Logitech G27 Racing Wheel Review

0
12 years
by in General, reviews
Logitech G27 Racing Wheel

Logitech G27 Racing Wheel

Yep, another Logitech product =). It seems every time I want something new, Logitech have an answer.

The reason I went for this one particularly is that it a) has good reviews and b) includes a clutch pedal and a 6-speed gear box.

As with all my other Logitech products, I got it from the good people of logitechshop.com.au. Ended up paying $299 with free postage, which to be honest, is about the best deal you’ll ever find on it.

So, some features I like:

  • Clutch Pedal
  • Nicely/realistically sprung pedals
  • Leather coverings, though they are a little rough around the edges.
  • 6-speed gearbox
  • Force feedback on this thing is incredible, if its set high enough the damn thing feels like a car from the 70s with no power steering.

And things I don’t like so much:

  • The pathetic plastic piece of crap clamps.
  • WIRES! Everywhere! Seriously
  • The LEDs don’t work with most games I’ve tried. Notably DiRT3(and 2)
  • The gearbox feels a little plasticy
  • Takes a fair bit to set up

Anyway, I think I got about 2-3 goes of it before one of the clamps decided to break off and so back off to Logitech it went. Amazingly it was a really easy task to get a Return Authorisation and ended up paying about $23 postage to NSW (LogitechShop.com.au).

So I got the new one a few weeks later (it took a few emails to get them to go pick it up from their Post Office). So far it’s sitting on my couch unopened, but im sure I’ll get to it sometime soon 🙂

In the few hours I had of the first one I tried it out in DiRT3. It took a little bit of tweaking of the advanced controller settings to get the feedback and vibration strengths right, but once it was right, man is it fun.

I found the best experience was when I changed the camera to the over-the-dash view making it just as real as possible.

 

Overall, its a truly awesome wheel that really makes car simulators really good fun. I hope one day to get a full enclosure, though maybe when I’ve got my own place to put it 😛

Derryn

Incremental email backups

2
12 years
by in jobs, networking, projects

I’ve had some interesting projects lately, most notably is an email backup script.

My first thoughts on this was to use RoboCopy and just have it run on log off. Unfortunately RoboCopy does not support incremental backups, thus meaning 10+ computers could be copying potentially 2GB+ files to the server every log-off; not good.

My attention was then steered towards Rsync, a tool which I have used before, that uses the ‘Delta Algorithm’ to scan for changes in a file and copy just those bits that have changed.

I toyed with the idea of having a Linux virtual machine running the server, though this most likely wouldn’t have worked, considering it would need considerable disk space and if something went wrong, well… Linux isn’t exactly the most user friendly of operating systems.

So then I remembered there was a Windows version of Rsync, though I had never actually managed to get it working, it seemed like the best place to start.

DeltaCopy is basically a wrapper for Rsync, running within a Cygwin environment. It’s open source, so no licensing costs, and it runs its own service with a quite small footprint.

My first itteration of DeltaCopy involved simply mounting the remote share and doing a local copy i.e. rsync.exe [source] [destination] which apparently is the wrong way to go about it. Every time a bit was updated, it took nearly 3 times longer than the whole file should’ve taken to copy. I discovered that if you use a share, basically you are downloading a copy of the file, scanning it locally, then sending the whole file back down the line.

The proper way of using it, apparently, is to have an rsync server where the backups are kept, and have the rsync client connect to the server. That way the server can scan for changes without having to send it down to the client. Then the server and client negotiate which bits need copying, then they do it.

After much frustration and many issues (mainly typos :P) I managed to get my test platform to copy from 1 machine to the other. I succeeded and managed to take the 3 minute transfer time down to 6 seconds. Impressive!

To implement the script I will need to have the rsync service installed on the server (which I have now done) and use Group Policy to deploy both the DeltaCopy client (particularly rsync.exe) and my script to run on log off (also done).

I have now come to the point where it should be working but unfortunately it keeps coming up with “Connection Timed Out”. My guess is the firewall on the server isn’t accepting the connections, so I’ll have to look into that and see what can be done.

I’ll need rsync’s port 873 opened up I believe. Whether that needs to be done using Group Policy or through the Firewall settings, I’m not sure.

 

Anyway, that’s it for the moment.

I think I’ll post my scripts up sometime, stay tuned.

Find them right here: Download backupScripts.zip 7.7KB

You will also need DeltaCopy from Synametrics Technology

Derryn

 

 

New Motherboard, New CPU, Problems solved?

0
12 years
by in Desktop, General

I was down MSY the other day with the intention of getting a new Wireless N Router, however as I was looking around I noticed there was a bunch of AMD 900 series based motherboards (the upgraded version of my current 800 series).

Among them was the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3, which is essentially the updated version of my 880FXA except I have the the UD5 model which basically is geared more towards Multi-GPU set-ups (SLI/Crossfire). Since I have just the one card, the UD3 was a reasonable compromise considering the $50 difference.

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3

 

Anyway I ended up getting it in the hopes that my TV Tuner issues would be solved. Yeah right!

So out with the old and in with the new; well maybe it wasn’t quite as simple as that, but anyway long story short I successfully swapped them out but in the process I managed to lose 1 pin on the CPU (it stayed in the socket) so that then forced me to find a replacement.

 

Naturally I wanted to upgrade in the process so I sought out the highly coveted AMD Phenom II 1090T 6-core 3.2GHz. MSY was my first thought, but they didn’t have any in stock in Australia, then I tried Landmark Computers, apparently they don’t sell AMD. So I tried a couple of local shops – CNET Technology and Centrecom. Nope.

In desperation I searched my usual internet based stores, first I tried PC Case Gear, which had it in stock, and I could also drive down and pick it up. Unfortunately they took too long to process the order, I cancelled and searched for a store that had a shop front with stock.

Eventually I stumbled across Scorptec Computers (Scorpion Technology Computers) which had the 1090T in stock, and also a shop front (closer that PCCG too). So I trundled off to Rowville, about a 40min journey via EastLink, got the processor (exceptional service there too) and I got it installed later that night.

 

Now after all that, one would expect/hope that the problem I sought to seek in the first place would have been fixed. But of course, me being me, it was not.

First boot was fine, all PCIe cards showed up, installed the drivers, no problems.

Then after the reboot, one was gone.

At this point I was 100% sure this has something to do with the use of a 1x PCIe card in a 16x/8x/4x slot so I started to experiment.

Test 001:

SLOT # from CPU Card Installed Result Notes
1 (1x) AverTV TwinStar PCI Bus 5
2 (16x) GTX275 PCI Bus 1
3 (1x) N/A
4 (4x) none
5 (16x) X-Fi PCI Bus 4
6 – PCI none
7 – (4x) DViCo FusionHDTV None/Not assigned No card detected
Reboots 3

As you can see, the Fusion card decided not to work when in the 4x (full length) slot.

Test 002:

SLOT # from CPU Card Installed Resulting Bus Notes
1 (1x) DViCo FusionHDTV PCI Bus 10
2 (16x) GTX275 PCI Bus 1
3 (1x) N/A
4 (4x) none
5 (16x) X-Fi PCI Bus 4
6 – PCI none
7 – (4x) AverTV TwinStar PCI Bus 5
Reboots 8
Day 4, think i’m in the clear

As you can see here, I swapped the 2 TV cards around and strange things happened.

Firstly, the TwinStar card retained the PCI Bus number that it had in the other slot. But what is most interesting to me is the DViCo card now has a new Bus number of 10.

I don’t pretend to understand the way these bus numbers are derived, I have no idea actually, but if they are indeed static per slot, then why did they change ?

 

I guess the most important thing here is that I now have 4 working tuners and I have not seen any bluescreens, crashes or other anomalies I’ve experienced in the past.

 

Once again, here’s to hoping it continues that way!

Until the next problem,

Derryn

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