Squaresphere

From Gundam

Very very nearly there now, just a few more weapons to do, some tidying bits, then it’s onto transfers and decals. Can’t say it will be as good as this one mind, but I like to think it’ll be close. http://fichtenfoo.com/gallery/FF-StrikeNoir, check out the review, http://www.dalong.net/review/mg/m100/m100_i.htm

The next project is a Hi-Nu MG kit which I managed to snag from HobbyLink Japan, for a decent price. Considering how hard it was to get hold of the kit, I’m pretty pleased.
Hi-Nu Gundam review, http://www.dalong.net/review/mg/m99/m99_i.htm

Nor did mine when I rebuilt my main rig on Sunday! I had been getting a few BSOD’s recently with my Netgear WG311T wifi card, saying that IRQ_NOT_LESS_EQUAL which is a little annoying as it seemed to be totally random. Well, at least since I moved to using a SpeedTouch modem/router on my new ISP rather than my old Netgear WGT624, which I left at home.

It got me thinking that having worked with the WG311T under Linux that the chipset is actually made by Atheros and they do in fact distribute their own Wifi drivers! Hazaa.. so after the fiasco with Netgears terrible drivers and the fact that during the age of WinXP64 they flatly denied that they would ever make 64 bit drivers they now are.

Just to put this into perspective of just how lame Netgear are at software, don’t get me wrong the hardware is pretty good. Just have a look at these examples.

WG311T Version 5.0
Fixes and New Features

* Added support for Windows Vista.

Known Issues

* 108 Mbps is not supported in Vista

..and as if that’s not bad enough..

WG311T Version 4.4
Fixes and New Features

* Fixed Blue Screen issues
* WHQL Certified version

..and then the crowning glory of the whole thing, (caution incoming geek joke) the driver installation instructions. http://kbserver.netgear.com/release_notes/D103110.asp. Yes really. They actually expect you to physically remove the card every single time you want to install or update the drivers, honestly some people. Anyway I digest.

My hunt for a working set of Atheros 64bit drivers sent me here after a quick google. http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14833 , as you can see the WG311T is listed as one of the support chipsets, so yey! The strange thing happened when I right clicked on my computer and clicked Manage, to get into the Device Manager. When I tried updating the card’s drivers and pointed the new driver wizard at the folder into which I had extracted the shiny new Atheros drivers, nada, nothing zilch! Oh t3h no3s.. no drivers found.

Well that’s odd as it’s totally the right driver. Next thing, uninstall that sucker! So right clicked the network card and uninstalled it from the system. Next thing is to now manually add a device. So jump into the Add Hardware wizard and pick a Network Adapter. Then when you get to device selection, simply select “Have Disk” and point at the folder where you extracted the new Atheros drivers.

Now for some reason there is an athr.inf and an athrx.inf, now I have no idea what the difference is, but I used the one with an x in because it’s clearly EXTREME and so much cooler Then lo! Vista stops with a giant red warning that these might not be the correct drivers! Well.. Man 1:0 Vista tbqfh. So say okay and the device will install and you’ll then be able to connect to your preferred wifi network!

I have not had one single crash so far on these drivers, and that’s having left Steam running all day. Although as you might notice from my previous post it probably didn’t tax the network as much as it should have done

I caved into temptation yesterday and bought myself a Master Grade Gundam model. I plumped for the Strike Freedom Gundam Full Burst Mode model at 1/100 scale, so it stands about 59cm tall!

It’s on backorder at the supplier so might take a few weeks to arrive, but it’s something to look forward to. Makes me think of all my time spent with lego as a kid. Although I did kind of underestimate the complexity of the build, there are literally thousand of parts involved. Sure does look interesting though. I found a review with a whole bunch of pictures of all the parts, check it out.

I got one! Mesarim managed to persuade me that getting a cheap second hand unit from Gamestation for £99 with a game was well worth it. I started on my age old diatribe about how they would be good if they were open and you could actually use them for what they were intended. He informed me that thanks to some dark magic jiggery pokery there is Open Edition firmware to unlock the unit and allow you to use it as it was probably intended by those who designed it before the Sony corporate suits got hold of it. I also nabbed a matt black faceplate from DecalGirl and now have a fully featured and functional PSP

Running 3.40-OE firmware, I am currently playing Final Fantasy 7 (psx version), Zelda: Link to the past (snes) and Wipeout Pure (psp) all from one memory card! I have to say, this coupled with the built in WPA enabled WiFi and internet browser make the PSP a great unit to own! It’s quite shocking the amount of potential that this machine has and that Sony have locked away from all their local fans. Shame on you Sony.. again.

The new set of nVidia release drivers are out now for the 8 series of graphics cards. The jump from 90 to 100 has come from 94 to 158, with the 158.19 drivers being released now. A great deal of fixes for GTX users and various issue for the 86xx cards. Find the Windows XP 32 versions at, http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_158.19.html

Installed

Originally uploaded by Neon1024.

New year and springtime bring upgrades and preparations for Crysis, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3 and Hellgate London. As an aside, after a fantastic presentation by the CEO of the Hellgate London development team Flagship Studios, Bill Roper, I am utterly enthused about Hellgate London and would happily bill it as the closest you will get to Diablo3, and well well worth keeping an eye on. I have a pre-order myself, but I digress.

I have uploaded some photos of the new pc to my Flickr account for people to look at. Not much at the moment, but I will update them as I get more used to fiddling with GIMP on my Ubuntu machine.

One tip I would give people if you are looking to update your pc to the new architecture, such as SLi, please do make sure you buy the right motherboard! I managed to buy an ATI Crossfire motherboard, which of course did not support nVidia’s SLi technology. No big deal as nVidia haven’t yet released any SLi drivers, so you can only really use one graphics card at the moment. I have to admit the performance of just the one card is superb. Running Command and Conquer 3 on maximum settings with 8x Anti-Aliasing is pretty impressive.

Ok, so having just forked out for an entirely new system I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of all the parts tomorrow (with luck) the breakdown is as follows.

• CPU: Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz 1066FSB LGA775 4MB cache Retail inc.Fan (3yr Manufacturers Warranty)
• MOBO: Asus P5WDH Deluxe Skt 775 i975X DDR2, PCIe16, dual GbLAN 1394 8ch.audio SATA/RAID0/1/5 WiFi Supports Intel 65NM cpu) ATX Motherboard
• RAM: Geil Value DDR2 2.0GB PC6400 Dual Channel memory kit (2 x 1GB) 800MHz (5-5-5-15) +Aluminium heat spreader, ATI Crossfire Ceritified
• HDD: 500GB Samsung SATA II 300 Hard Disk Drive 16MB cache 7200rpm oem
• SLI GFX: 320MB XFX 8800GTS, PCI-E (x16), Mem 1600MHz, GPU 500MHz, 96 Streams, 2x Dual Link/DVI HDTV
• DVD: Samsung SH-S183L Black DVD +/-R/RW Lightscribe DL SATA OEM SH-S183L BEBN
• CASE: Antec Full Case Nine Hundred Black Black full tower case +widow 3 x120mm and 1 x200mm fans ATX NO PSU
• PSU: Antec Truepower Trio 550W PSU TP3-550 GB PSU

Looking forward to building it all in time for i30, not sure if it will travel to lan with me due to issues with the drivers from nVidia and the 8800 series of cards. Piccies and build log to follow!