26 posts tagged “blackflame”

Tonight I opted to do a little more thorough testing of the memory used in BlackFlame after discovering over 100 errors while running memtest86 yesterday. So while watching Game 4 of the Flames-Sharks playoff series, I hauled out the beast and began.

The plan: Remove the new 'Patriot' memory stick from the system, leaving the previous two Kingston sticks in to ensure the Kingstons haven't gone corrupt on me (after all, they've been active almost non-stop since 2005).
Then, remove the Kingstons from the equation and test the Patriot stick on it's own.

My Hypothesis: The Kingstons would render no errors, the Patriot would produce errors after a while.

The Results? Exactly what I expected. After 47 minutes of memtest86 running on the Kingston sticks alone- no errors were reported. Since it was after the 35 minute mark of yesterdays test that errors began appearing, I figured 47 minutes into the test was probably safe to declare them 'working'.

I popped the Patriot stick in- even used a different memory slot than what it was previously sitting in. Within seconds of running memtest86, I had dozens of errors flood my screen.

I only bought this RAM 11 days ago from a local computer shop who has really made a name for themselves in Calgary. But their policies are a bit of a gray area I find. As the company has grown, I've found they have begun to adopt more of a 'big box retailer' attitude, including introducing their own 'Performance Plan' add-on services not unlike those found at places like Best Buy.
I did not buy the 'performance plan' service when I bought the memory. And the only mention I see on their invoice and website about returns or exchanges is simply: 'no returns of exchanges after 7 days'. I'm clearly over 7 days- and without having purchased their 'performance plan', I'm just expecting to have to put up a fight with them over this.

Quite simply- I don't want this 'Patriot' memory. I want to exchange it for a stick of Kingston. When it comes to computer parts for my own systems, I adopt a very strict 'one-strike-and-you're-out' policy. I run my hardware HARD, and if a manufacturer can't produce a product to keep up- then it doesn't deserve to be part of my rig. Period.
Patriot memory has struck out faster than any other part I've ever had to replace on my systems, so I don't want a new stick of Patriot- I want something that has a proven track record, and for me, that is Kingston.

But how much battle will I have to wage in order to get my way from this local retailer? Time will tell I suppose- though already I haven't heard back from them regarding my exchange request, so I'm not really expecting much from them at this point.

My parade of tech problems appears to have no immediate end in sight.
Now that my network is 'working' (to acceptable levels- still going back and forth with D-Link as to why my Nintendo DS can't get a connection speed any faster than a paltry 2Mbps), it seems that both the PVR and 'BlackFlame' have decided to be 'sick' now too.

The PVR, I suspect a hard drive issue. Nothing that has been recorded actually contains any data- just a black screen. We can no longer 'rewind' live TV either. How pathetic- just goes to show the true level of quality put into consumer electronics today.

BlackFlame's issue seems to be with the recently-installed RAM upgrade. I'm usually a stickler for certain brands. I've used Kingston memory in all my systems up to, and including, this one. So whatever possessed me to accept a stick of 'Patriot' RAM really did me a disservice. Things have been randomly crashing as of late- sometimes Firefox (still running 3.0b3- which I know is buggy, which doesn't help the situation obviously. Yes I know there have been releases since then- but that's an entirely other ball of wax I don't want to get into right now), sometimes parts of KDE, sometimes my entire X session!
Tonight I ran a test on the system RAM using 'memtest86'- a program I've trusted for many years. Within 30 minutes of the test beginning, the screen began to fill with red error messages indicating corrupt bits. A mere 45 minutes after the test began, memtest86 had counted 110 memory errors- all of which were in the higher area of memory- which belongs to the new 'Patriot' RAM.

Bad Memory

As of now, Firefox unstable to the point it's unusable- so I've resorted to using Mozilla Seamonkey in the meantime. Truth be told- after some of the recent discoveries with Firefox 3, I may be jumping ship to Seamonkey indefinitely.

I've been sick all this week. I started feeling it Monday afternoon, and by that night I was well into the throes of illness. Ange caught it too- in fact, we started feeling the symptoms at about the same time on Monday, so we've at least been able to suffer through it together. The only difference is that she still has to go to work, whereas I have the freedom to stay home and rest- and rest I did.
Unfortunately, after 4 days, I have yet to really begin to feel like I'm on the road to recovery. I actually don't feel all that terrible- but being sick around those who simply can't afford to be sick at this time of year has kept me in my own personal quarantine all week.
So this afternoon we decided to get out for a bit. I picked Ange up from work and we were off for an afternoon full of chores- but not bad chores.

Ange's laptop has slowly continued to rot. The DVD drive is completely unusable, and more recently, the wireless network card rendered itself completely unusable- it connects to my network, but at a paltry speed of 1Mbps, even when less than 2 feet from the wi-fi access point itself. A far cry from the expected 54Mbps.
So I backed up all the data to BlackFlame (using a cabled network connection) and took it back to Best Buy to cash in on our purchased 'performance plan'.
Browsing forums the past few days has revealed that the wi-fi problem seems to be a near-epidemic problem with this line of HP Pavilion laptops (Ange's was a model dv6000). And it's not a Windows problem- it's a hardware problem. Often times the motherboard needs to be completely replaced. I know plenty of people who have bought HP laptops similar to this one in recent months. I presume it's only a matter of time before their wireless network connections begin to crap out as well.

BlackFlame Upgrade

I decided to do a little self-tech support of my own with my workstation/server, BlackFlame. Nothing serious needed to be done- but my lone 1GB of RAM has become a performance hinderance lately- especially running both Linux and a Windows XP VM (virtual machine) concurrently. I added another 1GB stick of RAM to the system to bring it up to a more acceptable 2GB. I was a little weary about the upgrade since I've read mixed things about the memory setup on my motherboard. But the memory took to it like a fish to water with no problems whatsoever, and the performance difference has been very noticable thus far.
I also replaced my CMOS battery on my motherboard. Sometime last year, the battery died- and I've simply been dragging my feet to replace it. It hasn't been a real pain- but in the few cases where I've had to power-down the system, I've been forced to reconfigure my CPU speed and memory configuratation from (my) memory. I put an end to that tonight too, or rather, Ange did since her hands are small enough to get into the tight space and hold onto the quarter-sized battery. My big ape-like hands probably would have done significantly more damage.

Mario Kart Wii Preordered!

While I was out picking up dinner and a CMOS battery (just a typical Friday night outing for a computer geek)- I stopped by my local EB Games store... just to see if they were open. I decided that if they were, I'd pop in and reserve my copy of Mario Kart Wii. Sure enough- the doors were open, so I proceeded to reserve me a copy... and an extra Wii Wheel for an extra $10! (somehow I imagine I'll be picking up a few others shortly after launch as well).
There are a few games that I'd honestly love to pick up and go through right now- including Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 4. But I figured when it came right down to it- I don't have the kind of time to put into a game like GTA4 or even Vegas 2- but Mario Kart is always something quick and fun you can pick up and play for 20 minutes at a time and still make some progress through it. That's the beauty of Wii, really. While developers for XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 are hell-bent on creating 'epic' games that essentially require you to quit your job and give up food and sleep in order to get through them in a decent degree of time- Nintendo continues to stick to the idea that games should be just that: games, not 'epic' adventures or a form of virtual reality. Don't get me wrong- I still enjoy my 360 and the games on it- but in the past year the Wii has clearly received the bulk of my gaming dollar. And why? Because they're simple to pick up and understand- and most of all: they're genuinely fun.

I played the role of 'Dr. Hacker' this weekend- almost all weekend.
Late last week we picked up a new computer system that I'm using as a Linux-based server for an exciting up-and-coming project  for the family business. My plan was to dedicate the weekend to playing with it and get it completely up and running in order to get things moving along quickly. Friday I would get the OS installed to a point where I can simply login remotely from my laptop and continue setting things up from the comfort of the couch instead of having to stand over the system for several hours. Turns out that's exactly what I ended up doing anyways- standing over it for several hours.

Friday night we went out for drinks downtown after work with some people Ange works with- but it wasn't our regular stay-late-and-get-hammered routine (though I'm itchin' for one). By about 7:30 we were back home and ready to get into some serious geeking out- intoxicated, of course (it was Friday night after all). I hauled out the gynormous 19" CRT monitor that's been kicking around the apartment for almost the past year (replaced by the dual-monitor 'Hydra' setup BlackFlame currently has) and a keyboard- plugged it into the new hardware, dubbed thee 'BlueHorizon' and went to work picking away at hand-configuring/tweaking the system. Unfortunately, the Linux install went a little longer than I had hoped- but I guess anything worth doing is worth doing right and with diligence. But by hour #5 of standing on the hard kitchen tile floor (the only place I could hook up another system in our apartment), I could stand no longer. First I installed Slackware Linux 12 on a very conservative installation- installed nothing I didn't have to have and didn't run anything in the background that wasn't necessary to the basic functioning of the machine. Then I recompiled a custom kernel (2.6.23.8)- again, ensuring I didn't include things that I didn't anticipate the system needing- ie: audio drivers -in order to not bog down the system with unnecessary resources. And almost 7 hours later I finally got the system to the point of being able to login remotely. Time to sit down- finally. Everything was according to plan.

Saturday started well. Slept in- satisfied with a successful night before, and looking forward to forging ahead in the new server on the day ahead. But first, Ange and I went for an afternoon 'on the town' to run some errands- including lunch and gelato on 17th Ave ('the Red Mile'- hasn't been very 'red' in a while though) and even tanning! (getting ready for Maui) Had a good afternoon out- but were looking forward to another night in our cozy apartment on a Saturday night. I would sit on the couch and remotely work on the new server- while Ange sat on the couch beside me and caught up on some 'Super Mario Galaxy'. That isn't what happened.
Instead, I figured that since I was in the spirit of working in the kitchen on computers- that I should maybe haul out 'BlackFlame' for it's bi-annual cleaning. It's been acting up lately- specifically in struggling to reboot, so this would be a good chance to poke at it and see what the problem might be.
The dust was caked onto the top of the system- and this after running a Swiffer over it no more than a week ago. Gross. Inside, things weren't that bad- but I wanted to check the fans. Powered her on- the fans started spinning- no weird noises, looked like all was well. Until the fans started to stop spinning (almost in unison). The computer didn't actually turn on. Odd. Try again- fans start... and stop. *scratches head*

Sunday- I wake and think things through with a rested head. There were really only 3 scenarios: the motherboard was fried, the power supply (which was replaced just over a year ago) was faulty, or the video card shorted out- preventing the system from properly Posting. I tried removing the video card the night before- but because of the aftermarket cooling system we put on last year, which conveniently covers the locking mechanism of the AGP slot, especially for ape-hands like mine, I got nowhere with that. No way to really 'test' the motherboard for problems either- which led me to the power supply. I had the old power supply (PSU) in the closet- so we, or rather, Ange, swapped out the PSU's to see if the system would Post with a different power source. We didn't even bother installing it fully- just placed the PSU on top of the case- and removed everything else. We hit 'on'- and after the longest 2 seconds of my life- we heard the 'beep' to indicate success!!!
The power supply- an 'Antec Truepower 2.0 430W'- was causing the system to not properly start. The flashing onboard LED essentially indicates instability in the current to the motherboard, apparently.
We put everything back in properly to make sure it wasn't something else (a hard drive, etc) that was causing the short- but everything worked fine, and by this evening, BlackFlame was back in her spot under the desk.

But the new system, 'BlueHorizon'- setup was sidetracked because of the 'emergency surgery' today, but wasn't without it's own problems. The network connection seems to keep cutting in and out intermittently- which, considering that this machine is intended to be a server... sucks. However, I can't help but think the issue has more to do with my shitty 'D-Link DI-624' router that has decided to drop connectivity at random for the past few weeks- which is fun when you're in the middle of a long-distance phone conversation and your VoIP phone connection dies.
But it could also be a 'suspend mode' issue with the system itself too- since network traffic seems to go nowhere when trying to ping the system remotely- but the system beeps and appears to come back to life after hitting something on the attached keyboard. I can't ping it right away- but it does seem to ultimately come back. More tweaking it necessary this week it seems.

Still a lot of work ahead- but I'm satisfied with the work I put in this weekend. Feels like I accomplished something- and had fun doing it! That's always a positive.

Today I dealt with a competent person at UPS. Not only did she find where my package was, but was able to tell me where I can pick it up, what the depot hours are, and even directions! Consider me impressed! Turns out many others have been just as frustrated- probably moreso -with UPS. At the depot almost everyone in line had a problem with their packages. Either the C.O.D. charge was more than they expected, or the debit system was down, or the package was already put onto a truck to be sent out the following day... something. It seems everyone had a problem with UPS in some form. Inside the depot, they even had a sign posted on the wall stating their 'right to refuse service' in the event of crude language or otherwise rude and intolerant behavior. Apparently this has happened before.
Luckily my package was found relatively quickly, and with minimal hassles. I even shook the box a little to make sure I didn't hear pieces of it inside. I was pleased.

...

I was a little weary about picking up the monitor tonight- since it's been one of those days again where it seems everything I touch breaks. That seems to be happening a lot lately. The monitor kicked it off a few weeks back. It was then quickly followed-up by problems with the Wii not connecting to the Wiimotes- any of them! Our PVR has been on the fritz for a while now (we're not getting a bunch of the channels we should be), my phone still isn't great- still can't download midlets or other applications (like Opera). Last night I went to play a few games on the XBOX 360 for the first time in several weeks (maybe longer) only to be greeted with an error message and the 'red ring of death'. Somehow I remained unphased- almost as if I expected it to fail.
Today at work it was my turn to go back 'on-call', and problems started almost immediately. Our monitoring box (the computer on the network which is responsible for watching the network and make sure all the servers and network connections are up and running) failed. Of course, being the monitoring box, usually if a system goes down- it is the computer to send me a message on the 'pager' to notify me of a network problem. But it can't notify me if it itself is down. Luckily I stumbled across that problem and we were able to save the day- turned out the fan on the dated AMD K6-2 450mHz system failed and the CPU was overheating. More surprizingly, we actually had a spare fan for that specific CPU laying around! Disaster averted. Then this afternoon our entire network mysteriously went down! I've never heard the phone start ringing off the hook that quickly after a failure- literally seconds after I discovered the problem. Turns out it was a botched firewall script and we were able to get things back online quickly. So while things did act up today, we were at least able to resolve them. Even last night- I was able to get the XBOX working again, and the Wii has been fine ever since that initial problem.

So picking up the replacement monitor tonight could have gone either way considering the kind of day it's been. It could have been that the replacement monitor doesn't work at all, was damaged during shipping, had dead pixels, something... or it could be fine and continue the trend of resolving the problems that arise. Luckily what happened was the latter- and I'm happy to say that 'BlackFlame Hydra' has it's second head back! No dead pixels, no damage, no nothing. In fact, I think this monitor actually looks better than the old one did! Might have to do with the fact that I've been staring at a single monitor using an Analog VGA connection for the past two weeks, and now have a side-by-side comparison between the Analog and DVI connections- or maybe it's just that the new monitor actually works properly... but either way, the picture is amazing!

Unfortunately the stress of one situation was quickly replaced by another. And thy name is Microsoft- Office 2007 to be specific. Ange's laptop came with Office 2007 preinstalled- but only with a trial period. That trial period is now finished. Ange needs Office for work, and really I don't mind shelling out some bucks to (finally) have a legit copy of Office. Ironic, then, that the one time I'm actively prepared to part with hundreds of dollars to the 'Evil Empire'(tm)- they won't take it! Or rather, they send you into a mindless spiral to try and figure out exactly how to purchase a valid key for the software. I called their customer support- which, like my XBOX experience just after Christmas, had me in a discussion with an extremely robot-like representative who appeared to quiver like a deer in the headlights whenever I steered the conversation outside of the Microsoft-certified customer service script and actually have a conversation.
Why oh why do they ask me if it's okay to call me by my real name!? Next time I call I'll fuck with them and demand to be referred to as 'Colonel' or 'Loviepoo'.
In any case, calling customer service went nowhere- apparently I have to call their product purchases number, and they were conveniently closed for the day. But I was informed that I can purchase an activation key online! Cool- I like antisocial behavior, so I'll gladly take this route. That's when the chaos ensued. You see, Microsoft appears more than willing to provide you with a trial version of their software and let you take a stab at it for 60 days, but after that- it's almost like they want you to crack their software- because nowhere on their site is there an option that actually allows you to put in a credit card number and purchase the activation key. There's plenty of places where they tell you that you need to purchase an activation key and enter it into the field within Office itself- but nothing to actually steer you to a location where you can actually do the deed! Funny, every other commercial site on the web has a link to take you directly to the purchase page- sometimes even if you don't want to go to the purchase page- and yet the 'Evil Empire'(tm) itself... doesn't!?!?
Are we sure the temperature in hell hasn't dropped a few degrees recently??

Brown is the color of poo

UPS sucks!!! I'm in the middle of the custody battle between me and UPS for my replacement 19" monitor. Today was their third (and final) attempt to deliver the monitor- but duh, no one is at home... again! Get a clue guys! Seriously!

So according to their lengthy recording on their Canadian 800# (because heaven forbid you get to talk to a real person at UPS), they will now hold it for 5 business days at which time I can pick-up the monitor from their depot. Of course they don't tell you where the depot is on the recording- and there is no immediate option to talk to a real human being. And so- knowing that today would be the final attempt, I assumed they would relay this information to me on one of their sticky-notices. Nope. Just a rather large checkbox next to the bolded checkbox labelled 'FINAL ATTEMPT'. Naturally the American 800# is still conveniently posted for me- despite that I'll only end up being routed somewhere I'm not supposed to be, and end up calling the number I was previously given last week anyways. Is it seriously that difficult to provide information to your customers? Are the pursestrings at UPS that tight that they can't even provide appropriate contact information for the destination country? If I ship my buddy in Poland something- would his sticky-note still provide the American UPS toll free number?? Pretty fuckin' lame.

Had I known beforehand, I would have gladly shelled out a few extra bucks to ship the replacement monitor with another carrier. Argh. How frustrating!

You know that the kicker in all this is going to be? When I asked Samsung for the address to return the defective monitor to- they told me the address is included with the replacement monitor. How much you wanna bet that the address is already pre-printed 'for my convenience' on a fucking UPS slip??

*sniffle*

The second monitor remains off again tonight. I'm amazed how dark this corner feels without that second source of light.

My attempts to find out how to get this thing dealt with tonight fell way short. Apparently Samsung's technical support holds business hours (ET, of course), so calling at 7:00 tonight led me to an automated system that assumed I lived in the US. I request a list of service depots in my area only to be prompted to enter my '5-digit ZIP code' to which I replied C-A-N-A-D-A (yes, I realize that's 6). Disappointing.
Luckily their website was slightly more helping in providing me with an actual list of service depots in Calgary that Samsung deals with, so I'm hoping to call them and see if I can arrange to bring it in, or at least figure out what's involved with repair or exchange. The thing I'm worried about is the warranty. Out of the box, this SyncMaster 941BW comes with a 3 year parts & labor warranty. Pretty good! Every electronics outlet I've ever dealt with usually provide a 90, or sometimes 30-day warranty on all refurbished pieces... and an exchange almost guarantees you a refurb. So if the 'new' monitor fails in the same way early next spring... then what?
In a way, it might actually be worth it. Assuming it does last another 6 months from now it will be early spring and the already ridiculous price of a 22" LCD might be closer to the tune of $200. Maybe a 24" would be closer to $350, so by then I might not have an issue with upgrading to a new, larger screen.

In any case, I'm thankful that I'm in the kind of position where I can have two monitors and it doesn't make the computer unusable if the monitor dies- a year ago it would have been a different story. Plus I have my laptop, which I'm sure I'll be spending all my computer time on this weekend anyways.

But considering the kind of week it's been- adding one more thing to the list of 'things to do'(tm) doesn't help. It's times like this I wish my 'easy' button actually helped make things easy.

One of the heads on my workstation computer, BlackFlame Hydra, died tonight.
In fact- it happened just while I was preparing to post about how the part that sucks about long weekends is the tense, stress-filled week that follows as a result of not having a full week to get things dealt with- plus having to do the errands you couldn't do on the weekend because you were out of town during the evenings that week.
Just as I was preparing to really indulge- my right-hand monitor went completely white.

Initially I thought that some part of KDE had crashed for whatever reason- or worse, the shitty ATI Linux Driver decided to begin seriously crashing the primary display. I quit KDE expecting to get the usual dual-terminal display on both monitors. The left screen came up fine- the right side: still white. Oh shit.

I reboot the system to see if it could be the video card, or perhaps the signal (the cat has become quite friendly to the area where my cabling 'backbone' is- maybe he finally decided to start chewing the cords themselves). No change.
I completely shut off the system entirely- I get the 'Check Signal' message on the left monitor. The right one stays white. There is no signal, there is nothing coming up the cable at all.
In fact, I pressed the 'Menu' button on the front of the monitor- the one to allow you to change your monitor settings -and it didn't even come up! This is clearly a hardware issue.

This seems to just be yet another in an emerging stroke of bad luck I'm beginning to have with computers and electronics. My Samsung cell phone still isn't working properly (can't download midlets, 2GB memory cards are becoming corrupt, among other things), even the Wii started acting up tonight- we couldn't connect any of the controllers to the system (resolved by physically unplugging the system), and in the last few weeks my wireless mouse has become 'intermittent' resulting in a mouse cursor that doesn't always actually move when you move the mouse.

W. T. F. ???

Much more of this and I'm going to quit tech altogether and become a gardener.

Now that BlackFlame is largely up and running again, I decided to shift my attention towards a task I've been meaning to figure out for some time now- but never got around to doing. I decided to figure out how to implement a VPN (Virtual Private Network) with BlackFlame as the server. Why a VPN? I do somewhat need to know how to at least connect to a VPN so that I can easily administer any of the servers we have at work for when I am on call. So why not take is an extra step and figure out how to create a VPN network itself so I have a deep understanding of how this technology works.

Connecting to the VPN for work was easy- I was given keys and an appropriate mechanism to connect to the network, all I had to do was install the program on my systems at home and connect. It happened the first try- a rare thing for me. Usually I have to tinker and browse the web for a solution to some rare problem that only ever seems to affect my system. Not this time. WIthin seconds, I was connected and easily logging into servers on our network at work... from home! This isn't really anything new- it's just the way I'm connecting that is cool. Before, I would typically login remotely to an 'open' system on our network- a system designed to lie outside the protected structure of the network, and once there, I could subsequently login to most of the servers on the network. Using the VPN means I no longer have to login to that 'demilitarized zone' system.

Impressed by how easy the VPN software, OpenVPN, is to configure, I decided to attempt to setup a VPN for my home network. BlackFlame primarily serves as our home 'server'. It contains all of our music, pictures, and even movies. Until now, each of the laptops has been able to connect to BlackFlame over the local network, mount mounting/mapping 'network drives' in order to access this repository of data. But when we are not at home, that data is a little harder to get to- especially on Windows machines.
After a little tinkering, and following the extremely easy-to-understand documentation on the OpenVPN website, I successfully launched my first VPN- on the first try (again). Within minutes, I had created a VPN between SpitFire (my laptop) and BlackFlame. Setting up the network 'shares' on BlackFlame to accommodate the VPN took a little bit of work. Surprizingly, the Samba/Windows shares worked like a charm, but it was the NFS (Network File System) shares that took a little extra investigation on my part (both /etc/exports and /etc/hosts.allow need to be edited). But I got them both up and running and mounting flawlessly. I even took the extra time to write custom connection and mounting scripts for both systems so that the VPN server on BlackFlame is automatically launched whenever the system is rebooted, and to simplify the connection and mounting of remote network shares on SpitFire.

Windows 2000 BlackFlame

The VPN now allows us to be connected to our home data network from anywhere in the world- so long as we have an Internet connection. So far, it works wonderfully. Last night, however, I was really blown away. Prior to setting up the VPN, I had installed VirtualBox on BlackFlame, and installed my copy of Windows 2000 Professional (the only version of Windows I truly like), along with some of my old Windows software. VirtualBox provides a way to run a 'client' OS with RPC (Remote Procedure Call) support. Windows XP supports this technology natively, so does Windows 2000 Server- but not Professional. So I enabled this mechanism and ran the VM (which itself is very cool- you literally run Windows inside a window on your Linux desktop).

Windows 2000 SpitFire

So all-in-all, it made for another extremely successful weekend. Probably the most frustrating part of it all was upgrading SpitFire's kernel to the same 2.6.21.5 that BlackFlame is now running- more specifically, getting the wireless networking support up and running again.
I haven't tackled getting Ange's laptop (which is still unnamed) connected to the VPN yet, though I'm sure it won't involve very much.

Now all I have to do is get Cedega running on SpitFire properly so I can get my Warcraft III game on..

I'm officially done with ATI and the Radeon line of video cards.

Despite the several weeks it's taken me to properly compile and install X.org 7.2- getting that to work has been peanuts compared to the months spent over the course of the last 2 years trying to get my Radeon 9800 Pro to properly work under Linux.

I learned a lesson from my first computer: don't cheap out on the video card even if you don't think you'll play any games. So when I build BlackFlame over 2 years ago, I did my research and settled on a card that was powerful, but didn't (completely) break the bank. I knew about the potential problems with the ATI cards under Linux- but I had no immediate plans to use the system for gaming, so I wasn't overly concerned. I figured that by the time I was ready to play games on the system, there would be a decent driver (open source of proprietary) that would do the job right.

That day came a little sooner than expected- and I found myself elbow-deep doing battle with the ATI 'fglrx' driver in order to get hardware acceleration working properly (actually, it may have been a movie-related issue that prompted me to get things resolved). Months later, I finally got it working- not perfect, but working well enough to play games natively and under the Cedega emulator.

Then I went dual-monitor early this year- and again, it was time to do battle with the driver just to get things to work properly. To be honest- I don't remember getting the second monitor online being that much of a chore, thanks to the web. But I quickly noticed that while it was rendering two desktops, it did not do so with hardware acceleration- making gaming and even watching online videos almost impossible.

I upgraded the driver to a more recent version during my 'upgrade' of the Linux kernel and X.org in recent weeks- and after a little more battle with the configuration, was actually able to get the driver to work, with hardware acceleration. Even Cedega was happy! But there had to be a catch... right??

The catch came in the form of 'corruption' of video data on the second monitor. This 'corruption' seemed to be the result of 'ghost' form elements (like a textbox or a button) that caused blocks of graphics to become single-color boxes at random locations on the screen, similar to this:

Fglrx Sucks