December 27th, 2008
Not bad for an affordable motherboard (Gigabyte EP45-DS3L, $85 or so after rebate), some cheap Kingston DDR2-800 RAM, and a $30 heatsink. Core voltage is only 1.28V - I’m not going to bother pushing it harder because at this point the RAM is already overclocked and I can’t run the RAM any slower than the current speed. I’m happy with the speed, a 3.1GHz quad-core Core2 is quite the upgrade from my 2.5GHz dual-core Opteron.
One of these days I’ll probably slap a new video card in here (current one is getting a bit old, 7900GS) but I’m in no rush. Probably when the next-gen midrange gets cheap.
Tags: overclocking, Q8200
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
December 17th, 2008
Yeah, I suppose I should probably update in here more often, though it feels like I don’t have that much to say. I suppose I can throw out an update on the crap I’m working on…
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Posted in Automotive, Computers, Hardware, Windows | No Comments »
November 4th, 2008
9:10PM AZ time, November 4, 2008: Oh hell yeah.
Tags: obama
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
October 12th, 2008
Today, for the first time ever, I watched a Cardinals game, rooted for them, and was rewarded for it.
Blocked punts are awesome.
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October 5th, 2008
Protip: If you’re going to be all “LOL INTERNET DETECTIVE” you may want to get your damn facts straight first. The Volvo on Craigslist (shameless plug) is not the Lolvo taking up space in my garage because I haven’t had time to get it to a shop to get the new catalytic converter welded in.
God, I hate Craigslist.
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September 22nd, 2008
So, I’m currently running two fileservers. One at my house which has a 4×500GB RAID5, a 2×250GB RAID0, and runs a few other things for the local network. Pretty much anything of any relevance gets stuck on the server, the actual computers just get by with whatever minimal hard drive was cheapest. The other I stash at my mom’s for backup purposes, just in case something truly nasty happens that physically takes out my box at home. It was originally set up with a 4×200GB RAID5.
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Tags: lvm, mdadm, raid, ubuntu
Posted in Computers, Linux | No Comments »
August 25th, 2008
Thank goodness for eBay. I’m still rocking Socket 939-era hardware on both my desktop and Kate’s desktop, which unfortunately means that new motherboards are simply not available at reasonable prices anymore - so my only option for a replacement motherboard was eBay. Under $30 shipped for a decent AsRock board, the 939SLI32 or whatever they call it, it’s some strange ‘bridge’ board which can have an optional daughtercard installed to use a Socket AM2 / DDR2 setup instead of Socket 939 / DDR. It’s also ULi’s last chipset prior to being bought out by nVidia, and it apparently features some ‘unofficial’ SLi implementation that’s probably not very well supported these days.
Amusingly enough, though, it’s a solid overclocker, even moreso than the board it replaced (DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D) was. With no other changes I now have the CPU running on a 280MHz FSB - 2.5GHz clock, putting it roughly on par with an Athlon64 5000+. It would only do 270MHz on the DFI. Not bad for an old server chip.
The old motherboard was definitely the problem, but by no fault of its own. I had to replace the chipset fan once a few years ago because the factory one got noisy - apparently I didn’t make sure the pins were still secure since one failed and the heatsink lifted clear of the chipset with no warning. It’s toast.
Now, if I could only figure out why Folding@Home stopped running on my webserver for no good reason…
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
August 13th, 2008
Today, not long after getting home, the power blinked - just long enough to shut down the TV and a couple of computers, including the media center (which has a crappy power supply so that’s no surprise) and my desktop (which was a surprise). Every desktop system I have aside from the HTPC uses relatively high-end power supplies, which I’ve noticed have the side benefit of keeping the system on a bit longer in the event of a short gap in AC power.
After quite a few futile attempts to get my desktop to boot again, I’ve concluded it has now developed a nasty hardware failure somewhere. The random nature (it hangs anywhere from before POST completes to after logging into Windows) makes me suspect the motherboard, but I suppose the power supply could be at fault as well.
It’s really a pain because I really don’t have much time to sit down and diagnose why it’s broken, but at the same time I don’t have a ton of money laying around to throw at problems. I’m actually somewhat tempted to just let the damn thing sit until I can afford to do the upgrade I was planning on - a Nehalem-based quad-core Intel setup.
Tags: broken, computer
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
August 9th, 2008
Agh. So the Volvo’s tags are up this month and last weekend I ran it through emissions. It’s never given me any trouble passing before, but the results this time:
HC: 0.73 out of 1.60 - Pass
CO: 3.85 out of 15.00 - Pass
NOx: 5.25 out of 2.50 - Failed miserably
Well, that sucks. So today I went and did a once-over tuneup of the car - I Seafoamed it, then changed the plugs. In the course of changing the plugs, one of the plug wires (about 2 years old only) lost the crimp on the end so I had to drop $30 on a new set. And then, as a last-ditch effort, I disconnected the vacuum advance from the ignition - apparently the computer likes to put the timing on the ragged edge of pinging, which isn’t helping NOx.
The results today?
HC: 0.31 out of 1.60 - Pass
CO: 2.82 out of 15.00 - Pass
NOx: 2.57 out of 2.50 - Goddamnit.
I don’t want to use up the one voucher this car has for an emissions bypass since that may seriously hinder my ability to sell the damn thing, so I just dropped a bit under $100 total on some cheapo catalytic converter and O2 sensor on eBay. The converter had been replaced at some point by a previous owner, with a generic one of course, but I have a sneaking suspicion the fact that they used one that expected AIR injection (as evidenced by the giant open port on the side of it) on a vehicle without that may have contributed to the early demise.
So with about $50 in the tuneup itself, $27.50 wasted on the first two tests, and about $80 on additional parts, this cheap car is proving to be not so cheap anymore thanks to the damned sniffer.
Tags: emissions, volvo
Posted in Automotive | No Comments »
