Did my bass kill my computer?

[tbz]

Now that you mention it, how many apps are written in C? AFAIK, most modern languages have automatic garbage collection built it (in fact the only exceptions I can think of are C[++]).

I support JAVA apps all the time that perform faulty, or inaccurate GC. Just because the app/language *CAN* perform GC doesn't mean it does it properly, efficiently or correctly.

Windows tends to be a bit of a s**tshow with that stuff, at worst, due to their shared library model.

 

[ggunn]

I'm sorry if I'm starting a flame war, but I need to vent my hatred towards their vastly overpriced products.

Why, in a bass guitar forum?

 

[tbz]

or lets. ThePoloHobo made a great point - assemble your own comp, slap Windows on it and have a power rig that blows anything Apple makes (including that new overpriced cylinder) right out of the water.

Want a UNIX based OS? There are many Linux distros than ants in an anthill. I'm sure there are BSD-Unix distros out there besides OSX.

I'm sorry if I'm starting a flame war, but I need to vent my hatred towards their vastly overpriced products. Don't get me wrong, Apple products are nice, but their aluminum casing and completely-closed off OS' don't warrant the price tag.

Or, you know, pay a bit extra and have something that is more reliable, will last longer, is generally higher quality, and won't force Mom/Dad/Grandma/Kid Sister to call you every time a "non-warning warning" pops up.

Last time I installed Windows 7 on a machine it needed just under 200 updates. It took something like 4-6 hours to download and install them all.

Last time I fired up an older Mac that needed updates it took something like 30 minutes for it to download and install the new OS.

If your time is worth anything to you, or you prefer a hassle free life, Macs are a better choice. Every person I've seen pick up a Mac, that was non-technical, has had an improved "quality of life" in regards to their interaction with their computer. As someone that supports Linux OSs and variants professionally I prefer one, when cost is not an issue, as it makes my life substantially more "hassle" free.

Granted, there are pluses and minuses to each side. My "new" gaming rig is a repurposed 7 year old Dell with a new v Card and an SSD. It cost me about $300 to put together and seemed to be a better option than a similarly equipped Macbook for $3k. In terms of gaming power it's comparable, which is absurd considering it costs 1/10th the price.

Much like other things in life though, you get what you pay for. Windows = you do more work, Mac = you have to work more to afford it.

YMMV.

 

[moles]

Linux is not Unix-based. It is "Unix-like"...

I'd place my bets on the vibration from the amp perhaps being the culprit, if you were playing loudly enough. I also would not discount the magnetic field as being safe to have near your HDD...You can actually see an effect on CRT monitor/TV screens from 3 ft away with my cabs... Even if the math doesn't explicitly say the HDD would get completely wiped - it's probably strong enough to mess with the read-write heads and degrade swap files if not saved data.

 

[ddnidd1]

And to the OP - what happened when when you turned the computer back on?

 

[tbz]

Linux is not Unix-based. It is "Unix-like"...

I'd place my bets on the vibration from the amp perhaps being the culprit, if you were playing loudly enough. I also would not discount the magnetic field as being safe to have near your HDD...You can actually see an effect on CRT monitor/TV screens from 3 ft away with my cabs... Even if the math doesn't explicitly say the HDD would get completely wiped - it's probably strong enough to mess with the read-write heads and degrade swap files if not saved data.

I've stored computer equipment within a few feet of an active amp for months if not years at a time without issue.

Really doubt it's a magnetic field issue, it could be due to vibrations or could just be a massive coincidence.

 

[justin fleenor]

My hdd died while watching a mott the hoople video on talkbass same thing crazy audio almost like a skipping cd and I had to take my battery out to get it to stop Windows never came on again but now I have a solid state drive and linux and I like it a lot better

 

[mikeyjm2]

I would go along with the vibration idea as a possibility, or more likely still, just sheer coincidence.

 

[PortlandBass77]

Hi everyone! I'm new here (I said hello last week on the "New Member Intros" forum), and just bought my very first amp tonight. As a newbie, I know close to nothing about equipment, so I apologize in advance if this is a silly question.

When I got the amp home, I immediately hooked it up and started playing (so exciting!!). Toward the end of my practice session, I put one of those play along tab videos on YouTube on my computer and fiddled around a bit. I was halfway through a song when my computer FLIPPED THE HECK OUT. The screen froze and the audio was an unintelligible mess. Then I got the blue screen of death. I thought perhaps that was a sign that it was time to put the guitar away, and tried to recover the computer.

I'm wondering if somehow my bass and amp being right near my computer created too strong an electromagnetic field and messed my computer up. Have any of you had this problem, or do any of you know if this can happen? With the plethora of play along tab videos out there, I'm assuming people really do play along with them--this system wouldn't work if everyone's computers wigged out every time. Thanks for your help!

Most definitely not. I work computer repair and I am play bass and guitar along to youtube videos all the time and have never had anything like this happen. In your case the blue screen was likely cause by a power or processor issue, but I wouldn't be able to know for sure without checking the events log.

 

[awilkie84]

In a PC a fault can be due to a multitude of causes.

Coincidence doesn't correlate with causation.

Kind of like vaccinations & autism.

 

[okcrum]

Bass vortex, happens now and then.

 

[ThePoloHobo]

Or, you know, pay a bit extra and have something that is more reliable, will last longer, is generally higher quality, and won't force Mom/Dad/Grandma/Kid Sister to call you every time a "non-warning warning" pops up.

Last time I installed Windows 7 on a machine it needed just under 200 updates. It took something like 4-6 hours to download and install them all.

Last time I fired up an older Mac that needed updates it took something like 30 minutes for it to download and install the new OS.

If your time is worth anything to you, or you prefer a hassle free life, Macs are a better choice.

...

YMMV.

A bit extra? My mileage isn't really going to vary there. I just customized an iMac to compete with my rig and it was $2,300 (granted, 27" screen, but those aren't expensive these days on their own). For $1,000, I can deal with some updates. I can't really argue whether or not they're or more reliable or higher quality.. they're made in China just like most of the parts in my PC.

My time is quite valuable to me, as well as my money. But here's why I'm debating this. I use my PC for mixing and recording. It's silent. Plenty of screen real estate. But most importantly, I get low latency with effects and rendering times are reasonable.

Now, I've been messing with computers for many many years so this sort of thing comes naturally to me and I know Windows inside and out. I don't have to call anyone for tech support.

My opinion on the matter is, Macs are simple tools. Easy to use, but limited in their utility. PC's are nearly endless in their utility but get complicated.

 

[mellowinman]

Interesting. The amp was about a foot away from the computer, and I was standing right in front of it while I was playing. It could have been just a fluke, but this computer has never done anything like it before in the years I have owned it.

I am playing through an Ampeg 4x10 with 450 watts, and I have to take every guitar out of the room when I do so, and it hasn't damaged my computer at all.

Most likely your computer was just done. I find I have to replace them from time to time.

 

[tbz]

My opinion on the matter is, Macs are simple tools. Easy to use, but limited in their utility. PC's are nearly endless in their utility but get complicated.

How so? Specifically, outside of gaming, what can a PC do that a Mac can't?

That statement really does not hold much weight, especially when you add in the fact that you can always just run a Windows VM on a mac, or dual boot....

 

[fdeck]

Now that you mention it, how many apps are written in C? AFAIK, most modern languages have automatic garbage collection built it (in fact the only exceptions I can think of are C[++]).

I realize this is off the original topic.

But all three major OS's (Win32, Mac, Linux) are written in C, with some portions written in C++.

 

[fdeck]

How so? Specifically, outside of gaming, what can a PC do that a Mac can't?

You can run Windows on considerably lower cost hardware. I just got a Windows 8 mini laptop with touch screen at Best Buy for $250. I love it.

That statement really does not hold much weight, especially when you add in the fact that you can always just run a Windows VM on a mac, or dual boot....

Having to support two bloated, proprietary OS's instead of one hardly seems like an advantage.

But in support of what you say, "platforms" don't matter any more. Get what you like, with the hardware that you like, at the price that you want to pay.

I was a big fan of Mac, back in the early 90's. I wrote magazine articles on Mac hardware and software development. Then I switched to Windows, then Linux for a while, now back to Windows. They're all pretty stable these days. Some apps that I use at my day job (Zemax and TracePro) require Windows, but I can't afford to have them at home, so it doesn't matter. All of the apps that I care about at home run on every modern platform. All but Microsoft Office are free. All of the software that I write is multi-platform. I rarely interact with the OS.

 

[DiabolusInMusic]

How so? Specifically, outside of gaming, what can a PC do that a Mac can't?

That statement really does not hold much weight, especially when you add in the fact that you can always just run a Windows VM on a mac, or dual boot....

Run a multitude of programs, specifically in the business world.

I used to work for Apple Tech Support and there were quite a few people that were upset when they found out the parts inside their $2000 Macbook were essentially the same as their $300 Toshiba.

Additionally, if Mac OS is so stable why isn't is supported on anything other than a Mac? If Windows monopolized their own machines their failure rates would drop considerably.

 

[tbz]

Run a multitude of programs, specifically in the business world.

That gap is closing quickly as most business programs move to a hosted/SAAS/Web based model. Mac adoption at the enterprise level has been quite high the last 5 years so software manufacturers have a valid reason to facilitate this change.

As I mentioned earlier you can always just run a Windows VM on a Mac. You can't run a Mac VM on a Windows box.

I started using a Mac at work in 2010 and honestly haven't looked back. I'll fire up a Windows VM like 2 hours a week tops, the rest of the time was always spent in native OSx.

I'm not really arguing stability at all above, but the reality is that the Linux like model of OSx allows substantially better software isolation/compartmentalization than Windows "DLL H*LL" model ever could. Therefore it does allow for better stability.

By the way we've totally hijacked this thread....whee?

 

[tbz]

You can run Windows on considerably lower cost hardware. I just got a Windows 8 mini laptop with touch screen at Best Buy for $250. I love it.
Having to support two bloated, proprietary OS's instead of one hardly seems like an advantage.

Good point on the hardware issue, but I think the question was more along the lines of "what can you do in the OS you can't anywhere else"

Not sure how OSx is bloated in the slightest, or how it requires support outside of clicking "Yes install those updates now" or "No install those updates when I hit restart". That aspect of it is infinitely more painless than Windows. I've never had a OSx update freeze, lock up my system, or fail to complete.

That odd update behavior is baseline on Windows.

Literally when I did my last Win7 install at least 2 of the updates that tried to install after I hit "Shut down and install updates" required user intervention (e.g. someone had to click through an installer) before they would install.

So the OS would get to them, and just stop completely. No failure messages, no user prompting just "Installing update 75 of 150" for hours. In that case the solution was completely illogical, I had to shut down the machine via the power button, boot into the OS and click through the user input portion of those updates.

You *just don't* have that problem on a Mac.

Generally when you dig in on OSx you find similar quality of life improvements in other areas as well. One of my favorites is native ISO support. You can't even use MICROSOFT's ISO tool on 64 bit Win7..........seriously......the app THEY WROTE FOR IT does not work.

That lack of attention to user experience is my biggest beef. YMMV.

 

[ThePoloHobo]

Yeah we totally jacked this thread lol.

But Win8 seems to have really improved in the updates department. Mine's set to automatically do it when I restart/power off. Set it and forget it. No pesky clicks required..

The ISO issue is irrelevant, and I used the ISO tool on Win7 just fine. CloneDVD is freeware if that doesn't do it for you.

The whole "Mac: It just works" mantra is ridiculous if you ask me. No piece of software or hardware is perfect or fail-proof.

I was able to hand pick my parts from thousands of choices, rather than a few options. I'm able to take a hard drive out of someone's computer and back it up (be it 2.5" or 3.5") though SATA and transfer at a speed of 60 MB/s. Can Mac do that? Got space or enough connections for 5 HDD's? Water cooling options (which definitely is better for the processor(s))?

How about servers? Ever seen an OSX-run enterprise-level server? Me neither... They don't have the modularity of Windows/UNIX boxes, and don't have the capability to support the kind of hardware necessary. OSX doesn't have the in depth user control needed as with the great thing known as Active Directory and SQL in Win Server 2008 and 2012.

But I digress...

Mac users will be happiest with Mac. If it works for you and everything you need to do, great. But for me, a Mac was out of my price range. I ended up with something with far more performance hardware wise. Software we can debate for years.