Tequila Fish

I just installed FreeBSD 5.4 on my Abit AA8-DuraMax, but I’ve run into some troubles with my networking. It seems that the on-board NIC doesn’t properly detect when a cable is plugged in. ifconfig shows it as “status: no carrier”

I know it’s not the router or the cable, because they both work fine on other machines. The 8100S chipset is listed as supported on the FreeBSD 5.4 Hardware compatibility list, as well as the man pages for the re driver.

Some other weirdness: If I plug the ethernet cable from the BSD machine to another machine’s NIC, it is properly detected. It only doesn’t detect when connected to my router. Also, if I manually set the card to 10baseT/UTP using ifconfig’s media parameter, it also works. It doesn’t work on autoselect, or any other media setting besides 10baseT/UTP.

Anyone have any ideas? Some info:

Note: Be sure to read my Update to this post

When trying to update my shiny new iPod via iTunes on Windows XP, I kept getting the following error:

The iPod would lockup and I’d have to reset it to get it to work again. After some research I found the cause: Write Caching was disabled on my hard disks. Because iTunes tries to push as much data as possible as quickly as possible, Windows was unable to keep up, resulting in the error.

To enable Write Caching on your hard disks:

Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Disk Drives > Properties > Policies > Enable Disk Caching

Note that this option was unavailable to me (greyed out), and after some research I realized it was because I had the Intel Application Accelerator installed, which turns OFF write caching and prevents you from enabling it. So after a quick uninstall of Intel Application Accelerator and a quick reboot, I was able to enable Write Caching on my hard disks, and now the error is gone and my iPod is updating as expected.

I’m in the process of “upgrading” my desktop, and part of that upgrade includes a cooling overhaul. My desktop is a loud bitch, and my goal was to cool it as best as possible… and more importantly, as silent as possible. As part of my plan to lower the case temperature and get rid of the front air intake fan (as recommended by AMD’s Cooling Guide), I decided to order some Nexus Memory Heatspreaders from EndPCNoise.com to cool my RAM.

Installing them seems easy enough, so easy in fact, that I ran into a few problems.

First, you must ensure that when sticking your RAM onto the adhesive tape, you line up the RAM exactly in the middle of the heatspreader casing. While this may seem blatantly obvious, even a slight millimeter deviation from center can cause problems when seating your RAM back into the motherboard socket. One of my RAM sticks was slightly off-center in the heatspreader, making it impossible to re-seat the stick. The overhanging edges of the heatspreader were preventing the RAM clip from properly locking into place and seating the RAM. I ended up having to use a pair of pliers to bend the overhanging part of the heatspreader to make it fit.

Second, do not seperate the two pieces of the heatspreader when sticking your RAM to it. The heatspreaders have a little hinge at the top, and in order to close the heatspreader over your RAM, there needs to be a slight bit of head room for the hinges to slide into place. I made the mistake of sticking one half of the heatspreader on my RAM first. I wrongly positioned the RAM flush up against the top of the heatspreader, but this prevented the other half of the heatspreader from clipping back on! Think of it as a 3-ring binder: if you put too many papers in the binder, the binder won’t fully close. I ended up having to attach only one hinge, and the other one (that wouldn’t slide into the other hinge) I had to bend up with a pair of pliers. The provided clips hold both sides of the heatspreader in place well, so I’m not too worried about it, but for a moment there I was worried that I’d have a RAM stick with only half of a heatspreader.

Finally, that adhesive tape is amazingly sticky. If you mess up placing it on your RAM, there’s no going back, so make sure you do it right the first time!

So let this be a lesson to you if you’re installing heatspreaders on your RAM - it may look like an easy no-brainer, but it actually requires quite a bit of attention.