Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Nvidia 6600 Chipset incompatible with Sharp LL-T2020B monitor?

EXAMPLE PHOTOS

I built a new intel-based pc. I bought a ASUS Extreme N6600 Silencer, based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 chipset. I ran into the same problem with my last pc. It appears that any nvidia chipset that tries to talk to my Sharp LL-T2020B monitor won't work at any reasonable resolution. If I turn it up at all (using either the nvidia manager or the control panel) I get horrible ghosting/trails/jittery images. These are the examples I've photographed. If I turn it up to some higher settings (like the recommendd 1600x1200 the Sharp manual calls for) the monitor blacks out and says, "out of timing; 47 hz V, 48 kHz H" and I have to restart and change the resolution.



The sharp manual includes a list of Hsync, Vsync, and Dot frequencies for each of the display settings in Digital Mode. (I only use Digital Mode -- analog mode looks even worse, almost unreadable). However, my nVidia manager offers no way to control these settings, at best controlling a refresh rate (60, 70, 75). the higher the refresh rate, the viewer resolution options are presented.

On the last computer I "solved" the problem by installing a Sapphire/ATI card instead of nVidia. On this PC I was hoping tha tI could instead just adjust settings until it works, but I have run out of settings and ideas to look at. ugh.

I'm dying for suggested fixes.

ugh.... just found another nvidia menu. there is a "Advanced Timing" menu... it has a lot of scary parameters that remind me of XWindows. I even have to agree to a disclaimer threatening potential physical destruction of my monitor... Unfortunately the options are not matched to what my simple sharp manual had....

mode and timing

timing standard

flat panel scaling
HORIZONTAL PIXELS

front porch

back porch

sync polarity

sync width

scan rate

active pixels
VERTICAL LINES

front porch

back porch

sync polarity

sync width

scan rate

active pixels
...finally
interlaced mode
pixel clock (not adjustable0

ugh.......... wtf to do ?

---

OTHER FORUMS:

anandtech

Posted by Nils Blutig at 08:32 PM | TrackBack

In the middle of a massive computer meltdown and rebuild

So I have posted a few Christmas photos for everyone, but don't have much time for more emails and photos right yet. Hope to have more sooner than later.

The future of computing

If you have bigbandwidth, check out this google earth application, tracking the deadly Sydney/Hobart yacht race. It's totally stunning. This is the sort of futuristic science-fiction stuff that is becoming real every day. Amazing.

ho ho ho

plus

equals

Twelve Days of Christmas

Ling has been giving me a Christmas gift each day for each of the last many days. Today was a great one

"36 Quai Des Orfevres" a French action/drama movie. Definitely one of the coolest movies I have seen in a few years. Similar suspense and action and style as Heat, for example.

Wish I was near a public library to find out

So what happens if I request "I Fucked Alec Baldwin in His Ass" through interlibrary loan?

Wish you were here

So this was the dinner I made for five of us tonight:

1)Ttray-baked tomatoes in a casserole full of garlic, basil, and balsamic vineger. I cut crosses into each of the tomatoes (roma and vine-ripened from japan) plunged a fresh bay leaf into each cross, and sprinkled w/ olive oil, salt, pepper. Baked for an hour. Amazingly the balsamic vinegar and tomato combine so that nothing tastes sour.

2) Pancetta-wrapped scallops (skewered with rosemary stalks) covered in olive oil and thyme, pan fried on a bed of mashed celeraic (celery root). Holy fucking hell -- epiphany -- mashed celeraic, olive oil, salt and pepper tastes an order of magnitude better than mashed potatos. It has a totally marvelous flavor that isn't a function of just adding tons of milk and butter like normal mashed potatos. In any circumstance now I am going to favor celeraic over mashed potatos. Only problem is that a bulb of celeraic makes 5 small servings and costs ten dollars as opposed to a 10$ bag of potatos that would make 25 servings. It's worth it, though, try it.

3) Finely-sliced maguro (top loin of a blue fin tuna (less fatty)) cured in grapefruit juice (sort of like ceviche) served on a bed of fried glass noodles and covered in a chilli padi, grapefruit juice, spring onion, coriander, and mint.

4) Homemade foccacia of cherry tomato and sliced green olive with a pesto emphasizing the lemon vector. This was definitely the most beautiful dish -- the foccacia baked up looking like something from a cookbook.

5) Homemade "paneer" (indian cheese) blended with carrots, chilli padi, and coriander, pan fried and served with coriander and freshly shredded carrot. Paneer is made by bringing a gallon+ milk to boil, turning off the heat, and adding a glass of white vingar. It curdles and separates, leaving you with slightly sour white indian cheese.

All this taken with an ok bottle of non-oaked chardonnay. The warmer the chardonnay got, the nicer it tasted.

Waiting downstairs is 25$ worth of rasberries and blueberries with I am going to turn into smoothies once I get some room in my stomach. I have this monster Magi-Mix food processor that allows me to make all sorts of wonderful things these days. (I hand-kneaded the foccacia dough, for the record, but only because I forgot the kitchen-aid mixer has a dough hook)

(I must confess, every one of the recipes except the Paneer was from "Jamie Oliver's Kitchen" which Ling gave me recently. Another marvelous book. The paneer recipe was from an episode of Jamie Oliver's Twists tv show.)

Google's Picasa compatibility witha Buffalo TeraStation

I seem to be having a lot of problems with my Buffalo Terastation and running Picasa on a PC mapping some of the buffalo's drives to lettered drives on my desktop.

There isn't much clarification on google's support page:

Picasa is only able to manage image files stored on fixed drives (internal hard drives), external hard drives, and some mapped network drives. Picasa is not compatible with Novell or Mac formatted network drives.

Picasa cannot currently manage pictures permanently stored on removable storage media like USB flash drives, memory cards, or CD/DVDs. However, Picasa can import pictures from most of these devices.

Would be nice to know if the mapped Buffalo drives were included in that "some mapped network drives" column.

My Terastation is in a RAID 5 condition using an XFS filesystem. XFS is not a Novell or MAC-formatted network drive. I believe it's based on SAMBA linux filesystem, so it should be quite ok.

I am trying to scan the terastation again, but instead of telling Picasa to WATCH the folders, I am just telling it to read them once. Maybe that will reduce the number of issues.

Other telemetry:

TeraStation Name TERROR TeraStation Description TeraStation Firmware Version 1.12 Current Date and Time 2005/12/16 17:9:35 Time Zone GMT+08:00 Windows Network Workgroup / Domain Name DESERT AppleTalk Function Enabled AppleShare Network Zone Settings FTP Server Function Disabled NTP Function Disabled Disk Sleep Function Disabled Email Alert Notification Enabled Fan Status Normal (922 RPM)

As far as I can tell, I'm only having problems with the TeraStation when Picasa is working. The failure mode is either: 1) picasa hangs or 2) the Terastation goes into a many-hour-long diagnostic self-check.

Sometimes the Terastation gets mad and seems to disappear from the network:

An error occurred while reconnecting M: to \\Terror\media Microsoft Windows Network: The network path was not found The connection has not been restored

---

UPDATE 2/2/06: Found some basically-dead support forums for Buffalo. What a bummer

Luke's newest trick

A few new photos on flickr today

Seng Choon Farm Instant Eggs

When I goto pharmacies or gas stations I usually buy Ling a treat of mints or chocolates. I was driving on fumes Friday and stopped at Mobil to fill up. Laying on the counter next to all the mints, and chocolates, and other candies was a box of Seng Choon-brand "Instant Eggs." They were packaged in plastic, stored at room temperature, and apparently were ready-to-eat. For only 70c I bought one and popped it in my shirt pocket.

Somehow Ling was not impressed, and the egg has been sitting on my desk all week.

I had an itchy mouth tonight and decided eating the Instant Egg might be a good idea.

Check out the pictures as I open and consume the Instant Egg. They tell the whole story.

The Hired Help

In order to employ a maid (Foreign Domestic Worker [FDW]), Singaporeans are now required to take an online 'eLearning' course to prove that we know that we shouldn't burn, beat, scald, torture, starve, steal, or molest the maid. You'd think think people would know those things innately, but read the papers, and you'll find out that, no, in fact, many don't.

Anyway, Ling was tired after a dayful of Luke so I said I'd do the 'class' for her. Oh what a tedious forty minutes of pdfs and slow-to-load "quiz pages" but I eventually finished it. I only missed a single question, some stupid thing about locking window grills when the maids clean the windows. It made no sense to me now or then, but who cares -- we don't have window grilles and I don't live in a condominum.

Anyway, my favorite section of the text:

• To avoid misunderstandings, male members in the household may want to exercise caution when relating to their FDWs. In same cases, the males avoid being alone with the FDW during odd hours of the day when there is no one else around. Most leave the management of the FDW to their wives/ female members of the household, and also take care that they are appropriately attired when the FDW is present. Situations of the male members of the household sleeping in the same room as the FDW, or being massaged by the FDW should be avoided.
• We have also heard of cases where the FDW was employed to look after an elderly male, who became ?touchy?. As employers, we must exercise vigilance.

Mother, keep your hands away from the Pool Boy!

ebay.com.sg.sucks

I get envious reading hooptyrides and seeing all the cool shit he digs up at yard sales and things. Today someone told me they bought an ipod nano from ebay singapore, which reminded me that site does exist. Perhaps I could find some cool stuff there.

No.

No I cannot.

It's almost all garbage and the minimum bids are outrageous. And it's not just me saying they're outrageous. In many categories you'll skim through pages and pages of entries and see literally no one bidding on anything. It's shameful. I guess when the population viewing your auction is so tiny you have to start out with a reasonably high opening bid lest you sell everythign for a $1. Though on the other hand, it looks to me like lots of people are doing no selling at any level. I can't even imagine why these people bother.

And lord, the site loads soooooo slowly. Ostensibly it's a singapore server with better bandwidth.

Yuk. Tedious to browse, and anything you find is a ripoff anyway. About what I'd expect from a bunch of greedy Singaporeans.

(plus the selection sucks... try finding antique radios or cool tools or antiquities.)