http://hawtymcbloggy.com/2008/03/21/microsoft-finally-makes-things-right/
Category: technology
ZOMG!!1! Battlefield Bad Company Beta.. this week??
Building your own PC Hot Rod
ars technica has three configurations for ultra-fast, ultra-hot current PCs you can build. The God Box is only US$13,000 or so. But I bet it’s fast.
Mark Pesce: The Business Conversation
Mark Pesce has the transcript of a recent speech he gave to business leaders. A great article to give to those around you who need to get what is going on right now.
Worldwide Telescope
Spicks and Specks
Wait until the end…
Help Dataportability.org Design a New Logo
Chris Saad, as mentioned in yesterday’s post, needs a new logo.
Phenom: Phew! it works
So, the project was originally quite simple. Upgrade the AMD Athlon processor to a Phenom processor.
The Gigabyte motherboard supported the AM2 socket system, therefore replacement of the processor by simple drop in and out. Oh, but computers are never that easy.
After failing to boot with constant long beeps: I decided to purchase an ASUS motherboard. After upgrading the BIOS (see above), the machine seemed to boot OK. Certainly boot and stay stable enough for timing tests of Athlon vs. Phenom in a previous post.
Adding the extra 2Gb of RAM just pushed the poor system over the edge. Random reboots and general instability. My first thought was to blame the Phenom. How wrong I was.
Thanks to this comment from Tim, I hunted down the documentation of the ASUS motherboard and found that the Corsair memory I was using was not certified! 5-5-5-12 vs 4-4-4-12 timing memory is not a small thing. Also, there are voltage differences between the memory sticks.
So CM2X1024-6400 did not work, but the CM2X1024-6400C4 is working perfectly well – 4Gb installed on a Vista x64 24×7 and under CPU load.
Lesson learnt: read the supported memory documentation!
Oh, and the Phenom is a good 20% or so better transcoding video. Phew.
/AFK
General Melchett goes Vista Ultimate SP1
Whilst General Melchett has been Vista x64 from birth, we Microsoft people were recently given early access to the final Vista Service Pack 1.
Last night, I downloaded the updater. Backed up General Melchett. Double clicked. And watched.
So, firstly a note to all. When the installer says 1. Several Reboots and 2. About an hour – both are highly correct. Please be patient.
After an hour. A restart to the login screen. Service Pack 1 is installed.
Everything is working. Networking, Remote Desktop. It is difficult to quantify any gains quickly: however the formal list of changes is worth a read.