November 2004 - Posts
Nothing's free. Ain't it true. A while back I wrote that I had received a free Epox 8KDA3+ mobo and Athlon 3700+ CPU and that I was building a new workstation at home around it.
Well I built it, and it was working fine. Mostly. I had a few weird crashes that I thought I had resolved by going to the latest GeForce video drivers. Some problems were resolved, but I still had some odd behaviour that would cause the machine to sometimes just hard hang.
On Saturday night I was futzing around with my Rio Cali portable WMA player and I couldn't get my system to recognize it as a hard drive (turns out it had the old flash on it and wouldn't work that way anyway). At one point I decided a reboot of my machine might be a good idea. So I shut it down, waited 5 seconds, and then pressed the power button.... Nothing. Dead silence.
Huh? Or more precisely, WTF!?!
I opened the case, re-seated all the power connectors, the video card, and tried again. Nothing. I assumed the Ultra X-Connect power supply had died. By this time it was late Saturday night so I went upstairs and played Halo 2 (for way too long) and then went to bed.
Sunday morning we went to the Seahawks game (Wow! What a great ending to a horrible game). I then convinced my family to go to Fry's with me after the game to buy a new power supply. They didn't have any Ultra's so I got an Enermax EG565 550W unit. When I got home I wired it up and... Nothing. Damn.
I mean nothing. No LEDs, no beep, no fans, nothing. Could only be the motherboard. I don't normally keep spare nForce3 250Gb motherboards around and it was too late for any stores to be open so all I could do was go upstairs and play Halo 2 some more.
Today I went to Computerstop which is not too far from Microsoft's headquarters and bought an Asus K8N-E Deluxe. Computerstop doesn't carry Epox boards (sales guy claims they have too many returns...uh, oh). The K8N-E is also an nForce3 250Gb motherboard with an almost identical configuration to the Epox. The only big difference is the Asus has onboard 1394.
It was important to get an nForce3 mobo because my system disks are setup as a RAID 1 array using the nForce3 SATA RAID controller and I knew that different SATA RAID controllers use different on-disk formats and my system likely wouldn't work with another controller.
Tonight my kids helped me install the new motherboard. At 8 and 11 they are very helpful in pointing a flashlight and holding the manual open so I could see which jumper went where. Christine even plugged in all the connectors for the front panel.
Now for the moment of truth. Was I right that it was the mobo? We all crossed our fingers and I hit the power button.... Victory! It came right up into Windows.
I had to uninstall the Epox motherboard monitor (a POS compared to the Asus PC Probe which is no great work of art either) and just to be sure I re-installed all the mobo drivers from the Asus CD.
I've always liked ASUS motherboards. I now have 5 of them in the house. After installing and using this K8N-E I am even more convinced that Asus makes a great product. Their software is better. Their manuals are better. And (apparently) their quality is better.
A few bonuses:
- I complained before that the EVGA gForce 6800 Ultra video board was a tight fit in the Antec P-160 case. Well the Asus board's AGP slot aligns with the 2nd slot in the Antec case completely resolving this issue.
- The Epox board did not have 1394 onboard. This meant 2 things. First, I had to add in a 1394 PCI board to get 1394. Second, the Antec case has a front-panel 1394 connector which can only connect to a header on a motherboard. The K8N-E has 1394 onboard and a 1394 header. Now my front panel 1394 connector works.
- The K8N-E supports AMD's Cool & Quiet technology. In addition the Enermax PSU has a 3 prong fan plug (the Ultra does has none) so now the PSU is monitored (and controlled!) by the mobo. Because of all this my machine is now noticeably quieter than it was before and it is running cooler. The CPU is down to 30 degrees Celsius and the chassis is down to 40 in steady state (from 34 and 45). While running Prime95 my system is now at a reasonable 35/53 where before I had to open the cabinet my PC sits in all the time.
I don't want to knock Epox too badly. After all I didn't have to pay for the motherboard that failed. It may have been previously used and abused, I don't know.
Oh, and I now have a perfectly good Ultra X-Connect power supply that I'm not using. Wanna buy it off me?
Chris Gray on my team is playing with IIS at home. He's got a little moblog app that automatically takes pics from his PocketPC phone and uploads them. This pic was taken right before we had an executive review for our project.
Charlie, Chris, Sergey, Todd, Lee...
Community Server (formerly .Text) Beta One has finally been released. I'm downloading and installing it now at work to use as an internal team blog. I love .Text and can't wait to see how Scott has improved things in this new version.
Sheesh. I thought Linux devices were supposed to be cheaper...
Engadget writes about the Niveus A/V Storage Server which is basically just a Linux based NAS box with 1TB of RAID 5 storage in it. I can't even tell if it actually supports SMB or not. Sure it's pretty and fanless but why does it cost $3K?
If you think this box sounds cool to you, I suggest you instead consider what you could do with a Windows Small Business Server 2003 based Home Server:
From DELL buy their entry level (loss-leader) server box; the 420SC that I wrote about yesterday. Roughly $300.
From NewEgg buy the following:
- LSI 64-bit PCI to SATA RAID adapter; $283 for the 6 drive model.
- 4 Maxtor 300GB 7200RPM SATA drives for $204 each ($816).
- SBS 2003 OEM for $437
You'll spend $1836+shipping and you'll have an infinitely more capable solution.
The 420SC case is not fanless, but it is quiet. Yes, you'll have to set this up, but with all the money you save you could actually pay someone to do it for you!
Slickdeals.com is showing that you can now get a DELL PowerEdge SC420 P4-2.8GHz, 80GB system for $289+tax w/free shipping.
These SC series machines from DELL make great home servers. They are plenty powerful, expandable, and amazingly very quiet.
I've zipped up this skin I use on this blog and made it available for download here. Let me know if you are using it and/or if you have any problems.
If anyone knows how to modify .Text so that the order the things appear in the CategoryList (on the right) I'd love to hear it. I got started on this little remodelling because I was trying to figure that out. I want to move Post Categories up below the Disclaimer and move Archives to the bottom...
Ok, I think I have my new look and feel set. I based this on the Cogitation Blue by Mark Wagner but integrated what I had done previously. I really like the little tab bar.
Apparently Mark's skin (and hopefully mine) is more standards compliant. I have tested it in firefox and the only issue is the "glow" effect around my blog title does not show up in Firefox. Too bad.
Let me know what you think of this new look!
I finally was able to download and install .Text 0.95. I'm in the process of getting all my old settings in place (including my skin). You might see some ugliness for a while...
I wasted a bunch of time tonight updating the look and feel of my blog. Things I changed:
- Slightly altered the color scheme to have a bit more blue in it. Blue's my favorite color.
- Changed the header to be a picture (that's me cat skiing). I now have a bunch of images the right size that I can switch in depending on the season...ski season is upon us so that's the current theme.
- Moved the links bar from the left to the right to make reading my blog on Smartphones easier.
Let me know what you think of the changes.
I just realized I'm still running 0.94 of .Text. I wanted to play with some other skins like Cogitation Blue by Mark Wagner but it requires 0.95. Unfortunately the www.gotdotnet.com workspaces are down right now. Sigh. Anyone know of a mirror of the .Text 0.95 download?
Furrygoat asks how many gadgets people carry. Seems like his model is similar to mine. I carry a SmartPhone (I have the new Audiovox SMT 5600 which I just love), a 16MB USB keychain (hooked to my Microsoft card key), and when at work I carry my Acer C110TCi Tablet PC to and from meetings.
In my car I hava a Jabra Bluetooth wireless headset. At the gym I use a Rio Cali Sport portable audio player (512MB) for listening to music.
Via BusinessWeek a good article on home servers:
That's right, with most homes nowadays having multiple computers and lots of files to share, these new low-cost devices can do wonders
Want to watch movies, control your stereo's music, and back up your computer files from any PC in the house? A cheap server computer, a scaled-down version of the pricey machines locked away in corporate data centers, might be the best way to manage your family's files while keeping them safe.
The girls did it! We won the LWYSA Girls U-11 championship today, beating the Cougars 2-1. We also beat the Cougars yesterday 3-1 (the Cougars then won the bottom bracket by beating the Shooting Stars this morning).
In fine fashion the girls had prepared a jug of water and let me have it after the game. What a blast!
The Polar Bears won the sportsmanship award for U-11 Girls Division 1 Soccer!!!!
We came out on top, BY A LARGE MARGIN.
But the summary is the Polar Bears got 206 points and the next team got 174 (the Illusion).
As a reward, LWYSA pays for a party at Illusionz.
Even if we don't win the Tournament, I view this as complete victory. When the season started I told the parents and the girls we had the following goals:
Create an extraordinary, unique, and fun growth experience for our daughters to help them develop into confident, capable young women.
The pillars of what they should take away:
- Teamwork
- goals of the team above their own
- reward great teamwork above individual play - Sportsmanship
- how to win
- how to loose - Friendships
- camaraderie
- team building fun - Fitness
- most physically demanding of any sport these girls have played to date
- will run 6 miles over the course of a game
- learn to focus and do their job even when tired - Accomplishment
- Experience success coming form working hard and smart
- Confidence that grows out of hard work, overcoming adversity, and ultimately winning competitively. - Soccer ability - skills, knowledge of the game, future opportunities to play at higher levels.
I coach my daughter's soccer team (11 year olds) in the Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association (LWYSA). The team name is the Polar Bears and these girls are amazing!
I am blessed to have such a great bunch of girls on the team. They all have great attitudes, work hard, and more importantly play hard.
This weekend we won all three of their games in the LWYSA Year End Tournament. They beat the Wind 4-1, the Shooting Stars 3-1, and the Koalas 4-1. Next Saturday morning we play the Cougars (who we beat in the regular season 4-0). If we win that game we play in the first of potentially two championship games on Sunday against whichever team wins the losers bracket.
Last year we made it to the championship games out of the losers bracket after losing our 2nd game of the tournament. We ended up losing to the other team in the first game. I don't want to count my chickens before they are hatched, but if we win next Saturday the tables will be turned...and it's entirely likely that the team we lost to last year will rise out of the loser bracket to meet us (the Kickers who won our division this year).
I also coach my Son's (9 year olds) team, the Dynamo. Tonight we had our year end party. U-9 isn't eligible for the tournament, but next year as U-10 they will be.
I've done a lot of interesting things in my life; the only thing more gratifying than coaching these kids has been bringing up my own. Just absolute joy.
If you have a kid, I encourage you to get involved in youth soccer. It's a kick.
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