2008

Sat, Mar 15

<21:10 EEST> Here's to hoping that the third time is indeed lucky. I got the replacement motherboard on Wednesday, though busy with other life I've been a little slow to bring it up to speed. For example yesterday I got the display to work via DVI. Of course the display is crisper up close, with absolutely no colour bleeding between adjacent pixels, but it's mainly a matter of principle; the main uses for the monitor being videos and games ;)

This Intel-based Mini-ITX mobo is the one I really wanted all along, and it didn't turn out much more expensive or power-hungry. The price difference was pretty much due to the separately bought processor, which I got for 50 euros used. I would have been happy with something similar to the Pentium M in my laptop, but the Socket M mandated a somewhat newer processor, even allowing a 64-bit Core 2. Those, in turn, I considered too expensive for now, though I always have the option to upgrade. Another reason why I settled for a 32-bit Core Duo was the sharing of binaries with my laptop.

As for power consumption, my existing 80-watt supply works just fine, despite some warnings. Due to successful undervolting, the CPUs seem to consume surprisingly little power even at full load, and stay at a cool 35 °C with fan speed at minimum. Comparing to the previous experiences, this suggests that the chip consumes less than the 20 watts of the Via C7 :D

Thu, Mar 6

<23:44 EEST> Censorship is a great thing. Instead of dealing with social problems, you can just sweep them under the rug. These problems, of course, include websites that criticize censorship. My ISP must be an outright supporter of child porn, since it happens not to bend over for the big brother and its ban list.