we should be using at squad level. Or a dictatorial thumb from our Emperor if necessary At least the process has been simplified by the finalisation of 4.09m. It is now only necessary to retain a clean copy of this official version and 4.08m and 4.09b1m are now just redundant. Likewise the AAA UI remains a sure bet for the mods and I guess 1.2 has become the new benchmark. Whether or not to hold off until 1.3 arrives is a moot point, sure, but I think that's where I'll be going for my next taste of mod goodness. Whether I keep a further install that contains the stuff that hasn't made it into 1.2 is neither here nor there. I wouldn't be using it for flying on-line anyway. B

Well, things have shifted a bit and I'm able to report some success all around - even if the family wallet has taken a substantial battering! The work on the car is going ahead at high speed - with the modification marked as 'urgent' in the producer's work-list. I rechecked the purchase date on the Raptor and discovered that the broken one actually is within the warranty period. I had mistaken the receipt number, which referred to another Raptor (34Gb) which my wife is using. So I've been given an RMA number by WD - and I'll be able to use the packaging from the Velociraptor which arrives tomorrow, to return it. Win, win! I'll be interested to see what WD can give me in exchange for the dead drive. The 74Gb Raptor is no longer available so I'm wondering what they'll do? Any thoughts on that? B

I wouldn't want to hit ANYTHING on this contraption. Nor would I want to carry a 100kg over my shoulder as the film shows. I'm sorry to be so down on it but it looks like an accident waiting to happen and I know something about that. I was only doing 25 kph when I was hit, in city traffic, by a fairly typical bad driver. Now I only have one arm. In my opinion this is an exercise in fashion over function whatever the blurb claims. Take a closer look at the design and I think you'll see what I mean. B

Well I've got it downloaded and I'll be installing it once my new Velociraptor is in place and I've cloned my current OS partition onto it. Saturday, I guess. I don't expect any great surprises from it - after all, 'Guse has been explaining the content for ages now, and why several of the expected mod planes have been delayed until 1.3. In most cases it's because the authors are still finishing their work and I think that's a good thing. At least the notion of producing finished work, viz. Oleg's approach, is being maintained by the AAA crowd. 1.3 will bring compatibility with the official 4.09m version too, so it's well worth waiting for especially as the missing planes should be ready for inclusion by then. I'm especially looking forward to having the 6DoF mod for 4.09m. The most important point about the AAA-UI mods is that they are designed to work in on-line mode. Despite all the flak, and the claims of various other modding groups, this is worth waiting for. B

Thanks Rattler. I'm using the 3 Pro 'n Vector too, so I'll take a look at this, cheers. B

Oops - I didn't mean to sound like I was laffing at your hardware problems BG. Those big machines are a money-pit ain't they? The trouble with hydraulic systems is that you end up renewing all the hoses as the weak spot shifts along with the repair cycle, a bit like "painting the Forth bridge" as we say over here. B

can we trade? Like BG suggests above, there's a lot of servicing involved

How does it function with the 6DOF TIR mod BA? I heard that the two are incompatible? B

Thanks guys

It was a sad day when Abit went down the tube and turned over to manufacturing e-picture frames! I never had one break down on me except in cases of extreme user error - in fact I'm still using one in my house server. Apart from an excursion into DFI-land for a while I never used anything else. I certainly would never have considered an Asus back in the day. Note: I would consider a DFI mobo if there's one that fits the bill for you. Their construction is on a par with Abit's better days. I've also managed to sideline myself, see my down and out thread, and it'll be a while till I get back. Frustrating, ain't it? I may have to consider a return to my whisky-drinking days as well B

I couldn't quite believe it when my screen went black, but a reset and a visit to the BIOS showed me that the worst was true - my main drive, a 75Gb Raptor, was no longer detectable by the PC. A quick physical check, using the old mechanics' trick of holding the blunt end of a screwdriver to my ear with the point held in contact with the drive, revealed the sad news. I could clearly hear the drive winding up, then a loud click and the drive winding down again, over and over........ I've always thought it odd how, once Fate has you by the short and curlies, bad luck seems to come in multiples. This latest batch started on the day before my birthday, when our 15-year old Renault's head gasket blew. We got a new car no problem, but we are now dismayed to find that the remote device that enables me to drive has to be replaced. We had hoped to get away with transferring the old unit across (£200) - but changes to the way car electrics are distributed have scuppered that. So it's £1300 for a new remote switcher! I checked back to see the age of the dead Raptor - 5 years and 2 months, wouldn't you know it? About 50 days past the warranty.

Yep, separate install, working well

I have placed the il2fb.exe that I use into the Vault. Check the .exe that you have now: if it is less than 4.33Mb in size then replace it with the one I have uploaded. Please back-up the current one, of course, in case mine doesn't help. Apart from possibly not working, this file will not damage your PC or your file-system. Only to be used for 4.09m installations.... good luck, hope it helps B

To an atheist like myself I find the binding of old and incorrect assumptions into the fabric of religion a cause for despair. While science can clearly show that pigs are not unclean animals despite their diet, the superstitions bound up into religious dogma means that the Jews and Muslims are unlikely to ever be free of this basic misunderstanding. As for the mistreatment of minority groups: show me a country that doesn't do this and I'll move there tomorrow! B

see PM Rog

Thanks Beebop. I'd like to add that installation over a clean version of 4.09b1m is also safe to do. I've guided several people through that already, without problems. One thing that did occur during my installation was a revival of that old hoodoo, SecuRom! That occurred because I bought a very early copy of FB which had that particular piece of crap written into it. It asked me to insert the disc, which I did, and then it told me I had the wrong disc Rather than let this pos drag me through hoops, I d/led and swapped in a friend's il2fb.exe which worked fine. My friend had bought a later version of FB without SR, and had upgraded to 4.09m without problem, so his .exe worked fine I will upload the good il2fb.exe to the vault if anyone else is experiencing this problem. B

I think I'd get in touch with pcspecialist to see what they have to say. Did you buy the whole rig from them?

Well, I am very tempted BG, and I'd love to oblige you, but I first need to get another drive large enough to take all the data I already have (on the original Raptor and my back up drive). This is because I need to do some nifty footwork to enable creating the Raid 0 array without doing a format/ fresh XP installation. I'm also considering the launch of Windows 7 in late October, and maybe waiting until then. I'll definitely be doing a full installation then, with a Raid 0 array. B