Wuphon's Reach: 2003-02-16

Saturday, February 22, 2003

Hmmm... it was working

And now it's being flakey... problem #1 is that there is no chassis fan in this case (it's a regular desktop case), so I'm going to stick a single-speed 80mm chassis fan in there (it does at least have a spot for a chassis fan) and see if I can help with the cooling issue. At the moment I'm uninstalling and re-installing the nVidia graphics drivers because they seem to have gotten semi-hosed (system boots fine in VGA mode, but glitches in full-color mode). CPU temp was up in the low 50s (C) when I looked in the BIOS (case off), so I also have a larger cooler on order should I need it.

At the moment I'm trying to get the video drivers uninstalled and updated to the latest versions.

Update(s): A few hours later, case off, the BIOS screen reports the motherboard is at 38C and the CPU at 53C. However, the AsusProbe application will reports different numbers... 40C for the motherboard and 42C for the CPU. (Put the case back on... highest CPU temp reported by AsusProbe is 46C which is just fine.)

Okay, ripped out the Ti4600 AGP card, dropped in the older GeForce2 MX400... and when I put it into deep color mode, I get a jerky-mouse / keyboard syndrome going. Something is fighting with something for a resource, but I don't know which yet. ... Well, fixing the contention issue was easy enough, I just moved the Promise FastTrak66 RAID card over one more PCI slot and reset all of the BIOS settings to the optimal defaults.

Which makes me wonder if I can put the Ti4600 back in... I may try it again tomorrow once I redo all of my other installs.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 5:21 PM

PCMark2002 Results

The old system's PCMark2002 scores were CPU: 2500 MEM: 2000 HDD: 575 and I was expecting new scores of roughly CPU: 6000 MEM: 4500 HDD: 600. Instead I got:

CPU: 6300 (good!)
MEM: 4116 (eh... a bit low)
HDD: 442 (ATA/66 will do that...)

Might need to do some tuning still, but the numbers are still very respectable.

(On a side note, I have been so freaking irritable the past 2 days... right now I'm so hostile I'm having trouble concentrating on getting any thing done... very low frustration threshold at the moment.)

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 12:51 PM

Friday, February 21, 2003

W3C Web Lint

Also known as the W3C MarkUp Validation Service. Tossing my current homepage at it results in (14) errors... bleh! Most of them are minor issues, some of which come from my saying the page is HTML 3.2 when it's not... (list of valid DTDs). For instance, I'm saying:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">

When I should probably be using one of the following instead:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Hmm... that broke some things, LOL! Time to go play with the CSS validator as well and finally put this CSS file to sleep.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 8:40 PM

New Toys

Hooking up my new MB / CPU / RAM in my 2nd game machine... this motherboard has everything (Firewire, USB v2, two LAN ports)... (way too many connectors to get hooked up). Took me about 2 hours to rip out the old motherboard and install the new one (this upgrade cost me $850, but is replacing a 1Ghz AMD which was using 768Mb of PC133 memory). The only thing I was not able to do was switch over to SATA/150 drives (the motherboard comes with a built-in RAID1 SATA/100 controller. I did look for the drives, but all of the SATAs that I could find were backordered roughly a month or more. So I'm going to stick with my tried and true Promise FastTrak66 for the moment and upgrade the drives this fall (since that'll force me to rebuild the O/S again... which I tend to do every 6-9 months).

AthlonXP 2600+
2 x 512Mb PC2700 CL2
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
NVidia Ti4600 GeForce AGP 4x 128Mb
Promise FastTrak66 PCI RAID Card
(2) 40Gb Maxtor HDs

Currently rebuilding the mirror set, then I get to install the O/S, all of the drivers, the O/S updates... then run the burn-in program on it for a day or two. At which point I'll have to rearrange some things on my desk because I'm going to want to switch which PC is where. If I skip the burn-in test, I could be up and logging into EQ (shock!) sometime tomorrow night. The old system's PCMark2002 scores were CPU: 2500 MEM: 2000 HDD: 575 and I'm expecting new scores of roughly CPU: 6000 MEM: 4500 HDD: 600.

So far so good on the burn-in (let it run for 8 hours while I slept). CPU only got as high as 42/43C which is perfect. (I'm using the stock fan that AMD sends in the retail version of the CPU). Currently doing the Windows Update shuffle... then I get to shuffle the office around this morning.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 8:16 PM

Thursday, February 20, 2003

Updates

Mmm... busy week, most of my spare time was spent creating content for the SimCity 4 portion of my web site (including figuring out how to work with MicroDEM). Oh, and one of the users at work installed the Valentine's Day program that's making the rounds and now we're trying to un-install a home-page / search-page hijacker that forces the user to visit http://www.searchex.com. (See my google search for removal instructions.)

Weather has been very warm the past few days, a few degrees celsius above freezing so the snow is melting away at a nice rate.

EffexorXR weaning process is still on-going... although I've lost track of the exact number of days (and don't feel like being any more specific then "1 week down").

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 7:24 AM

Sunday, February 16, 2003

Still Snowing

Heh... it's still snowing out there. I figure there's about 5-6" on the ground now, and it's still cold cold cold out there (-12C).

... and the NWS alert from 90 minutes ago now says 12-18 inches (it was 8-10 this morning), possible storm totals of 24".

Oh well, as long as the power doesn't go out, I'm fine (got TP and plenty of food in the pantry). It's nice to be a telecommuter and living in town where I can walk to the store.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 5:04 PM

EffexorXR +90 Hours

That tiger is currently running amok... I'm about a step ahead of it at the moment (slight naseau, minor brain shivers), but it's getting a bit more difficult as the day wears on.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 1:08 PM

EffexorXR +84 Hours

Halfway through the 3-day weekend (or you can look at it as 48 hours left in the holiday). It's currently snowing outside, which for someone with cravings is a good thing (it means I can go out and buy ice cream to binge on... oh? did I forget to mention the binge eating of the past year? the half-gallon of ice cream consumed in around 6-8 hours after bringing it home from the store?).

Not 100% sure yet, might be psychosomatic, but I do feel like taking a Tylenol now and then is taking the edge off. We'll see how I do today on 4 hours of sleep (I didn't take the sleeping pill last night).

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 8:50 AM

Saturday, February 22, 2003

Hmmm... it was working

PCMark2002 Results

Friday, February 21, 2003

W3C Web Lint

New Toys

Thursday, February 20, 2003

Updates

Sunday, February 16, 2003

Still Snowing

EffexorXR +90 Hours

EffexorXR +84 Hours

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