Fruit Machine Chat

Played on an itbox today and God was it running slow. Not just one game but all of them - even the animations on the likes of Monopoly where chugging. Considered powering the thing off and on again but seeing as the pub gaffer was working on the pool table lights 6 foot from me in the local 'fighting pub' I thought better of it. Has the IT-Box got problems? Has any else seen this kind of thing happening?

The reason I ask is because I play word games like HA a lot and I've noticed the 'keyboard' stop responding (but the clock keeps on running!) - real p!sser when you know the answer and can't type it in.


As the machine was running so slow, maybe I should have played Bully and seen if the end game really is rigged?

D'oh just thought about STD ops:

If it was all of the games running slow, then the system must've been doing something in the background. From what others have said on this forums (and from watching them power up) Itboxes are W2K based - so if it was running a defrag or network update in the background that might do it.

Oh yes, many a time....

Bullseye aiming is great fun with a 3 second delay on it!

At least stuff like cleudo isnt affected, but you've already thrown 50p down the pan by then anyway.

Matt

>Bullseye aiming is great fun with a 3 second delay on it!

Glad I didn't have a go at Bully then! This had like 10 second delay on it (well knack'd)

Thing is does anyone know:
1. What gets the machine into this state?
2. How do you get back to normal (reboot)?

If it's a scheduled defrag - wait for it to finish (a fragged hard drive will load much slower, and if the games do any streaming, they'll run slower as well).

If it's a scheduled network operation - wait for it to finish (all those games have to get on there sometime).

Even if you reboot the machine it'll either carry on from where it left off, or worse, start the task again!

It must have been a dark day yesterday. The only reason I went in that scabby pub was because my regular mc was being played, my backup is broken (out of service for 3 weeks now! in a JDW pub - link leisure get it sorted!), get there at the wrong time of the month too

Is that really true Wyland? How do you know that? I've seent his happen and always wondered what was going on?

WaterGate wrote:Is that really true Wyland? How do you know that? I've seent his happen and always wondered what was going on?

It's a purely a guess, based on my other guess that Itboxes are W2K based, that we know they're networked, and that I know W2Ks habits. Prolonged network access is always a killer, particularly downloads. And if I were running a remote PC-based system that I kept adding new stuff to, I know I'd schedule regular defrags, or the hard drive would eventually grind to a halt.

Wouldn't you schedule the defrags to occur outside of normal business hours? It was lunch time (12-2pm ) on a Friday.

I can see the queued downloads will happen when they happen, but defrags during prime drinking hours?

step7 wrote:Wouldn't you schedule the defrags to occur outside of normal business hours? It was lunch time (12-2pm ) on a Friday.

I can see the queued downloads will happen when they happen, but defrags during prime drinking hours?

But the landlords tend to turn the cabs off outside of normal business hours. Besides, they can take hours to do, so if it started at 10AM, it may still be going two hours later.