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Don't be cheap

By Rich Johnson on Published: July 13, 2007 at 12:52 am

When buying new computer components. A couple of months back I had lost a long time favorite Abit motherboard with my XP processor. This caused me to go ahead and buy the cheapest AMD 64 setup I could at the time and actually got what I thought was a good deal. I had purchased a Biostar K8M80-M7A from Newegg.com with an AMD 64 3200+ for like $70. It has worked great until I had purchased a DVD burner that was SATA II. It works fine, however it works when it wanted to. Booting from CD was a crap shoot. If I was lucky, I would get it to boot from the CD 1 out of 5 tries, however the average was 1 out of 15. I had contacted Biostar about the issue since their websites, both Taiwan and USA, suck. I was trying to find information on the issue or maybe a Bios upgrade. Well low and behold you couldn’t download the correct Bios, and to this day you still can’t. So, I fired off an email to their USA tech support and within an hour I had a response with an attachment. Rock on I thought. Well tonight I figured I would go ahead and get the Bios flashed since I had just bought a brand new WD SATA II 250GB, 16MB cache, and 7200 RPM drive from Newegg for like $60 shipped. Another great deal. Well, I go and buy a floppy drive so I can do the flash. Ya, who the hell uses floppy drives still? Anyways, it flashes fine, says it worked and then it asks me if I want to reset the system, so I press ‘Y’, and it reboots. D’OH! It doesn’t reboot, black screen, no beep. So I wait a few seconds thinking maybe it is resetting itself. Who knows with hardware these days. Well, after about a minute and nothing. I decide OK, reset the Bios. So I reset it accordingly, get the PC back in order, and press the power button. No luck, same exact thing.

So, I have emailed Biostar letting them know about the issue. I am pissed beyond belief right now. HOLY SMOKES! I just realized, I have homework to do, and the only machine where I reluctantly spared 10GB for that crappy OS, is now dead. Just my luck. So let this be a warning to you. When it comes time to purchase a major system component, don’t skimp. There is a good possibility it will bite you in the ass. And to think, I should have learned my lesson. This is my 3rd Biostar to belly up in less than 6 months. Thanks Biostar!

Posted in Personal | 8 Responses

Compiz Fusion and ATI

By Rich Johnson on Published: July 7, 2007 at 11:28 pm

Well, don’t get to excited first off. I have finally gotten my Radeon 9700 (which reports as a 9550, something tells me I got ripped off) to work with AIGLX using the Radeon drivers (the open source drivers, not the FGLRX binary drivers). I have pieced together howtos from any place imaginable. However…Compiz starts, but doesn’t draw any frames or borders on windows, and I haven’t messed with any effects because this has annoyed me. It has something to do with an outdated CCP plugin. I have tried all of the –replace this and that, and it still doesn’t work.

But anyways, here are the settings you want to add to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Make sure you have the following options under your Section “Module”:

Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "glx"

Make sure you have the following options under your Section “Device”:

driver "radeon"
option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
option "AGPMode" "4"  #if you have 8, you can try it
option "AGPFastWrite" "true" #enable in bios as well
option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "true"
option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
option "EnablePageFlip" "true"

Make sure you have the following options under your Section “ServerLayout”:

option "AIGLX" "true"

If you don’t have a Section “DRI”, add it and make sure it looks like this:

Section "DRI"
     Mode 0666
EndSection

Add the following if you don’t have a Section “Extensions”:

Section "Extensions"
     option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

If you have an idea on how to fix the CCP plugin issue with Compiz, I would greatly appreciate it. As for installing Compiz, I followed https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CompositeManager/CompizFusion.

Posted in Application | Tagged | 8 Responses

Take your time Jordan

By Rich Johnson on Published: July 6, 2007 at 5:27 pm

This is in reply to Jordan’s post about taking a little Ubuntu break. Personally I hate to see it for many reasons. Just to let a few of you in on why, here are a couple of my reasons. Jordan has been a very good friend and has helped me out tremendously in a lot of areas:

  1. Ichthux Linux – when we were active we were on! Hopefully one day Raphael will not be so busy and we can get back into it.
  2. Documentation – Jordan helped me out in so many areas while I was becoming accustomed to how the project worked.
  3. MOTU – I wouldn’t be a MOTU without the drive and support of Jordan. Granted I worked hard for a couple of years, but Jordan’s constant support lead me to believe I was ready.
  4. Edubuntu – I was watching as Jordan and the crew over at Edubuntu were kicking some major arse and working hard. In a time of need over there I attempted to step up and help out. Seeing as Jordan is taking a well needed, and well deserved break, I am willing to step up and hopefully continue where you will be leaving off. I am up to help you on this!

This doesn’t include the day-to-day interaction with Jordan that was just amazing. I couldn’t ask for a better person to really enforce some of the deep meanings in Free Software that Jordan has done for me. When my eyes were cloudy, he always found his way over to me to clarify them.

If you aren’t heavily involved in the development of Ubuntu or Edubuntu, then you may not know just how important Jordan is to this community. Not to rain on Mark’s parade, but Jordan is the “sabdfl” of the MOTU world 🙂 He is the most patient person you will ever run into, always stays level headed, and I can honestly say for the past couple of years, I have never seen him lose his cool.

So Jordan, here is to you and a speedy recovery 🙂 Yes, burn-out is something a lot of us face in this community, and if it wasn’t for great people like Jordan, I am willing to bet you would probably see even more. I know Jordan will be back soon and ready to kick arse and take some names again. In the mean time, if I can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to ask buddy! I am willing to work more on the Edubuntu stuff (sorry for taking a hiatus, I am still here for you guys though), as well as the Packaging Guide in the mean time. So if you have any extra information you would like to pass along, feel free to hit me up anyway you feel!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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