What's New Archives - 2001
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Actually, I have an excuse (yeah, sure). I have been studying. Really.
I decided that I wanted to learn C / C++. I have no formal training in programming, but am pretty good with it intuitively, so I figured that a couple months hard work would put me somewhere on the road to understanding the finer points. Not so! I'm six chapters into Prentice Hall's C++ tutorial and will attest to the fact that this is no "walk in the park." Trying to understand and memorize the "rules and definitions" has been enough to give me fits!
However, I will say that the more I learn, the more I want to learn. Funny thing about learning - when we know a little, we boast - when we know more, we realize how little we knew when we boasted. I'm at the point where I now realize I know nothing - but, at least I know the path to follow.
As for projects, there are lots of things that have sparked my interest lately. The one that is getting the most attention is a multimedia computer for the family room. Fast processor, heat pipe cooling, furniture grade wooden case (my wife would like that), killer sound (integrated with the home audio system), a nice "TV out" video card, lots of HD space, wireless keyboard and mouse (gotta have it from the couch), well, you get the picture.... It's still in the planning stages, but it sounds like fun.
Sometime soon, I hope.
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I've put up a more or less finished version of the software I'm using to monitor the temperatures of my laptop. You can find gp_TempL and a few more programs on the downloads page.
I also decided to do some clean-up on my laptop's disk drive. This involved a bit of repartitioning and the re-installation of Red Hat 7.1 / Win2k. This time I took the time to document the process. You can take a look at a "cookbook recipe" for the dual boot here.
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My best wishes go out to all who had loved ones affected by this act of terrorism.
Let us have patience in placing the blame and strength in dealing with it.
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In other news, thanks go out to Pontus Fröessander and Thomas Demant for helping me with one of the challenges in writing software that is used internationally. I hadn't allowed for the fact that some countries use a comma, rather than a period to separate decimals from whole numbers. Anyway, my lack of foresight caused gp_Temp5 to give Floating Point errors when commas were used as the decimal separator. There's a beta version of gp_Temp5.03 up if you have encountered this error.
That's it for now.
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I hope to get started in pulling the 1800T apart this weekend and installing a 4 sensor temperature monitoring system. With the ability to check the temps, I hope to do some re-testing of some of the cooler programs and see what I can do to improve on the cooling of this notebook. Hopefully the next time you check back I will still have a working notebook. ;-)
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In other news, I've ordered a new notebook - a Compaq 1800T. The research that swayed me to the Compaq almost took me to the purchase of a Toshiba instead. On the plus side for the Toshiba is that it seems to be the only notebook I could find that actually came with a health monitoring chip on the motherboard. I found this a little strange, seeing as processor temperature is probably even more critical in a notebook than in a desktop. I ended up ordering the Compaq in spite of the lack of a health monitoring chip because the rest of the features out-weighed the lack of monitoring - and - judging from the service manual, I will be able to add enough of my own sensors (and gp_Temp, of course) to keep an eye on the heat. Yeah, I haven't even gotten the darn thing and I'm already planning on taking it apart. Well, what did you expect. We'll see what kind of cooling performance this thing gives and if we can help it along a bit. ;-)
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I received many requests to make gp_Temp compatible with the shared memory function of Motherboard Monitor. So... that's what I've done. I now have a version, gp_Temp5, that will send the readings from either 2 or 4 - 10 to 200 k Ohm thermistors to MBM5. This version also works in Windows 2000.
It has been run successfully on 95, 98,
Me, NT, and Win2K, but only with a limited amount of hardware. I
would appreciate some more feedback on the program before I release it
- so if you have a couple of thermistors in your part's box and want to
give me a hand with the testing, please drop me a line at
jim@benchtest.com,
and I'll get a copy to you.
Thanks.
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While I wait for some parts to arrive for the heat sink tester, I'm going to throw together a box out of parts from the "used to be expensive stuff and now it's just junk" bin. I have a few AT cases with motherboards and a couple ol' P133's. I want to run the temperature logger on a computer dedicated to just testing - and - after all, one can never have too many computers.
Hmmm, I wonder how far I could overclock this thing.... 140? 166? 180 with a peltier...? That'd be cookin'!
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So, I have had the pleasure of a fresh install of RedHat 7 and ALL of the supporting software that up until the attack, had served me so well. I was also forced to drop all other projects while I got much more friendly with the 3 zillion or so Linux security sites on the web. While I am no stranger to network security, it is not the main focus of my life - though I am much more security conscious now than before the attack. I guess that's a good thing. Good for the learning involved, but unfortunate that it is necessary to have to guard against children who consider it a major accomplishment to run a script and trash a computer. I guess that's enough ranting....
As far as cooling projects go, I have been working on the first step in building a heat sink tester. That meant finding a logging thermometer that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. As fate would have it, finding a thermometer turned into building a thermometer and writing some Windows software to make it work. As I am not a programmer by trade, writing the software took about 8 times longer than it should have, but the BETA's finished. All in all, I learned a lot and ended up with a pretty neat tool. The hardware is simple to build, and if all goes well, my software might even work ;-). You can take a look at the project here.
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My son wants redhat 7 on his Win98 box, so we'll get that dual boot going in a day or two. When we get it going, I'll post that one too.
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The next project up is an attempt at an accurate heat sink tester. I have been talking with quite a few people about what specifications and design considerations would be necessary for such a device and am ready to give it a shot. Hopefully it will be more accurate than the last attempt.
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In the mean time, I have written a javascript calculator to help me figure out how many watts a processor consumes when overclocked. I also wrote another that does the math for figuring °C/W. Nothing earth-shattering, but it saves me some time. The calculators can be found here.
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