Joel Perry Productions

Ok, so first, sorry I have not posted in a while.  First I was out of the continental united states for a couple of weeks in December, then had some pet problems in early January, followed up with breaking the crap out of my leg January 16th. I cracked my Tibia clean through about 3 inches above my ankle and then the tibia split up the bone about 6 inches, followed by cracking my fibula clean through just above the split in my tibia.  I have a lovely 8″ metal plate in my leg with 15 screws now.  so I do actually have a couple of good reasons for not posting.  I just started feeling somewhat better, I got my appetite back this past Saturday and my pain is mostly manageable even though I rarely find a comfortable position to sit/lay. in

Happier news…

Sprint is finally getting an Android phone with the new 1GHz SnapDragon processor by Qualcomm (extra cool it is capable of going up to 1.5 GHz if I remember correctly). The HTC Super-sonic. Hopefully late March, early April!! finally! I’ve been waiting since October…

Next up, back to my lovely PC, most everything seems to be working just fine now, I am running with the default BIOS settings and it works at least; however the PC sits on the BIOS POST image for almost 2 minutes before it actually starts POSTing.  Not sure what to do about that, I think I need to wait for the next BIOS update to fix that, but for now… it works.

So, I used a bootable CD with Paragon Defrag on it to Defrag my Windows 7 boot HDD and then used the Fedora 12 KDE x64 Live CD to install Fedora on the HDD by shrinking my Win7 partition by 100Gigs and then installed Fedora on it.

Now, the next time I booted into Windows 7 I got a message that my copy of Windows was not Genuine.  Not sure what’s up with that, but I haven’t done anything about it, and I have not gotten the message again.

Now back to Fedora… I added the proprietary drivers for my Motherboard’s ATI Radeon 3300HD in an attempt to try to use wine to play Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and a couple of other things, mostly some older games…  after rebooting, I no longer get a GUI, just a blank black screen and about 8 lines down a blinking cursor.  I can type, I can hit enter, but it does not respond.  This has been going on since January 5th or so.  Today I found out that Fedora has Virtual terminals just like FreeBSD, so very cool, I can at least get to a prompt today.  Now I cannot find any assistance online for configuring the ATI drivers so I can get them to work.  I know that a couple of versions ago they changed the command to configure the drivers, but I can’t find any helpful, current, information for this.  I am lucky I found the aticonfig command again.  I think I can figure it out from here though.  It just bugs me that the only info I could find said not to use the drivers, then if you go to Wine’s website they tell you if you don’t use the proprietary drivers that you can expect your games not to run well.  What a pain. (not as big of a pain as my leg though)  after searching for “aticonfig linux” I found some more info…

Will try and update again this week on how things are going, I am also working on my taxes so who knows… right now I am doing it on TurboTax.com but I think I will try a couple of others before I submit, even though I have used Turbo Tax for 15 years or so.

More from Finndo

• couple of updates to the site…
• getting my PC to function…
• just a couple of random thoughts…

Everything has come back up fine, there was a BIOS update, and it is FLASHing now, also had a few Windows updates, a Java update, and plenty of new Anti-Virus updates…

I noticed that the new BIOS supports the AMD DDR3 memory profiles, so I enabled it, it read my CPU as 3.2GHz with a NB of 2.2GHz (not correct but works for me…), and the RAM defaulted to 533MHz (=1067MHz) 7,7,7,16,4,27 which kinda sucks… but I’ll mess with it later… I upped the CPU to x18.0 @3.6GHz and the NB to x12.0 @ 2.4GHz, leaving all other settings alone except the onboard video settings previously mentioned, and the auto shutdown at 70C.

BSOD – System Service Exception

0×0000003B (0×00000000C000001D, 0xFFFFF88001047ED2, 0xFFFFF880053A3AB0, 0×0000000000000000)

fltmgr.sys – Address FFFFF88001047ED2 base at FFFFF88001046000, DateStamp 4a5bc11f
and completed a system memory dump.

All I’ve found so far is that the .sys file is the File System Manager, however all the forumposts say it’s something different, run chdsk, run memtest, get new video card drivers… so who knows.. I guess I’ll scale back the OC’s…

hmmm… DDR3 memory profiles…

Okay, restarted, no OC’ing, DL’ing the newest Vid drivers… running to the store, will see if PC is still functioning when I get back…

More from Finndo

• couple of updates to the site…
• just a couple of random thoughts…
• The first post, one which may disapear forever…

Ok, back from vacation, had a good time, now I think I’m sick, sore throat, sinus drainage, coughing (tried to text that word earlier and my phone thought I wanted to say “coffeeing”), stuffy head (more like someone tried to stuff me for thanksgiving dinner…). will give some updates on my vacation sooner or later, but for now I shall utilize the World Wide Web for what it does best… Immortalizes information. As I can never find the settings for my Motherboard, I will post them here, so I can always find them, I hope…

Right, so first off, I have my replacement MB and I am trying (still) to get it to work. The first issue I am having is that the MB will not POST if I place my ram in either Dual Channel Configuration. (slots 1&2 or slots 3&4, per the MB instructions using slots 3&4 provides the best performance for a 2 DIMM setup, and this is how it was before I sent the MB back to ECS as an RMA). no matter what I do, with 2 DIMM’s installed it will only POST if and only if I place the RAM in slots 1&3 or slots 2&4. No ifs, no ands, and no butts.

So I am dealing with that, I just want the dumb thing to work at this point. I’ve had it since the end of May and it has never worked correctly, so this is a minor inconvenience. I am using slots 1&3 currently.

After setting the date and time in the Standard CMOS setup page (American Megatrends v02.62 BIOS), I skip Advanced setup and go to Advanced Chipset Setup and change the third option for Shared VRAM from “Auto” to 128MB. I do this because it has a 256MB Dedicated Sideboard, and I doubt I need more than that, but just incase… Also (forgot this the first time), I need to change the default startup video “Init Display First” to “OnBoard” from PCI, as I am currently only using the onboard video.

Next, I’ll skip Integrated Peripherals, Power Management Setup, and PCI/PnP Setup, as there are no features in there that I wish to mess with. So, I’ll head on over to PC Health Status and go to choice numero uno “SMART Fan Function” and set “SMART Fan start PWM” value to 50 (I think this is the percent of max RPM the fan will start at) and set “SMART Fan start TEMP.” to 55C, this should allow my CPU fan a chance to stop spinning at some point… maybe. Escape out to go to the second option there “Shutdown Temperature) and change the default setting “Disabled” to “70C/158F” (the minimum) because I want this thing to shutdown quick if something happens, and since it normally runs around 51C/123F CPU and 31C/87F System temp, I have determined that a 20C/35F temp spike is not a good thing and the PC should kill it before it gets any higher. Except when I was messing around with AMD’s Overdrive software for overclocking from within Windows, I have never seen the CPU break 53C so I did base my choice off a researched value, not just at random…

Next victim… “M.I.B. II (MB Intelligent Bios)

this is where I will have to do some trial and error… first off (already been at this for 1.5hrs, fyi) I am not going to change a thing and see if the PC will reboot with the above changes only, then I will stop changing them and just do this part till I can get a reboot again… after which I’ll combine the two parts and try to boot up again, as every time it fails to boot, I have to reset all back to default and start again…

Save and exit… system restarted fine… oh one more thing I am using the HDMI out AND the VGA outputs currently to 2 different TV’s (this is what it would not do before and is the primary reason for the RMA, the HDMI out would crash the PC if the cable was connected to the PC). A quick check shows that everything is exactly as I set it, except the current CPU temp is 50C and the CPU fan is running at 2335RPM…. oh well, maybe I’ll get around to that later… now to play with the MB and RAM settings…

so the PC Health Status page shows my CPU Vcore at 1.344V and the VDIMM at 1.520V. over in the MIB II page it is correctly displaying my processor as a Phenom II x4 955 running at 3200MHz with a NB Clk 2000Mhz. (different than before, but still automatically detected…) it shows my RAM as 533MHz,7,7,7,16,4,27 (previously it showed 533MHz,6,6,6,14,4,20) but this is good, as previously I had to manually change it to 9,9,9,24 in order to get the PC to boot, so I think I will leave it be. ****edit**** the RAM is supposed to be set to 667MHz change made at the bottom****

CPU settings, as most OC websites show this CPU running significantly faster when OC’d (up to 3.8GHz per core), all without special cooling systems or changing the voltage, I think I will bump it some.

first try
x18.5 3700MHz at 1.350V with NB @2000MHz (default). save and exit… reboot successful, I think I’ll leave it there, I don’t need to push it, and if it works, well then it works…

But… I will try bumping the CPU/HT Reference Clock (MHz) from the default of 200 to 225 (based off the results from this review where they bumped it to a whopping 240MHz, they say when you up the HT Ref Clock, it also increases ram speed, HT link speed, and NB (IMC) speed) again, no voltage change was made… and time to reboot… fail to POST

2nd attempt on the HT Ref Clock, (utilizing information from AMD’s employee blogs and this overclocking reviewat AnandTech) 220MHz and +.75mV on the NB, I also bumped the NB Frequency to 2400MHz… time for a reboot… well, the power light came on, but the system did not POST.

setting a base again…
x18.5 3700MHz at 1.350V with NB @2400MHz (default 2000MHz). save and exit… reboot successful, so it would appear that the HT ref clock is killing me…

I set the HT ref clock to 215 and saved and reboot… no good that is… ok then, back to my base (with 2400MHz NB) If I feel like it, I’ll play more with the AMD Overdrive proggy… right now I want to see if my Video works… well failed to boot this time… I did not change any settings from the base, so…

New settings… 3.7GHz, 2.4GHz NB, +80mV to DIMM, +50mV to the NB, and I manually configured my RAM to 667MHz (remember the multiplier…) at 7,7,7,24 lets try that… and we have windows booting… although I think I forgot to set the other BIOS settings… doh!

I also got a BSOD (pre-login screen)… Stop: 0×0000007E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFF80002CDDDA7, 0xFFFFF880037706D8, 0xFFFFF8800376FF30)

Best results I found was a forum post over on Tom’s Hardware… could be the new board?

well, back to 3.6GHz, 2.4GHz, 667MHz,8,8,8,24, +80mV, +50mV…. failed to POST.

trying:  3.7GHz, 2.4GHz, 667MHz,9,9,9,27, +80mV, +50mV… as it is obviously the ram.  I know the voltage is too low, as the BIOS reports it as 800MHZ, not 1333 AND claims the voltage is 1.6, but should be 1.75.  Now if I try to set the voltage above 1.72 it goes red and tells me I am exceeding the safe voltage level for the system… failed to POST.

I am beginning to wonder if the dual channel issue may be the culprit at this point…  I am just going to try and get the system to start now and see about a BIOS update… then see what happens… guess I should have held off on OC’ing until I knew it was all working…

settings are at 3.5GHz, 2.2GHz all else default, PC booted, allowed Win7 to go to startup repair mode, pulling a system restore now.  Very confident message… “If system restore was successful, Windows should restart successfully”  well, it’s sitting on the “Starting Windows” screen… and I have a login screen…

more later…

More from Finndo

• couple of updates to the site…
• nearly wrapped up issue with my new-ish PC
• wow, wild holiday season…