Major announcement: Sorry for the lack of updates. I've
been in talks with a "major player" all week and so I've
been kinda busy. There are going to be few changes around here.
Primarily due to Tweak Central having new ownership! I've been very
fortunate and the new INVESTORS!!! They are, none other than garage.com.
They invest in startups and have major backing. One of their backers
is Microsoft. Kinda nice.
So expect to see a few changes. 1. banner ads. 2. no more M$-"bashing"
- their products are, after all, pretty darn innovative. There will
me more responsible content and actual timely updates.
If you are interested in investing or advertising with Tweak Central,
please email them and be sure
to include today's date so your message receives the consideration
it deserves.
On
a more serious note: Have you seen my desktop? Image this picture,
only 10 times larger... Funny, I end up saying that a lot... It's
1152x864 - if you want a copy, let me know and I'll email/ftp it
to you.
Anyway. I haven't updated the site because my web-editor software
is acting up on me. It will crash after about a minute or two. I
don't know if it's because this machine is overclocked, or I have
a bad "distribution." - I'm sure I'll get it all sorted
out.
Interesting networking story: Thursday I was in Seattle, helping
my friend out by installing another computer on his cable net-access
deal. So I got another IP from @Home,
but when I went to hook everything up, it didn't work. Appearantly
you have to plug the computers into the hub, but hub has to connect
to the cable modem through the hub's "uplink" port. Well
this was a crappy old hub that just had a BNC (coax) uplink port.
So I thought we were screwed and I told my friend to buy a linksys
cable-router. But I thought I'd do some research and I came
across this Linksys
FAQ page. It basically says that an uplink port is just a regular
port with it's wires crossed. So by using a cross-over cable, one
could use a regular port as an "uplink" port (and vice-versa).
So I picked up a piece of Cat-5 x-over, put it between the hub and
cable modem and everything worked fine.
3/26
- Sunday 03:18
Is my L2 cache disabled in NT4? I found this
article and a couple others that tell you how to tell NT about
a larger L2 cache. When I checked my settings, it was set to 0.
Is that default 512 or what? I changed it to 128 but I don't know
if it makes a difference...
The registry entry is at: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement.
(note there's SessionManager and Session Manager (with space) -
it's pretty obvious once you're in there...)
I don't know... seems a little bogus to me... Like when pharmaceutical
commercials say, "Effects similar to sugar-pill." - wtf?
Someone less lazy than me want to run some benchmarks?
Update: Couple of things: 1. Got my grades
yesterday: passed all my classes: WOO-HOO!
Broke my computer yesterday... had to reinstall NT4... that's fun
for me: it only takes me a day-and-a-half.
I did learn a few things and I'll get links up soon. And I want
to fix a few things with the site. The best thing (I think) is I
finally got DPMS (powersave or "sleep mode") to work for
my monitors on NT4. I could never get this to work during the login
screen. It's simple: get
Powerstrip or Energysaver (I couldn't get EnergySaver to work).
And go to your screen-saver settings and select Powerstrip (DPMS).
Then go to the registry under HKCurrent_User
| control panel | desktop. Copy the value of the ScreenSaver
key. Go to HKUsers | Default | control panel
| desktop and paste it in for the value of the screen saver
there. Adjust the time (ScreenSaverTimeOut) you want the login screen
to show before the screen-saver kicks in. There you go, if you logout
and leave, your monitor will go to sleep.
And about my home network... I think it might have something to
do with the MAC addressess of the cards. I put the original POS
NIC (from ATT) back in there and it screams now. I downloaded a
2.77 Meg file from a Netaxi site at 120KB(ytes)s. There's one nice
thing about going online at 3am, no traffic... kinda like why I
like driving in the wee-hours...
3/23
- Thursday 16:42
What's a tweak? In the process of "fixing"
my home machines, I dug up the links and tweaks anyone would need
to spruce-up their computer the right-way™
This is all old-news but you might find it useful...
BusMastering (DMA) = on, speed = up: bmdrivers.com
and benchtest.com
(instructions for NT4) - instructions for 9x are here too...
Running NT4? (post SP3) Get DMACheck from Microsoft Knowledge-Base
article q191774.
Fun with the Registry (don't be afraid):
A couple little tweaks: change the size of the menu-bars and sliders
on windows: Go to control panel | display
| appearance and click on any window item and then click
the size "spinner" or type in a smaller number in the
size box.
Change the time it takes to show new menu items in the start-menu:
In the Registry (run regedit) HKeyCurrentUser
| Control Panel | Display: change the value of "MenuShowDelay"
to something like 60 or 75 (default: 400).
In other news: My network sucks. My connection is slower
than crap. It's 100Mbps, but it's slower than sin. I'm pissed. I'm
going back to my tin-can-on-a-string network... just have to dig
that stuff out of the trash.
I decided to follow the advice of countless individuals and finally
I got my eyes examined today. Holy crap - This site sucks! What
a difference! I can blame it on poor vision (or lack of vision).
3/23
- Thursday 00:31
update: It turns out that NIC was a POS
(never trust the POS brand, they always disappoint). The machine
started locking-up on me and then the NIC stopped working. I lowered
the fsb down to 60MHz, and it didn't make a difference. As a last-resort
(I mean I never do this!) I looked at the readme.txt file and it
says that the NIC needs to be the bus-master and needs to have it's
own IRQ... blah blah - basically, the NIC's a bitch (no offense)
on older mobo's. So I just swapped it with the Kingston NIC from
my other machine. It seems to be ok for now (knock on wood) and
I bumped it back up to 75MHz fsb. We'll see how things go.
I'm still eager to hear if anyone knows why the 66MHz fsb won't
work. I suspect something bad with the power in the back-room?
Steve teaches
you how to troubleshoot: Ok. Normally I don't bother visitors
of Tweak Central with my
problems but I just _HAVE_ to share this little episode. I have
this old 200MHz pc in the "back room" that I have just
because I have enough spare parts to put together a clunker. Today,
I was upgrading the local network to 100Mbps and to make a long-story-short,
that old machine wouldn't take a PCI NIC (network card). I tried
absolutely everything I could think of, I searched all over the
net, and I launched an email to the motherboard manufacturer. I
could not get it to boot. In a last-ditch attempt, I inserted my
old Diamond Voodoo1 card
(an obsolete 3d accelerator) into one slot, and the NIC into another
slot and viola! it worked! Ok wtf? that doesn't make any sense.
If anyone can tell me why that "fixed" (knock on wood)
the problem, and/or what I did wrong, you will get 2 things: 1.
a shiny new "Massachusetts" quarter (upon widespread availability)
and a chance to go for the bonus-round question: Why won't this
box run at 66MHz fsb. It will run at 55, 60 and 75 MHz, just not
66MHz. It has an Intel Pentium
200 MMX (P55C), Abit TX5 (430TX
baby-AT) motherboard and 64MB SDRAM DIMM in it.
. (please, no "becuase you're a dumb-ass"-type
responses... we all know that.)
If you can get this machine to run at 66MHz fsb not only will you
get the stupid Massachusetts quarter, but you will also get a tongue-kiss
from me and a limited edition (heh) set of all the "state"
quarters released so far*.
*(or instructions on how to obtain them)
Now
who says I don't luv ya!
3/22
- Wednesday 15:21
UDcide: A new company named
IDcide.com has popped up promising to help you with your privacy.
It looks promising to me, but we'll see, huh? It claims to run while
you surf the net and allow you to see and control what cookies are
doing what. I got the link from Slashdot.
Interested? Go take a peek! IDcide.com
(I just think it's sad what people will call a company since there
aren't many good domain-names left).
What does compulsory mean? Microsoft will teach
you: SR1 (which stands for Service Release 1, is microsoft's
term for a patch/update) for Microsoft Office 2000 has been released.
According to the
Register, Microsoft will be requireing "registration"
of the product within the first 50 uses or it disables itself. Registration
is a blanket term for collecting personal information about a user
for marketing purposes or to curb piracy. Many in the software industry
still won't admit this. Get over it. According to
the Register story, "According to
Microsoft, existing users installing SR-1 either via download or
CD won't be affected by the Registration Wizard, but new purchasers,
either retail or OEM, will have to use it." A sign of
things to come... if you don't like compulsory registration, you're
really not going to like what's
coming...
Cheap chips cometh: This
story on CNet reports on Intel
and AMD's upcoming CPU offerings
for the "low-end" market.
Rambus stock roller-coaster: If you own Rambus
stock, I hope you brought your airsick-bag. After being trounced
yesterday, the stock is back up today after an analyst upgraded
his target price of Rambus stock.
CNet
story on the recent events concerning RAMBUS.
I read somewhere that the problem with Rambus is yeilds. Their yields
are around 10 to 15% (which is bad). Their problem is the RAM runs
so hot, it needs to have a heatsink attached before it can be tested.
In order to attach the heatsink (and test it) the RIMM basically
has to be fully assembled. At that point they can see whether or
not those chips perform and can then discard them. Sounds like a
problem to me. Probably explains why RAMBUS
RIMMs run about $600 to $1000 for 128 Megs.
Napster
making enemies left-and-right: Napster
is a program that allows users to freely share .mp3 files. The music
(recording) industry (RIAA) absolutely HATES the napster.
They've filed a few lawsuits in an attempt to stop what they see
as illegal copyright violations. This
CNet story reports that users have managed to modfiy the napster
to allow them to freely exchange other data such as digital movies
and software. Now more acronyms are going to pissed, namely the
MPAA and SBA.
Btw, Napster's stand throughout the controversy is that they don't
store or posess any copyrighted material and they are not responsible
for the activity of it's users.
3/20
- Monday 15:21
I pity the fool: Detonate.net
sends word that Mr. T is avaiable to "pity"
any web-site you wish him to. I spit up sandwich bits because I
made the mistake of looking at this while eating. Empty your mouth
and click here.
Look at what he did to my friend
sky's web-site (jpg 222K) . I like the changes!
Don't even think of pitying tweak-central!
By the way, don't steal his stuff, he's a 1337 haXor and he will
0wn J00! h4w h4w h4w! what?
Speaking of HardOCP, Kyle
managed to find a
real Tom's Hardware (and here)...
Too bad it took Cr0bar (0n1y 1337 haXors
can have #'s in their names... ugh) over at Detonate.net
no-time to bastardize
those pictures as well... In-case you missed them, check out
Cr0bar's Hackers and Matrix movie spoofs... their pretty darn funny...
On
a more serious note: Have you seen my desktop? Image this picture,
only 10 times larger... Funny, I end up saying that a lot... It's
1152x864 - if you want a copy, let me know and I'll email/ftp it
to you.
.
Now
who says I don't luv ya!
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