Why I'll Never Buy Another GigaByte Motherboard

From :
Dennis Bareis [ me@gmail.com ]
Sent :
1/15/2008 13:58
Question :
Works OK with Windows XP. Remember computer shop telling me about bios bug and conf setting needing disabling. Had to reset to defaults. BIOS has 2 identical settings for LAN ROM (another bug?). In any case booting linux (Ubuntu) either hangs or doesn't recognise the network depending on which combination of the 3 LAN related options I enable/disable (2x2x2 = 8 alternatives).I was looking for a later firmware but can't find it on your site. If you know what the issue might be with Linux or what the setting is that would be a bonus...
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I have just discovered CTRL+F1 for advanced options. Now there is only 1 LAN related option in advanced/standard modes! Also F6=Safe defaults doesn't appear to work at all anywhere. Do I need to reset some persistent memory?
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Model Name : ga k8nsp
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M/B Rev : cantfind
BIOS Ver : f13
Serial No. : cantfind
Purchase Dealer :
C/tick Number :
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VGA Brand :
Model : CPU Brand : AMD Model : 64 3200+
Speed :
Operation System : Linux SP :
Memory Brand :
Type :
Memory Size :
Speed :
Power Supply : 400 W



Answer :
Dear Sir, Thank you for your kindly mail and inquiry. About the issue you mentioned, after checking the model name, the board is a OEM model. Due to the board has special H/W design/BIOS, we are afraid that we cannot provide the proper suggestion/solution for your reference. Therefore, we suggest you contact the shop/reseller you purchased this system before for more help later.At last, if you still have any further suggestion about our products/service, please do not hesitate to contact with us. We will try our best to help you ASAP.******** Thank you for supporting Gigabyte products ***********



From :
Dennis Bareis [ me@gmail.com ]
Sent :
1/18/2008 15:57
Question :
Thanks, but this is the last Gigabyte board I will ever buy.



Answer :
Dear Sir, Thank you again for your kindly mail. Your valuable feedback is the motivation for us to improve and serve you better. If you still have any further suggestion about our products/service, please do not hesitate to contact with us. We will try our best to help you ASAP.******** Thank you for supporting Gigabyte products ***********

GPS Receivers for the TREO 650

I recently borrowed a bluetooth GPS receiver and played with Tom Tom version 6 software. After realising I liked what I saw (and that I wanted a more sensitive GPS receiver) I decided to do some googling. It was surprising how little information there was on GPS systems on the PalmOs... Hopefully the information here will help people in similar trouble.

The GPS I borrowed was a BTGP-38 that was bought very cheaply on ebay. This immediately worked once I chose a nice open spot to test it. I was thinking about buying one of these for myself but didn't like that the fact that the unit didn't have auto-off and I thought I'd try for a more sensitive unit with a better chipset.

I was really keen on the QSTARZ Q818 but had seen posts about problems with palms (vague, no details). The manufacturer didn't know which is a pity as it sounds much better than the BT338 (auto power off AND on for starters).

I bought a GlobalSat BT338 for twice the price of the BTGP-38 and got it working reasonably quickly (but not immediately). It is a more sensitive unit but shorter running time and heavier. It works in many places where the other didn't as it can handle much weaker signals.

Since buying my GPS I have since successfully tried the "Holux GPSlim GR236".

My main tips:

• Pair the bluetooth device first (phones bluetooth configuration). Most (all?) devices use a key of "0000" (four zeros).


• A Palm program will ask you which device you'd like when establishing the connection. If you have not been asked it must either be being remembered (check app config) or something is going wrong (some apps can take a while to prompt for GPS device). Tom Tom 6 in particular is a major "pain in the but-t" (I've taken 30 minutes to get it going at times the first time and I have done it many times...) and for bluetooth devices has no supported way of entering baud rate or choosing the trusted device, stupid, but it will eventually ask (and I think its better not to have the TREO attached to USB cable/cradle)...


• If using a Windows laptop or PDA you will need to create an outgoing COM port to that specific GPS device so when an application wants to communicate with the receiver it will know which trusted device it needs to talk to when esablishing the serial connection.



• If you haven't been asked for (or configured) the baud rate and you are having trouble, then its possible that your application doesn't autodetect it (or is failing to do so). TomTom 6 is buggy in that it has no way of specifying baud rates for the device, what I think worked for me with the BT338 was changing config to a hard wired device, this prompts for baud rate, after entering this correct device to say is a bluetooth device and "Bobs your uncle"... Check GPS doco for correct baud rate (38,400 for the BT338).



• Once a bluetooth session is established (see GPS receiver documentation for what the LEDs mean) I recommend moving to the clearest outdoors location you can find and trying to get the app to work. The GPS receiver will probably not work well indoors, around tall buildings or trees. If that works try walking and/or the car.



• Initial connections can take a very long time. I have seen mention of 5 and 10 minutes. Leave it alone for a while, try to find a test progress or screen which shows satelite information (position/signal strength etc).

Belkin USB 2 File Transfer Cables

When I read the review about this cable I was excited! However as usual reality set in (this never seems to happen to hardware reviewers...).

> The Belkin usb 2.0 File Transfer Cable provides the perfect solution
> that allows you to copy files from PC to PC without the need to install drivers
> when used with Windows ME, 2000 or XP.

Yeah, right, the first thing I had to do was install the drivers and then a "laplink" (PcSync) transfer program (for WinXP SP2).


> Simple drag and drop operation.

Another classic, not only are there no drive letters for drag and drop in explorer but the "you buet" transfer program required me to create a batch file so I could quickly create the destination directories rather than add an extra step to its million step process for setting up each pair of directories I wanted to syncronise.

After this it crashed in many interesting ways which makes me conclude:

* It has a problem with long (but obviously legal) file name/path lengths
* It has problems with large amounts of data
* It has problems with large numbers of files.

Error messages are hopeless, the confirmation screen tells you virtually nothing and progress indication where not wrong is misleading and is in any case minimal.

So how did I fix it? I threw it away and wrote a batch file which uses the free Microsoft "RoboCopy.exe" program to do the copy.

Haven't seen such a piece of cr*p in quite a while. They really excelled.