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A7V 1003e BIOS with original AWARD EPA

WARNING: THE 1003e BIOS cannot BOOT from ATA100. It has no PROMISE BIOS!!!

A7V 1003e2 BIOS with original AWARD EPA

A7V 1003e3 BIOS with original AWARD EPA

There are also versions of the above BIOSes with the A7V EPA logo:

You can have them if you email me.

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Must read:

DVD Myths

Linux Myths

24/05/08

Broken TorrentFlux after php upgrade.

This is a problem that occurs on many linux boxes running TorrentFlux after upgrading php.

It appears that version 5.2.6-2 coming down through automatic updates (at leastin Fedora boxes) causes TorrentFlux to report the file status as "DONE" and the ETA as "Downloading Failed!". The file size also turns to 0 (zero).

I had this problem myself and after a couple of hours managed to downgrade my version of php and all seems fine now.

I have written a small howto downgrade php to fix Torrentflux and you can read it here.

I hope this helps.

29/04/08

Back online!!

After quite an adventure with this domain, we're back online.

Email accounts are now restored, so log in and check your emails.

I have to say a big thank you to the person who made all this possible.

Mr. S.K. of the Open Earth idea literally saved this domain and was kind enough to restore it back to us. Most importantly though, reminded us that there are people out there who care for others, even if they hardly know them and set an example we should all remember and follow.

Thank you so much for everything.

20/08/07

Seagate FreeAgent Desktop Linux Problem

This external USB2.0 drive from Seagate spins down after 15 minutes of idle operation. While this is OK with Windows, it gives I/O errors with Linux and remounts as read only.

Here is the solution, taken from Diane's Trout Journal:

# the drive reports something like this

$ sudo sdparm -a /dev/sde

/dev/sde: Seagate FreeAgent Pro 400A

Power condition mode page:

IDLE 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]

STANDBY 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1]

ICT 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]

SCT 9000 [cha: y, def:9000, sav:9000]

# when the drive was idled I got the following error message.

$ sudo sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sde

/dev/sde: Seagate FreeAgent Pro 400A

change_mode_page: failed setting page: Power condition

# this appears to force the drive to start

$ sudo sdparm --command=start /dev/sde

# and now this command works

$ sudo sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sde

$ sudo sdparm -a /dev/sde

/dev/sde: Seagate FreeAgent Pro 400A

Power condition mode page:

IDLE 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]

STANDBY 0 [cha: n, def: 1, sav: 0]

ICT 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]

SCT 0 [cha: n, def:9000, sav: 0]

23/03/05

Icecast2 Howto!!

I have written a small howto for icecast2 streaming mp3 audio.

It's working beautifully and is a great idea if you run a linux server.

Enjoy setting it up here.

Comments and corrections welcome.

12/05/02

Patch available!

Update: As requested, I put the tweak into a patch against kernel-2.4.18 (should work with other 2.4.x kernels), available to download from here. You can apply it using:

zcat mp760_mem.patch.gz | patch -p0

I hope this makes it easier now. Please report back for any and all input :-)

08/05/02

Finally: Linux memory tweaks for the TigerMP

Alex Crow let me know of his findings:

If you add the following function definition after the VIA fixups in linux/arch/i386/kernel/pci-pc.c:

static void __init pci_fixup_tyan_mem_hack(struct pci_dev *d)

{

pci_write_config_byte(d,0x54,0x89); pci_write_config_byte(d,0x55,0xc6); pci_write_config_byte(d,0x56,0x01); pci_write_config_byte(d,0x57,0x08);

}

and in the same file, add after the line marked:

struct pci_fixup pcibios_fixups[] = {

{ PCI_FIXUP_HEADER, PCI_VENDOR_ID_INTEL,etc...

add this line--->{ PCI_FIXUP_HEADER, PCI_VENDOR_ID_AMD, PCI_DEVICE_ID_AMD_FE_GATE_700C, pci_fixup_tyan_mem_hack }, <---add this line

Compile the kernel and reboot with it. I tested with LMBench and saw nearly 20% bandwidth improvements for memory transactions larger than cache on my Tiger MP. Please test it and prove or disprove my findings!

As far as LMBench goes the benefits are clear, I currently run seti to see how it shows up there.

As always, additions, corrections and and input is always welcome.

18/04/02

Tekram U3W/D important details!

With the latest trend of the new 64bit 33/66Mhz PCI bus offered by the 760MP(X) chipset, there has been some confusion as to if the Tekram U3W/D cards can be used with it. Due to the differences between a 66Mhz and 33Mhz PCI bus (the former is 3.3V and the latter 5V) older Tekram cards will NOT fit the 66Mhz slot as it requires one more notch.

Now Tekram U3W/D come in three different flavors, one for each taste:

• v 1.0 - 64bit 33Mhz, 5V only, two notches, using the LSI53U1010_33 chip. This is the standard card as shown at Tekram's site and cannot be used with the MPX boards.
• v 1.0.1 - 64bit 33Mhz, 5V and 3.3V tolerant, three notches, using the LSI53U1010_33 chip. This card is still 266MB/s max 64/33 but can be used on a 64/66 slot (of course taking the bus down to 33Mhz).
• v 1.1 - 64bit 66Mz, 3.3V and 5V tolerant, three notches, using the LSI53U1010_66 chip. This is the full 64/66 card with 533MB/s available to it (only 200/320MB/s from the U3W/D card) preferred choice for the MPX chipset as it does not handicap the North-Southgate link.

So before you buy the card make sure you contact your (r)etailer and find out which one they stock.

15/03/02

Yamaha CRW2200 gets Audio Master!

Now these are some great news!!

Yamaha is going to release a new firmware for the CRW2200 line of drives (20x10x40) that will support their Audio Master thechnology.

This is a very important feature: it is not a firmware gizmo (like Z-CLV or BURNProof), but a burning technique that makes wider pits so that audio quality for CDDA disks is increased due to the higher signal to noise ratio. Quality is so good that brings these burners in direct competition to porfessional burning equipment.

Look for an update in April at Yamaha's site.

Link here.

Updated 4 Apr 2002

The new firmwares are now out. Make sure you use Nero later than 5.5.7 to make use of the new features.

15/03/02

Tekram U3W/D New BIOS

There is a new bios out (4.19) out that corrects issues with some Cheetah X15 drives, but also corrected my boot support issues with my Phoenix bios (Tyan TigerMP).

So it might be worth a look.

BTW: if you update, it may take up to 1hour updating (yes 1 hour) if your hardware setup is not common (and can't be bothered to disconnect everything before flashing) so be PATIENT (althought unlike motherboard bioses there is an easy -documented- way around a bad flash for your card).

Link here.

08/12/01

Tyan TigerMP news:

I had a new TigerMP with dual Athlons to play with. I need to share a few tips I learnt playing with it and reading at the forums

Since I am using Linux 100% most of them (bar one) are meant for Linux users :)

The non Linux tip is that the latest rev3 board carries a new PLL. Check the underside of your board for a square white siklscreening that says something like 3A and if indeed it does, then you're game. Also check Tyan's FAQ here for how to tell, and make sure you use the newer manual for this board as the jumper settings for the FSB are changed. Also the rev3 board has lower fan header wattage so be carefull!

Now this new PLL allows FSB overclocking up to 150Mhz. But the only way it can be done it's through Windows using a program called CPUFSB. The new PLL is ICS9248BF-153 so set CPUFSB accordingly. You will need to reboot for the new FSB to take effect and this is the best part as you can now boot to linux and keep the settings as long as you don't shut down (resetting using the reset switch won't affect it :).

You may have already noticed that when you enter the bios you need to hit a key to get the hardYou may have already noticed that when you enter the bios you need to hit a key to get the hardware monitor started. Now unless you do that, Motherboard Monitor (MBM) won't work. So for people you don't want to enter the BIOS everytime just to start the monitor you'll have to leave without MBM. A kind soul has writen a small tool for temperature monitoring and offers it for free. Follow this link for more.

Finally you can stick around the same forums to find the memory tweaks that boost performance by quite a bit.

For Linux:

The tricky part is to get lm_sensors to work with the TigerMP. To do that you need three modules compiled (as modules :). These are: i2c_dev i2c_amd756 w83781d.

You then need to call them with modprobe:

/sbin/modprobe i2c-dev

/sbin/modprobe i2c-amd756

/sbin/modprobe w83781d init=0

Make sure you include the init=0 otherwise the system will freeze. Now you need to tweak /etc/sensors.conf. You will be using the section that starts with chip "w83782d-*" "w83783s-*" "w83627hf-*" so under that line you change the CPU's temperature sensors to type 2. This will give you accurate readings.

Fan speeds are still a bit tricky and didn't actually work them out, if you did, please drop me a line :) Same for the voltages calculations!

Finally you can apply the same memory tweaks as in windows using this:

/usr/X11R6/bin/pcitweak -w 0:0:0 -b 0x54 0x89

/usr/X11R6/bin/pcitweak -w 0:0:0 -b 0x55 0xc6

/usr/X11R6/bin/pcitweak -w 0:0:0 -b 0x56 0x01

/usr/X11R6/bin/pcitweak -w 0:0:0 -b 0x57 0x08

Make sure you ran lspci and 0:0:0 refers to the Host Bridge :)

If you notice a difference please drop me a line cause I start to believe that while Sandra picks up the difference in Windows, the same changes do not affect Linux (or perhaps the do not get through??)

Corrections, additions, anything is always welcome so drop me a line here.

07/12/01

Site News!!

I will not be able to update this site for the comming weeks as I am terribly busy. See you soon :)

02/09/01

Forum News!!

If you haven't been to our forums yet, you should! Why?

NDC has posted a list of great tips and tricks for Windows OS.

I have also compiled some general notes on storage matters here that will hopefully answer most FAQs and may help you solve your storage problems.

Should I mention the rest of the members? You find out!

Finally the site has now a Great New Face so don't miss it!!!

02/09/01

IBM hard drive users:

IBM has now released the new Feature Tool. It is a must have:

1. Enable or disable the read-ahead or write cache.
2. Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings (quite/low performance, normal/high performance).
3. Change the predefined capacity of the drive.
4. Switch the Ultra DMA mode.
5. New feature! Change Advanced Power Mode - allows you to change between the lowest power consumption and the highest power consumption (maximum performance level).
6. New feature! Show Drive Temperature - shows the current drive temperature in Celsius and Farenheit.

Grab it from here.

02/09/01

Athlon Overclocking...

Robert Richmond of SysOpt has posted a great Athlon overclocking guide from the original Slot A K7 to the latest Socket A Thunderbirds and Palominos.

So read the guide and get the maximum from your AMD chip!

SysOpt has now an overclocking database that will give you an idea of what to expect. Don't forget to input your results to the database too!!

02/09/01

Quake 4 released!!

To many gamers delight, Activision and id have officially announced Quake IV. Voodooextreme has posted the news in this article.

02/09/01

Storage news!

Serial ATA specs were finalised so expect the new interface to hit the market this time next year.

The Greek Gods of optical devices (that's CDRInfo) posted an in depth article on the quality issues between Z-CLV and P-CAV burning technology. A must read, find it here and watch out for the annoying noisy ad!

02/09/01

P4 at 2.0Ghz and Tom's lowest ever!

Most will know by now the release of Intel's P4 2.0GHz part. Many reviews appeared on the web, I'll only link anand's and Tom's reviews.

The latter comes after a barage of poor reviews at Tom's, like this terrible CDRW review and this even worse 90 and 99 minute media review. These two are the worst reviews I have read for some time at a professional site like Tom's and I think demonstrate the low point the site is going through.

The P4 review causes some controversy though as Tom sounds biased towards Intel. Such claims may not stand considering his bias towards AMD this time last year, but people have hinted that the bias follows the bill payers... and that's bad.

I have to say though, that I liked Tom's Who's screwing who article.

02/09/01

New Celerons at 1G and 1.1GHz

As the new Duron based on the Morgan core (same as the Palomino but with 64KB L2 cache) was released at 1GHz, and reviewed all over the web (see anand's review) Intel has also released the 1GHz and 1.1GHz Celerons. The Celerons were not very popular in the web reviews and the only review I could find for the two new CPUs is in german at this site. The numbers speak for themselves (keep clicking on the Weiter link at the bottom for the next page :) It appears the 1G and 1.1G Celeron finds it hard to match the Duron 900 and in many benchmarks even the 850 part.

02/09/01

AMD and PR Rating?

It's all over the web now and most likely it's not just a rumor. The idea is to market the Athlon with a model number instead of the MHz speed, and in this way the 1400Mhz Athlon would be the model 1600, to reflect the fact that it's equivalent in speed to a P4 at 1600MHz.

My opinion doesn't matter here, you can find more detailed information about the scheme on the web, but make sure you read Van's comment here as he gives an insight that is not as obvious to anyone.

04/08/01

Forums are up!!

The new FORUMS are now up! Hosted, maintained and administered by Mntsnow this will be a great place! Already full with tips and tricks for Windows, great discussions on techinical matters, overclocking, network and let's not forget the lounge.

You are welcome to sign up!! and turn this to a great place. See you there....

04/08/01

Maxtor announces ATA133

It was kind of expected by many while others thought ATA100 would be the last parallel ATA interface. To be honest it's a marketing move (note here by Quantum's labs, now part of Maxtor) since ATA133 will not add any more to the already far from saturated ATA100. With current PCI design being limited to 133MB/s that practically gives aroung 110MB/s (depending on the chipset), the bandwidth increase from ATA100 to ATA133 will be marginal, and certainly unnoticeable

The new interface however brings two new features that will make it worthwhile as an update rather than an upgrade. The first is CRC error checking (like SCSI) which adds to the data integrity and makes IDE storage safer. The second and more important is the break of the 137GB limit on disks size by current ATA interfaces.

There you go then, expect it to hit the market this time next year, but with Intel not embracing the ATA133 interface, expect a direct jump to SATA "inside" your Intel PC in 2003.

Read the full press release here

04/08/01

Sandra's games

Van Smith at his site reports how Sandra finds it difficult to decide what optimisations for the P4 are fairly compared to the powerfull FPU of the Athlon.

Read through and decide yourself... Pay a visit to the main site for some excellent analyses and news by the master of IT journalism.

04/08/01

Burner Decisions?

The Greek storage masters at CDR-Info have posted the first review of the long awaited Plextor 24x burner. It appears Plextor delivered again, but this time there is a catch!

Days earlier the review of the LiteOn 24x burner was posted here by them as well, and a quick read through the two reviews to compare reveals that the LiteOn is a better burner overall. Now this should not come as a surprise! LiteOn worked it's way to the top of the "value" manufacturers with it's past burners considered best buys for a long time now. Same with their DVD drives (reviewed here by Ian at CDRLabs), and now are settled as a manufacturer of great products at a very competitive price. And with their new deal to supply Dell with some 300,000 burners they look very strong as well.

In all fairness I should say that the Plextor drive comes with 2 year guarantee (EU only) and it's more than likely that a firmware update will solve all problems faced by the reviewers.

I'd wait for Ian's review at CDRLabs before I made my final decision.

You can also read my thoughts on the Z-CLV vs. P-CAV burner issue at the forums.

07/07/01

Swap file??

If you still have questions about setting up your swap files, icrontic.com has posted a great article that goes to the extra mile on the matter.

A must read for perfectioninsts and/or people interested on the subject, you can read it here.

01/07/01

Dual AMD setups!!!

This review at Anandtech about the new Athlon MP and AMD 760MP based motherboard by Tyan, is a must read.

Read it from first page to last! It's amazing what AMD has managed to pull off with this one. Enjoy it!

Also at Anand's a great review on IDE RAID. Read it here.

01/07/01

I have found (ok, old news but it's worth it) a great hard disk benchmarking tool at Atto's site. This tools will benchmark your hard drive using different sizes of data chunks. This way you can select a cluster size when you format, and you can tune your RAID setup to the highest performing configuration. It's a MUST HAVE.

You can download it direclty from Atto downloads page (there is a "subscription they ask for, so the link may not always work).

As always, I have a local copy but always check for updtates before getting it.

ATTO Express-Pro tools come with a tuning utility (I presume it sets the cacheing of the drives, but only works for SCSI devices). I tried it but did not notice any difference, but you can try it for yourself.

01/07/01

Tekram users:

LSI ftp site has posted a nice tool to diagnose your SCSI card.

It sets power managment individually for each device, but most importantly it changes the disk R/W cache.

I tested it in windows 98SE and it works great (as it's supposed to). In Win2K Pro, after I changed some cache settings and rebooted I got a nice blue screen (complaining about the evian.sys which is my onboard Promise ATA100 power managment dirver). It could be either that the utility does not work in Win2k (after all it's under win95/98 folder at LSI's site), or my Win2K is a bit of mess (which it is), or that it conflicts with my Promise driver. I think you should be cautious before using it with Win2K anyway.

I also kept a copy of the utility localy.

03/06/01

I have started following the Storage Review forum. This is the most active forum I have seen for some time, offers great help on problems and technical issues, staff of the review site offer their knowledge and experience, and tens of established members contribute to a high quality discussion.

Don't miss out on this one if storage matters is your primary concern. Just click on discussion on the main page.

03/06/01

ASUS A7V and A7V133.

New firmwares for the two motherboards, with a few added features for finer tunning and troubleshooting, new Promise BIOS (built 39) for the A7V and most importantly added Palomino support

Yes! the A7V series will support the Palomino out of the box. Obviously, unless the current multiplier settings are remapped, overclocking through the multuplier will be impossible. Even with the newer 1.3G (and 1.4G in a few days) the multiplier should be set to AUTO for them to operate at the marked speed. With faster CPU's on the way, the multiplier adjustment we all bought this motherboard for will go away!

For your firmware needs and downloads see German ASUS site.

05/05/01

No news this week for me as I had a very bad month (see my Jazz page).

Just make sure you update your links to Juggernaut's site and fforums.

My Astronomy page is now updated for month May so take a look.

01/04/01

If anyone is using a Tekram U3W SCSI card and is hunting for W2K drivers, read this:

The drivers (ver. 1.0, dated 7/5/00) listed at Tekram drivers site will work but depending on your SCSI devices sync mode may be disabled! I had this problem with my Pioneer devices (DVD-303 and U06 CDROM) and my Plexwriter 8/20. After digging the web for drivers, I found them at LSI's ftp server. I have only used the Windows 2000 dated 24 January 2001 (w2k1010.zip). They work at least as well as the ones by Tekram if not better and they solve the sync problem.

Make also sure you have updated the card's bios to the latest 4.18b0 from Tekrams site.

1/04/01

01/04/01

On the A7V front, the latest official 1007 BIOS release is a must for ultimate performance and stability so get it from Asus and flash it (at own risk)

Some people report success with the FXD (fixed) hacked bioses from braziliantech.com that claims to fix the high idle temperature issue on Durons. I tried it on my 1.01 A7V but I noticed no difference with my Duron in W2K (didn't tried w98). Read more at Juggernauts forums.

1/04/01

18/02/01

The first official OPEN MEDIA SYSTEM DVD was announced this week from LiViD. All Linux users can download the first ever DVD player for Linux. This is the result of a great effort of people that with very little resources put together this program. I remind you that they still fight against the big companies for licensing, so they need all the support we can give. Follow my link of DVD myths for starters.

Visit the LiViD page here to download the DVD player and other software.

18/02/01

05/02/01

Get it from here (1002A version) and flash it at your own risk (sorry I just had to say that).

Follow the discussion in the Forums here, here and here.

20/01/01

18/01/01

03/01/01

03/01/01

01/01/01

01/01/01

27/12/00

23/12/00

23/12/00