Well I finally have a running PC after a few days of pain and some sticky issues. I was going to take some build progess pictures but time and circumstances were against me and so there aren’t any.

To summarise, my PC failed to do anything useful shortly after plugging a USB device into the back, I then went through an ‘I can’t afford it but I need to upgrade’ moment and bought a full rebuild kit for £280. I was forced to change the mobo as I figured that had blown and it was Socket 939 with DDR ram and an AGP GFX card.

So all the new kit arrives, gets fitted and wired up, all cables inserted in the correct orifices and turn on. At this point I was expecting a nice shiny BIOS post screen, but instead I got the exact same symptoms I had previously.

So unplug all cables except monitor - nothing, unplug al HDD’s - nothing. Damn at this point I figured that the new Jeantech Storm 700W PSU I have is the culprit.

PSU swapped, and plugged in all wired up and…… Nothing :0( at this point I’m crying. Last thing I considered was unplugging the RAM as I expected a beep of some sort to come from the speaker on the mainboard (yup I do have one, I plugged it in myself). So RAM removed turn on and…… BEEEEEEEP!

Crap, bad memory? Plug chip into Slot 1 - and machine starts, Plug another into Slot 2 - machine starts, Slot 3 - OK, Slot 4 - no boot. Remove first 3 chips place the last ‘offending chip into slot 1 - machine boots.

So bad mainboard. At this point I’ve nothing left to do but figure on swapping the mainboard. So I continued with repairing windows so it would boot and as part of my auto rebuild mode I updated the BIOS - bit of a silly thing to do if I’m swapping the mainboard but hey at this point I’m tired, have wiped the wrong drive during partition maintenence (luckily only an extra storage drive) and I’m tired.

So windows spent the night updating it’s patches again and during a reboot I decided to verify the issue with Slot 4 and note the exact symptoms so I can rant at some poor schmuck at the store. So plug chip 4 into slot 4 and….. machine boots 80;

It figures that a Bios update fixed something and it figures i just spent 3 days trying to get a machine running when there was a really simple fix waiting there to be discovered by the intrepid explorer.

So I’m Back up and running again, busy re-activating Photoshop because My hardware changed - wasn’t expecting that. And I have also managed to run 3DMark06 and got a score of 7189. the actual results are here if you are interested in the detail.Technorati Tags: Cheap PC Upgrade

I suppose everyone has those days where everything seems to go right then like a pack of cards it all falls apart. I just managed to get a whole weekend like that. All started well on Saturday with a nice day out to see a friend at his medieval weekend, complete with battle re-enactment and bird of prey display. The weather was superb and I enjoyed a full session with my new camera. Then Sunday seemed to take a major nosedive.

I was working away happily on my main office P.C. and decided to try adding some files to an external usb drive that is plugged into my NAS drive, for some reason I was unable to add a new folder to the drive so I ejected it nicely from the NAS and plugged it int the back of the main P.C. POP! now all USB devices are lifeless - Keyboard, mouse… all dead, monitor shut off due to no signal being received and I’m left baffled.

All the fans spin up the drives all fire up theres power going to the Mainboard but no response at all, not even a bios. Obviously something nasty happened somewhere either just at the same time I plugged in the USB drive or as a consequence of plugging it in.

Either way I’m left P.C.-less at the moment. Fortunately my laptop is helping to pick up some of the pieces.

So now I need to repair the damage, my main course of action would normally be to replace the mainboard and move on. Unfortunately the mainboard is a socket 939 board so i’m screwed!
It also had AGP for the Graphics and despite only just upgrading to a nice shiny X1950 Pro, it’s AGP and that’s a problem. The memory is DDR as well so that’s a count of 3 that leaves me stuck.

My only recourse, at a time when I need to spend money on my car is to buy as cheap as possible without completely ruling myself out of any future upgrades, or worse, getting cheap crap components that will fail in a year like this mainboard has.

Despite wanting to splash the cash, I’ve done the right thing and been stingy enough with the cash. Hopefully I will be up and running again tomorrow night.

Being a fan of ATI and AMD (despite their current shortcomings in the quad core department), and knowing I can’t stretch to quad core I opted to stick with dual core and had to move up to AM2.

I was lucky enough to find a mainboard coming in at £52 that is AM2 and AM2+ compatible and when AMD offload their Phenom stock I will be able to slap another couple of cores in later on for a few quid less than they are currently selling for. This baby has the new AMD 780G chipset on it which includes the ATI 3200 embeded gfx which gets awesome 3DMark06 scores AND the new Hybrid Graphics technology which means you get a psuedo SLI type effect when you plug in a PCIe x16 card.

I’ve opted to slap in an ATI 3850 Pro from Sapphire which will give me decent graphics performance on a budget with the ability to crossfire. Matching this to the chipset means I don’t have to worry about conflicts and I can take advantage of the Hybrid Graphics functionality to boost things a bit. The 3850 comes close to the 8800’s in most reviews I’ve seen so not bat for a shade less than £100.

4GB of DDRII from OCZ

An AMD 64 X2 4800+

Then a couple of cables and a new DVD burner running off SATA as the mainboard has a single IDE connector and I’ve got 2 drives I need to connect.

This configuration is not going to break and speed limits or win any awards for high powered gaming rig, but, I should get impressive performance on a shoestring. My budget celing was £300 and I came in at £280.

This is an upgrade I could have done without right now but I think i’ve been savvy enough with my cash to buy decent performance and some form of upgrade capabilityon a very tight budget.

When I get it all running I’ll post a 3DMark06 score and some pics of the build in progress. Fingers crossed that all goes well.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to experiment with my home wireless set-up. Currently I am running a Netgear router that includes their RangeMax Next technology to provide draught n capabilities. Until now it has been set-up to broadcast the b/g compatible signal only. Since I was in my garden at the time and was receiving a weak signal, I decided to see what would happen if I switched the modem to output at full power, intended for the benefit of n capable devices of course.

The result surprised me a little as I actually received a stronger signal through my normal Wireless card built into the laptop. So this got me thinking, Summer is on the way and I plan to be in the garden as much as possible so… Off I went this weekend and bought a PC card to go with the modem. The NetGear WN511B coming in at £39 seemed the perfect choice given it is the partner card for the router and the price was almost £20 less than the other cards on show.

Installing the card was a breeze, following the usual run the CD first routine and once it had negotiated with the router performed the necessary handshake etc. I was able to get a blistering 200+ mbps over wireless Fantastic! All ran fine for a day then suddenly things started to go south. The wireless card refused to connect, no error no warning just nothing at all. It has taken me all of sunday evening and yesterday evening to finally nail the issue.

Of course I went through the pain of attempting an uninstall which was unbelievably crap. The installer wanted Cab2 which doesn’t exist on the HDD or on the damn CD so I gave it the jackboot treatment and deleted the driver and all installed files manually and used RegCrawler to blat the registry… at this point I had already dropped the laptop once carrying it from the office and wasn’t taking any prisoners.

So I downloaded the latest software and installed it without using the CD, during the download I noticed some release notes, apparently this version (the same as the one on the CD) fixed an issue where the card can’t connect to the router if it is set to run in a mixed security mode of WPA2 and WPA. This rang a bell as I run that mode due to having an older laptop at home that my wife uses, of course it can’t do WPA2 and the wireless card isn’t supported any more.

So once the card was re-installed I switched security mode to WPA2 only and reset the router. As soon as the router was back up the card connected fine and I got the superb speeds I got before. I then switched the router to WPA and reset again, and again the card connected fine. Finally I switched back to mixed mode and the card refused to connect.

So I am now stuck with WPA mode only until NetGear actually fix the issue, a shame as I do like to run the highest possible security I can, when I can, but at least for now I have a working wireless n set-up and can hopefully enjoy a great summer of catching up on my backlog of podcasts, shows and training that I have been lining up.

I have now managed to set up RSS feeds for my photo’s direct from my Gallery site. There are currently 6 feeds to choose from as I have decided to push the feeds from each gallery giving you the flexibility to choose which galleries you want to monitor. As I add new galleries new feeds will become available but for now you can get the following feeds nicely toasted via Feedburner.

• Landscapes
• Photo Journalism
• Manipulated Images
• Nature
• Abstract
• Monochrome

I’m working on a master feed but there’s a couple of teething problems with that at the moment. Enjoy the feeds and please remember if you like what you see tell others, if you don’t then tell me.

All my images are original, © Shaun Newman and may not be copied, edited or transmitted in any form without prior written permission. If you do wish to use any of the images you see or would like a hi-res print please contact me I don’t bite and I won’t charge a fortune. There is a link on the gallery site to email me or you can leave a comment on this blog and I’ll get back to you.

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: SDN-photography, landscape, monochrome, journalism, nature, abstract

I’ve always been one of those people that likes to tinker and squeeze as much performance from my computer as possible. Often I’ve rendered my PC completely useless, though not beyond recovery, and I have learned a lot along the way.

This weekend as I was tinkering with my BIOS settings I noticed a few settings I was not sure of and it never ceases to annoy me that there’s very little help inside the BIOS interface to guide you. Of course there is always Google to lend a hand and I found a great site that explains quite a few BIOS settings.

TechARP has quite a lot of useful articles and information and well worth a bookmark. Another old favourite of mine that I have been using since it’s inception 4 years ago is Tweakguides. Chock full of excellent information and lots of detail this site will help you get the best performance from major games as well as your System. Starting with a benchmark optimisation of your system it allows you to seriously squeeze every bit of performance possible from your kit. This is a windows-centric site I’m affraid so don’t expect any Linux or Mac tweaks. If I find a good linux tweaking site I’ll post it as an edit.

Technorati Tags: Tweakguide, Games, Windows

Seems like quite a while since I posted anything.  I’ve been a little busy of late manages to pick up a nasty chest infection of some sort that was doing the rounds - the wife keeps reminding me it was only man flu.  Really knocked me for six.  Then I had two weeks holiday over the easter period, bumming around the local area with my camera and a little DIY on the side to keep the missus happy.

The most annoying thing was to come away with over 280 photos and not be happy with a single one.  None of them stand out and say anything to me at all which is frustrating.  Still give it a little time and maybe I will find one or two I can work with.

I found some great places to visit in the peak distrit and derbyshire.  Carsington water looks great, I didn’t get chance for a proper visit but I certainly will make the time to take a walk round.
There’s an awesome Formula 1 museum at the Donnington rage track, an awesome collection of cars apparently the largest collection in the world, loads of famous cars driven by Nigel Mansel, Damon hill, Graham Hill, Sterling Moss, Mikah Hakinen and the man himself Ayrton Senna.
The heights of Abraham in Matlock Bath is a great place to visit if you have kids.  there is a cable car ride up to the top of the heights which is 1000ft above sea level at it’s highest view point.  You get a great view of the countryside and there’s plenty of playgrounds for the kids and two tours of the lead mines.  Cafes and some nice, and quite challenging, walks in the area too.  There is a steam railway that runs weekends so in the summer it’s quite popular.

One other thing that has kept me diverted from blogging for a while is setting up a new hosting business with a good friend of mine.  We finally got all the paperwork sorted out and have settled on our branding so netOxide is live and offering some great value hosting packages.  I promise that this blog is not going to become one big advertisement, in fact this may be the last I mention it except the odd passing comment here and there where it’s relevant.

So it’s pretty much business as usual now and I’m spending a little more time in Photoshop which is cool so I may drop a tip or two ionto the blog in the near future.

Stay happy and thanks for reading.

It’s been almost a week now since I attended the focus on imaging show at the NEC Birmingham and I realised I didn’t write an entry. If you are not aware of focus, it’s pretty much a show for Photographers. The latest camera’s printing technology and imaging software is all on show along with new framing ideas. There’s a big orientation to the pro photographer of course but it’s great to go along and pick up a bargain or two while you rub shoulders with some of the best photographers in the business.

Last year I picked up a Pantone Huey to calibrate my monitor, a very nice piece of kit that allows you to get decent calibration on a budget. This year I set my sights a bit higher. I bought a Sigma lens from the show a couple of years ago, a nice super zoom that has been an absolute joy to use, this year I was determined to get a wide-angle lens as I have been itching for one almost since I bought my current camera. My brother-in-law had managed to borrow one a couple of weeks back and the results were stunning.

So 10 minutes after arriving at the show we both had a shiny new Sigma 10-20mm USM lens in the bag.  The lens retails at about £300 in the shops and you can get it for £289-ish online, the show price saved us a tenner on that so we were both happy bunnies.

Canon were at the show this year displaying all their latest models and I got a chance to take a look at the new EOS 450D a 12 mega Pixel model with anti-Dust technology built in. It’s small light and has a huge LCD screen on it. It looks a little more like the pro models but in minature, and has borrowed technology from the EOS 1D.

The show itself had a couple of common themes, Black and White is definitely in vogue, as are acrylic frames, mount cutters and photo books. There were some nice images on show and a couple of them got me inspired a bit.

Of course, having last week off work was very useful as I managed to get out into the Peak District, where I live, and get snapping. A couple of the pictures have made it onto my Photo Gallery already.

Focus is on every February so if you live in the UK and are into Photography, I highly recommend it.

Technorati Tags: Focus on imaging

I finally got round to putting together my photo gallery website to showcase some of my images. this is a pretty big step for me as I have always been a bit nervous about people criticising my work.

I’ve only got a few of my pictures up there at the moment and these are some of my first digital pictures so it’s a step back in time for me to have gone through them again.

I hope they will bring enjoyment to someone and hopefully, as I move into stage 2 where I actually set up something to sell my pictures, I’ll be able to extend that enjoyment further.

you can get to the site here, and I’ll be hooking something into this blog so you can see the odd picture as you spend time here.

Technorati Tags: sdn-photography, gallery

I’ve been trying to improve the blog a little so I’ve been busy
tweaking and improving the categories.  I’m not sure if this may break
links to posts, if it does I’m sorry about that.  All the posts still exist so you should still be able to get to them and re-link (i’ve improved the permalink format as well) via the search widget.

Hopefully this is another positive step to imroving the core of the blog :0)

Some days are good, some bad and others are just plain shitty.

Yesterday was one of the shitty ones. I had to say goodbye to my dog Duke for the last time :0(
I had a really frustrating day at work and then when I got home I found that Duke had collapsed and was struggling to move, my wife Sue had to get help to bring him in off the street where he collapsed so of course she’s quite upset. We managed to get him to the vet but his heart was giving out and it was really the only option available, no sense trying to make him hang on.

We got Duke just over 13 years ago when we both lived in Hungary. I always wanted a German Shepherd and one day as we went down to the local market, we saw a guy who was selling some pups. We wanted a male dog rather than a bitch so we sorted through the whole box and found Duke at the bottom of the pile the only male there fast asleap.
he had a close call with parvo during the first year, but he pulled through and became a sort of mascot amongst all the kids we worked with.
He loved to play with them and they loved to come round just to see him, he was bigger than most of the kids by the time he was 1.
he had such a lovely temperament and could move so fast, he liked chasing the rabbits in the fields and the occasional squirrel without ever having actually catching one, he never tired of chasing them though :0)

Duke had been unwell for a good couple of weeks, and had to be on a special diet & steroids for the past few of years due to a skin problem he contracted, so we kind of expected and tried to prepare ourselves for this moment, but after over 13 years of loyalty from a dog who was second to none and lived up to his name perfectly, it’s hard saying goodbye to the Duke.

I don’t know what happens to animals when they die, everyone has their own beliefs and customs, I’ll be content to think he might be off making mischief chasing rabbits somewhere :0)

So, not my usual post but this is what blogs are all about, a window into my life. Friday November 30th 2007 was my shittiest day since my baby sister died three years ago.

For Duke
04/08/94 - 30/11/07
No better friend than he.

Powered by ScribeFire.