Warthoggers: Updated firmware released

[Teej]

Well...then I realized my mistake: the stick and throttle were plugged into USB 3.0 ports (EVGA X58 FTW3) which worked fine with the Warthog (and my old X52 Pro, I now realize) until the firmware upgrade.

 

Strange. I doubt (but wouldn't bet my life) it's not the 3.0 ports...unless something has the extra physical bits, they'll just act as 2.0 anyway. Of course, there's no benefit to plugging 'em into 3.0 either....

 

So, since you have the same mobo I do...do your throttle LEDs go out when you "shut down" or use S3 or S4 suspend? Mine do, but it sounds like I'm nearly the only one.

[Snoopy]

Strange. I doubt (but wouldn't bet my life) it's not the 3.0 ports...unless something has the extra physical bits, they'll just act as 2.0 anyway. Of course, there's no benefit to plugging 'em into 3.0 either....

 

So, since you have the same mobo I do...do your throttle LEDs go out when you "shut down" or use S3 or S4 suspend? Mine do, but it sounds like I'm nearly the only one.

 

When I shutdown my throttle lights go out, before I sent it in to Thrustmaster to get fixed they would stay on whenever plugged in.

[louisv]

No Teej, on shutdown the lights keep going (didn't try 'sleep'. Sleep is not good for OC'd computers, it tends to make the temp rise too much) unless I use your idea of plugging into the monitor USB. Maybe it is a question of BIOS update (75 on mine).

 

Lou

Edited December 20, 2010 by louisv

[Teej]

No Teej, on shutdown the lights keep going (didn't try 'sleep'. Sleep is not good for OC'd computers, it tends to make the temp rise too much).

 

What do you mean by this? My temps (i7-950 @ 4.0) after sleeping are not different from if I'd had it "shut down" for the same amount of time.

 

The only thing even close to what you're saying is I remember some Asus boards about 10 years ago would (erroneously) report a temperature ~ 25C too high after coming out of sleep mode.

[louisv]

I always thought of the sleep mode as a laptop thing.

 

Also I got burned by a bad experience with an older machine. Maybe the sleep setup was wrong...anyway I got into the habit of powering down 2 or 3 times a day instead of putting it to sleep, even if the temps do go up after a powerdown as the fans stop immediately and there is still a lot of heat left over.

 

 

Lou

[Slammin]

I never power down. Sleep mode only.

[Teej]

Yeah, same here. I shutdown or reboot as rarely as I can get away with.

 

I still don't follow what Louisv is saying. There's no more (or less) heat with S3 vs power off...and the fans don't run any more or less.

 

The only real difference is saving a few minutes of boot up time every time.

[louisv]

Old habits die hard I guess...

[Pilotasso]

Minutes of wait to power up? I wait less than a minute for mine. ;)

[Gadroc]

Strange. I doubt (but wouldn't bet my life) it's not the 3.0 ports...unless something has the extra physical bits, they'll just act as 2.0 anyway. Of course, there's no benefit to plugging 'em into 3.0 either....

 

So, since you have the same mobo I do...do your throttle LEDs go out when you "shut down" or use S3 or S4 suspend? Mine do, but it sounds like I'm nearly the only one.

 

It is the USB 3.0 ports as mine did the exact same thing on a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R board. Firmware update would timeout every time on the USB 3 ports. Switched to the on chip X58 usb 2 port and worked first try. This happened on both the stick and throttle.

[Teej]

Minutes of wait to power up? I wait less than a minute for mine. ;)

 

Time it, with a stopwatch, from poweroff until the time you're ready to actually use it. Do include anything you would normally have running if you were simply to have stepped away for a minute. (Browser, TrackIR, etc). It's not simply a matter of how fast you get to the desktop.

 

It's not like we're talking 10 minutes...but with S3STR, I'm up and running before it would even post if I'd done a shutdown.

[NotiA10]

It is the USB 3.0 ports as mine did the exact same thing on a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R board. Firmware update would timeout every time on the USB 3 ports. Switched to the on chip X58 usb 2 port and worked first try. This happened on both the stick and throttle.

 

same story here. might have something to do with the mainboard rather than the Hotas.

 

 

wbr,

 

NotiA10

[Teej]

Minutes of wait to power up? I wait less than a minute for mine. ;)

 

OK, so here's the deal. I'm running a nice fresh Win7 install with no excess crap getting loaded.

 

I'm at about 9 seconds from sitting in my chair to checking email when I use S3STR.

 

From a cold start it takes 15 seconds before I see the video card POST. I don't get "starting windows" until about 35 seconds.

 

I get my login prompt at 57 seconds (After 20 years in IT, I don't leave a computer without a required login...and I force the one my wife uses to have a required login as well).

 

Then to load trackir and my browser with the 7-8 tabs I usually leave open...I'm at about 2:10 before I see my emails and can do whatever else.

 

That's on a machine running at 4ghz w/ 6GB ram.

 

2 extra minutes isn't a huge deal but it would get really old, really fast if I had to waste that much time every time I STR instead.

[Callsign.Vega]

^ - That a slow booting computer you got there! Time for a SSD. Plus web browsers like Chrome save your open tabs when you close the browser. ;)

[Teej]

I use Firefox. It saves my tabs. But it still takes time to load and refresh.

 

And yeah, I'm using a ~ 2.5 year old HDD as my boot drive. Heh. And on one hand, I probably overtimed the boot since my "main" tab was on yahoo mail which stalled...everything else might've been done first. And on the other hand...20 sec to boot win7 ain't bad. Heh.

[Callsign.Vega]

You have a decent system. I think an SSD would be the biggest bang for the buck upgrade. Once you go SSD, you never go back!

[ZaltysZ]

Teej,

 

maybe you have to much things going in POST? I.e. memory check, initialization of not used hardware like additional SATA controller, or large boot order list in which your HDD is not at first position? 35s till seeing Windows boot screen seems extreme for desktop PC.

[JaBoG32_Prinzartus]

^ - That a slow booting computer you got there! Time for a SSD. Plus web browsers like Chrome save your open tabs when you close the browser. ;)

 

Be aware that an SSD will not improve BIOS-POST portion of your boot-time.

The major part of booting time is consumed by the POST, on my rig.

As soon as I have "Windows starting" I can feel the SSD-Boost.

 

Thats why I cant wait to get a working UEFI Maniboard to get rid of the stone-aged BIOS and BIOS POST.

[Teej]

Teej,

 

maybe you have to much things going in POST? I.e. memory check, initialization of not used hardware like additional SATA controller, or large boot order list in which your HDD is not at first position? 35s till seeing Windows boot screen seems extreme for desktop PC.

 

Nope. We're definitely straying far off topic here, but....

 

I will say this board does take a few extra seconds to get through initialization (particularly the 15 seconds prior to the video card POST message - that's definitely longer than many I've had) but there is nowhere after that where it just "sits and pauses" waiting for input / timeouts / device boots (I have nothing but the main HD as a boot option, no extra memory tests (there's nothing to select))...it's as clean as it's gonna get.

 

As I said, I don't even see the vid card's post message until 15 seconds from power-on. During that time the mobo is running whatever checks it deems necessary (can see the status progress on an on-board LED display). That's on for a couple of seconds, then the bios info & proc ID pop up...3-4 more seconds and the RAM size/speed are displayed, a few more lines of text, then it clears and displays the Marvel controller info for a couple of seconds, quick flash to all the IRQ lines and such and before you know it it's hit 35 seconds and 'starting windows' pops up.

 

Now like I said it takes ~ 20 seconds from that time until I get my login prompt and I can be at a "stable" desktop at just over 60 seconds from power-on. But again, that's not what I was talking about when I said over 2 minutes.

 

From that point I need to start everything else I'd just leave "running" on an S3STR...trackir, browser with a couple of email accounts and a couple of forums, etc. Firefox starts in like 1s if I just start it up clear....but if I have those tabs open it takes a while to fetch/refresh from the interwebz.

 

Why go through all that when I can just tap a key, count to 3 and my system is "fully booted". I generally run a pretty tidy computer. Not counting crashes caused during overclock attempts/tweaks, I often go months without a true "reboot" and have done it that way since win95. My crap just _works_. Never been a victim of those strange freezes/lockups/crashes that so many seemed to complain about over the years. My buddies with macs bitch about their systems more than I do.

Edited December 22, 2010 by Teej

[hassata]

I've kept my macbook on virtually since purchase, but this guy has different ideas:

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20026047-52.html

 

"Turning a computer on and off regularly is bad for it

Another myth I heard when I canvassed my social networks was that a computer can be damaged over time by being regularly turned on and off.

In fact, said the Geek Squad's Matos, it's specifically recommended that you do power your machine off on a daily basis, for example at the end of each work day.

According to Matos, "Every computer needs its rest time," in part to be sure that if you're away from it and there are power fluctuations or surges, it isn't damaged by them.

As well, he said, it's recommended that if you're going to be away from your computer for small periods of time, you let it go to sleep while you're gone. But in any case, he said, a regular on/off pattern is definitely good for the computer, not bad."

[Teej]

See, that's just full of crap. The worst thing for electronics is the power on surge and heat cycles. A "surge" in the mains _shouldn't_ get past the power supply, if you have a decent surge strip and power supply. Kinda depends on what your target audience is though.

 

For home users that use a system frequently (daily), the more it's left on, the longer (calendar) it will last. Fewer heat cycles = fewer chances for a drive/fan motor to get stuck and fewer times the motherboard heats/cools stressing solder joints.

 

The problem with that in an office environment is if everyone leaves their systems on, not only is it wasting a ton of power but then when you have a power outage, you suddenly have 30 systems that won't power up instead of 1 every week or two.

[Callsign.Vega]

I hate millions of computers in offices idling all night long. What a massive waste of energy on this planet. Computers life cycle isn't long enough for "power cycling" to mean anything. In the US Army, our computers are replaced every 3-4 years. Most failures are from dirt/dust caking the inside from running them 24/7, not power cycling it on and off.

[Kuky]

I don't like that my work PC has to be on all the time (I just have to logg out every day) as it is really just a waste of electricity... but its company rule to leave the PC's on so they can do upgrades over night... at least I can do is turn off the monitor when I leave... but sadly most people leave even their monitors on...

[Succellus]

Its like not using discharge bracers, I neve used them and i still have 10 year old computers that works, and they went throught a lot of component shifting, house moving etc.

Before any of those waste your PC overtime, the thing is obsolete.

As for companies only companies riddled by shody IT ask to leave all computers always on, even when not used. Want to make an upgrade ? scheldule some nights and do it. If by any chance the company has too much money give its employees a salary raise.

[Loz]

Update

 

TM have finally admitted defeat with my Joystick that refuses to update the firmware.

I have sent the base of the Joystick (ie minus Stick and Base plate) to them in France and they are going to send me a replacement.

Thank goodness I kept my Cougar (for running my RCS Pedals) as now that, with the Warthog Stick inserted is allowing me to continue flying the Beta.

:pilotfly:

 

I have just received my "new" Warthog Joystick from TM France.

It didn't take too long considering the time of the year, I suppose.

 

BUT I have found that the Joystick firmware is version 9 and should be updated but I'm afraid to do it. :joystick:

Edited December 31, 2010 by Loz
Incorrect version number.