say@syedmuhammad

Sick but techy

I am sick today, was getting better when the night came.

Anyway, last week my P4P800 SE was making a fuss. It refuses to post with the new 2 X 1GB RAM DDR 400 I’ve got, replacing the 2 X 256MB Kingston HyperX I suspected memory problem, so that’s why I’ve got myself those ram. But it still doesnt work. Damn. Now I’ve got 2 X 1GB and 2 X 256MB, and four of them working.

So open the VT7 (my spare motherboard) out of the box, and transfer the processor and RAM onto it. But it is not stable (That’s why it became my spare motherboard in the first place). It has something to do with the dual channel controller. I noticed that VT7 had two revisions. Mine is the unlucky revision 1.0.
Disable dual channel, and it works like a charm.

Come to think of it, I should have gotten a new motherboard (Biostar P4M900-M4) and a 2GB of DDR2 667 RAM. The 2 x 1GB DDR400 cost me around RM220, but the combo said above would have cost me RM240. I can use back the processor, but have to let go of the RAM and the graphic card. Shit why didn’t i think of that.

iPhone upcoming firmware 3.0

I’ve expressed my disappointment before with the iPhone, but after seeing this link, I am quite impressed. It is not as full featured like an HTC phone, but it looks like its getting back on track again.

The feature that should get the attention is Copy & Paste, MMS, as well as Spotlight search.

Copy & Paste:
How in the world this feature was missing in the first place? Well now you can forward your sms, and even copy & paste at the SMS/Notes. WooHoo. Yay.

MMS:
A camera phone with PDA features, but no MMS? Luckily for 3.0, there will be MMS. Unfortunately, the MMS feature will only available on an iPhone 3G. Not like mine the 2G. Hmmm. Buy an iPhone 3G?

Spotlight:
The search engine from OSX, at least now I won’t need to scroll to find my SMS.

Don’t get me wrong. The update is worthy for the iPhone to be competitve with other advance phones and open up more audience.

…

Typical Apple.

Unable to connect to any MySQL Host

I was debugging my colleague PC because the MySQL Connector.NET throws the said error. Found problem similar to it, but the solution was not satisfactory. This one throws a generic exception.
I was scratching my head, because MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser works.
There must be something wrong.
I did a lot of things, such disabling the antivirus, check the WinSock, check .NET Trust level with no avail.
Then I just changed the connection string from localhost to 127.0.0.1, and then it works.

WTF just happened?

Well it seems that the 127.0.0.1 localhost entry in hosts.sam is missing. So put it there again and it works.

Damnit. How in the world the entry is deleted?

Unreal Tournament 3 Black

Steam provided free weekend for Unreal Tournament 3 Black (last weekend) and I must say it gives me a glimpse of Unreal Tournament 3, which I must say it is my kind of game. I’ve played the original Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2004 and liked it for its simple gameplay and a stress releaser.

40% OFF until March 22nd. I. Could. Not. Resist.
› Continue reading

Tags: steam

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.7.1

After a long overdue, finally this blog has been upgraded to Wordpress 2.7.1. I must say the admin part at least looks quite cool at the moment.

iPhone as a phone

Basically I’ve gotten hands on my brother’s iPhone (well after it has been originally passed from my dad to my younger sister, and then to my brother) and I have to say, I am quite disappointed… for it’s features as a phone at least.
› Continue reading

Mass Effect on Steam

Bought Mass Effect on Steam a week ago, and have to say really liking it. You do not have shiny boxes or DVD to show off, but this particular version of Mass Effect have no SecuROM in it!

But there were problems if you’re using Vista. You might not be able to run it successfully the first time because of UAC. But easy to remedy by running Steam as an administrator

It only took a day for me to download the files, but after playing a few minutes, I felt that the game was not responsive and I was getting headache (slow fps).

It turns out I have to disable Steam In Game Community, as it took a lot of resources. After that, smooth sailing!

The amount of system memory has changed

Yesterday when I bought the BenQ E2200 HD, I also bought two sticks of 2GB DDR2 SO-DIMM. Got my trusty precision screwdrivers, I upgraded both the DIMM A and DIMM B of my Inspiron 640m. DIMM B is quite straightforward, but DIMM A needed a little bit more work. See here for more info.

Anyway when I first booted up with the memory, I’ve been greeted with the message

The amount of system memory has changed.

Well there are other messages such as this can occur when you upgraded your memory (duh!) and please reseat your memory.

OK, fine then what?

That message fail to include “Please Enter F1 To Continue Anyway”.

I hit F1 because I’m a total geek. For the average user, I don’t think they will hit F1. Well the average user won’t be bother upgrading their ram anyway. After I hit F1, it will boot up Windows.

Anyway I am using the i945GM chipset, so the total addressable memory is 3.3GB RAM, although mine is 4GB. Windows Vista SP1 reports as 4GB when you right click My Computer->Properties because it can detect the two 2GB sticks. But if you look in the Peformance tab in task manager, you will see the real total physical memory available to the operating system.

Meh, at least it’s dual channel.

BenQ E2200HD

Finally after way too many years of waiting, I have put down my 17″ CRT to retire. Let me tell you a little bit of history of the monitor that I used.

< 1994: I dunno how small the CRT monitor must be, but it worked well for my DOS games. But to tell you the truth, the brightness was so low, playing games that does not have gamma settings will be dark as the night (TIE Fighter!)

1995 - 1999: Comes with an ACER desktop, works well with anything. Again, can't remember the inch of the CRT. There's another monitor in late 1999, again, not worth mentioning.

2000 - 2006: My first high end monitor: LG Flatron 775FT. A very good monitor, but thick as hell. But after playing it with a program called something powerstrip, screwed the brightness of the monitor. Permanently. Oh well it still works.

2007 - 2008: The LG Flatron died of old age. Bought a second hand monitor (17" CRT) just for the purpose of having a monitor. Considering a Flat LCD, but still expensive compare to what I want.

And now for the new year of 2009:

Bought a BenQ E2200 HD. 22" LCD Widescreen. Native res: 1920 X 1080. They market the monitor as Full HD. Funny really. Because you lose more screen estate than a 1920 X 1200. You should check the product minisite.
But hey, its cheap! Wait to see how long this baby can last. Anyway it’s backed by three years warranty. I bought this monitor rather than a 22″ 1680 X 1050 so that my HD4850 CrossFire can sweat a bit. I don’t mind about the height resolution (1080) as even at the office i use a 1280 X 1024. I don’t need the 1200 … yet.

Tags: monitor

My Mikail

Unrelated to technolog, my newborn son is named Mikail. The only thing related to this post is that it is done on the iPhone