2Inside HDD LogoFix for problems with Seagate Momentus XT

Published by & filed under Misc Hardware. Last updated .

I’ve had prob­lems with the new Seag­ate Momentus XT hard­drive in my new­est HTPC.  The PC was lock­ing up every 48 hours or so (which may have been related to standby), was occa­sion­ally jerky, and upon reboot would often refuse to boot with an error about a miss­ing boot device, which could only be fixed with a hard power cycle.  There is a firm­ware update for the drive to SD25 but this did­n’t resolve the issue.  How­ever, after I changed the power man­age­ment set­tings in Win­dows 7 to nev­er spin-down the hard­drive, the prob­lems all went away.  Success!

Update (14-Sept-2011).  Seag­ate has released firm­ware SD28.  There are reports that this fixes sev­er­al issues and is a worth­while update.

0MCEBuddy LogoMCEBuddy — v2 Beta 14

Published by & filed under Misc Media Software, News. Last updated .

MCE­Buddy 2 Beta 14 has been released.  It’s the first release in a long time that is a com­plete pro­gram.  It also includes offi­cial x64 sup­port.  There are still some major issues remain­ing, but with­in those lim­its it should be an excel­lent solu­tion for con­vert­ing wtv files and strip­ping adverts from them.

0Dell 3130CN LogoExcellent utility to fix Epson printers

Published by & filed under Misc Hardware. Last updated .

I had a prob­lem with an old Epson Stylus Photo R200 print­er.  Des­pite being loaded with paper and fresh genu­ine ink cart­ridges, the unit refused to print.  The 2 red warn­ing lights on top were flash­ing altern­ately.  After con­sid­er­able googling I dis­covered that this error code is related to the ink cart­ridge clean­ing well.  Appar­ently it gets full of ink after a cer­tain num­ber of head clean­ing cycles.  As usu­al with cheap inkjet print­ers, the warn­ing is based on a counter, not on the actu­al full­ness of the clean­ing well, and the error can be bypassed by reset­ting the counter in the print­er.  The good news is there is a util­ity which will do just that.  Although it does­n’t list sup­port, I can con­firm that the util­ity does work fine on Win­dows 7 x64, so I believe it should work on every ver­sion of win­dows since Win­dows 95!

0Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case LogoComparison of HTPC GPU’s

Published by & filed under Media PC Hardware, News. Last updated .

Anandtech has an excel­lent art­icle com­par­ing 4 bot­tom end GPU’s for HTPC’s.  The art­icle is extens­ive and does a good job of explain­ing issues of fram­er­ate tim­ing, cadence detec­tion, tele­cin­ing and pull­down as well as com­par­ing the 4 GPU’s.  As we don’t believe in rein­vent­ing the wheel — we recom­mend any­one build­ing a HTPC setup read the art­icle before set­ting out.

0AMD Vision Fusion Premium LogoFusion E‑450 coming

Published by & filed under Media PC Hardware, News. Last updated .

Semi­Ac­cur­ate has news that AMD are to immin­ently release a new Zacate mem­ber of the Brazos plat­form.  Accord­ing to pre­vi­ous inform­a­tion on Anandtech and Hex­us the E‑450 is clocked at 1.65GHz (up from 1.60GHz) and has graph­ics clocked at 600MHz (up from 500MHz).  It will also reportedly sup­port high­er speeds of DDR3 memory, and fea­ture some kind of turbo.

0FFmpeg Logoffdshow DXVA fixed

Published by & filed under Codecs, News. Last updated .

DXVA in ffd­show, which was [int­link id=“937” type=“post”]broken for the last few builds[/intlink], appears to have been fixed, at least in the 3878 x64 build from 11th June.

5Highly tuned Arcam Alpha CD playerUpgrading an original Arcam Alpha

Published by & filed under CD Players & DACs. Last updated .

Back­ground

This old stal­wart dates back in design to about 1989 and I believe mine was made in 1991.  The Arcam Alpha uses one of the first DAC chips around, the fam­ous TDA1541(A).  Here’s a good page ded­ic­ated to play­ers fea­tur­ing this chip: Lamp­iz­at­or guy.  The author of that site is fam­ous in DIY circles but misses a few import­ant tricks when modi­fy­ing CD play­ers.… Read Full Article

0PSU LogoPSU Efficiency 4 — Modern gaming PC

Published by & filed under Misc Hardware. Last updated .

This art­icle on PSU effi­ciency for a mod­ern sandy bridge gam­ing PC fol­lows on from 3 pre­vi­ous art­icles, about PSU effi­ciency for a medi­um power serv­er, a medi­um use very high power gam­ing PC and a low power serv­er or HTPC.
… Read Full Article

0PSU LogoPSU Efficiency: worth the upgrade? part 3

Published by & filed under Misc Hardware. Last updated .

This is the third install­ment in a series of art­icles address­ing PSU effi­ciency.  Art­icle one focused on a [int­link id=“76” type=“post”]theoretical new server[/intlink], art­icle 2 on a [int­link id=“77” type=“post”]typical desktop PC[/intlink].  This art­icle will focus on a cur­rent real serv­er, and intro­duces a new PSU — an 80+ plat­in­um model.
… Read Full Article