Merry Christmas!

Christmas went well. The kids got gifts that they really like, Dan got a nerf dart gun game (most darts are already lost in the house somewhere), Emma got "Littlest Pet Shop" toys and Anna Marie got an I-Pod Nano which she loves. The biggest family gift we got was Sammy, a Budgie, which they all have a really good time with. The bird is still really shy but is getting used to its cage and the family.

So I also got a chance to work on one of the graphics cards. I re-soldered a few joints and was able to get better results out of it. It passed the initial tests but failed miserably when DirectX shaders were in use. The strange thing is that the OpenGL shaders worked flawlessly. I would think that the shaders for both API (OpenGL and DirectX) should use the same logic on the GPU so this is really puzzling. Basically I am using a simple pixel shader for bump/normal mapping and that same exact code is used (CG code) whether I am in OpenGL or DirectX. Maybe there is still a component outside the GPU that is having problems; something that is only active when DirectX shaders are being used. Unfortunately that is a big deal as all modern games use CG so the card is still pretty much useless. I'll have to start looking at the other card soon, maybe I will have better results with it.

Awareness

So my brother sent me an email about change. Basically it was a petition for Obama to change things and it specifies 4 goals:
* Move to 100% clean electricity;
* Cut our dependence on oil in half;
* Create 5 million new clean energy jobs;
* Cut global warming pollution by at least 80%.
The problem is that it doesn't give any way to accomplish these goals. Also, can you see the holes and contradictions? What jobs can be created? What about the jobs lost to oil? What electricity is 100% clean? How can you place a metric on global warming when it isn't even understood? Ideas without a plan just ideas. If you go to change.gov you will be able to see that Obamas' plans are mostly in line with this anyhow.

After going back and forth with with my brother on this it basically comes down to awareness. Aware of how we pollute this planet. Aware of how dependent we are on foreign oil. Aware that we need to develop new alternatives for producing power. Aware of our own wasteful habits and contribution to the problem.

Getting ideas out there will hopefully inspire someone to find a solution. Find a way to produce cleaner electricity. Maybe a way recycle nuclear waste. Or how about a new engine that runs on clean energy. I like the idea of "Mr. Fusion" from back to the future ;)

So here I am spreading the word. Be aware. Without change things will only get worse.

Annoyance

So earlier this week we get a visit from city ordinance. Apparently someone complained about our dead sunflowers so we were given 10 days to 'clean it up'. What's worse is that I've had a bad head cold this week. We have done the same thing for several years now with no complaints at all. So I had to clean it up being sick. At least I had help from the rest of the family. ;)

Electronics

So I was on the EVGA forums as this guy has 2 dead 7900 GTX cards that he wants to give away. I say "Sure, why not!" and aobut 3 weeks later I have them sitting on my desk! All the while I've been researching how to repair electronics to give me ideas on how to make these work. The #1 problem is typically blown capacitors which are easy to replace. Well, it's gonna be harder than that with these cards (I think the guy my know more about fixing them than I do). There are a total of 4 capacitors on the card and all look to be in good shape. So here's a picture of the cards:


As you can see they only have the heatsink on the RAM. He won an Alienware system and it came with water cooling so the stock cooler didn't come with them. So in order to test them out I had to put my cooler on them temporarily (I have a 7900 GT). Initial results show that one card may have bad RAM, not easy to fix. Basically the card had a hard time loading the test and paused between loading scenes which is what gives the hint that RAM is the issue. The other card started out great but slowly degraded over the testing, heat was a big factor there. Either the cooling wasn't sufficient (not as likely) or the voltage regulation is wacked. I will be doing further tests with that card once I can find a cooler for it. If anyone has one lying around I'll be happy to take it off you hands ;). The cooler for the GTX is quite a bit different from the GT that I have; both cover the GPU and RAM but the GTX also covers cooling of the MOFSET; that black heatsink that you see on the right of the card (which go really hot with both cards).

One thought with the card that worked at first is the RAM heatsink that is on it (the large copper thing on the board). If you look on the right side you will notice a black square that touches the heatsink just before it takes that 45 degree turn. That is a voltage regulator similar to the MOFSET under the black heatsink. Well, it does touch the heatsink, infact the heatsink is putting a little bit of pressure on it. It makes me wonder if that regulator went bad from the added stress, of course I could be wrong.

Also there are thermal pads between the heatsink and the RAM chips. Whoever it was at Alienware that put this together didn't pay close attention because most of the chips were not completely covered by the thermal tape. This was the case with both cards. Uneven temperatures across a chip can't be good for it. From what I understand about how RAM works it cycles power through it to keep the memory state. Electricity will flow through the chip which generates heat and temperature affects how fast the electricity moves; cold = slower, hot = faster. If this is right (again I'm no expert) then that would put additional stress on the chip causing it to wear faster. This may be the cause of RAM failure in the other card, of course it could simply be a bad solder joint too but solder joints on these chips are a ball joint that is heated and sandwiched for the connection and requires special tools to solder/re-solder.

Ok, Ok, enough babbling about electronics, I like challenges and this is looking to be a pretty good one. Hopefully I can get at least one card working :)

Hello World

Don't know how often I will be able to update this blog, my kids come first. In fact I don't even know what I'll end up blogging about, time will tell. The entries may be about my kids or as a software engineer I may talk about development. I'm also into music so I may post about compositions or about my endeavor to learn orchestration. Hopefully I'll update it often enough to make it interesting.