AsierArranz.com » Tecnología / Technology

MovilForum 2009, 1st day

Asier Arranz — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:53:24 +0000

I’m back, finaly I didn’t write from Madrid, you will know why later… ;) MovilForum has been great, I have met many interesting people who have very good running projects . I’ve also been testing HTC Magic and especially the Nokia N97, which I was eager to see it.
I have also been able to attend to a presentation about Nokia WRT Widgets and the Ovi Store.

The bus from Bilbao takes about four hours, and the first thing that I feel in Madrid is a tremendous heat (36 º C in the shade). I go to the Round Communications station by subway (¡Ironically there is no coverage in the subway station! !) and I arrive at the “City of Telecommunications,” is a complex of buildings of futuristic design with double glazing and have a central space with a large pond and a fountain that throws water to about 30 meters, all very green and wooded, with ducks! Here you have a panoramic shot that I get:

Panoramic shot of the views:

I enter in the building and after the check-in I meet with Open Movilforum frineds, who have the stand there. The venue is not too big but there are many exhibitors, mainly from mobile terminals and logistics services and fleets control.

I plug the laptop, in this case a good NETBOOK the Asus 1000HE, maybe one day I will post about it, it’s awesome with its 9 hours and a half of real autonomy, and the demos start …

PyNoki and NiiMe

The main demo that I went to present was PyNoki, it uses Open Movilforum API’s from Movistar to be able to locate people and to establish automatically 3G connections through an SMS. Surprisingly NiiMe attracts more attention, it might be because is more attractive to use the accelerometers to drive a car or navigate through Google Earth . The afternoon was very entertaining :)

At 7 pm I went to the hostel, a hostel for bloggers (¡¿?!) that Open Movilforum reserved for me, It was great for the price that have (26 €!) . It has a single bed, all furniture is new, the bathroom in the room is very clean and new, and especially it has a very well placed desktop with network cable included. The hostel is Hostal Martín . Highly recommended!

I was hoping to keep writing the blog that night, but Ildefonso Open Movilforum invited me out to be with a group that was in the Dakar Madrid making a presentation about Second Life by Wilhelm Lappe . I did more informal demos about NiiMe for those who were there, while taking some beer. We spent a good time :)

A day and a night with very good atmosphere, but there are many interesting things to tell that occurred on the second day of Movilforum 2009.

(To be continued ..)

Solve the “White Screen of Death” in Acer Laptops

Asier Arranz — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:20:20 +0000

After a month of inquiries, it seems that I have found a solution. Until now, many models of Acer laptops suddenly display a white screen (called “white screen of death”), this usually happens after a couple of months after purchase.

It’s very difficult to identify the problem because it’s a random error, so I start to work in the solution because I prefer to touch my computer instead of sending it to the service. Many users have sent his laptop to the Acer Service and have returned with the same fault, with the screen replaced!!

I will send an email to Acer. Tehy could sen me an Acer Timeline as gratitude xD (If you are looking for lightweight laptop have a look)

I leave you with the disassembly video and photos in which is shown the exact point of the connector of the screen on which you must to exert pressure indefinitely. I used a paper folded several times , as simple as useful …

Ideally, a piece of rubber, but the objective is to do pressure (not much)

Open the laptop
Click here to view the embedded video.
Find the conector of the screen (the larger)

Put over it a non-conductive thing (folded paper, rubber…)

Close the lid carefully (first fit the side nearest the keyboard)
While we’re closing, watch that you are not moving the point of pressure and that it continues pushing the connector
And eureka! SOLVED! , I have been over a month without white screen, before, i saw the white screen sometimes every day and sometimes every 2-3 day. A few days ago and before publishing this, to make sure I removed the paper and … white screen!

Greetings to the unofficial Acer forums! I hope that this solve the problem for you! ;)

How to overclock to the maximum a nVidia 9600M GT (8600M, 9700M, …)

Asier Arranz — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:57:20 +0000

Today we are going to put our nVidia 9600M GT to its maximum performance, which hold up to 140% of its initial capacity!

Graphics cards essentially have 3 “clocks” at different frequencies, the GPU (core chip that makes all the calculations), the DDR memory (where textures are stored and read) and the SHADER (which processes each pixel individually parallel to the GPU)

There are two ways to overclock these graphics cards, hardware (BIOS flashing) and software (nvidia software)

Now we are going to the heart of the matter, if we overclock the card is best to keep the GPU:DDR ratio and DDR:SHADER ratio, I’ve seen many overclocks that work very well without caring this proportion, but if we do this we will avoid bugs (black screens) and the scores in 3Dmark will rise proportionally to the overclock, this will not happen if we went up with the GPU and not with the DDR, etc …

Therefore, for the 9600M GT we have this values (see at http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA -GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html )

Core Speed 500 MHz
Shader Speed 1250 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz

Well, I have tested some configurations an I carry the core to 660 MHz mantaining the proportion (AND ALWAYS GETTING WITH THE DIVISION NATURAL NUMBRES WITHOUT DECIMALS).
I had 5600 marks before and now i have 7636 !!!!

500 / 1250 = 0.4 SHADER
500 / 800 = 0.625 DDR

For 660:

660 / 0.4 = 1650 MHz
660 / 0.625 = 1056 MHz

So let’s open the tool and put the values [660 / 1056 / 1650], sit over a couch in order not to fall, and watch the 3Dmark score!

The method to make a hardware overclocking

And to make a software overclocking [Download this nVidia tool]

If you have any doubts post it into comments

Changing the processor of the Acer 5930g (P8400 to T9600)

Asier Arranz — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:12:21 +0000

Hello to all, today and specially to the Acer 5930g forums. I’m going to change a P8400 processor, and we will put a T9600 instead.

Remove the laptop battery
Remove the screws on the back cover
Remove the cover with a plectrum, or anything similar (made of plastic)

When opening the cover, we must locate the 9 screws of the heat sink (2 in the chipset, 3 in the processor and 4 in the graphic adapter)
BE CAREFUL with the graphic adapter screws, because they are very soft, and you will ned a good screwdriver.

Now remove the two tiny screws from the fan (warning, they can fall into the PC, and if this happen, you must dissasembly more parts
We must take care with the heat sink, we must have some skill because it’s a little fit, but once removed the fan it’s easy

Release P8400 processor with a flat screwdriver, giving 3/4 turn to the plastic screw,you must hear a “click” and it will be released.

And here are the two monsters :) , one sais “goodbye” and the other one sais “hello”.

Clear the graphic adapter contact surfaces with alcohol

The 9600M GT core cleaned!

Now use the thermal grease, it will be better to spred a little into the heat sink and a little (very little) in the chips (very spread)

DON’T REMOVE THE DEFAULT GREASE FROM THE GRAPHIC ADAPTER MEMORIES because they need to be into contact with the heat sink. I only added a little more of thermal grease.
It’s also recommended to clean the heat sink with alcohol

And that’s the end!! All is ready and mounted, now we must power up the computer and enjoy with our T9600, soon I will write about the benchmarks into the 3D mark, and how to OC the graphic card to the limits. Now I have 7614 marks!! A NEW RECORD!!