Technically minded Weblog

Parts have arrived 2 days ago.
The system will be:
CPU: AMD Athlon II x2 240 (AM3)
Mainboard: Gigabyte MicroAtx w/ AMD Chipset. AM2+ (AM3 ready)
RAM: 2GB Kingston DDR2 CL5 (2x1GB)
VGA: Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD4670 1GB (w/ Zalman Cooler)
HDDs: 500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA2, 640GB Samsung F1, 500GB Hitachi (external Iomega), 320GB Hitachi (external LaCie, slim). All from my main PC (will leave 2x160GB Samsungs alone. Should be enough for few more demanding games).
ODD: Not sure. Either Optiarc DVD-RW from my secondary or LG BD-RE from my main PC.
FDD: What ?
PSU: 400W FSP (not much room for expansion).
Case: some generic ATX tower (old case of my main PC, before upgrading to Antec 900).

Will probably start building tomorrow. Will post an update when the new system will be completed (or maybe earlier).

Happy holidays everyone !!

I have ordered the parts for my new build.
Parts list:

1. Athlon II x2 240 2.8Ghz CPU (Socket AM3)
2. Radeon HD4670 1GB VGA (Gigabyte)
3. Gigabyte MicroATX board AM2+ (with AM3 support, don’t remember the exact model, this board has AMD chipset)
4. 400W FSP PSU

As you can see, this will be AMD based build (I would prefer Intel and Nvidia instead but AMD parts are cheaper and this is not a high-end build)

I will take out 2x1GB RAM sticks and 2 HDDs from my main PC. For optical, I will either take the LG BD-RE from my main PC or Optiarc DVD-RW from my secondary PC.

This new PC will also need a name.

Will post an update when the parts arrive (or maybe sooner)
That’s all for now.

I’m planning to build a low power (400W maybe) PC which I will use as a File Server, DNS server, Web server, a TV (using IPTV) and a light gaming machine.

I already have a untested P4 CPU (2.4Ghz, Northwood Core 533 FSB) which I’ve salvaged from a dead Gigabyte motherboard (bad capacitors) a while ago. I also have 1GB of DDR2 RAM and I can get another 2GB from my main PC (it won’t need 6GB RAM without VMWare running anyway). I can also get some HDDs from my main PC (it won’t need 2.1TB just to store 10 or so newer games).
I already have the case (original case of my main PC, before I upgraded to Antec 900).

I don’t know if P4 CPU works (don’t have any socket 478 board) and I don’t want to waste money on socket 478 board in case if P4 is bad. So I will probably just get a low power AMD Athlon instead.

I will also need the PSU. I will probably get one of these Delta OEM Chieftecs.
I also think about getting some cheap PCI-E videocard so I can do some light gaming.

These plans are not final yet. I haven’t yet ordered any parts.
But I need to get this system built until the end of the year because electricity prices will rise dramatically (by about 30%) and I already pay too much for the power used by my main PC.

That’s all for now.

Decided not to buy that HDTV STB thing. That’s because my ISP gives non-hdtv one for free and my old CRT does not support digital anyway.
I will probably upgrade to HDTV STB when I will get a LCD TV (that’s probably when the old CRT TV dies which probably won’t happen in near future).

I will wait until December and buy some hardware upgrade. Just haven’t decided yet what to buy (probably not another HDD).

After returning from my African holiday (Nov 14-21), the first thing I’m planning to do is to get a new piece of hardware.
No, it’s not an upgrade for my main PC. It’s a DVB-T box with a 160GB hard disk and a USB port which supports flash drives and supports AVI (probably DivX, Xvid and maybe MPEG2), MP3 and JPEG. It also has HDMI port and supports HD channels.
Our ISP sells it for cheap along with their digital TV service. The channel set is similar to that offered by their IPTV service (which I use now).
The good thing is that I can now use this device with my main TV (a good old Panasonic CRT) and leave the IPTV for computer use only. This would allow me to watch anything I want on my PC (instead of having to watch the same channel on both my main TV and my PC) and also this would free up 4.5Mbits of bandwidth when I’m not watching TV (which is a lot of bandwidth for me because my line is just 6Mbit).
The HDD is pretty small’ish but I think it can be upgraded because most of these video recorders and DVB-T boxes use standard PC hard disks (unless there’s a hardware lock like in some Pioneer DVRs).
OK, enough for this post.

Darn. I should have posted this three weeks ago.
My BD burner is OK. It’s just those crappy Chinese BD-Rs.
Tried a Verbatim 2x, recorded at 8x without problems.(Too bad Vetbatim media is expensive).I’ve also tried another one of those Chinese BD-Rs (made by Infosource), it recorded without problems but had like 600 read errors at the end of the disc (and that’s before I canceled the verification).
Also, ImgBurn worked better than Nero 8 when recording BD-Rs (and ImgBurn does not care about max write speed returned by blank media).

That’s all for now.

My BD-RE drive arrived a few days ago. Well, the drive itself is nothing special, it looks like any ordinary DVD/CD drive except for being able to write to BD-R and BD-RE (and the Blu-Ray Disc logo ofcourse).
The drive is made by LG-Hitachi. It’s a 8x burner. Too bad some new models of this drive arrived just after I’ve bought this drive.

I also bought 5 BD-R to test the drive. This is where the problems started.
The drive did not like those BD-Rs. Tried burning at 2x, it went to around 80% and then the drive decided to uninstall itself from system (perhaps due to bad SATA cable). Burned another disc (with the same cable), this time it was a success (somewhat), but due to bad disc a few sectors got corrupted.
Replaced SATA cable. I had 3 BD-Rs left so I’ve tried burning some data to them. The drive burned them at around 1.5-1.7x (these were 4x BD-Rs) and always encountered a write error at around 75-80% accompanied by a click-click noise from the drive (like if it was trying to recover from error).
But at least one burn was successful. So the drive should be OK (but we can’t be sure until we try to burn some more discs).
I have one of DVD-R DL discs made by the same company (InfoSource). It’s ok but none of my drives like it (they all read it really slowly). It seems that InfoSource BD-Rs are no better than their DVD-Rs.
I returned bad BD-R discs to the shop.
Too bad Verbatim BD-Rs are really expensive here.
I will have to find some better BD-Rs and try burning them.

P.S.: My Twitter is here.

Have some better news to post. Got my money back to my account.
Ordered a LG BD burner and a Logitech laser mouse (my second PC’s mouse is dead and my backup mouse is old and crappy).
The site where I ordered does not require registration but has a strange policy of having the manager contact you before you pay (possibly, to confirm that things you have ordered are in-stock). The good thing that they will ship my items to me, so I don’t have to go anywhere to get them (the site where I usually buy everything PC related charges too much for a home delivery).
I will wait now, and post here when there’s anything new.

P.S.: I will soon get rid of that Giveawayoftheday.com ticker image if they continue to post crappy software.

I found where to buy a BD-RE drive locally. The drive is made LG and does 8x. The cdfreaks review of this drive looked good for me and I’ve decided to buy it.
It’s a bit older model but it’s 8x so it should be OK.
But I also have some bad news.
I wanted to deposit some cash to my bank account but the person, who accepted my money, mixed up two last numbers of my personal id so the money got deposited to the wrong account. Dammit I’m going to scream this: SUCH MISTAKE IS UNACCEPTABLE !!! The cashier did not even bother to check account holder’s name before depositing the money.
Now I can’t order my hardware. I’ll have to wait until I get my money back (I hope, not “if I get my money back”).
Well this shows at least one thing: Humans who work in supermarkets or even banks are not robots.
I hope I will have some better news for posting in my next blog post.

That’s all for now.

Recently found that some of my programs (in Creations folder have been infected by a Delphi virus (Win32.Induc.a). This virus is harmless, all it does is infect Delphi to add itself to compiled EXEs. The code added infects Delphi installation (up to Delphi 7) when infected EXE is run. It seems that this virus has been in the wild for a while (I’m detecting it in EXEs compiled three months ago) but was discovered only very recently.
I will re-upload disinfected copies of the infected programs now.
Also, more than 50 of my other compiled EXEs had this crap in them.

I was reading about this virus and even found the code it adds to compiled EXEs. Just didn’t think that my own Delphi installation could get infected.

Also, my ISP was complaining about the virus activity in one of my PCs. I found and removed the freakin’ Conficker worm from my secondary PC. The good thing that this worm did not do any additional damage (like disabling Safe Mode) to the OS.
It seems that the worm did not infect any of my other PCs.