Quote from aoun :

why is a real track so much better then a fictional one?

Because its there in real life? Because you know the track from watching it alot? I find made up ones just as good...

I thought I'd explained that...

Quote :

and having real tracks will turn this game off because id feel that its like GTR2 or RF which are the most shit games out..

Err...you've lost me here. LFS with real tracks would still be LFS...

Quote from Mazz4200 :

I think the question is, what would real tracks bring to LFS ?

More revenue ? perhaps, but would that revenue cover the expenditure of a license of a real world track ?

I'm not suggesting that the devs add real tracks to the game, I'd rather see the game opened up to modding when the development is finished. Personally I quite like the rFactor model of "we do the physics, you do the content", though I do understand the problem of uncontrolled add-ons.

Quote :

The romance of being able to drive classic tracks such as LeMans, Nurburgring in cars that handle as good as they do in LFS. ? Go get GPL

I've had GPL since it came out in 1998 and the handling is nothing like LFS. True, we don't have a 1967 F1 car in LFS, but GPL is a bit of a disappointment when I revisit it now.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Of course we're not happy with incomplete physics in LFS - to suggest we are is silly. But physics are something that progresses, whereas track designs tend to be more static.

I wasn't suggesting that you should be happy with the incomplete physics, but I'm sure you'll agree that LFS will never be perfect in the physics department. For it to be 'perfect' you'd have to have a Navier-Stokes based CFD solver coupled to a finite-element solver etc... which isn't going to happen. However, at some point Scawen will decide that it's 'close enough' and I don't think people would avoid LFS just because it didn't calculate the boundary layer separation on the left-front widget.

Quote :

What would real tracks bring? I don't think they'd bring anything really. The turns on real tracks are only there because the person who designed it put them there. Does it matter if it's Eric or Herman 'I can't design circuits' Tilke?

But they are often subject to constraints which aren't there in the simulated world. Look at most of the 'classic' tracks around the world and you can see how the track has been laid out to fit around the geography of the location.

Quote :

As for accuracy...it might as well be Fern Bay Club.

True, but surely there must be some point where it gets close enough? If you agree that LFS cannot achieve perfection from a physics point of view, why is the same not true of real-tracks? There's nothing to stop somebody modelling those things in an LFS version of Brands.

Quote from aoun :

Aslong as the real tracks have the absolute right banking, right track physics and right everything ( i litrally mean everything) then sure bring out real tracks..



If not, i dont want it..

If you'll forgive my frankness, your opinion is absurd so long as you're playing LFS. You're happy to drive the LFS cars (I assume) even though the physics model doesn't include the "right everything", yet you don't want real tracks unless they do. Inconsistent?

I'd love to see real tracks in LFS, for the simple reason that I find fantasy tracks a little boring. There's something quite pure in a group of people looking at landscape and working with it to produce a racing circuit. Of course, I exclude Hermann Tilke from this as he seems to start from a completely blank canvas and builds hills where he wants them.
Fantasy tracks, where someone sits down and draws them out, just don't have the same appeal for me.

It's the same reason I don't read fiction...there are so many good true stories out there that I find 'made-up' stories boring. All the time I'm reading I think "this is only happening because the author wants it to happen". It's the same with fantasy tracks in LFS...I often think "the only reason I'm turning right here is because Eric thought it would be a good idea". Don't get me wrong, I think Eric has given us a very good set of tracks for LFS, but I still feel there's something missing from them.

Of course I'd want real tracks to be as accurate as possible, but there comes a point where I'm happy to call it 'good enough'.

OK, it's happened again. I got everything back up and running on my old HDDs on Friday and all was well until this morning, when the problem reappeared.

However, if I disconnect my documents/storage drive (primary slave) then everything boots fine. The last time this happened, connecting the second drive would cause the boot to fail.

I've reached the point where I'm about to buy a pair of SATA drives but I'd like some confidence that it will fix the problem before I go spending more money. Does anybody have any final thoughts before these IDE drives get ditched?

EDIT: I just reconnected the second drive and it works! Maybe it could be the IDE cable...I did check this before, but I'll replace it and see what happens...that's a much cheaper fix than new HDDs

Last edited by StewartFisher, Wed 26 Sep 2007, 10:13.

I've tried a different IDE cable, yes. I'm not sure what you mean when you say 'power cable'...I've tried changing round the 4-pin Molex connectors inside the case but the main 3-pin power lead from the power supply to the mains is the same.

I had thought about viruses so I ran a disk eraser last night...until I discovered that it was going to take 70 hours for one disk! I'm going to try to get hold of an old PC tonight so I can leave it going while I work on mine.

OK, here's the latest. I unplugged all non-essential devices from my PC in an attempt to lower the power draw on the PSU. Still broken.

I then plugged in my friend's power supply (which, incidentally, is the 450W version of mine). and it still wouldn't work.

I've also tried changing the order of the HDDs and the only configuration which will boot up properly is the borrowed HDD on its own. Any time either of my Maxtor drives is plugged in, the PC fails to boot. I've tried varying Primary and Secondary IDE channels and master and slave order, but the PC still doesn't boot if a Maxtor drive is plugged in.

I've put my old boot drive in an external USB caddy I have and I can read the contents fine. I even ran Scandisk on it and no errors were found.

Now, it's hard to conclude that BOTH of my drives have died more-or-less simultaneously (though they were bought together, and were manufactured on the same day), so what could the problem be?

My next attempt will be to completely wipe my main boot drive and re-format. I'll put my second Maxtor drive in the USB caddy so I can access the information without having it plugged into the IDE bus.

Quote from mcintyrej :

Okay, spoke to my dad about the problems. Just as I thought, he totally thinks that my PSU has nothing to do with it, he just thinks the PSU was cheap for no reason. He actually had the nerve to tell me that he thought it was MSN freezing my computer.

Anyway i can convince him that its the PSU? No tests I can run?

You should be able to check the motherboard voltages in the BIOS, but there won't be much load on the PSU at that point. Still, if any of the voltages are off by much in BIOS it should be an indication that your PSU is dodgy.

What I would recommend is to download some system monitoring software, either from your motherboard manufacturer's website or a generic program like SpeedFan to monitor your system voltages when the system is under load (i.e. gaming).

According to some advice in another thread, my PSU might be knackered too, so I might have to take my own advice and check my voltages when I get home this evening

Quote from Bean0 :

Mine would boot into safe mode, and a reinstall would work until I installed graphics drivers.

Interesting! The first time this problem occurred back in August, I had just updated to the newest (168.somethingorother) NVIDIA drivers.

Quote :

As you say, it's worth trying another if you can borrow one, swapping a few cables over isnt exactly a hard job

Indeed...I've just heard that a friend has a spare, so I'll try that one. Thanks

Quote from Bean0 :

I suspect the PSU is either not up to the job or on it's way out.

I had a very similar problem a few months back, XP would lock/restart/BSOD seemingly randomly and sometimes fail to boot. After borrowing various parts from friends to test, it turned out to be the PSU, although all voltages in monitoring apps looked fine at the time.

I had considered that, but discounted it because reinstalling Windows solves the problem...unless the PSU failure is corrupting the disc data in the same place I don't see how it could be the cause. There's still the issue that, even after a failure, it will boot in safe mode.
My PSU is the 500W version of this:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module ... duleNo=98736&doy=19m9

and is about 18 months old.

Quote :

Can you borrow one from a mate to test ?

Possibly, yes. It's certainly worth trying.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Yea, that's kinda weird. I know Windows does some odd things with different HDD configurations. I had a RAID setup in my PC and 1 HDD separate, and Windows refused to install on the RAID setup until I unplugged my loner drive - no idea why.

I've heard of some odd problems with drives in Windows, usually that the plugs need to be in a different order for them to work...no real logic behind it!

Quote :

Are all the HDDs you are using SATA drives?

Nope, IDE. My original setup was as follows:

Primary Master: 250Gb HDD (boot drive)
Primary Slave: 250Gb HDD (storage)
Secondary Master: DVD-RW
Secondary Slave: CD-RW

I've now tried the new HDD in place of the Primary Master and got the same failure. The only working configuration at the moment is both 250Gb disconnected and the new one from work as Primary Master.

Quote from Mazz4200 :

Erm, maybe a stupid point, but you do have the jumpers set to master and slave on your HDD's ? If all's well then it may be a simple cable problem.

I haven't actually checked, but I'm sure I set this up properly when I installed the drives a year ago. I would assume if the jumpers were wrong then nothing would work, rather than a fault appearing after a few days. I will swap the IDE cable for a new one when I get home from work, just to remove that from the possible problems list.

OK, an update. I borrowed a spare HDD from the IT guy at work. Installed it last night and all seemed well.

That was until earlier this evening when the same problem returned. I had simply swapped my main boot HDD (which holds Windows, applications and games) for the new HDD from work and left my second HDD (used for documents and general storage) as the slave drive.

When the error occurred on the new drive, I unplugged the slave drive and, lo and behold, the system booted up fine. So, thinking there might be a problem with the second of the two drives, I unplugged the new HDD and swapped back to my old drive, which I hadn't touched since I had the last boot failure. This time, I get the same error and Windows won't boot (typing this from Safe Mode again).

So the system will now only boot when both my original drives are unplugged and the new HDD from work is acting as the boot drive.
I haven't tried plugging in my old boot drive as the slave to the new HDD as that would require lots of messing about with cables and jumpers. If you think it's worth it I could try it.

So, any suggestions? I was hoping a new HDD would solve the problem. I can't imagine that BOTH my Maxtors have failed, but the system will only boot with them unplugged...hmmm...

I don't understand this ruling at all. What are Microsoft supposed to do? If they didn't bundle WMP with Windows then there would be thousands of complaints about people not being able to play videos on their brand new PC.

How much you use WMP is totally up to the user, so I don't see how Microsoft are forcing user to use their own media playing software.

Then again, the EU are involved, so it comes as no surprise that they make bad decisions.

Quote from Jakg :

Raptors aren't really that noisy, or hot, tbh, but they are very expensive for what they are - a set of Seagate 7200.10's in RAID0 will net you 320 GB of storage for the same price as a 74 GB drive while being almost as quick.

WD are good, as are Seagate - tbh i wouldn't touch Maxtor with a bargepole though

The problem there is that Seagate now own Maxtor!

Quote from dropin_biking :

Does sound like a HD issue, I notice you have two Maxtors. Why not just boot from the other harddrive to see if the errors continue?

I don't have any partitions available on that drive to install an OS.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Definately a hard drive problem. I've had similar problems before, with XP not booting, but it was usually just Windows problems, once they were solved the problem disappeared.

That's what I thought initially, but the problem is occurring ever more frequently, so there must be some deeper problem than Windows.

Quote :

Btw, why are you still using IDE? I mean, you have this amazing system, and you're not running SATA hard drives on it?

I've been constantly upgrading parts of my system for the last two years...the CPU, mobo, GFX and RAM were added 6 months ago. I bought the drives over a year ago when they were on mega-special offer and couldn't really justify replacing brand new drives just to switch to SATA.

Many thanks for the replies guys, that confirms my suspicions. I'll run with a different HDD for a few days and see if the problem goes away. If so, I'll get some SATA replacements.

PS - Any suggestions for new HDDs regarding brands/models? I had thought about a pair of WD Raptors but I've not read great things about them (specifically the noise!).

I've been having problems with my PC for the last few weeks and I thought I'd ask for some advice as I've got fed up with reformatting.

Sometime near the end of August my PC stopped booting properly. It would get to the 'Windows XP' screen and the little blue bar would scroll for about 5 minutes (with the HDD activity light on constantly), then the bar would stop, then the system would reboot. It would then sit at the POST screen until I switched it off.
The system would boot in Safe Mode but not in normal mode.

Reformatting solved the problem so I thought I was just unlucky. Unfortunately it happened again two weeks later, followed by another reformat, then a week after that (which takes us to last Friday and another reformat), now it's happened after only two days (typing this from Safe Mode)!

I've searched around and I seem to have the dreaded 'MUP.SYS' boot failure which seems to have a whole load of different causes all with the same symptoms. On two occasions of the four failures I had recently updated or installed some drivers.

At the moment I'm leaning towards a physical problem with the main boot HDD. CHKDSK did find some bad sectors after one crash but none this time round. The manufacturer's diagnostic software has passed the drive OK.

I've arranged with a friend for me to borrow a HDD from him tomorrow but I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone else has any suggestions. I'm hoping that the problem will go away with a different HDD so buying a new one will fix the problem. A little irritating for a 14 month old HDD...better look out the warranty information!

The system is a home-built PC...specs as follows:

Intel Core2Duo 6600
Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard (NVIDIA nForce 650i)
MSI NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTO
2 x 1024MB Corsair DDR2 6400 C4
Creative Audigy 4 sound card
Hauppauge HVR-1300 TV card
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax +10 7200RPM IDE/133 250GB 16MB Cache HDD
Sony DWG-120ASV 16x16x8x DVDRW/RAM
Sony 52x32x52x CD-RW

Runinng a fully updated Windows XP Home Edition.

Any help or advice would be appreciated!

Quote from Origamiboy :

Not necessarily a drive, but you don't send over 300 messages to them to arrange a meal, do you? Other than Ferrari, where else could Alonso realistically go, especially considering recent events? He doesn't exactly scream 'team player', does he?

Erm...weren't the 300 text messages between Stepney and Coughlan? I don't think Alonso was mentioned regarding text messages and phone calls.

Quote from Origamiboy :

Personally I think Ron Dennis is innocent in all of this. I believe that at the time of speaking to Mosley he was convinced that Alonso had no information and it blew up in Dennis's face when he called his bluff.

Exactly. Just because what Dennis told Mosely turned out to be wrong doesn't mean he was lying, just that he didn't know any different.

Quote :

It seems like he has acted properly throughout, but the actions of a rogue employee and a driver seemingly trying to bribe his way into a honda car next year must have taken him off guard.

You think Alonso's trying to bribe a drive with Honda?? You have noticed those green and blue cars driving round at the back, haven't you? Apart from Spyker, I can't imagine a team he'd want to join less than Honda.
Its amazing IMHO that Dennis hasn't told Alonso to race in a pedal-car for the rest of the season![/quote]I think this is the confirmation that Ron means what he says when he claims that he is committed to equality in his team.

I don't defend everything Alonso's done, but we're not exactly in posession of all the information about what's going on in McLaren. If Alonso really was expecting to be number one driver then he shouldn't have joined McLaren. That's not the way they do things.

Quote from Albieg :

And since there was no pressure on Stepney it should be right?
If I stole the source code of the company I work for and gave it to the chief developer of another company I'd be guilty of intellectual property violations, and the other company would be guilty too. I'd just be fired and prosecuted, with perfectly good reasons. And I'd be convicted, no matter if I saw any money or if I was pressured.

Things just work this way.

Well, I don't know enough about IP law to say whether it's legal to receive free information from an employee. I haven't made my mind up about the situation, I'd just like to know exactly what rules McLaren have broken.

Quote :

Edit: and no, Ferrari isn't at fault. Not even slightly. This unauthorised flow of information went from Ferrari to McLaren, so Ferrari has been damaged while not being guilty of any wrongdoing. Such things shouldn't be even discussed, or mentioned. They are obvious for me and they are obvious for lawyers and judges.

I wasn't suggesting that Ferrari should be punished, just that the fault might lie with them since it was their employee and their security which was compromised.

The 'incident' on the exit of La Source seemed fair play to me. It wasn't like Alonso drove Hamilton off the road...Hamilton was behind, but going faster, and Alonso seemed to be taking a fairly normal line. Hamilton could have lifted and stayed on track or keep his foot in and take to the escape road.

Brilliant driving from both of them through Eau Rouge. I thought one of them would yield at the bottom of the hill, so to see them both go through together was incredible.

The rest of the race was rather dull.

You could try this site:
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
to see how much power you might expect your PC to draw at full load.

You could also try downloading something like SpeedFan which will monitor the supply voltages on your motherboard. If you see those drooping below their nominal values under high CPU/GFX load then that's an indication that your PSU isn't meaty enough.

Cheap power supplies often quote the sum of the powers available at each voltage rail when ONLY that rail is operating. When all rails are operating the total power can be much lower.

Quote from mcintyrej :

I don't have a clue. I might just go and buy a new PSU, but I need him to fit it. Since i've really got no idea where all the wires go.

It's really not difficult! Take a picture of your current setup if you're not sure, but there's no way to get it wrong as far as I can see.

Quote from Hyperactive :

So basically it would be ok to bribe the other team's technicians and whatever to get information about their cars? Taking spyshots is on whole different level than getting the data directly from a employee of another team. The employee knows it is against his contract as does the other team. Just because people mention some classified stuff to their friends doesn't mean that it is ok - or acceptable.

No, I specifically mentioned that if pressure had been put on Stepney to provide the information (or financial reward), then it would be wrong. I don't think it's acceptable for people to pass on confidential information but I think that should be Ferrari's problem, not McLaren's.

Can anybody tell me what's wrong with what McLaren did? It seems to me that they asked a Ferrari employee for data on the Ferrari car and he gave it to them.
I don't really see how this can be described as 'spying' unless there was some sort of pressure put on Stepney to give the data to McLaren.

Article 151(c) of the Sporting Code so vague that almost anything the FIA doesn't like could be punished should they wish.

I think this sets a dangerous precedent in F1. Journalists have always had 'sources' inside teams to give them hints on pit strategy, etc... If a journalist tells Team A that they've heard Team B will stop on lap X, will they be accused of spying?

Quote from deggis :

Apparently McLaren will only pay 30$ millions. If McLaren had won manufacturer championship, prize money would have been 70$ and this will now cut out from the total fine. What a steaming pile of bullshit.

Didn't find English news link for this...

Yeah, but they're still $100 million down on where they would have been, so the fine still stands at $100 million.

Quote from Storm_Cloud :

They have been found guilty by the World Motor Sports Council, not me. I do not have the evidence - WMSC do. It is a 26 man body, not just Max Moseley and Jean Todt as McLaren fans would have us believe.

Guilty of what, exactly? The last 'judgement' from the WMSC said that McLaren had been found in breach of Article 151c which, as I recall, talks about "acts prejudicial to the sport" or something equally vague. I want to know what 'new evidence' was brought to the court to persuade them that McLaren were, in fact, acting in a manner which was damaging to the sport.

Quote :

I'll repeat my earlier point - 1 member of an Olympic 4x100m relay team is caught taking steroids but the other 3 get to keep their gold medals. That is roughly the position we have because of this insane punishment.

I agree with you entirely on this, and that's one of the reasons I'm so angry with the WSMC decision.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

I am glad for F1 that the drivers were not punished, Alonso is one of the few people to beat Schumacher to a title, and Hamilton has been big news across the world and introduced new fans to F1. I know strictly speaking they should also have their points taken away, but I wouldn't bother watching the rest of the season if that happened, and I think many people would do the same.

It shouldn't matter how many people would watch the remainder of the season, the decision should have been fair. The way things are at the moment it seems that the FIA have given McLaren a punishment to keep Ferrari happy while keeping the Drivers' Championship alive.

When you think about it, only two drivers are in the running for the Drivers' Championship in either case. Currently they are Alonso and Hamilton, if McLaren had been disqualified they would be Massa and Raikkonen.

It's official. A $100 million fine and exclusion from the 2007 Constructors' Championship. The drivers are unaffected.

What a load of nonsense! I'm very interested to hear the detailed findings of the court. I don't understand how the team can be punished but not the drivers. If McLaren are guilty then their drivers must have been subject to the same unfair advantage as the team. If McLaren weren't 'guilty enough' to disqualify the drivers then I don't see how they can be disqualified as a team.

What a disgrace.