got the controller on friday, installed it. system works fine w/ ONE exception: i often get a stupid BAD_POOL_CALLER (freeing memory twice) blue-screen from the soundblaster audigy driver when winamp reinitialises the WAVE-out (probably when it is closed and the reopened).
maxtor replacement drive arrived (sent the RMA web-form on saturday night). now just waiting for the adaptec 1200a to show up… then it’s the familiar OS reinstall (did that about 6 times over the weekend due to controller-troubles, hard-disk failing, hard-disk working again, hard-disk failing, etc.).
still trying to get my computer to work. returned FastTrack TX4 as it (according to tech-support and many blue-screens) does not support hypernate / power-management. ordered adaptec 1200a instead. while it might not be as fast, i hope it works. ordered advance replacement for the maxtor 80gig drive that broke after 5h.
spent the weekend playing LAN.
2nd (mini-)review of the evening: musa (“the warrior”) region 3 (only). anamorphic transfer, but some artifacting close to the black-levels, which is a bit of a shame as quite a lot of takes place at night / in the dark. still a good transfer, but you might want to reduce brightness / contrast a bit [edit: looked fine on telly]. excellent film as well (had me crying for the last 20 minutes). rather violent. director’s commentary does not have english subs :(. good balance between action & character interactions.
avalon region 3 release by “panorama entertainment”: playable in all regions, not anamorphic, good transfer, Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0 (polish), chinese & english subs (ok, some typos). excellent film. very oshii (slow in a sense), thinking, bleak. excellent soundtrack by kenji kawai.
recovered from lack of sleep on the bus / neck still hurts quite badly.