2013 Computer Build

Decided to build myself a new computer. I’ve upgraded everything less the keyboard and mouse. I’ve tried to go with top-end parts.

Monitors (x3): Dell Ultrasharp U2412M 24″ 16:10 IPS
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell
Liquid Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H110
Video Card: EVGA GTX780 Superclocked w/ ACX Cooler
Motherboard: Asus Z87-Pro
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (8GBx2) DDR3-1600 CL9
System Drive: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD
Game Drives: Crucial M4 128GB x 2 (256GB raid 0)
Storage Drives: Seagate Barracudas 3TB x 4  (6TB raid 1)
Power Supply: Corsair Professional Series Gold AX850
Case: Corsair Obsidian 550D Quiet Mid-Tower
Speakers: Logitech Z906 5.1 THX Speaker System
Headset: Sennheiser HD280 Pro
Mouse: Logitech G700s
Keyboard: MaxKeyboard Nighthawk X8 Cherry MX Brown

 

Here are a few shitty pictures in case you don’t know what computers look like.

IMG_1359

The computer is hidden behind the desk.

IMG_1375

 

 

Programming a 4D Systems Serial Display With an Arduino Board

I’ve just begun working on a new project and I’ve very briefly been playing with a 4D Systems serial display (the uLCD-32PTU to be precise), ordered from Sparkfun. I figured there was no way I was gonna drop any coin on their proprietary 4D Programming cable, because from what I read it just uses a standard FTDI chip. Fortunately I had my Arduino Duemilanove kicking around, which has the USB interface with a built in FTDI controller (as do most Arduino boards) .

This one’s dead simple, so long as you have a removable ATMega chip in your Arduino.

For Arduino’s with removable chips:

  1. Remove the ATMega chip
  2. Connect +5V, GND, Rx, Tx, and RESET straight from the serial display to the appropriate, matching pins of the Arduino’s header. You might mix the Rx and Tx up like I did the first time around; Rx on the display goes through the line marked Tx on the included 5-pin header cable and connects to Rx on the Arduino (so, ignoring the cable, Rx to Rx). Same idea for the Tx line.


If your chip isn’t removable, it’s more complicated (and might not work):

  1. Disable the ATMega chip by tying the RESET line to GND.
  2. Do the same as step 2 above, but do not connect the RESET line.
  3. The 4D Serial Display requires a momentary RESET pulse before the code can be loaded onto it (this is the DTR leg of the FTDI controller). Unfortunately, the DTR leg was tied to GND in step 1. You’ll have to manually trigger the RESET on the serial display right before it’s programmed. To do that you have to connect the display’s RESET to GND momentarily, right before the code download is initiated. It’s a matter of good timing (and would really, really suck for development purposes).

 

Of course, this could be applied to any board that is programmed through an FTDI controller. Hope it helps someone.

Shadow

Shadow passed away last night at the age of 13.5. She really was a great friend. She was incredibly energetic, always showing off her toys, always looking to play a game. Whether the game be catch, or tug of war, or simply trying to avoid being fooled… “Who’s here!? Go see!”… she always loved to play. And yet she was so caring and emotional. If I were upset, she’d come nestle her head under my arms looking for a smile. When I came home from a semester of university, she’d ignore me for a few hours as her way of saying “Why the hell were you gone so long?”  My family has a lot of great memories with Shadow and all of her funny quirks. One of my favorite memories with her was going down to the river bottom.

Shadow’s all-time favorite place to go was the river. It was her Disney Land.

 

Her favorite thing to do at the river was play fetch with rocks. You could tell she considered herself a pro. She’d eagerly await a pebble thrown her way from the shore so she could show off her skills.

 

The pebble was too small for her to see sometimes, but once she heard the sploosh as it struck the water, she’d take off for it, sloshing through the knee-deep water.

 

Arriving at the drop zone, she’d start feeling around for the right rock. Sometimes it would take her several minutes as she sorted through all the rocks with her little paws, but she knew exactly what she was looking for.

 

Once she found it, she’d drop her head in for a final visual inspection and retrieval.

 

And then she’d erupt with the biggest boulder her mouth could possibly fit.

 

She’d carry it around for three or four paces just to show how awesome she is, then plunk it back into the water. It was very important to her that you immediately threw another rock for her to find, otherwise she would freak out. “THROW A ROCK I CAN’T WAIT ALL DAY.” (She took lessons from my dad.)

 

Pebble after pebble, she’d pull up the biggest rocks she could find.

 

Because little rocks are for sissies.

 

And Shadow was awesome.

 

 

 

But really, she just loved playing in the river.

 

When it was time to go, she’d downright refuse to get out until we were practically driving away.

 

Eventually she’d force herself to come out.

 

And as we drove away in the truck she looked incredibly sad.

 

But I know she had great memories of the river. And great memories of her life. I’ll always have great memories of you, Shadow.

 

Vegas!

I was in Las Vegas last week with my dad and sister. My dad took me there as part of a graduation present for completing my Electrical Engineering undergrad degree this April. We had a ton of fun. Seen a lot of things. Bought a lot of stuff.

Obligatory picture of Las Vegas sign.

Monday – May 1
Arrived in Vegas. Went to The Strip. Seen Mystère, a Cirque du Soleil show at the Treasure Island Hotel. As expected, that was incredible. Did not understand the story at all.

The view from our room in the Rio hotel. Pretty clear side view of the Strip.

Tuesday – May 2
Went shopping at the South Las Vegas Premium Outlet Mall – my dad bought me a suit from Van Heusen and I bought some new golf attire from the Nike store. Ate at the largest buffet in Vegas (which was in the Rio). Went to Penn and Teller illusion/comedy show – both my dad and I were called on stage on separate occasions! After the show, my sister and I went up to the Voodoo rooftop nightclub on the 51st floor of the Rio; coincidentally there was a huge group of Albertan’s there.

Me and my sister at the largest buffet in Vegas. I'm om-nomming some crab legs.
Getting our picture with Teller. The paper is the punchline to a joke used in the skit with my dad.
And a picture with Penn.

Wednesday – May 3
Went on an all day bus tour to the Grand Canyon. Our bus driver, Mike, made the 3.5 hour drive to the canyon a blast; he was hilarious the whole way. Checked out Hoover Dam. Went on the Skywalk. The Grand Canyon was amazing. The Skywalk, however, was just silly. I heard it was a 4000 ft vertical drop through the glass – turns out it’s between 500 to 800 ft. Felt like 50 with the glass as scratched as it was. Got back and went to the Strip again; can’t understate how incredibly massive and glamorous it is. I don’t normally like drinking, but I had a Havana and Banana colada from Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville and that thing was tasty.

View of Hoover Dam from the new bypass bridge.
Me, lookin' good on the bridge.
Me, checkin' out the uhh... the canyons.

 

Back in Vegas on the Strip with my sister and some parrots.
A nice picture of the Strip that my sister took.

Thursday – May 4
Went shopping at the same outlet mall again – my dad bought a suit for himself. Later at night we went to Freemont street. It’s kinda neat with the roof being a gigantic screen. I put $20 into a slot machine and lost it. Felt bad. Watched my dad win in Blackjack. Felt good.

Freemont street.

Friday – May 5
Went shopping at the North Las Vegas Premium Outlet Mall. It was all outdoors – a very cool place actually. I ended up buying more golf apparel. Went to the Strip again. Afterwords my sister and I went to Absinthe, a small show at Caesars Palace. It was hysterically vulgar and featured impressive acrobatics. We got bumped up to front row seats which was awesome – one of the actresses gave me a little more than I was expecting…
Saturday – May 6
Started the long 18 hour drive back home. Got home on Sunday. What a great week.

August 2006 – Modding my computer case

[Back when I was 16, I guess I had nothing better to do than modify how my computer case looked. Here is a forum post I made.]

In the past 2 weeks or so,  I’ve been messing around modding my computer case and improving the things that I just didnt like. 

My case is (was?) an Aspire X-plorer ATX mid tower case. Here are pics with possible brief descriptions of what I’ve done.

First, here are some pics of my case before I did any modding to it:

Now here are quite a few shots of what it looks like now after many hours in the garage =P:

Here you can see how I stealthed the DVD drive. (among other things)
This pic shows the switches (in the 3.25" bay) I put in to turn off certain fans and the cathode lights so I can actually sleep at night. Also seen here is the 120mm fan I cut in (with a wholesaw, of course...) and the new mesh i made because the old thing was just fugly, IMO.
Another shot of the custom mesh cover I made, with the fans and light switches off ('Cause c'mon, I gotta show off the craftmanship here =P)

To make the mesh into the exact spot it belongs it took several steps. First i traced the outline of the old mesh with a pencil. Then i scanned the piece of paper to my computer. After a half hour of work, I finished the template. I took a peice of wax paper, taped wide masking tape to it, cut it to 8.5x11, put it in the printer, and printed off a template. I pasted it to the new mesh I needed to cut out. The black outside edge is what I needed to cut, and the red line was where i needed to meticulously bend the mesh.
Onto the side panel: I cut a much larger window out as you can see. For window trim i took 14awg wire and stripped the insulation off in a clean motion, and put it on the edges. It worked out quite nicely. It is held on just by the pressure of the screws holding the window on. In the inside I put a case temp display in the top right corner. I painted the chassis white to glow nicely and contrast the black case. I added a Zalmon CPU cooler. I painted the handle (w/e it is?) of the door white to add contrast.

I cut the top window out to match the side panel (notice the side window near the handle and the top window near the fan). You can see how I also windowed my dvd drive and I also took my Aspire PSU (I know you guys hate these PSU’s – jeez they’re fine IMO…) and slightly modified it so i could make it face up, so that you can see its clear case through the top window. The 80 mm fan I cut in couldnt have fit any better since there is little room between the PSU and DVD drive to fit a fan.

Here's a better picture of the top.

[Sidestepping a bit,  here is a different post I made about the DVD drive]

To the right is a picture of my DVD drive. This morning I woke up with ambitions. I decided to hack up my drive, wire some LEDs into it, window it, paint it, and hope it still works.

This is a blurry pic of my wiring for the LEDs, seen from the underside of the drive (without the cover on).
From the top view, you can see how I arranged the LEDs.
For the covers, I cut the inside cover (underneath the very outer top cover) to a allow for a lot of exposure of the disc. I cut the outer cover to a large rectangular shape.
I then cut, placed, and riveted some acrylic plexiglass to to the top. I painted all the covers white (my case chassis is white)

 [Now back to the original post…]

Here are a few before and after GIFs of my case.

A shot of the inside of the case.
Another shot of the inside.

Some mods worth mentioning that I never explained:

  •  removed the four lit corners on the front of the case and painted the clear plastic they were black.
  •  painted the power and reset buttons white to match the theme
  •  cut out the rear fan mesh and put a 120mm fan in

And finally… A shot of the entire finished product:

Suggestions, questions, and comments are extremely appreciated!

 

[The end. I was really proud of what I made and had a lot of fun. The computer is still being used today.]

HyperSLI: Enable SLI on a Crossfire-Only Motherboard

I built my computer a little over two years ago. At the time, NVIDIA (a GPU manufacturer) and Intel (a CPU manufacturer) were at odds with their licensing agreements, and I ended up being stuck with a Crossfire-only motherboard. If I wanted to use multiple graphics cards in parallel, they had to be ATI cards. Nevertheless, I purchased an NVIDIA GTX280 card because it seemed like the best card for the price. Lo and behold, earlier this year I completely forgot my motherboard was Crossfire-only and I bought a second GTX280 in anticipation for new games such as Battlefield 3. That was basically a $200 mistake.

Fortunately, a lot of other people also wanted SLI on their Crossfire-only boards, and someone created SLIpatch.  SLIpatch is great, but it has a few shortcomings such as requiring modified NVIDIA drivers for each driver revision. A few days ago the developer released a new tool called HyperSLI, which greatly simplifies the process and doesn’t require modified drivers. HyperSLI currently only works for motherboards with Intel processors, so if you have an AMD processor, you’ll have to stick with SLIpatch [Edit: Now works with AMD chipsets] . But if you do meet the requirements, here’s how to make it work:

  1. Install the latest NVIDIA drivers for your card.
  2. If you’re upgrading from SLIpatch to HyperSLI, just run the HyperSLI installer and click “Update”. If otherwise, just click “Install”. Simple.
  3. When the computer is rebooting, open up the BIOS. Most computers use either F1, F2, or DEL to access the BIOS. Look for something called “Virtualization Technology” and make sure it is enabled.
  4. When the computer boots back up, open up the NVIDIA Control Panel and enable SLI.
That’s it. Pretty easy.