September 2004 Archives

Support - Protocol Error appears and BlackBerry Desktop Manager closes unexpectedly on a computer running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Heck, folks say going to SP2 should work. I'm sure glad I just have one machine there.

There are certainly issues with it and here's another gotcha. There is a very arcane thing you have to do to solve this but fortunately, there is actually an FAQ on an official Blackberry site (I think this is the first bug I've ever found that had a resolution up there). Here is what you have to do:

It is nearly impossible to navigate through the t-mobile UI to find the web client interface for the blackberry. I don't know who designed the interface but it is terrible. Here's the link to the "Web Client":http://www.t-mobile.com/bwc/ if you need it.

It's Full Spectrum Warrior Madness!. There is a God. Full Spectrum Warrior is the Xbox game based on a real simulation sponsored by the US Army. Its finally out now and Gogamer has it on sale for 20% off even.

Also Ludwig points out Call of Duty United Offensive is also now available. Wow, get me ready!

A9 has a different scheme for page rank. Amazon actually lists all the sites in the same Amazon catalog. Pretty clever. They seem to be using Alexa to do this, so it isn't really a ranking like google that is used to figure out what sorts to the top (the real use of such rankings). Still, it is kind of interesting to see how various sites list. YOu can find this on the A9 toolbar where it gives site information: | Site | Traffic Rank | PR | | "marketingplaybook.com":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002WZ9L6/ | 619,952 | 6 | | "theludwigs.com":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000Z9BAA/ | 969,144 | 6 | | "tongfamily.com":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AUJZO/ | 527,929 | 5 | | "freereturn.com":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/url/-/free-return.com/002-2075837-5877638 | 2,890,899 | 5 | | "smithstuff.net":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/url/-/smithstuff.net//002-2075837-5877638 | N/A | 4 | | "zagula.com":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/url/-/zagula.com//002-2075837-5877638 | N/A | 0 | | "vcmom.com":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/url/-/vcmom.com//002-2075837-5877638 | N/A | 0 | | "scbhooper.com":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/url/-/www.scbhooper.com//002-2075837-5877638 | N/A | 0 | I've also noticed sites like "Pricegrabber":http://pricegrabber.com doing the same thing for the election and other things that aren't physical goods.

Zagula has been raving about this toolbar.

I've also been bad and not been looking at other people's blogs. As you can see most time I've had has been spent building computers and doing computer geek stuff, but I'm getting back to the basic blogging job.

So A9 is cool and I hear ebay is doing a search engine as well. There is an incredible category merge happen on the Internet as MSN, Yahoo, Google, ebay and Amazon all compete for search. What a drag race!

OK, I've been putzing with this film scanner for a while now. I have to say the Minolta site is just awful in terms of finding things and this is one case where google queries don't work well at all. So here is what I've found out: h4. Scanning software There are three basic choices. First there is the included software. Free, but you get what you get. Main issue is that it doesn't support the full 48-bit resolution of the scanner. The next if vuescan. This is $90 for the software and is very powerful with many settings. Then there is Lasersoft SilverFast AI. This is $300, but as usual, it is super powerful. The main difference between the Dimage, Vuescan and Lasersoft seems to be the amount of control you have. Vuescan produces the most unsaturated while Dimage and Lasersoft are doing something to adjust this for the scanner itself. h4. Placing in negatives This is actually not nearly as easy as you would think. First thing is that if you don't have the negative exactly aligned, so that it bubbles out for instance, then you will get strange color casts. If it bows out, then the images looks blue (this is because the light focus is designed to be very narrow). So the image isn't out of focus, but the light is. Also if you aren't careful, you can easily put the negative loader in backwards, then you get all kinds of strange multicolor streaks. Final strange thing is that to get it right, the labeling on the holders is reversed from the actual direction of the film strip. Or you have to scan things in upside down. A little wierd in either case. I have also gotten this same kind of streaking putting in the right way. Turning the scanner off and then letting it cool and then on again seems to mysteriously fix it. h4. Color Calibration (a.k.a. ICM) so WYSIWYG really works. The first thing you discover when you do this is that the scan looks completely different on the screen and when you print it out. This is because every device has a different way that it responds to color. In a very real way, it is not clear what red is. So, to get things right for. Windows has something called ICM and ICC profiles that tell it how to adjust for the correct color. h5. Monitor Calibration "Norman Koren":http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html has a terrific overview of what you need to do. Its a simple but laborious procedure. You can either buy a $200 device such as the "Colorvision":http://colorvision.com Spyder2 and get it automatically or just eyeball it like this: # Keep the lights down low. Go to the monitor itself and try to set its color temperature to 6500K or D65 and make sure the video card is set to 24 or 32-bit color depth # Set the contrast to maximum unless that is really too harsh (that is as much contrast a.k.a white level) as you can stand. From my home theater calibration days, I know this means you want to set it high enough but not so high you get blooming and you lose the top end white color. On my Optiquest L700, that's a setting of about 80 out of 100. # Set the black level (usually called brightness) and the gamma (the level you get between black and white) together. There is a pattern for doing this using a special "chart":http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#gammachart. Set the gamma to 2.2 using the chart and procedure where you look at the chart and see where the bands disappear. There is a utility called "Quick Gamma":http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#QuickGamma but this doesn't give you an ICC file. The utility called "Wysiwig":http://www.praxisoft.com/pages/products.wiziwyg.html is I think much better and gives you an ICC profile. Plus, the result seems more natural to me from my home theater days. # Look at the test pattern at http://www.inkjetart.com/custom/ and see if people look the right color. h5. Scanner and Printer Calibration The purist, you have to do a bunch of corrections. Some people do it at every stage, others do it just at the end. But here are the corrections. First, the film responds differently, so the top end programs like Silverfast and Vuescan have different color profiles for hundreds of different kinds of film. If you are shooting digital BTW, the same thing is true, the camera image sensor responds to light differently depending on the color. Also, depending on lighting and other things, you can get the exposure wrong with either film or digital. So, most of the pros end up shooting digital in what is called RAW mode. This means don't do any processing in camera, give me exactly what the image sensor sees. So the advanced programs have a correction for both film and for the scanner itself or for the actual digital camera used. On the Minolta Dimage for instance, Silverfact has buried in it Options/CMS, a setting for the scanner type and a bunch of standard "profiles":http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009ZS5&unified_p=1 and of course on the Internet, folks can get software where you take a known color sheet scan it in and then create a correction based on what you actually got. This is called IT-8 correction. A special film negative costs $200 to buy that has the exact right shades. Or you can download a profile that is kind of close from "ethervizion":http://www.ethervizion.com/lost_found/ for common slide films. The next thing to do is to make sure the monitor is also calibrated. This is reasonably easy to do the simple way. Most folks will get Adobe Photoshop Elements (the junior version of Photoshop). It comes with a calibrator called Adobe Gamma. Also modern monitors usually have an ICC profile that comes with it so you can do that. The advanced user will buy a custom color calibrator such as the Colorvision Spyder2. It has a little reader thingy that you put on the screen and then it will automatically produce a calibration. I did mine by hand and it doesn't look too accurate. Finally, you have to have an ICC profile for your printer. These things come with ICM profiles as well, although they are hard to find. The Canon i9900 that I have didn't seem to have one. But one comes with the Silverfast AI. I haven't found a generic profile. You can also buy a dedicated printer reader that does the same thing as the Colorvision PrintFX that again generates a profile for your printer. Note that you actually have to have a profile for every kind of paper that you will use since different papers respond to ink differently. Sigh, now isn't that confusing! h4. Scanning workflow There are lots of opinions about this, but basically, all of these programs seem to some support three very different modes. First is the scan it in and the computer sets everything. Kind of scanning for dummies. This works pretty well, but one thing that is amazing is how much you can completely change a scan with this software. No two scans seem to look alike. So, most folks have a second mode which is to change contrast and everything else in the scanning software itself and then you feed it to Adobe Photoshop or something for final printing. Then there is the most advanced mode where you scan the image in at the highest resolution (5400 dpi) and highest color density (48 bits) so you create a 500MB real acrhive of the 35mm print. This is true digitization, so you do this and then apply all the changes by hand. Most of the true pros favor this method. I can see why. Storage is cheap so just scan it all into a gigantic hard disk (a $120 200GB hard drive stores 1000 prints for instance). I'm working on the later method, but you need an incredibly fast machine too. h4. Using the 5400 as a scanner The most confusing thing about using this thing is to make sure that you put the film holder in the right way. There is an up arrow and I kept putting it in upside down. What then happens is the scan seems to work but the scans comes out streaked and fuzzy. It isn't intuitive because there are two ways to insert the ting. h4. Editing the photo before you print Second thing is that the number of parameters on these applications is really dizzying. I haven't figure out exactly the right settings, but the most pure appear to be 16 bit linear from the Dimage utility and 48 bit HDR Colour in Silverfast. These really try to pass along what the scanner sees rather than trying to image process. The main issue is what can process a 48-bit (that is 16 bits for each of the three colors Red, Green and Blue). Adobe Photoshop Elements doesn't. It only handles 24 bit scans. The most expensive but most flexible option is Adobe Photoshop CS. This is about $500 (when software really made money), then there is Silverfast HDR at $300. Finally, if you are on a budget, JASC is only about $80 and gets good reviews, but can't run the plug ins that Photoshop has and doesn't do 16-bit scans. In many ways, Photoshop is a classic platform with plugins costing more than the product. There is another program called Picture Windows Pro that handles big scans but is incredibly hard to use.

Colorvision Spyder and Optical Review. More reviews of this little gadget. As I've been doing some printing, they are right. The monitor color and the printer color doesn't really match. The original Spyder got good reviews.

Spyder2. They are just now launching the Spyder2 ($179 list) and the Spyder2Pro ($279). The sensor is upgraded. The main difference is the complexity of the software. Spyder2 looks about right for the amateur like me. Only problem is it doesn't ship until November. Photographyblog also covers the same press release.

Maxthon Plugins @ TaraPages.com. Been trying a bunch of alternative web browsers. IE progress has just been so slow. Maxthon seems to be the best of both worlds, its IE compatible since it uses the IE engine, but it has all the features like tabbed browsing, popup blocking, mouse gestures and plugins that I love in Opera and Firefox.

Give it a try. Used to be called Myie2 and is a great example of a stealth play. Use the compatibility of IE and then add lots of features.

_A quote from Cascade Bikes

The good news is that no matter how many lanes wide, the new SR-520 bridge will make room for bicyclists and pedestrians. However, if a few noisy NIMBY's get their way, getting to the bridge from the south won't get any easier.

For years, the State and other stakeholders have been talking about connecting the bike/ped lane on the bridge to a street-end in Madison Park. A connecter from SR 520 wouldn't just get people to the bridge - it would open up an easier north-south route between lake side neighborhoods.

Some residents of Madison Park, or the nearby gated-community of Broadmoor, have suggested they will sue on environmental grounds if the connection is considered. However, if there are any environmental impacts from connecting the ped/bike lane to dry land, the SR-520 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is
where they should be studied.

So, the State won't study this connection in the unless asked by the City of Seattle, and the City, under pressure, is letting our window of opportunity to close.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? TAKE ACTION TODAY!

Mayor Nickels needs to hear from you today. Tell them you want a connection between the new SR-520 bicycle/pedestrian path and a street in Madison Park in the SR-520 EIS.

Send an e-mail or call right now, before you forget, to Mayor Greg Nickels and Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis at (206)684-4000, or tim.ceis@seattle.gov. To email Mayor Nickels, go to http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/citizen_response.htm

If you have time, don't forget the City Council at (206)684-8888 or jim.compton@seattle.gov; richard.conlin@seattle.gov; david.della@seattle.gov; jan.drago@seattle.gov; jean.godden@seattle.gov; nick.licata@seattle.gov, richard.mciver@seattle.gov; tom.rasmussen@seattle.gov;
peter.steinbrueck@seattle.gov.

I have one of these Kyptonite locks for my bike. How depressing when this happens.

Here net is from Kryptonite

Kryptonite U-locks with a typical cylinder lock can be opened in seconds with a common BIC plastic pen.

Videos of how to do it have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times from websites in the last few days.
After inserting the open end of the pen where the round key goes, several wiggles pop the lock.

Kryptonite has moved quickly to supply a solution. If you own one of its many vulnerable U-locks, you can
get a free or discounted crossbar that isn't so easily picked. The details are at www.kryptonite.com

Meanwhile, the word is out. If you have a Kryptonite U-lock that uses a round key, don't trust it to protect
your bike.

Monitor calibration and gamma. I printed my first photos via the Minolta Dimage 5400 through Photoshop and then Canon i9900. Thought I did job on color calibration, but the printout was way more washed out than the screen.

Sigh. The above is a good site that explains how to do color calibration. I thought I did it correctly with the Adobe Gamma tool, but I guess I need to read more. Or spend $150 to get a piece of hardware that does color calibration. This spits out a custom ICC that corrects for a particular monitor.

TripAdvisor. An interesting site. Was acquired by Expedia.com. What they did a great job getting content and then getting readers.

It shows what you can do when you have a focused audience.

Inkjet Paper by Red River Paper. I've noticed folks on Nikonians and other enthusiast sites like to use Red River for their paper. They are a specialist site and even include ICC files so that when you print to their paper, you can use the exactly correct color matching.

They have a nice tutorial that explains how to use color profiles. The basic idea is that there is an .ICC file for every kind of paper from Red River and every kind of professional printer. That's because how the color comes out depends on both the printer and the way the paper absorbs the ink.

Adorama is another vendor that supplies ICC profiles for their Projet paper.

Gamma. This whole monitor calibration thing is very confusing. You essentially have to get the calibration right on your scanner, your monitor and your printer so that colors don't shift and so you don't lose anything.

Adobe Photoshop includes an Adobe Gamma calibrator for this purpose. You can also buy a device that is like a little electric eye to do direct calibration called the ColorVision.

Finally, you can eyeball things and use a tool called Powerstrip to remember all the calibrations for you.

Lonestardigital.com - Better Blue Sky (Photoshop Tutorial). I'm learning how to use Photoshop Elements now that I've got my 35mm scanner working. Wow, its a hard product to learn. Very powerful, but very difficult.

Current thing I'm learning is how to make the sky more blue. I wish I had used a polarizing filter on my camera to make the sky better. Here's a quick trick I found on the web in lieu of this.

Digital Film Tools has an Adobe Plug-in that emulates a circular polarizer which is what I need to make things really look darekr.

Next step is learning how to lighten an area that is underexposed.

Well, its somehow the end of September, as you can see I've been experimenting with PCs like crazy. Here once again is the PC buyers guide based on the AnandTech guides that I find so helpful. The main modifications have to do with learnings from SilentPCReview to make the machine decently quiet.

High end machine

OK, this isn't a really expensive machine, but is one that will be very fast without being ridiculous. Total price is about $1572:

CPU. AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Mobile $213. This processor is a ClawHammer. Its got a 1MB cache and should overclock easily from 2GHz to 2.5GHz. If you are less of a do-it-yourselfer, get the desktop version for the same price, you probably want the harder to find ClawHammer version, CG revision. Newegg has these but they cost a little more than the Newcastle.

Motherboard. DFI LANParty UT nF3 250GB. $137. Top rated, only issue is that it is hard to find. Zipzoomfly.com has them listed but not yet available. Great reviews from Anandtech.

Memory. Crucial Ballistic 512K PC3200. $300 shipped. Newegg carries these and they are Micron based. The other great memory to consider is the OCZ 3200 EL Platinum Rev 2 that Newegg also carries at $278 for a 1GB kit. These are Samsung chips that work very well with the DFI as well and are cheaper.

Video. eVGA nVidia GeForce 6800GT. Newegg has it for $392. Its a great fast card. If you want the best price/performance, then the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro at $219 from Newegg is a good value choice. Or just get any el cheapo card for $20 if you don't play games. The great value for both is that both overclock well using Riva Tuner or Coolbits.

Disk. If you want performance, get a WD740GD at $174. Its a 10K rpm drive and is wicked fast. It is pretty noisy though. If you don't need raw speed, then one of these for speed and then a Samsung Spinpoint SP1614N for $95. This is a 160GB drive that is whisper quiet. If you are doing video editing where you need lots of storage, get both. Use the WD740GD for the applications and cache and the 160GB drive for storing all the big video files.

Optical. Benq DW-1620. This is $80 from mwave.com and is a dual layer 16x drive. Also have book management so it is very compatible with all DVD players.

Case. Evercase ECE-4252 for $45 from Newegg plus two fans if you are a do it yourselfer. You will also need two 120mm fans as well to mount inside. Get the very quiet two quiet Globe S1202512L for $8.49 a piece plus $6 shipping for a total of $70 from mcntech.com. If you want to splurge, get the Coolcase PC610-M2-FKPJ for $124 and you have to do less to assemble.

Power Supply. Silent Tornado 400. $100 from Newegg. This uses a very quiet 120mm fan.

Fans and Heatsinks. If you get the mobile Athlon, then get the ThermalTake XP-90 from Heatsinkfactory.com for $33 and the PanaFlo FBZ09A12L1A for $18 from "STSI.com':http://www.stsi.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?page=STSI_4/PROD/Panasonic/FBA09A12L1A. If you are just getting the regular Athlon, then either use the retail HSF that comes with it and buy a $10 Zalman Fanmate-1 controller to make it quiet (if your motherboard doesn't have a fan control that works) or get a Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCU for $33 from Newegg.

If you are splurging and really want quiet, bet the XP-120 from them for $49 and then the Globe S1202512Ls from mchtech.com to mount on it. This means it should run very cool and quiet. The loudest thing in your rig then will be the fan on your video card. You can get an Arctic Cooler VGA Silencer. The GeForce 6800 version is 37 from Newegg and the 9800 Pro version is about he same from Newegg. Folks report that the VGA silence alone lowers temperatures by 10C and increases overclocking quite a lot. For the ATI 9800 Pro, overclocking goes from 330MHz to about 420MHz with the stock heat sink. With the VGA silencer, you get to about 480MHz. That's a huge difference.

Budget PC

Well, the above machine is pretty good as a high end machine. If you take all the low options, you get to a very nice low end machine for about $850:

CPU. AMD Athlon 3000+. This is $165, but a good value and it has a 10x multiplier, so on overclock will get you to 2.5GHz. Has 512KB cache so a little slower.

Motherboard. Chaintech VNF 250gb. $80. Still top rated. This just lacks firewire. It doesn't have working Quiet N Cool, so that's depressing, but otherwise a high quality board.

Memory. Crucial Ballistic 512MB PC3200. $150 shipped. Newegg carries these and they are Micron based.

Video. ATI Radeon 9800 Pro at $219 from Newegg is a good value choice. Or just get any el cheapo card for $20 if you don't play games.

Disk. Samsung Spinpoint SP1614N at about $94 from Newegg. This is a EIDE 160GB drive that is whisper quiet. If you are doing video editing where you need lots of storage get both. You can drop to Spinpoint SP0812C for 80GB, but it really doesn't save you much at $70.

Optical. Benq DW-1620. This is $80 from mwave.com and is a dual layer 16x drive. Also have book management so it is very compatible with all DVD players. Bite the bullet and get a good drive. Otherwise if it is really a home machine, then get a $50 CD-RW with DVD-ROM playback.

Case. Evercase ECE-4252 for $45 from Newegg is a pretty cool case even with extra fans, but spring for the $10 to get the Globe from mnctech.com.

Power Supply. Seasonic SuperTornado 350 at $77 or even the Super Silencer 300 at $60 if you don't have a graphics card. Get a good power supply though, it makes a difference and these supplies are very quiet.

Fans and Heatsinks. The retail HSF is really oud, so get a $10 Zalman Fanmate-1 controller to make it quiet (if your motherboard doesn't have a fan control that works).

Right now the chip to get is the mobile Athlon as this great thread describes.

There are four flavors so it is very confusing. There are:

• 1.2V Mobile Athlon 2800+ and 2700+ running at 1.8 and 1.6GHz Newcastle respectively. These both have 512KB cache and should overclock OK to 2.4-2.5GHz. The 2800+ looks like a good one. These are 32 watt chips so nice to use Quiet N Cool to overclock them when needed.
• 1.4V Mobile Athlon 3000+ and 3200+ that are ClawHammers running at 1.4V. A bit of a strange thing since most of these normal desktop versions will undervolt to 1.4V so not a great buy. Undervolting them is nice. Not clear why you need these since with Quiet N Cool, the system automatically undervolts to 1.1V anyway.

The main advantage of the Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ is that it is a 2GHz/1MB cache ClawHammer while the current retail Athlon 64 3200+ is a 2.2GHz/512KB cache, so you can overclock the mobile higher and the cache provides you with 5% more performance at any given frequency.

If you get one, you have to get the right heat sink since it (like the older Athlon XP) doesn't have a heatspreader cap on it. The Thermalright XP-90 works fine for this purpose.

Athlon 64 for Quiet Power :: SilentPCReview.com. A good review of the power consumption differences. Has a great slide on actual power consumption of CPUs:

Basically shows that the new Intel Prescotts and Northwoods really burn up lots of power. Quite a reverse from the Athlon XP which was way hot and the original Pentium 4s.

Now that I've figured out how to get the Chaintech to overclock, the next question is how to get the thing to run more quietly.

The stock fan that comes with the Athlon 64 is incredibly loud. Runs at 3500 rpm and sounds like a vacuum cleaner. The Chaintech unfortunately doesn't support voltage control from the motherboard. At least I haven't found that Speedfan works with it. I got a $10 part that is a voltage controller, so that I could turn down the fan speed. The new maximum of 3000 rpm is much cooler and now the thermister on it works to keep the temperature all right.

Longer term if I really cared, installing a low speed fan on top of the heat sink would be a good idea. The fan is not a standard 80mm fan. I got an Arctic Pro TC and it won't fit on top unfortunately.

The next big noise seems to be the Stock 9800 pro fan . It is quite loud compared with the 5900FX I have in my other machine. You can apparently get something called the VGA Silencer which is a $11 part at svc.com. It is quiet, 2-speed and seems to work well. SilentPCReview for instance really likes the VGA Silencer.

Newegg has a bunch as does Heatsinkfactory.com. Great name. The headsinkfactory prices seems to be lower than newegg.com so check it out. For instance the Thermaltake XP-120 is $48 there and R60 at Newegg.com

Forums - Desktop Manager crash. Sigh, I still get crashes from my Blackberry even with the latest software on the 7230 (v3.7) and the latest desktop manager (3.6.2.29). I get messages like uncaught exception and yesterday while dialing the phone kept crashing and going through a 5 minute reboot and reverify cycle. Arrgh.

Sigh. Others have similar symptoms, but they are very strange wierdness with Outlook folder browsing. Even with a delete and reinstall, I can't browse any Outlook folders. The Desktop Manager just returns to the main menu when you hit browse. So you can't connect to contacts.

Also the reconciliation fails with strange errors right after you read the Outlook contacts.

BTW, deleting all the firmware and everything on your machine is actually quite hard. To clean out your Blackberry is amazingly hard to find. Here are the steps:

1. Start Desktop Manager
2. Connect Blackberry
3. Click on Application Loader (how unintuitive is that)
4. Hit Next until you get to the last dialog where it says, there is nothing to update
5. Click on Advanced
6. Click on Delete and reinstall system and all data

Eclipse.org Main Page. Pretty amazing IDE that the folks at mFoundry are using. Its amazing.

This was an IBM project that they then made open source.

windows history. Beenlooking for old products shots. Amazing what is on the web. Here are old Windows boxes and screenshots.

Now that the Chaintech is essentially running, its time to start doing some editing with it. Main issue is to get my film scanner working.

There is a dedicated Dimage 5400 marketing that doesn't link to any support site. Arrghh. I just hate these companies without integrated website.

Instead, you have to go to the main Minoltausa.com to find the software buried in the support section looking for software & drivers Very hard to find on the main Minolta site and then you have to select Category Scanners, Model 5400. There is no URL for this as it is generated dynamically. I also hate sites without hard URLs as well. Anyway there it is current version is 1.1.5 and it is three floppy images if you can believe that!

Now that I've got the Chaintech and the Athlon 64 about in the right range. That is maximum memory overclock to DDR500 and maximum CPU overclock to about 2.45GHz, the next question is how fast can the Radeon 9800 Pro go.

First some data on the Internet:

• Extremeoverclocking.com. My ATI Radeon Pro comes stock with 128MB of memory and runs at 378/337Mhz (Ramdac and Memory speed respectively). Its about the same as the Sapphire they reviewed which runs at 380/340. They got up to 465/378 respectively. Wow, that's quite a bit of headroom on the Ramdac!
• Xbitlabs. They did an overclocking shootout of the 5900 Ultra and the Radeon 9800 Pro. They used a watercooled solution, so their overclocking is going to be way better than using the stock heat sinks. They got to 540/420 which is just amazing. Interesting fact is that performance moves up well with the Ramdac speed increases, but not much with video memory because the 9800 Pro's R350 chipset has enough memory bandwidth apparently. The push from 380 to 540 got them 20% more performance so cooling makes a difference.
• Computing.net Forum. A wide variety of folks report that with the stock heatsink and fan (HSF), they got to 425/380.

So that led me to my own experiments. Running Aquamark, I got to 425/375 as well with not artifacts. That's a nice jump. When I get a bigger case fan things should be even better. Here are the results I got assuming the fastest CPU on my rig (272MHz FSB, DDR 452 Dram, 9x multiplier):

DAC	Vram	Aquamark	GPU
414	720Mhz	46982	6228
425	750	48367	6462

Got my first call from someone that has SP2 causing them problems. Actually I've heard of two other folks with issues. Some folks think 1 in 10 will have problems with an upgrade, so beware. At my house, I have one SP2 machine that I installed as a greenfield installation, so I'm experimenting myself. Here are some of the problems:

• NewsFactor Network - Enterprise - Microsoft Lists XP SP2 Problems. Main issues have to do with applications incompatibility. Antivirus programs, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ are on the list.
• Official List of XP2 Problems. There appear to be some software that just breaks and another list that doesn't get along with the builtin firewall that is now turned on by default. Lots of games also break.
• SP2 Uninstall. So how do you get rid of SP2 is pretty easy (if you pray). Go to the control panel and choose add/remove programs and hopefully you'll get rid of it.

Brother HL-5170DN. Been using the printer. It is great with both duplex and network port.

Main thing not covered in the FAQ is that it doesn't do TrueType correctly, so printouts over the network fail. For some reason the default is to load TrueType fonts as graphics. This is fine at 300 dpi, but at 600dpi, it overloads the memory. You have to go to Printer Preferences/Advanced/TrueType and set it for print as Truetype and use the internal printer fonts.

Then you don't have this problem with bad pages, ejects and so forth. Its faster too.

Newegg.com - WOET TSERN ICR-A2 Beige Card Reader/Adapter. For $15 how wrong can you go. This thing lets you read just about any type of flash plus it has a USB 2.0 port as well. Great for upgrading a case that doesn't have a flash reader.

I was able to get the Crucials to run to 217MHz before I had stability problems. This was running at the very aggressive 2-2-2-10 settings Anandtech recommends for Athlon 64.

To get farther, you have to relax timings, I was curious to see what others folks experience was. The Crucial Ballistix 512MB Low Latency PC3200 DDR at www.bigbruin.com =- was a good guide.

At 200 MHz, the timings on the Ballistix DDR were the afore mentioned 2-6-2-2, at 220 MHz I had to relax them slightly to 2.5-6-2-2, and at 240 MHz they were run at an impressive 2.5-8-2-2. Beyond 240 MHz I experienced various errors before, and once into Windows, no matter what combination of timings, voltages, and other BIOS settings I tried. All of these were at stock 2.6V.

Anandtech had a similar experience in their review of the Ballistix. This was also on a Pentium 4 system. In that test he had:

Speed	Clock	Timing	Voltage	Quake 3 (fps)
DDR400	200MHz	2-2-2-5	2.5V	329
DDR433	216MHz	2-2-2-5	2.65V	359
DDR466	233MHz	2.5-2-2-5	2.65V	384
DDR500	250MHz	2.5-2-2-5	2.65V	410
DDR514	257MHz	2.5-2-2-5	2.85V	419

Both of these test showed that the timings have to go from CAS of 2 to 2.5 somewhere in the 220MHz-233MHz range with an Athlon 64 and the MSI K8N Neo2, so hopefully, the Chaintech VNF3-250 will do as well.

Here is what I actually got. I haven't benchmarked yet, but got these to run with stability. So a little less than the above, but certainly in the range.

Speed	Clock	Timing	Voltage
DDR400	200MHz	2-2-2-5	2.6V
DDR420	210MHz	2-2-2-5	2.9V
DDR450	225MHz	2.5-2-2-5	2.7V
DDR500	250MHz	2.5-2-2-5	2.9V

Thermalright XP-120: 1st 120mm fan CPU heatsink :: SilentPCReview.com. Well, if you really want to be cool and quiet get this monster.

This is absolutely massive heat sink that can take a gigantic 120mm (that's about five inch wide fan). Newegg carries it for about $65. It is expensive, but worth it for the quite most likely. This comes without a fan, so you need to find a gigantic 120mm fan as well.

It works particularly well with the Globe 120mm fans. The S1202512L is their low speed 2000 rpm fan. A specialty part, they are $9 from mnpctech.com. You do have to cut a little of the plastic around it to get it to fit, but that's not such a big deal.

Overclocking is a complicated topic. Here's how I did it on this new Chaintech VNF3-250. The net is that I got an Athlon 2800+ costing $150 to perform like an Athlon 3700+ costing $400 with a 30% overclock. And also got another 10% out of the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Read away:

The Overclocking Tools

OCFaq Article :: KB84 - Overclocking: Tools & Info. A good summary of what you need to know before you overclock. Its a complicated topic to say the least.

Another good tool is Clockgen. It works with all nVidia nForce3 250 boards like the Chaintech. It is great because you don't have to keep rebooting your machine to try new clocks and tweaks. You can just live in Windows

Well, that's the tools, what about how to change things? It's complicated enough, but Bleeding Edge has done a nice review of the board and included photos of how they precisely overclocked it. The main issue is that using a 3200+ results in different overclocking parameters than running 2800+. The 3200+ runs with a 10x multiplier (so a 200MHz FSB interface to memory means the processor is internally running at 10×200MHz=2GHz). The 2800+ runs at 9x multiplier or 1.8GHz at 200MHz FSB.

BTW, there are two strange things if you are using the BIOS. First, don't cache the BIOS into system memory (something I normally do). This is because if you are overclocking, this means the BIOS image in RAM doesn't get read properly and the whole BIOS resets. Second, when you are playing with the cpu multiplier (called the Hammer FID in the BIOS), you don't hit ENTER and see the list of options. If you do that, the BIOS hangs. Instead, you have to hit page-up and page-down to see different multiplier values.

Overclocking results

MSCS.MS has someone with the same 2800+ and ZNF3 250 where he is getting these results which are quite similar when you realize he's running Corsair 3200LL at 3-2-2-10 while I'm running Crucial Ballistix more aggressively at 2-2-2-10. He got 225MHz clock at 1.6V core, 2.8V DimmV and 4x HT.

FSB	Memory	FSB/Mem	Vcore	DimmV	HT	Timings	CPU	Mem	HT
200	Auto	1:1	1.5V	2.8V	4x	2-2-2-8	1.8GHz	DDR400	800
215	Auto	1:1	1.65V	2.9V	4x	2-2-2-10	1.935GHz	DDR430	860
240	166	6:5	1.5V	2.8V	4x	2-2-2-10	2.160Ghz	DDR400	960
250	166	6:5	1.65V	2.9V	4x	2-2-2-10	2.250Ghz	DDR 416	1000
255	166	6:5	1.5V	2.9V	3x	2-2-2-10	2.295GHz	DDR425	765

These were all done with aggressive timings and all of these were just to get to Windows XP booting, not to getting to 24 hours of stability running Prime95 which is the practical goal.

Now if we back off from 2-2-2-10 to 2.5-2-2-10, the performance gets much better and quite close to Anandtech review levels. Not that these are done running Prime95 and are thus really stable, usable, vs. just the unreliable maximums listed above:

FSB	Memory	FSB/Mem	Vcore	DimmV	HT	Timings	CPU	Mem	HT
212	Auto	1:1	1.45V	2.9V	4x	2-2-2-10	1.92GHz	DDR224	848
245	Auto	1:1	1.45V	2.8V	4x	2.5-2-2-10	2.2GHz	DDR490	980
265	166	6:5	1.55V	2.7V	3x	2.5-2-2-10	2.39GHz	DDR445	801

I could actually get Windows to boot and look stable at 275MHz or 2.475GHz, but it wouldn't pass Prime95. Most folks when doing the testing don't seem to burn it in, but check to see if Windows boots. Also for the 1:1 maximum speed, this is the burned in version where I could get Prime95 to run for 7 hours before crashing. Note that the voltage is way down. The Newcastle runs fine at lower temperatures as it turns out and this means that it much cooler and more reliable. The rough statistics are that at 1.45V the maximum temperature is 61C, 1.55V (the default), the machine runs at 67C and at 1.65V you get to 73C and it normally shuts down. So, dropping the voltage as low as possible is important.

Not that I couldn't get to 2.5GHz or more because I didn't get an 10x multiplier chip (either a Athlon 3000+ Newcastle or an Athlon 3200+ ClawHammer). Rats.

In terms of actual performance at these stable levels I got these results. All of these were done with the ATI Radeon overclocked to 425/375MHz (DAC and VRam respectively):

FSB	CPU	Timing	Temp	Sandra 2002	CPU	Mem	Aquamark3	CPU	GPU
212	1.9GHz	2-2-2-10	58C	2847	11853	5740	44540	8097	6144
245	2.2GHz	2.5-2-2-10	62C	3129	13645	6773	47901	9423	6423
265	2.4GHz	2.5-2-2-10	68C	3157	14779	5961	47736	9357	6408

The interesting thing is that the 2.2GHz balanced system has the best overall performance. Going to 2.4GHz makes the CPU fast, but it runs very hot (68C) and because memory has to slow down so much, the faster CPU doesn't compensate for running at DDR445 instead of DDR490. So this is going to be the default setting.

Turning Legacy USB Mouse support on in bios locks keyboard o. Thank goodness for the internet, it just required the correct google query, which was google:"Chaintech VNF3-250 keyboard locked".

This told me that when you turn on USB Legacy Mouse support in the BIOS, then you get the Post Code 7C. Keyboard is locked: Unlock message.

Seems like this is some strange BIOS interaction, so the solution is turn off legacy USB mouse support (whatever that is) in the BIOS and then use new mice (I think that means a true USB mouse, rather than one that is really serial but has the pin adapter to make it fit in a USB slot).

Bleeding Edge reports that if you update to BIOS version VN120729 this also resolved the problem. Sigh. PCs, Love their flexibility, but they sure are hard to decipher sometimes.

To actually flash the Chaintech is a little tricky if you don't have a floppy drive. There is a boot time flash updater, but it requires a legacy floppy and won't work with the USB floppy. So MCSE.ms recommends:

1. Create a bootable system disk with the bootme utility. You need this because Windows XP makes it a little trick to create a bootable. Alternatively, you install a USB floppy. Right click on it and choose format and ask for a system
2. AWDFlash. This was almost impossible to find on the Chaintech site. Finally found it on their German site of all places. These AWDFlash all appear to date from 1999 and 2000, so I'm not sure it is that critical to have the latest one.
3. Copy AWDFlash.exe and the latest BIOS from Chaintech onto the floppy. This should be a file that ends in *.BIN and is 512KB long. I actually think the awdflash from asus.com is a later release and gives more information.
4. Reboot the machine. When you get to the startup screen, press ENTER to get the boot device selection. Pick the USB Floppy and the PC will boot from the floppy.
5. Type AWDFlash at the command prompt
6. When AWDFlash loads, type in the name of the *.bin file you got from chaintech

The main small thing about this board is that it will monitor fan speed but won't control it. The result is that the CPU fan is incredibly loud with the stock HSF that comes with the Athlon 64 processor. Getting a new fan is probably the answer but I'm going to try to get a $10 Zalman Fanmate 1 controller. This will turn down the fan voltage to 7V so it will run much cooler. The older ASUS board I have for my Athlon has fan control so this is a little depressing. It works by lowering the voltage on the motherboard to the fan so that you can do this dynamically.

Finall thing to resolve is the Quiet N Cool feature. This is wonderful on Connie's Dad's SN85G4 and makes things much quieter. I installed the drivers from AMD, but it doesn't seem to work. Also with the latest BIOS revision, there is a check box for Quiet N Cool (this throttles the CPU for you when idle), but nothing seems to happen. And, the PowerNow Dashboard bails with a message saying no PST which essentially means Quiet and Cool wasn't found. On the MSI boards, there is a thread about how Windows XP SP2 has broken the QnC drivers. Hmm.

Boy it sure has gotten complicated installing Windows. Here's what I did (breadcrumbs for Calvin's new machine):

1. BIOS errors. On startup, I got BIOS errors 7F and 8C. 7F is "Keyboard is locked". This means the BIOS thinks that there is a lock on the PC case itself and you have to turn it off. Scary thing is that PCGuide also says this could mean that there is a motherboard problem. Uh oh.
2. Loud fan and bad temperatures. The fans are just on at full bore. The CPU fan in particular is ridiculous. Loaded Speedfan and it doesn't seem to be able to control it. Need to see if I installed the fan connectors correctly. Also Speedfan reports the CPU is at 126 C. Which is clealry impossible. Motherboard monitor doesn't see the temperature or the fans, so this might be a new motherboard problem. Will have to figure this out later. The Digidoctor utility seems to show a CPU temperature less than the case temperature, so this is equally confused. AMD Forums reports that there are problems with the Chaintech reading temperatures correctly, so I think I'm OK. You need a BIOS fix for the newer Newcastle (which I have) and the later Clawhammer Rev CG parts. So burning new BIOS I go!
3. Memtest86+ v1.26. This you can burn onto a CD and see if the memory essentially works.
4. Windows XP SP1. I have one of these disks.
5. Windows Update. I like to install all the updates to the core operating system first. This currently take three reboots from the start. You first get some fixes to Windows Update, then you get some critical bug fixes and then you get SP2. Takes about an hour.
6. Chaintech. Went to the Chaintech VNF3-250 product page and downloaded the latest BIOS, Digidoctor utility, Manual and Motherboard drivers. It is a little confusing how to actually do an upgrade, but trolling around, Chaintech support has a document explaining the process. Their error message summary BTW is really unclear on what the Post error is all about.
7. Nvidia. Next stop is the motherboard website. There is the nVidia system level drivers, then their tweaking tool called nVidia system plus their audio setup tool.
8. Benq. The DVD-RW drive I got is constantly getting new firmware. So have to go get a firmware upgrade as well.
9. ATI. I got an ATI 9800 Pro to go with it so needed the latest Catalyst Drivers. YOu get the default drivers with SP2, but this adds their control panel in all its geeky glory. Also loaded RivaTuner 2.0 to get ready for overclocking.
10. "AMD Quiet and Cool":

OK, this entry is truly for me, but with so many devices in a home now that are IP aware, I think folks are going to need some sort of mapping and documentation tool. Here's my poor man's network:

D-Link DI-624 Router. Running WPA-PSK encryption (whatever that is, but I've heard it is stronger than Wep). Uses something called TKIP for encryption. So, you have to know the magic passphrase in order to get onto this network (Ha!)

Static devices.

The DI-624 allows you to have certain Mac address have a "static DHCP". Doesn't make sense until you realize this is all about certain devices needing magic addresses and it essentially uses the Mac ID and Netbios name to figure out what address you want to hand out.

Here's how I've laid out my network:

Device	Netbios Name	Static DHCP Address
DI-624 Router	N/A	192.168.0.1
Brother 7140DN Network Printer	Brother	192.168.0.2
Audiotron	Audiotron	192.168.0.3
Linksys NSLU2	Nas	192.168.0.4

Then the rest of the PCs are not static since you don't need well know namesj to access them.

Yahoo! Groups : nslu2-linux Messages : Message 1096 of 1387 . Pray that you never have this happen to you. In my first test of the NSLU2, I did a firmware upgrade since I was having problems and it is good to get the latest.

Destroyed the boot of the machine. Fortunately, there are literally a thousand people on Yahoo's nslu2-linux group hacking away. One guy Pete, supplies instructions for how to get things back as long as the low level loader is running. Quote from Pete below...

1. The first thing you will need to do is set up a TFTP server, if you do not already have one installed. I work mostly on OS X, so I can't
give detailed instructions for Linux (I did try, briefly, to install a TFTP RPM on my Linux machine, but though it claimed to be client and
server only the client seemed to be installed). If you're using OS X, feel free to contact me for details. You should set up the server with
a directory to serve from; this will need to be world-readable, as will any files you place in it if you want them to be served.

2. Obtain the firmware and place it in the TFTP serving directory. If you've bricked your slug I suggest you start by getting it back to
default configuration by installing Linksys's firmware - you can always upload a fancier one via the Web interface once you've got it working.
Download the firmware from their site if you haven't already ( http://www.linksys.com/download/firmware.asp?fwid=217 )
and place the 8MB firmware file found in the zip file into the TFTP directory.

3. Connect to Redboot via Telnet. When the slug starts up, for a few seconds it listens for a telnet connection on port 9000. Redboot will
insist on being 192.168.0.1 for this, whatever you've set the Linux portion of your slug to be. Since this will conflict with other equipment on many people's LANs, you may like to connect directly with a crossover cable and ignore the network for the moment. NB: If you
have a fancy network card with auto-MDI (ie you don't need to worry about crossover or straight-through, as with all new Macs, for
instance) you may end up missing the brief telnet window as the card tries to work out what sex it should be today. Consider connecting via
a cheap hub which doesn't have such hangups. You will also need to change your computer's ip address to one on the 19.168.0 subnet if it
isn't already.

Type the command telnet 192.168.0.1 9000 into a terminal window, but don't press return just yet. Turn off the slug (pulling out the power
if need be, then plugging it in) and be ready to turn it on with the power button. Press the button, then press return on your computer to
start the telnet connection. Some people report that they have to start telnet at just the right moment to "catch it" - I find mine will sit
there with "trying 192.168.0.1..." as long as necessary until the slug starts listening.

What you do need to be ready with is a finger on ctrl-c, as when the Redboot prompt appears you will have between 2 and 0.1 of a second to
hit it. It's something of a reaction test - hold down control when you start telnet, and be ready to mash C as soon as anything appears on the
screen. You should then get a Redboot> prompt that you can type at. If you miss it, simply cycle the slug and try again.

4. Load the firmware. At the Redboot prompt, type the following command:

ip_address -h 192.168.0.99

where 192.168.0.99 is of course your computer. This tells Redboot where to get stuff from. You should get your prompt back after each command; I occasionally had it hang, in which case restart and do the ctrl-c
dance again.

Now do:

load -r -v -b 0x01000000 NSLU2_V23R25.bin

(assuming, of course, that you're using the R25 firmware). This will load the firmware into the slug's RAM over the network.

For safety's sake, you can now do a checksum on the file to ensure it didn't get corrupted in transit. Simply type:

cksum

and you should get a set of numbers calculated from the file. For the R25 firmware, these should be: 3007264634 8388608 . If not (and you're
not using a newer firmware version), you should probably try loading the file again.

5. Burn the firmware to the flash. Cross your fingers and do

fis write -f 0x50060000 -b 0x01060000 -l 0x7a0000

This will write the kernel, ramdisk and trailer portions of the firmware to the right position in the flash. When it's finished and you get your Redboot prompt back, your slug should be unbricked. Reboot it to find out, and be ready to celebrate when you hear that strangled
little beep it makes as it finishes booting.

Because you didn't overwrite the SysConfig part of the flash, your slug will still be using the same IP address as before you bricked it.
Remember to set your subnets appropriately, and ensure you're looking for it in the right place.

I got an el cheapo Linksys Linksys: NSLU2 - Network Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives which is about the size of a small camera. Plus, got a USB 2.0 enclosure for cheap from Newegg called a Quick-Serv Penr35u2. It cames in a box labeled Backup Q. Here is what I found.

The net is the hardware works, but who wrote this software. Yuck! Here is the ratings of it by category (a new thing for me) where I would rate C as being the average computer savvy pro can do it, A as the computer-is-just-a-tool person can do it and F you have to know the history of computing and how engineers think at Microsoft to do it.

Hardware Installation: C-

This is a blended score. The NSLU2 quick install isn't bad, but the USB enclosure is miserable because you have to understand jumpers. OTOH, if you are doing this, you presumable know about master and slave, but it doesn't tell what to set.

• Getting a separate USB 2.0 enclosure is way cheaper than a put together hard drive. They charge quite a premium for snapping two parts together.
• When you install a hard drive into the Backup Q, don't set the hard drive for channel select (that is the cable sets things up automatically). You have to set the hard drive DIP switches for master only. There isn't any documentation on this nor a web site you can find. So if you order an exclosure, set to cable select and if doesn't work, set for single drive only.

Software Installation: D

The quick install is actually is actually pretty good to setup the basic network, but it doesn't help you at all with the end user problem of finding the drive. So the software initial install is an B+. I've never seen a Linksys product that didn't require you to deeply understand TCP. However, once setup quits, it is an F because you really have to get Windows networking to use it.

• There is a CD you put into a PC and there must be some sort of low level search since you d