Geforce 6800GT Super Cooling

CardMod01
Originally uploaded by ModestOne.

While cleaning the dustbunnies from my videocard's stock cooling setup, I decided to pop off the stock heatsink/fan assembly and have a look around. I found a very sloppy thermal paste application, and horrible pads for the ram.

I decided since this card will eventually be water cooled, and the stock stuff removed, I may as well come up with my own aircooled solution. Hopefully it will preform quite a bit better than the stock cooler.

Tonight is the testing night, hopefully it doesnt blow up.

My quest for making a "Gaming Pod"

I have wanted to have a semi enclosed "pod" specifically for computer usage/gaming for a long time now. The idea has been thrown around many many times, and has always seemed like something that would be easy to do, and have a great benefit. However its just one of those things I have not gotten around too. Now that I have a full sized arcade, I need a "cockpit" like enclosure as well!

I want to design it in such a way, that it is not only great for gaming, but also can make for a productive workstation as well. The main objectives? A semi enclosed environment, that can remove unwanted distractions, as well as act as a sound buffer. Full access to all types of control/computer input that would come to be expected in a workstation, and gaming environment.

Anyways, these are some photos from across the net of a particular design I like. While it is not enclosed, it can be made to pretty easily.

Dual monitors in Ubuntu

On my laptop I go from using dual monitors during the day, to just the laptop display at night. In Windows this usually happens pretty seamlessly. However Ubuntu does not seem to have a very evolved interface for setting up and using dual screens. I had to do a little digging to find the necessary information to get everything how I wanted it.

The requirements were;

• Dual Screens (duh)
• An "extended" desktop, not "cloned"
• Automatic detection of monitors, and automatically set up X windows for single or multi
  

I got most of these things working within short order, but getting automatic detection / configuration took a little more looking. I am going to try to include all the information required here, but will also link off to the pages that I found the bits of info.

The "xorg.conf" file, located in "/etc/X11/" is the main config file for the display system of Xorg. This file contains the information for monitors, video cards, X screens, and the instructions on how to make them all work together. The first thing most people should do is plug in their second monitor and run "sudo xorgconfig". This should make X scan for hardware and update the Xorg file accordingly. This way all the info needed for your two monitors and video devices will be in there. It will probably be cloned, and it defiantly will not auto detected/adjust at boot.

unfortunately that step did not detect my additional monitor on my IBM Thinkpad, however it did work for my co-worker's laptop. Try it out and see what you get. I had to manually enter the information for my monitor.

I am not going to go into full detail on how to get all of this working, instead I am going to link to the pages that I used to get what was needed, and supply my own config files for use/examination. This way I don't have to re-hash what they already go through.

This page here has a very good xorg.conf file, and a guide to the file. Here you will learn how xorg.conf works, and what means what. This xorg.conf file is almost identical to mine.

This page here has lots of information, a little ways down is information about dual monitors, and below that is a guide on getting what is needed for auto detection of the monitors. This page also contains the script and packages needed to get it all working.

The auto-detection relies on a couple small packages, and a simple script. It also requires that you make two extra xorg.conf files. One for single screen setup, one for multiple screens. Mine are named "xorg.conf.single" and "xorg.conf.multi". You then register the script as a startup script that. It runs before X windows, and checks through the "read-edid" package to see if there is a second monitor hooked up or not. It then moves over the appropriate xorg.conf file to replace the last used one.

The script will need to be edited to indicate your two xorg.conf files, and their location. All of this information is available through that last page.

While this may seem complicated it really isn't to bad. I do however, hope that the Ubuntu developers incorporate something like this in their next release!

Ubuntu, Linux for all

So I have decided to jump back into Linux, with the intention of really only messing around a bit, and seeing how some things have come along in the many years since I used it exclusively. Ubuntu has changed all my "intentions".

I intended to partition my laptop out so that I could dual boot from there, play around, and be back into Windows when I inevitably get frustrated trying to make things work that just don't want to play nice in Linux. So I went ahead, reformatted, partitioned out a small section of my drive for Linux, and installed Windows on the rest. I then proceeded to decide what distribution of Linux to use, and ultimately decided on Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).

After going through the VERY nice install procedure for Ubuntu, I prepared my self for the inevitable, at least a couple hours trying to get sound to work, or WiFi to work, or networking, or video, like I almost allays had to do in the past with Linux.

To my complete surprise, I heard the Ubuntu start up sound. "Well that's a good sign", I thought to myself. I then started thinking about how much of a pain it was going to be to get Linux drivers for my IBM Internal WiFi card. Only to look up by my clock and see that Ubuntu apparently has already jumped online through my WiFi and found 3 system updates ready for download. WHOA! Not only did it get my card configured, and working properly, without any input from me, but it also has an automatic update feature! Awesome.

So far so good with Ubuntu. Seems to be a very refined Linux desktop. It is clear that they are trying to bring Linux to the masses, and are doing a great job at it. There are still some things to learn with Linux if you are converting from Windows, with no Linux experience. But with Ubuntu, it takes care of all the pain in the ass things, and lets you learn the parts that are fun and interesting.

Expect to see more posts about Ubuntu in the near future!