January 2004 Archives

Darn it, I like the monitor, but thing has mysteriously died. I get heart rate and speed, but I don't get cadence or power anymore. Sent a note to the folks at Polar and they think:

_If the Power sensor shows green light, then cadence should work. Have you chosen the cadence ON (also power) in your wrist unit (options - bike set)? Other possibility is that the chain speed sensor or its' wire is broken (yellow led is not blinking). On that case you can contact your local distributor for further assistance, you can find the contact information at "Polar":http://www.polar.fi/polar/channels/eng/polar/contact.html_

So it has to go back to the shop. Too bad I actually like the thing and was just getting used to training by watts.

"Diet K":http://www.dietk.com/. Now that Kazaa lite has been hammered by Kazaa, Diet K seems like the new replacement. Like Kazaa lite, it removes the spyware. Get it now before it disappears. I've also tried E-mule. Smarter protocol, but doesn't have nearly as much content it seems.

"Tom's Hardware":http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040127/index.html. Given that doing the label and then affixing it to a CD and DVD is a pain, maybe the better way is to print directly to the CD. The Epson R800 and a couple of other models do this. Could be the tipping point for me in buying one of these. Here's what Tom's hardware found: * The key to this is that the Epson 900, 960, R300, R800 have a straight paper path that allows thick things to go through. * What CDR you use matters here. They like the Memorex produced the crispest brightest looking end product. Imation was next. The media is more expensive though, but it is just one step. * You should wait 24 hours after you burn a CD before you print the label, that's one difference.

"Captcha":http://www.captcha.net/. Bill Gate mentioned this in his Davos talk, but the idea is that if you don't want spam send something back which computational hard for a machine, but easy for a person. Here is the CMU version of this. Ticketmaster uses this as does quite a few bulletin boards and some other places. He's right I think that its the answer long term to spam. The other piece you need is unforgeable email so that you actually know if it says, I'm from somewhere I really am.

Interesting to see how two trends could make the PC quite different from what we know it. Beside Google, "Citeseer":http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs is an incredibly useful way to find related academic documents. Give it a try. # "Knoppix":http://www.knoppix.org/ . Now that modern BIOS let you boot from just about anything. Not just a floppy, but really anything, folks at Knoppix have created bootable CDs that have all the executables on the CD and just boot. That means only the data is left on the machine. What a great way to have a zero install. Of course, you can now go larger with a bootable DVD, but it is amazing what you can include in 700MB. Also interesting to see how it is configurable. You get BTW, Linux, the KDE graphical desktop, MP3/Ogg/MPEG4 media player, Open Office. # "USB Key fobs":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php?page_id=152&sortby=popular-&vendors%5B%5D=0&popup1%5B%5D=55%3A105&popup1_attr_id%5B%5D=105&popup2%5B%5D=0&lo_p=0&hi_p=0&form_keyword=&sortby=&ut=1813100444775761. These are truly amazing devices. The only thing that Connie has ever asked for that I don't have. They are amazingly convenient personal storage. It is totally passive and 256MB is $50, 512MB is $130 and 1GB is $250. "Samsung":http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112684,00.asp is the leader in this and the technology developments are pretty amazing. A 512MB flash is a single chip for goodness sakes. # "Migo":http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1366612,00.asp are already doing clever things by caching personalization information like favorites, etc. Then there is "ibutton':http://www.ibutton.com/pki.html which throws a Public key certificate on the fob. Given that USB 2.0 is everywhere and fast, I know understand what a smart card is. It ain't a mag striped thing. Its a keyfob with identity on it plus a cache. # "Peer Tech":http://peertech.org/UsbKeysAndHardwareCrypto has also done this so that with just a CD that has a read-only Linux file system plus the fob for keys then it is easy to have secure access anywhere and worry about viruses, etc. # "OceanStore":http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu/info/overview.html. Related to this is abstracting storage. At Berkeley, they are working on a Peer-to-peer system that persists files forever. A very impressive set of research has been done on this. "IEEE Internet Computing":http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu/publications/papers/pdf/ieeeic.pdf has a great overview of the architecture. # "RDF":http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html. I've actually had an RDF description on this blog forever, but haven't understood exactly what it is for a long time. This reminds me that it is a general purpose description language that is easy to query. Used quite a bit for newsfeeds, but its more general than that. It's a W3C thing with a formal "specification":http://www.w3.org/RDF/ and I actually found their formal "primer":http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/ quite helpful. # "JXTA":http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jxta2/. As part of this peer-to-peer research, quite a few folks have developed basic frameworks for writing P2P applications. JXTA is one that Sun has done that provides a high scale way for peers to communicate (rendezvous) with each othere.

OK, based on a couple of reviews at popphoto.com and also photo-i.co.uk, here's a list of printers to consider at the top end: * Epson 2200. $600 street. The grand daddy anmd most folks still love it. * Epson Stylus "R800":http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20R800/. $400 street. Brand new, has 8 inks. Can also print directly to DVDs/CDs. Some complain about duller image though. See previews at "Red River";http://www.redrivercatalog.com/infocenter/epsonr800.htm, but most folks seem to like it quite a bit. Widespread availability in February. Announced at CES. Also see "FLAAR":http://www.fineartgicleeprinters.org/5760x1440_dpi_Epson_Stylus_Photo_R800_printer/UltraChromepigmented-archivalinks.htm which BTW is a really great web site for high-end printers. * Canon "i960":http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Canon%20i950/. $170 street. He basically loves this printer. It is a 2 picoliter ink head, so it is incredibly fine and the quality is amazing. So is the price! * HP Photosmart "7960":http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/HP%207960/. $260 street. Main drawback is that you get six inks with three cartridges, so not quite as efficient as one ink per cartridge. Like our current HP, the print head is in the cartridge, which is why they are expensive, but also why they don't clog. Compared with the Canon i960, it has less punch, but seems more accurate than the i960.

We have an old HP Deskjet 970Cse. Printer cartridges are amazingly expensive at $25 for large black (45A) and $50 for large color (78). "Omnipro": http://store.omni-biz.com/. Trying a place that sells remanfactured cartridges for $10 and $15 respectively a pop. A little bit of a risk, but interested to see what the quality is like. Got good reviews at Yahoo and Pricegrabber.

Been using this browser called Opera. Pretty nice. Very fast. Also allows multiple subpages in the same browser and it restarts from where you left off. Very convenient for us shoppers who close the browser and then want to get back to where we came from.

Also has a nice mail browser. Best thing about it is that is is small and keystroke fast. Not true with Outlook which takes so long to start. Not a great spam filter though.

Chaosmint :: QTFairUse, MyTunes, and Protected AAC Explained. I've been using itunes for a litle bit on the Mac. Because it does such a good end-user job, its hard to see what's really going on underneath. Great notes from Chaosmint about what is really happening: * File Formats. There are unencrypted formats MP3 and M4A (AAC, but not protected). Apple created a new format M4P which is AAC encrypted with an iTunes ID. If you want to listen to an M4P song, you have to have the iTunes ID and only three machines can have that ID at any one time. * MyTunes. iTunes allows streaming of MP3, M4A or M4Ps out over your LAN, but you can't save the files being streamed. Mytunes lets you save those files to disk. Now, M4Ps are still encrypted, so you still need keys. * QTFairUse. What this does is that it takes an M4P file and if you have the right iTunes ID and password, you can decrypt into an M4A file effectily removing the DRM form the song. * Audio Hijack. These are tools that takes the M4P file and when it decrypts into uncompressed format (e.g., a WAV file in Windows speak, an AIFF file in Mac speak), then you grab that and recompress it anyway you want.So, it doesn't crack the scheme, but grabs * Ripping a bunred CD. it just as you can make a Audio CD with iTunes and then rip it to get unprotected content. This is exactly the same idea as audio hijack. The basic problem is that with PCs, you can always find a stage where the music is open and then you can grab it.

I've been using Mac OS X for a while now. Finally getting used to it. Main issue is that Entourage seems very slow and also seems to crash. * "Entourage Unexpected Quits":http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=OfficeX&Number=370362&page=19&view=collapsed&sb=1&o=&fpart=1. Another in a series of great errors messages. Have this with both Entourage and Ecto (a offline blog editor). Seems like the equivalent of app hang, but there don't seem to be any user accessible diagnostics. Happens whenever I try to browse contacts or calendar entries. There is a magic entry with Entourage, hold the option key down when you start it and you get the rebuild database options (why isn't this a menu somewhere, maybe a Mac convention). * Ecto unexpectely quits. Still need to research this one. I'm sorry it was unexpected ;-}

Popular Photography Magazine Buying Guide. A good review of things photographic. I've used it to get a quick overview of at least good products. The printer review is particularly good. As is the digital SLR review. Here are some notes. First, all the printers they thought were pretty good. Epson used to be way ahead, but HP and Canon have very much caught up.

a little ludwig goes a long way: Command Prompt Explorer Bar. Nice find from Ludwig, command promots on the explorer bar. I use command line stuff all the time.

Ghost Recon Jungle Storm. Got Ghost Recon as part of my video card bundle. Wow, how much these tactical first person games are using the machines. Amazing how graphics and so forth. Its an old game, but here are some links to folks modding it: * "Walkthroughs":http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/recon.htm#wt. A detailed walkthrough of all the missions. Missions 8-10 are missing, so "Pierre Maris':http://faqs.ign.com/articles/438/438209p1.html and "Cynn Smith":http://guides.ign.com/guides/16525/page_3.html or "Abby Cheats":http://www.abby-cheat.com/modules.php?name=Walks&d_op=show&lid=2896. * "Unlock Codes":http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/code/32519.html. A good list of unlock codes. There are some XML files that tell the game what missions you've done and what specialists you can use. * "Platoon":http://www.theplatoon.com/ghostrecon/. The usual set of great folks modding and giving advice. * "Tactics advice":http://www.theplatoon.com/ghostrecon/tactics.asp. Some great advice. * "Graphics settings":http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/graphics-settings/graphics.htm. Explains all those complicated graphics settings. Main advice is that shadows is a 15fps hit on frame rates, so turn this off * "Damage model":http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/damage.htm. For techies who like to know what is going on. * "Sniping Tactics":http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/tactics-sniper-01.htm. One of my favorite guys is the sniper. He's great for being long range. * "Threat sensor":http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/recon0007.htm. Strange magic device in the game that tells you where the bad guys are. The little arrow on the inside is north. there is a direction indicator and the red light comes on when there is an enemy within 40 meters. * "The Weapons":http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/day-tac-weapons.htm. A good guide to the weapons used. * "File Planet":http://www.fileplanet.com/section.aspx?s=90445&v=0. Another place for great downloads. Has a mod called frostbite that looks fun. "Full Spectrum Warrier":http://www.gengamers.com/html/full_spectrum_warrior.html. And now that I'm addicted, there is a simulator adapted from the US Army coming out. It won the E3 2003 award. Should be out in early 2004.

Fascinating to see what books are actually selling right now: * Amazon.com: Top Sellers in Business and Investing. Of the 10 top books, 7 are about getting rich quick, 1 is about leadership (Jim Collins), 2 are about specific industries (baseball and fast food) and 1 is about dealing with life change. Not surprising, investing is far more interesting than business. * "Amazon on Marketing and Sales books":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/books/2698/ref=pd_ts_b_nav/104-6601881-3282336. 1 is on customer service, 1 is the tipping point (chaos theory), 2 is generalist texts by Phil Kotler, 2 on positioning, 2 on sales, 1 on international, 1 is on consumer behavior. Quite a spread "NY Times Business Best Sellers":http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/books/bestseller/200401besthardbusiness.html?ex=1074834000&en=20defa848936c042&ei=5070. (free registration required). We have again quite a mix: 2 self-help books, 4 famous people books, 1 get rich quick, 1 HR, 1 case studies. # THE PRESENT, by Spencer Johnson. (Doubleday, $19.95.) An inspirational parable about the search for happiness and success at work and in life. (New to list, bulk orders) # IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD, by Robert E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg. (Random House, $35.) A political memoir, combined with economic analysis, by a secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. (New to list) # MONEYBALL, by Michael Lewis. (Norton, $25.95.) How Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, produces a successful team despite having one of the smallest payrolls in baseball. (7 last month) # WHO MOVED MY CHEESE? by Spencer Johnson. (Putnam, $19.95.) A management expert offers techniques for dealing with change in the workplace. (bulk orders, 3 last month) # THE GREAT UNRAVELING, by Paul Krugman. (Norton, 425.95.) A volume of essays, most from the The New York Times, that are "mainly about economic disapointment, bad leadership and the lies of the powerful." (4 last month) # HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL, by Noam Chomsky. (Metropolitan, $22.) The price for America's "imperial strategies" for economic and political global dominance over world resources. (new to list) # THE CREATIVE HABIT, by Twyla Tharp. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) The choreographer provides a practical approach to achievement, including turning ideas into products, notions into deals, through lessons learned in the peforming arts. (new to list) # GOOD TO GREAT, by Jim Collins. (HarperBusiness, $27.50.) Why some companies thrive and others do not. (2 last month, 2 last month) # TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER, by Dave Ramsey. (Thomas Nelson, $24.99. ) How to pay off debts and build a nest egg. (bulk buys, new to list) # NOW DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. (Free Press, $26.) How to identify and develop your talents and those of your employees. (9 last month, very close to previous) # EXECUTION, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. (Crown Business, $27.50.) Closing the gap between vision and results in the workplace. (bulk orders, 5 last month) # FISH, by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen. (Hyperion, $19.95.) A manager's guide to morale boosting in the workplace. (very close to previous, 10 last month) # FINANCIAL RECKONING DAY, by Bill Bonner with Addison Wiggin. (Wiley, $27.95) How to protect investments in a deflationary depression economy due to an aging population and a swing back from the recent financial booms. (1 last month) # THE 11TH ELEMENT, by Robert Scheinfeld. (Wiley, $24.95.) In this manual, the key to wealth and success involves consulting with your "inner CEO." (new) # *THE INNOVATOR'S SOLUTION, by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor. (Harvard Business School Press, $29.95.) Strategies that help companies "grow" new businesses. (8 last month, bulk buys)

A quick troll through the various marketing treatise on the Internet. Kind of interesting to see what is up there when I type "market positioning": * Target Markets & Segmentation. Dan's powerMpoint slides from business school. Basic definition of terms * "Hourglass 1998":http://www.hourglass1998.com/. Interesting methodology from Mark Smith. Nice to have everything reduced to one dimension. * "DMOZ on Positioning":http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Marketing_and_Advertising/Positioning/. Worthy of a DMOZ directory entry. Interesting to see what google has here. * "Brandchannel.com":http://www.brandchannel.com/. There's an entire web site devoted just to branding discussions.

Tom's Hardware Guide Motherboards & RAM: Ups and Downs: Memory Timings Put to the Test - How Memory Access Works. Another great piece over at Tom's Hardware. A nice refresher for those of us with old computer science degrees. They explain how memory works and what timing means. There is a sequence to access memore which is: # row address select (RAS) # then you wait for column address select (CAS), then you wait # you get some data on the DQ lines (usually 64 bits worth) # then you turn off RAS and CAS and do it again. In short, if you have 2-3-4-6 RAM, this refers to how memory is addressed. If you have typical 200MHz memory, that means every 5ns, you get another cycle. * 2 (CL) means that you have to wait 2 clock cycles after CAS is asserted in step 2 to actually get data * 3 (tRCD) means you have to wait 3 cycles after RAS is asserted to assert CAS * 4 (tRP) means you have to wait 4 cycles to for RAS to charge up (that is after you read the data, you have to wait tRP-CL to deactivate) * 6 (tRAS) means you have to wait at least 6 cycles for RAS to be active before you can deactivate it. They also did an incredible set of benchmarks that I'm still digesting. Let's just say, you don't necessarily need to buy super fast RAM anymore, the results seem to vary quite a bit. Although for highly computer bound tasks like video encoding, it is still true, faster is better.

How GIMPS works. A great machine torture test. Runs in the background doing calculations. Since it checks results, its a good test of stability particularly for the memory and cpu of an overclocked machine.

3ivx D4 4.5 - MPEG-4 Audio and Video Compression. Recently got a Mac encoded file in 3ivx format. It's another MPEG4 encoder. You need to download a plug-in to have it work with Windows. Or use Quicktime. Amazing how many codecs I now have loaded on my machine. 3ivx, Divx, xvid, Windows formats, etc.

Seems like everyone is got something on this. Here are some links: CPU overclocking: * "Dev Hardware FAQ":http://www.devhardware.com/c/Hardware/HowTo/Overclocking_Your_P4_800FSB/. A guide for Pentium 4 800MHz FSB machines. A great guide. Basically says, you can overclock a 2.4 or 2.6GHz to about the same as 3.2GHz one. Also that cooling is the firs timiting factor to get beyond 3.6GHz. You also need a great motherboard that can handle very fast speeds (300-333MHz which the Pentium Quadpumps to 1.2GHz-1.5GHz!). Most boards are 875 or 865 based. Check FutureMark's Online Result Browser (ORB) for overclocking results. Another piece is memory, the basic recommendation is to buy PC3200 memory a reverse divider (run the board at 300MHz and the memory at 200MHz requires a 3:2 divider). Graphics card overclocking: * "Dev Hardware FAQ":http://forums.devhardware.com/showthread.php?threadid=15686&s=f9b9fe828dc5cedca7f464f7a79e6c8e. It says download Coolbits for nVidia or Radclocker for ATI. Points out that when you overclock, go up 5-10MHz at a time and watch for artifiacts in video and also how hot the card is. * RivaTuner. _Yet another tuning for video adapters, I've been using coolbits so far, this is the other major on_. RivaTuner is a tweaking utility for NVIDIA and ATI display adapters running under Windows 98 / Windows 98 SE / Windows ME / Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the undocumented features of Detonator and Catalyst drivers. It's a bunch of registry edits, so you really have to know what you're doing. * "5900 to 5950 Ultra":http://www.madshrimps.be/forums/showthread.php?s=d379e43ca59c935b7abac4d4f1639da5&threadid=3785&highlight=fx5900+flash. Apparently, you can flash the right nVidia graphics card and get an upgraded one. Don't know if it would work on my own card. Interesting to see what people can do though.

Both Alex and Calvin are fascinated by the Mars missions. Here are some amazing web sites: * "Mars Exploration Rover Mission":http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/. The official site. Some cool videos and images. Lots to explore. * Maestro Headquarters. Wow, you can look at the imaging applications they are using at the JPL to piece together all those photos they are taking into a 3-D world. Cool visualization application that's a Java application you can download and try. * "Panoramic Views":http://athena.cornell.edu/the_mission/ins_pancam.html. Amazing, you can do a 360 degree view around. *

AquaMark ARC - Overview. Kind of a cool site. These use a Aquamark, a benchmark based on a real game. You submit your ratings up there and see how to tune. For instance, Alex's new Athlon went from a score of 36693 (this is really 36.693 frames per second in the benchmark) to 40145 by overclocking the graphics card. The RAMDACs went from 400MHz to 450Mhz and the memory on the card from 700MHz to 800MHz. Interesting to see how stable and also to see how high you can get. The biggest is a Pentium overclocked to 4.2GHz (!!!) that does nearly 70,000. Wow. They also overclocked the graphics card (nVidia 5900 Ultra) to 668/1071MHz. Wow!

nVHardpage. On to tweaking the new video card. Wow, these new ones are incredibly powerful. This seems like the best utility for nVidia. Basically, it turns on some pretty complex menus you find in the advanced display menu. Also has a mode where you can test your video memory to make it go faster.

In our case, we have a GeForce 5900 SE (using the Nvidia 5900 XT chipset a.k.a. NV36). It gets 36693 Aquamarks when (4923 gpu, 7298 cpu) when running with a 2.15GHz Athlon XP (Barton 0.13micron, 512KB cache at 390MHz system bus). That with 400MHz RAMDAC and 700MHz video memory. According to the board, this can overclock to 450MHz and 800MHz. So giving that a try on speed.

This particular machine doesn't like getting close to 200MHz on FSB. That's mainly memory I think. I bought cheap Kingston Valueram CL3 memory and that just doesn't like getting close to 200MHz. Had the same problem with my Dad's Kingston HyperX CL2 memory but boost the voltage to 1.65 volts and that fixed the problems. This Valueram sample doesn't seem to get better when memory boosts.

Well, I finally got Alex's new machine up and running. Thought I'd give overclocking a serious try to see how things are. Boy there are certainly some risks in it, but it is interesting to see how flexible folks have made these things. Here's the machine today. The main gotcha is that it was incredibly unstable when I had the memory set at 200MHz and the bus at 166MHz. Once I set memory and bus to by synchronous, the problems appear to have gone away. Boy, I've never been blown to a hard reset so many times before figuring this out. There are numerous "posts":http://www.resellerratings.com/forum/t94438.html about this. Also about how it really does need high quality ram and a good fan to overclock. * AMD Athlon 2500+. This chip costs $90 or so. Runs at 1.8GHz, 11x multiplier against a 166MHz external frequency at 1.68 volts. Got this to overclock to 2.16GHz against 196MHz at 1.68 volts so far. It is quite stable so far. I'm just itching to go to 200MHz. That would make it a true Athlon 3200+ (11x200MHz). * ASUS A7N8X-X board. This is a single channel board, so its memory bandwidth benchmarks aren't too great. OTOH, in most real world cases, this doesn't seem to matter much. Main issues are that you need to run the RAM synchronously. Also, the machine hangs if I try to set the CPU multiplier below 11x. * Kingston Valueram 1GB Kit. This is pretty slow ram. The SPD default is 3-3-3-8 at 200MHz, I'm going to try to drive it higher and see if I can't get 2.5-2-2-7, but first I'll push the clock up a little faster. * eVGA geForce 5900 SE 128MB DDR. Haven't benchmarked this guy, but it is a good value leader. I left most of the rest of the system in tact, so it really does need faster disks. Right now it has: * as the system disk an old Western Digital WD6000BB (this is a 5400 rpm 60GB, 2MB cache disk) * Plus it gots a pair of WD12000BB (7200 rpm, 2MB cache) for main storage. * These two run on a Promise FastTrak TX2 Raid card. I actually don't run them in raid mode because on my old ASUS P3V4X, I had incredible problems with bad disk writes in RAID-0. ResellerRatings - nForce2 good or bad? I've got two a7n8x deluxe motherboards, both are great. One is an ultra 400 and the other is the ultra 333. However one of the main problems i've seen is memory incompatability, it seems the motherboard is finicky when you don't have compatible ram and it so happens that there is a lot of incompatible ram. I've got two sets of ram, the kingston hyper X PC3200, running just fine and another set. I forget the brand name, but they would only work stable at 266mhz rather than 400mhz, however since it's 1gb running on dual channel, it makes up for the bandwidth. However that board has an athlon xp 1800 in the other machine, the 4200 bandwidth does pretty good.

Ultimate Boot CD. Wow, what a great idea, here is a CD image of a bootable CD with everything on it. I tried to use Bart's Boot CD stuff, but the script fails mysteriously. This is a better idea since it has everything on it already. A 56MB image.

Been putting together Connie's new computer. First time I've ever had a machine not power up and also the first time I've smelled burning. Not good. Fortunately, didn't burn out the whole motherboard. Whenever you build a new computer, make sure your hand is next to the power off switch. So, here is what I would do if you have something like this: * Take out all the peripherals. Unplug them from the power connectors * Take out all the cards and memory too. * Find the motherboard manual (hopefully saved in hard copy or PDF from a site somewhere). Now, the chore is plugging things in one at a time, powering up and seeing if anything blows up. Took some time, but here was my order: * Check the power supply fan and the cpu fan. Make sure they the ground goes to the ground side pin. These are keyed. * Install the ATX power supply connector. Might want to take a gander at the power supply manual and the motherboard manual to make sure the pinouts are the same. * Don't power up the machine, but just plug it in. On most modern motherboards, there is an LED now on the motherboard itself telling you if there is standby power. A good sign. * Plug the power switch into the front panel connector on the motherboard. A little confusing which is power and which is ground, so read the manual. * If this is good, you should see no smoke, the CPU fan turns on and the power supply fan turns out. Eureka. No smoke I hope. * Now the rest of the front panel into the motherboard. * Now, plug in the memory and try again * Now, the cards (graphics, that sort of thing), try again * Now plug in the IDE drives and their power supplies connectors (it is possible but very hard to force these connectors. Power cycle each time. * Now finally, the floppy. This is the one that I got wrong because its easy to flip the connector. First of all, you can easily misalign since floppys just have four pins and there isn't a housing. Second, you can easily defect the small key and put in backwards. Floppy Drive - How To Build A Computer. Took a while, but discovered, I had put the floppy power connector in backwards. This is essentially the only non-keyed thing left in a computer. Good illustrations for this.

Here are some more tools that I've been using: * "Mac Flac":http://www.danrules.com/macflac/. Flac is a lossless compression format for compressing CDs. * "Bit Torrent":http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/. This is a pretty cool file download system. The client is a little strange as it is the usual obscure user interface. * "Experimental":http://ei.kefro.st/projects/btclient/. When you download experimental, you get a user interface that let's you download and then you can also share. Most folks recommend this client. Nice UI. A little strange in that it only does download and not search * "Bit Torrent Search":http://www.btsearch.net/ Do a google search because you need to find .torrent files that tell you where things are. There are lots of garage bands and things about. There isn't a central directory. There are things called torrent servers that list where various files are and how to get them. they bounce up and down quite a bit, but there are search engines around. I also used isohunt with good effect.

OK, Connie has $2,200 to buy a machine and printer for work. That's the standard budget over at Harberview. They are standardized on Dell Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks. Interesting to see Windows 2000, not XP is part of the standard too. I'm not used to paying so much for hardware, so this is a good way to compare values vs. DIY and the cost of enterprise level stuff. * PCWorld.com - Dell Latitude D600. This is a midrange notebook that is available. About $1,600 for small business and home and about $1,800 for large enterprise. Another irony that big companies are really paying more for their hardware. The low-end is just filled with rebates. For instance the $1,600 machine includes a free printer, more memory etc. Of course, the enterprises have their own discount schedules from the web price. Last time I looked those were about 5% off. * "PC World on the Dell Latitude X300":http://pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,113341,00.asp. This is a 2.9 pound thin and light notebook that can also ahve an expansion chassis for carrying all those peripherals. Expensive, but a good choice if you work around a lot and sometime need some more peripherals. Of course now with USB 2.0, all the peripherals can hang (unneatly albeit) off of USB 2.0. A good configuration is about $1700. * "Optiplex 270":http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardware/desktops/0,39001723,39015761p,00.htm. This is the desktop machine from Dell. With a 19" LCD monitor, weighs in at $2,200 with a 2.8MHz Pentium and 512MB memory plus an 80GB hard drive (sure makes the Shuttles I've been building seem like nice buys if you can stand the risk, Connie's dad machines cost about the same at $1,600 and had an Athlon 64 3400+, rocking fast ATI video card, 2GB of memory, a DVD+RW drive and 200GB disk or a 20% faster processor, 2x faster video, 4x the ram, 3x the disk).

Onkyo Upgrades TX-DS989 Future-Proof Receiver. I've had this Audio-video receiver for about two years now. Blew out an amplifier and also part of the digital processing section by crossing some speaker wires in the back (yes, Virginia, it was dumb to have a bunch of stripped wires back there, I've fixed that now). In any case, its in the shop, but there is also an upgrade for the thing. Hopefully, I can get it fixed *and* upgraded at the same time. The first upgrade (which I have) added DTS-ES and Dolby Pro Logic 2 processing. This is actually the second upgrade has: * "THX Ultra2":http://www.audioholics.com/FAQs/THXp1.html. (I'm not sure exactly what that means), but it is for 7.1 systems (that is there are two additional speakers in the back). there is someting called CinemaMode processing that detects a Dolby 5.1 program and synthesizes it into a 7.1 program. Nice to be able to get a simulated additional output, but you do need more speakers, so it ain't free. * "DTS 96/24":http://www.dtsonline.com/technology/at-a-glance-details.php?ID=1960930779&glanceID=Overview. It also adds DTS 96/24 for audio decoding. Essentially, there are special DVDs that have some additional data (conventional DVDs have 48Khz and this is twice as much at 96KHz). Seems limited in applicability to me. So what are all those other formats (which I never use for). A good time to figure this ou. * "Dolby Digital":http://www.dolby.com/Consumer/Technologies/DD/. The most prevelant format on a DVD today. It is 5 channels plus a subwoofer (5.1). * "Dolby Digital EX":http://www.dolby.com/Consumer/Technologies/DDEX/. Addes a sixth channel (6.1). You do need to add two back speakers to take advantage of it. * "Dolby Pro Logic II":http://www.dolby.com/Consumer/Technologies/PLII/. This takes a stereo signal and synthesizes 5.1 channesl worth of sound. It has a movie mode and a music mode. * "Dolby Pro Logic IIx":http://www.dolby.com/Consumer/Technologies/PLIIx/. Synthesizes 6.1 from a stereo (2.0). The competitor to Dolby is DTS. Here are their equivalent modes: * "DTS":http://www.dtstech.com/company/faq.php#faq51. DTS comes on special DVDs (it is a different format than Dolby Digital, the most common format). It uses less compression and is supposed to sound better. * "DTS-ES":http://www.dtsonline.com/technology/at-a-glance-details.php?ID=1857247944&glanceID=Overview. This is a 6.1 sound format. So there is a new center channel that is matrix in to the rear channels (it isn't a separate track, but added into those). There is a subformat called DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete which has a separate track. So you need to find DVDs with this DTS-ES logo on it. * "DTS Neo:6":http://www.dtsonline.com/technology/at-a-glance-details.php?ID=1996020590&glanceID=Overview. This format takes an ordinary stereo (like a regular old TV program) and synthesizes 6.1 channels, so it competes with Dolby Pro Logic Surround which does the same thing. * DTS 96/24. Already discussed above, its a new DVD soundtrack format that goes up to 96KHz sampling (vs. 48KHz) and 24 bit (vs. 16 bit) sampling. General conventional wisdom is that DTS sounds better than Dolby Digital, but only a few DVDs have that format. Also there is lots of questions about "Dolby Pro Logic II" vs. "DTS Neo:6":http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/showthread.php?pagenumber=1&threadid=176069 that is at best inconclusive. I've been using Pro Logic, maybe I'll switch back to DTS Neo:6 when I get my Onkyo back from the shop.

"Firing Squad":http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/evga_e-geforce_fx_5900_xt_review/, "Hot Hardware":http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/gffx_5900xt.shtml, "Guru-3D":http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/112/ and "Tech-Report":http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q4/geforcefx-5900xt/index.x?pg=1 have all reviewed this board (called the GeForce 5900 SE) and the chipset (called the 5900 XT). Go figure this naming convention stuff. You can get it for about $185 right now online. It is basically a high end GeForce 5900 with slower memory (2.8ns vs. 2.2ns) and slower too (700MHz vs. 850MHz). That being said, it is still 256-bit wide memory so is very fast. It is about the speed of the 5900 and it cost $30 less. (About $180 street right now). It's less than 10% slower in most cases vs the very fast ATI RAdeon 9800 Pro ($280 street). Accoridng to "Firing Squad":http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/evga_e-geforce_fx_5900_xt_review/page13.asp, the only area where it really loses is with antialiasing and anistrophic features turned on. Then the Radeon is much faster (like 20%). So the net is that it is a good value and compete well with the ATI Radeon 9600 XT (about the same price) in performance. Even with 4xAA and 8xAF in 1024x768x32 mode, on Unreal Tournament, the benchmarks are: | Card | fps | | Radeon 9800 Pro | 66 | | Radeon 9800 | 59.5 | | GeForce 5900 Ultra | 56.7 | | GeForce 5900 | 51.5 | | GeForce FX 5900 SE | 50.5 | | GeForce FX 5700 Ultra | 46.4 | | Radeon 9600 XT | 45.5 |

Pricewatch Video Cards. Here's an easy way to see the prices of video cards at a glance. Pricewatch publishes them all on one page. The pricegrabber merchants seem higher end (fewer small stores), but this is a great way to get a feel for market pricing. "Pricewatch on CPUs":http://www.pricewatch.com/menus/m3.htm. The same is true for CPU pricing. A good display here showing the pricing cascade.

Build Your Own PC Message Forums - shuttle sb61g2 memory problems?. I tried to overclock my Dad's machine and everything fell apart! Got all kinds of random crashes. Not just blue screen of deaths, but hard crashes. Also unrealiable reads and installs. Tried a bunch of things and finally detuned the memory and this seemed to help. Went from DDR 400MHz to 266MHz and from the SPD settings of 2.5 to 3. Backed everything else off and it is now stable. Strange. Before I putzed with it, it was running fine at SPD but with a CAS 2 (2.5 is the default). This thread shows there are some mysterious memory problems. I'll try a sis sandra burn in next.

"Endian roadmap":http://endian.net/roadmap.asp. One of the worst things to do is to buy a new card or other piece of hardware and then discover there was a big price cut or a new model due the next week. Endian has a whole cut of news just basd on new roadmaps. Super useful to check. So for graphics cards as of January, some relevant hits: * 2004Q1. Nvidia "NV40":http://endian.net/details.asp?ItemNo=3820 is the new processor to succeed the NV35 (GeForce 5900) built on 130nm. The NV35 was launched 05-03 so this is a quick turn. * Q404. ATI R500 will succeed the R420 (Introduced 3-04) and the R350 (Radeon 9800) and R360 (Radeon 9800XT) * Mar-04. The "R420":http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/34607.html is the near term successor to the current line this coming March.

I've been using the Macintosh at work. Great to get back to this machine. quite a community of software. After 15 years of being on the PC pretty much exclusively, I sure feel clumsy in a different environment. Anyway, here are some tools and things I've been finding helpful: * http://www.errant.org/lago/archives/000723.html. A good list of tools. I'm trying a tool called ecto which is an offline blogging tool. Works with MovableType. * http://archipelago.phrasewise.com/faq. Yet another tool called Archipelago for the Macintosh.

"OC FAQ":http://www.ocfaq.com/forum_new/showthread.php?t=303. The folks at OCFAQ seem to know an amazing amount. Here's the detailed scoop from a thread of theirs. There was quite an opportunity in the last ATI product cycle to turn 9500s into 9700s, but that window has closed, but is still open a tad for 9800 SE to 9800 non-pro * Unlocking. ALL 9800 SE's can have their 4 pipelines unlocked to 8, there is just an approximate 50% chance it will work without a problem. It will about doulbe performance. * Memory. If your card contains memory aligned in a single horizontal row, or "I" shaped pattern, you have 128bit memory and there is no converting it to 256bit. For those of you with memory aligned in both horizontal and vertical patterns, or "L" shaped, you have 256bit memory. There is a 1500~2000 3D Mark 2001 point spread between these 2 types, so make sure you purchase the latter. * The 256 bit has 256bit version has a core of 380 MHz and memory of 340 MHz as an additional check. * Sapphire 9800SE: all models 128bit bus, so these aren't preferred * ATI cards: various, see W1zards chart, most of them are 128bit though so the odds are low. * PowerColor: all 256bit (that I have seen), 2 different pcbs, one like the 9700, one like the 9800 most have 9800Pro clock speed. The part number is Powercolor R98SE-C3. They are $30 more because they also have better RAM. Someone did get a 128bit model once though, so caveat emptor. Don't get the XR98SE-C3 as this has I shaped 128 bit memory. * All in Wonder 9800SE: several brands, all 256bit memory since there is only a single reference design for these. * "Extreme Overclocking":http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread/t-64690.html. Club-3D cards are also supposed to be 256-bit and softmoddable.

Video at Digit-Life.com. A good overall review site. Every month, they test various video cards from top to bottom. Good to get a perspective. They just did a 4 year test from 1999-2003. Amazing the progress that's been made. Good to check every month. "Overview":http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/over2003/index.html of the last four years of video development. To sum it up, let's just take Unreal Tournament 2003. Here are some sample frame rates. Amazing how a Riva TNT2 Ultra, the fast card 4 years ago is 20x slower than the fastest card today! Also looking at the street prices, its pretty clear why ATI is outselling nVidia right now. Here are my recommendations for buying cards right now: * As usual, if you can wait, in March or so, both nVidia will launch their new NV40 (NV35 is the current GeForce 5900/5700) and ATI will launch their new R420 (R360 is the current 9800/9600XT family). In 2H04, you'll see new cards taking advantage of the upcoming PCI Express bus, so that's the big change. * High end cards. The Radeon 9800 Pro looks like a very nice price performance at $272, nearly $150 less than the 9800XT and 1% lower performance. 122fps * Midrange cards, The big winner is the nVidia GeForce FX 5900 SE. This card is $185 does 111.7fps so is 10% slower at $100 less than the Radeon 9800 Pro. * Budget cards. Radeon 9600 Pro at $145, you get about 2/3 the performance of the fastest cards. 87 fps, but I think the best price performance is in the mid range | Board | fps | Specifications (engine width, clock/memory clock) | Pricegrabber 1/11/04 | | Radeon 9800XT 256MB | 124.4 | DDR 256 bit, 412/730MHz | $435 | | Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB | 122.4 | DDR 256 bit, 380/580MHz | $272 | | GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB | 118.5 | DDR 256 bit, 450/850MHz | $364 | | GeForce FX 5900 128MB | 116.4 | DDR 256 bit, 400/850MHz | $215 | | Radeon 9800 128MB | 115.7 | DDR 256 bit, 325/590MHz | $298 | | GeForce FX 5900 SE 128MB | 111.7 | DDR 256bit, 400/700MHz | $185 | | GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128MB | 100.4 | DDR2 128bit, 475/900MHz | $184 | | Radeon 9600XT 128MB | 94.1 | DDR, 128bit, 500/600MHz | $185 | | Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB | 86.6 | DDR, 128bit, 400/600MHz | $150 | | Radeon 9800 SE 128MB | 84.5 | DDR, 256bit, 380/680MHz | $176 | | GeForce FX 5700 128MB | 72.2 | DDR, 128bit, 400/800MHz | $166 | | Radeon 9800 SE 128MB | 67.6 | DDR, 128bit, 325/540MHz | $167 | | Radeon 9600 128MB | 68.5 | DDR, 128bit, 325/400Mhz | $118 | | Radeon 9600SE 128MB | 36.5 | DDR, 64bit, 325/400MHz | $99 | | Radeon 9200 64MB | 30.0 | DDR, 64 bit, 250/400Mhz | $59 | | GeForce MX 400 32MB | 16.1 | SDR, 128bit, 200/166MHz | $33 | | Riva TNT2 Ultra 32MB | 8.1 | SDR, 128bit, 150/183MHz | $18 | | Rage 128 Pro 32MB | 1.8 | SR, 128bit, 118/143Mhz | N/A |

X-bit labs - Hardware news - Does AMD Supply Enough Athlon 64 Processors?. Well as usual, yields are the big issue. A good summary of Athlon 64 shipments. They claim 170K units shipped in Q403. The folks at Solomon Smith Barney think they'll do 350K in 1Q (a drop in the bucket). For perspective, they think for FY03 | Chip | FY03 Shipment | FY03 ASP | FY04 Ship | FY04 ASP | | Athlon XP | 25.53M | $70 | 19.55M | $59 | | Duron | 1.795M | $25 | N/A | N/A | | Athlon 64 | 0.365M | $327 | 9M | $146 | | Opteron | 0.040M | $400 | 0.5M | $383 |

My main problem right now is that Windows Update isn't working. It's the well know "Windows Update Problem":http://www.updatexp.com/0x800A138F.html call 0x800a138f. Great name! In my case, studying c:\windows\windows update.log revealed I was really getting an 0x800C0008 error (man have PCs become like mainframes or what!). Amazingly, this is because I got the clock screwed up by a year (2003 not 2004), so it rejected a bunch of things. When I have time I'll research that :-). Interesting to see the auto time sync in Windows refuses to update the time if it is dramatically off. I had thought that time was never going to be a problem again. Sigh.

X-bit labs - Articles - AMD Athlon 64 3200 CPU Review (page 4). Very cool point about the Athlon is that with the right Athlon 64 CPU (look at the serial number on the chip, it should end in "AP" and if you have the right motherboard BIOS, it should have a quiet'n'cool entry in it, and if you download the right processor driver from "AMD":http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871. Then you can install and XP will dynamically change the speed of the internal CPU from 800MHz all the way up to its rated maximum. It will also change the voltage from 1.3 to 1.5. This change heat dissipation from a high of 90 watts to a low of 35!

Stuart's Overclocking Software Page. Stuart recommends Motherboard monitor and cpu cooL. .:: Motherboard Monitor. Great tool when you are in overclock land. What is the temperature and other facts about your machine. A nice monitor, but you need to see if your motherboard is supported since it dives down *deep* into the system to find things like CPU temperatures, etc.

I got the components and assembled it over the last couple of nights. Here are notes for other brave folks doing this: * Pricing. Make sure you get good pricing on the Athlon 64. These prices seem to be changing weekly. There is good availability if you go to http://pricegrabber.com, but for instance the Athlon 64 3200+ on newegg.com was at $420, then $405, then at a bundle price of $350 and is now $300. * Shuttle Assembly. The assembly is harder because the CD/DVD driver holder doesn't come out. Otherwise no more complicated than Pentium 4 or Athlon XP installation. * Corsair 2GB memory is *slow*. Only glitch here is that is actually CL3 memory, so not as fast as the 1GB stuff. The specifications for the memory is 3-4-4-8, but the SPD is 3-3-3-8 which seems stable even overclocked on this board. I'd recommend the 1GB C2 version of Kingston HyperX or Corsair Twinx. They are much faster. * X-bit labs - Articles - Socket754 Platform: Overclocking (page 39). Going to try a little overclocking. Basically the limitations are that the VIA K8KT800 doesn't really allow this but the nForce Pro 150 chipset does. The 3200+ runs natively at 2GHz and X-bit test show that they could get up to 2.3GHz and 2.15GHz with the Shuttle motherboard with the stock fan and overvoltage from 1.5V to 1.65V. I've gotten mine to over clock to 2.15GHz at 1.5V no problem. As a comparison, the new 3400+ is a 2.2GHz part. * "Shuttle on Quiet'n'Cool":http://www.shuttle.com/share/fae/hq/faq/sff/qa/XPC%20Barebone%20SN85G4.pdf. Read the FAQ from Shuttle. Its obscure, but follow the "X-bit":http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-3200_4.html instructions. You need an Athlon CPU with an 'AS' suffix, you need to update your BIOS on your SN85G4 to "S015":http://www.shuttle.com/hq/support/download/dwn2.asp?model=SN85G4. basically, you can implement quiet and cool on this box by first updating Windows XP with all the latest hot fixes. Then, you can go to AMD and install their latest processor "driver":http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871. Finally, you go to the control panel and turn on power management. Now the box will manage both the CPU clock (going between 800MHz and 2.0GHz) and the voltage (going from 1.29 to 1.5V) based on CPU utilization. This lowers power consumption from 35W up to the 90Watt maximum. Very cool. You can see this by running CPU-Z and it show dynamically what is happening. Kind of neat. * "nVidia":http://www.shuttle.com/hq/support/download/dwn2.asp?model=SN85G4. As usual, the you need the latest chipset drivers. One bummer is that the Hypertransport bus on the SN85G4 is only running at 600MHz not 800MHz. Watch out for a Shuttle that goes to the newer nForce3 250 (the SN85G4 today has the nForce3 150). These drivers are right now 3.43, but check to see when newer ones come. * "ATI":http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html. These video drivers are *always* changing. Go get the latest ones for the best performance. So after all that, how does this machine do? Well, here are some benchmarks:

Repair XP Breat notes from Harry O. on fixing Windows XP. Man, you have to be smart sometimes. Some great links and notes. here are some I've used lately: * "Repair by Installing Over":http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm#How%20to%20Repair%20Windows%20XP%20by%20Installing%20Over%20top%20of%20Existing%20Setup:. Good notes on how to repair. If you have an OEM CD you are in luck, it has a repair option that let's you blow away what's corrupted. Great if you've destroyed the NTFS partition by overclocking :0) * "Better XP Boot Floppy":http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm. If you still have a machine with a floppy or better yet a motherboard that knows how to boot a USB Floppy, here's how to create a universal boot disk. * "Knoppix":http://www.knoppix.net/docs/ - Ok this might appear to be blasphemy on a site dedicated to Windows but if your system is really hosed and you are desperate to get data off the drive then give Knoppix a go. The download is a whopping 700MB but you get an ISO that, when burned to CD, creates a version of Linux that runs directly off the CD and doesn't require installation to your Hard Drive. With this CD Operating System you can access your NTFS or FAT partitions and with it's built in CD Burning software copy your important data off the drive . Or if you have a network you can transfer files to another system. This is a must have! I'm amazed. This would have saved me lots of time if I knew this existed.

Ultimate CD and DVD Data Recovery and Rescue tool (CD Data Recovery). Like winimage, this shareware, lets you backup CDs and DVDs. Very useful if you ever need this stuff back.

Software mod for turning your Radeon 9500 non-Pro into a 9700 - FAQ. Wow, you can both overclock your video card. it also turns out that you can take a 9800SE and with a software modification to drivers, turn on some of the hardware on the board and turn it into a 9800 Pro. That's a big price difference if it works. Of course, you have to know exactly what the board layout is. Apparently, some 9800SE cards are actually 256 bits wide, but only have 128 bits turned out because so you can try to turn it on and see if you see artifcats and other problems. You can also overclock the memory. Amazing what folks have found out.