Author: andy

Juan Cole (Professor of History at the University of Michigan) on If America were Iraq, What would it be Like? Quote:

“What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?

“What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis?”

A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was really, really important that I spend a lump of money on upgrading my (home) desktop PC. After cautiously running the idea past Debra, who seemed surprisingly indifferent to such an important subject, I headed off to my favorite parts retainer (with Debra and Matthew in tow) in search of a new CPU, motherboard, memory, and PSU.

In the end I went for a 2.4GHz P4 with 1MB cache, a Gigabyte GA-8S655FXL, two 512MB sticks of DDR memory and a generic 400W PSU. This looked like it would be somewhat of an improvement over my existing home-built 850MHz Athlon / Abit setup. After we had a nice lunch at the nearby Eighth Day cafe I decided to prepare the system, removing any hardware drivers relating to the old mobo, but leave swapping the hardware until the following day. As things turned out, I needn’t have bothered – but I still managed to get it completely wrong.

The next day, after removing an absurd amount of dust from the case, PSU, and boards, I got the hardware swapped-over. I should admit here that hardware makes me paranoid: I always use an earthing bracelet and am absurdly careful not to touch anything that might be damaged by static. I also work very slowly, double checking all the time, so it took quite a while. Eventually, though, there was nothing left to do but turn it on and see what happened. I’m always struck at this point by the thought that if it doesn’t work then I have absolutely no idea how to find-out why. Press the button… POST… Into the BIOS settings for a fiddle… Save and Exit? Yes… Windows 2000 starting… Then…

***STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF741B84C,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

Damn. Powered it down and checked everything. Re-fitted the old board, which booted fine. Three hours flew by while I tried numerous of combinations of memory, chennels, devices, and settings – all with no success. It just didn’t make sense: everything looked fine. Finally, though, after a lot of googling I had the answer. If you’ve grown tired of this tale (and frankly, I have) then you can just skip to the answer is here. Hopefully this will give it a little more Google-juice for anoyone else who has the same problem.

The BSOD was happening because I’d forgotten to uninstall the disk controller driver. Win2K can cope with most hardware changes, but if it can’t access the boot disk then it doesn’t have much option but to give up. In this case, it was expecing to find the old motherboard’s VIA chipset drive controller, and got upset when it couldn’t. The solution was to install the old mobo one more time, install the “Standard Dual-Channel PCI IDE Controller” driver, and then install the new hardware. The system booted fine. Ironically, as I hinted earlier, all the other changes I’d made the previous day would have been handled automatically by the plug-and-play support, so I needn’t have bothered.

So there you go. If you’re upgrading to a new motherboard, always uninstall the drive controller driver. Unless, of course, you really enjoy fitting motherboards.

Did you know that simply turning on a hair dryer will cause a crying, unsettled baby to miraculously fall asleep? I didn’t until Debra showed me. Amazing!

Did you know that simply turning on a hair dryer will cause a crying, unsettled baby to miraculously fall asleep? I didn’t until Debra showed me. Amazing!

Well, I warned you that something big was about to happen, and it did…

Our son, Matthew, was born on Tuesday 13th July at 8.22 pm, weighing-in at 8lb 6oz. He is, obviously, absolutely wonderful in every conceivable way. Currently, he’s keeping us busy with feeding and nappy changing and washing – basically pandering to his every whim. We’re coping okay so far, and just enjoying spending a lot of time with him. Life is good.

I thought I’d better write a quick update to reassure anyone reading this that I’m still here and still alive. I know that this blogs has kind of gone dark recently, but big things are about to happen in my little life and the preparations have left little time for blogging. If that sounds a bit mysterious then just hang on for a few more days and all will be revealed.

caustictech: A bit like Rory, but with more fucking swearing.

The WSJ has now published the full text (large pdf) of the memo advising the US government on how to circumvent the anti-torture provisions in international law. Reading it requires a certain capacity for accepting mutually-contradictory concepts. IANAL, but to me this reads like someone said to the authors: “We’ve got to torture some people. We really want to do it, but we think its illegal. You find ways to make it okay.” (Via DefenseTech)  #

Doc Searls points to a little gem of an article: An Inquiry into Living While Walking the Roads of America, Mexico, and Beyond (pdf), by Jeffrey Sawyer. Its the story of a guy who sold all his possessions, and just walked the back-roads of the US, surviving on the plants he found and the kindness of strangers:

“…money would come, and though at the time I didn?t really need it, turning it down seemed to offend the giver. The money also gave me an opportunity to find out how rarely it brought me a true sense of security. Some days I would give away all the money I had, to see if the absence of it made me miserable. It didn?t. Rather, the giving opened up my mind and heart to an abundance that exists regardless of whether one has money or not.”

Reading this was the best thing that happended to me today. Which is sad, but also true.

Intel Dump: Another smoking memo. Defense Department legal memorandum provided a roadmap for getting away with torture. #

This site has a fairly astonishing real-time cost-of-the-war display. It only covers the US, but my own little country must be spending similarly obscene amounts  (Via Tim Bray)

The Law of Accelerating Returns, by Ray Kurzweil. Okay, so this is yet more “the Singularity is nigh” stuff, but its rather well thought-out. (Via Wesner Moise) #

Ray Kurzweil’s hard-to-find RSS feed.