T'is the Season to be Jolly

Above: I have three computers - Gemini, a very old Sony Vaio, and an even older Sun Ultra 5 workstation. There is my Kodak color printer on the left and my HP laser printer on the right. The sophisticated air conditioning setup (to the far left) is very handy in the summer.

So I'm talking the last half of December off from work. I've been waiting for this for a long time because I wanted to spend some quality time with Gemini and get everything set-up just the way I wanted.

Deena tells me that everyone can hardly wait until I finish setting things up so I will be less grouchy and stressed out. I can understand that, as my frustration often leaks out to those close to me. Thanks for being patient!

So a few weeks ago I finally did what I hope was last install (for a while) of Windows 7. I finally received my official version of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit from Microsoft, so now I had a product key that was all mine. Up until now I have been using the RTM from MSDN through work, but I never left the O/S installed long enough to have to activate it - until recently. A few weeks ago I had most things set up and running the way I wanted, but Windows started complaining that I would loose certain feature unless I activated it. I figured I had installed Windows 7 so many times before I was pretty good at it and it would not hurt to just install everything from scratch.

I've been keeping notes on my Windows 7 installation, keeping track of what works and what doesn't, so I wanted to do one last clean install from scratch and do everything in the correct order. At first everything seemed to go well but after a couple of weeks I noticed a couple of things that were not working right any more:

1. ShoutCast was broken. I was never able to get IceCast to stream to more than one person previously, so I was quite happy when I was able to get ShoutCast working. Unfortunately after reinstalling Windows my ShoutCast stream stopped streaming to multiple people and was behaving the way IceCast was. The problem seems to be related the firewall in my BitDefender security software. When I disable the firewall I am able to get ShoutCast to stream properly.
   
2. Aventail was broken. I have to use the Aventail software to connect to work. Unfortunately this software does not work very well in Windows 7. I have two versions of the software: (a) the beta version for 64-bit Vista, and (b) the production version for 64-bit Vista. For some reason only the beta version seemed to work, but before my last Windows installation I was able to get the production version to work. This time I had to install the beta version again, and I had to set the Setup file to Vista SP2 compatibility mode.
3. My HP printer is hosed. I've had a lot of trouble with my HP LaserJet 1018 because they do not have drivers for Windows 7 (the hosers). I was able to get it to work by setting the driver installer to Vista SP2 compatibility mode in the past. The problem is that there are two different driver installers - and HP does not tell you what each version is for. I can print to the printer from Gemini, but when Deena tries to print via her computer the Windows spooler gets hung up. Before I did the last installation of Windows I had this all working - but I still don't have a solution yet.

I've decided to re-rip all my music on CDs. I was using Windows Media Player before because it can do loss-less compression, but the directory look-up is not very good so too often when I put a CD in, WMP can't find the artist and titles. After doing a bit of research I discovered FLAC - Free Loss-less Audio Codec. There is a plug-in for WinAmp so I can RIP my CDs that way. I've spent almost 4 days just RIPing music now, and I'm only half done. So far WinAmp has only failed once to find the CD information in the directory - and it was only a partial failure - but I was able fix the meta-information on the tracks.

I'll go into more detail later, but in all my adventures over the last 6 months or more I've discovered one (unsurprising) thing --- Windows 7 sucks! In many ways Windows 7 is better than Vista or XP, but I've discovered many things that just worked in XP, were a lot of trouble to get working in Windows 7. I think to summarize things properly it's fair to just say Windows sucks! Microsoft just keep adding more and more features every time they release new products, but they never go back and fix the original problems their software has, they only add new features and new problems.

Windows 7 Hell

I totally understand why Apple continues to increase market share, but more importantly mind share.

Since getting my cooling problems sorted out I have been spending a lot more time focusing on experimenting with system configurations, installing and trying software, and generally getting a feel for how I want to crystallize my system. By "crystallize" I mean -- that point in time where I stop changing configurations, do my final installation of Windows 7, and declare this now my main computer.

I recon that I've installed Windows no less than 20 times on Gemini now. Each time I learn a little more about the installation process and some of the pitfalls. More recently I learned how truly abysmal Windows Setup is about actually setting up a computer for first use. To Microsoft's credit few people actually ever have to run Setup this way as most people just buy a computer with Windows pre-installed.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading about the back-up features in Windows 7 and I thought I would try them out. This should be simple, you just go to the Control Panel, find the back-up page, configure where and when you want your back-up, then click the back-up button. Unfortunately mine barely started before it failed. I spent a couple of hours trying to understand the error messages I was getting and using Google to find similar problems. Eventually I ended up going to the Microsoft forums. Fortunately there are some really knowledgeable people on those forums and eventually I was guided to the source of the problem.

When you install 64-bit Windows 7 on a system with a blank disk Setup created two partitions. The first is 100 MB and called "System Reserved." This is set to the active partition and is where the computer boots from. The second partition C: takes up the rest of the disk and this is where Setup actually installs the Windows 7 operating system. The problem it turns out is that 100 MB is too small for the backup to work. After going back and increasing the size of my System Reserved partition, and then reinstalling Windows 7 yet again, I was finally able to make a backup of my system.

It took me 2 or 3 days to finally solve that problem just because Microsoft are too stupid and/or lazy to properly test Windows Setup. I can only feel better in knowing that I had caught this problem before crystallizing my system, in which case it would have been a lot harder to go back to increase the size of the System Reserved partition.

The backup will create a system image that can be used to fully restore a system from the Windows 7 Setup DVD. I was playing around with something and decided I had to reinstall Windows 7 yet again, but this time when I tried it would not work. When Setup fails it gives these really cryptic messages and tells you to look in the "log" for more information. The first insult is that it does not tell you where the log is. When you use Google to find some information on Windows 7 Setup you finally find a web page explaining where the logs are. The second insult is that the web page is wrong, the log is not where it is documented to be. After farting about looking through the file system I finally found what I thought might be the correct log file, but when I tried reading it - the third insult - the log is huge, huge, huge, and fully of really cryptic information badly formatted. Of course the command line tools are not very helpful in viewing the log information either. Out of desperation I tried doing the system restore from Setup, and guess what - it does work like a charm. After taking a rest for the remainder of the day it finally occurred to me that I should disconnect the new backup drive I was using. Ta-Da! After that Windows installed normally again. Somehow the second drive was interfering with Windows 7 Setup. Setup is this incredibly fragile tool. The slightest thing wrong or different and it throws up its hands and say "I can't do this, and I can't tell you why."

I thought it would be cool if I could backup Deena's computers (running Vista 64-bit Ultimate) on my computer - the networking should just work right? WRONG! For some stupid reason when I tried accessing the file systems on Gemini from Deena's computer it kept prompting use for a login name and password, but no matter what we typed it always said it was wrong. I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Microsoft do not have the first clue about how to run a network!

What really makes this frustrating is that previously Deena's computer was easily able to see the files on Gemini without any problems or password prompting.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

However, when Microsoft is involved

The definition of insanity is doing he same thing over and over again and never getting the same results.

Microsoft finally shipped me my Windows 7 upgrade DVD so I can finally install a legal copy of Windows 7 on my system. Up until now I have been using an MSDN version that I never activate. When I crystallize Gemini I will install the version I paid for with the correct key, and finally activate Windows.

Also I bought a copy of Windows 7 for Deena's computer because it turns out that Windows 7 can actually share files with other Windows 7 system just fine. Strangely Windows 7 can also share files with Windows XP systems too. It just cannot share files with Windows Vista systems.

Cheers, Eric

Cool Change

It's been a month now of playing around with Gemini. I finally solved the problem of the I/O Hub overheating by installing a new fan in the side of the case - it's the transparent fan in the middle of the side panel. I searched around the web reading up on fans, reading reviews, reading product specifications, etc. Finally I settled on the Antec Tricool 120 DBB, mainly because it has a three-speed switch and I did not know how much cooling I would need. Once I got it installed I found that the fan cools adequately well on the lowest setting. Before I could install the fan I had to find a way to cut a hole in the pexiglass side panel. Fortunately Deena remembered a plastics company (Dimension 3 Plastics) that did fabrication and machining. At any rate, I now have Gemini upstairs in the study where it belongs instead of spread out across the dining room table. Deena was getting pretty tired of eating in the living room by then.

While Gemini runs well and is nice and powerful, I still cannot get the file system configured the way I want. I have five 2 TB disks in a RAID array configured to appear as one large 10 TB disk. Unfortunately I cannot access more than 2 TB right now. The reason is that the disk array is layed out with the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. This is the standard PC partition layout, but it only supports disks up to 2 TeraBytes in size. The GUID Partion Table (GPT) layout is newer and has no such limitation, but Windows does not support booting from a GPT disk with the BIOS firmware. Windows does support booting from a GPT disk if your system uses the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). As it turns out the S5520SC motherboard I have supports both BIOS and EFI, but for some reason you cannot use EFI with the built-in RAID feature. This is especially dumb because the S5520SC is a server/workstation board, and you would expect people to use a large RAID array.

My other option is to configure the RAID as two virtual disks, one small one for booting Windows, and one large one for all the data. Unfortunately the new motherboard I have will not allow me to configure two virtual disks. It's frustrating that with my previous motherboard I was able to configure two virtual disks, and now I can't.

I've been in contact with Intel technical support for over two weeks now trying to find a solution to my dilemma. Finally we had to esclate the problem to their Engineering department. I had to fill out a long detailed report for the Engineering people, and I'm still waiting to hear back from them.

I think I've installed Windows about a dozen times now because I keep trying to find a way to configure the disk array the way I want it. Needless to say every time I do this I have to reinstall all my applications again. At least I am able to run Windows 7 fine, and I continue to get more exprience with it. I still have more work to do on the hardware - mainly I need to clean up the rats nest of wires and cables inside - but I can do that any time.

Darkest Before the Dawn

Who'll Stop the Rain...

Friday September 4 I set out again to rebuild my system. I tried to be a little more careful this time and not miss any steps. Previously I had forgot to install the back-plate on the I/O panel of the motherboard. Still installation had it's bumps. I got one of the water blocks on the CPU and then noticed that one of the fan cables was stuck under the motherboard and I could not get it out. So I had to pull the water block off, clean off all the thermal compound, pull the motherboard and put it back in holding the fan connector out of the way.

Finally I had enough things rigged up that I could power on the system again - I pushed the power button and everything powered up fine. Pretty much the first thing I did was to booth the Intel Deployment CD and upgrade the BIOS (and friends) to the latest version. However, when this was finished my system powered down instead of restarting - this was very odd (but a sign of things to come).

After that a lot of thing were behaving oddly, but mostly the system just kept powering down. For the longest time I could not get into the BIOS setup, the system just kept trying to boot something, but there was nothing to boot. Eventually I go into the system BIOS again and started trying to configure the RAID but I was having the same problems last time, I could not configure a second Virtual Disk.

Eventually I got on the phone with Intel Technical Support. He as asking my about what disks I had connected and I said five 2 TB disks. He says, "oh, that's your problem; your controller can only support 1 TB disks." After that he was not very willing to help any more so I said I would see what I could figure out on my own.

After a while later I tried booting the Intel Deployment CD, but this would no longer boot. I was confused as I did not have this problem with the previous motherboard. Also, my system kept powering down, which was annoying. Eventually I was back on the phone with Intel Technical Support (a different person this time) and told him about the system shutting down. I asked if this was because some component was getting too hot and he said likely. He asked me what Intel server case I was using and I said it wasn't Intel. He started giving me the same song and dance that it was not compatible with the motherboard and there was little he could do. I asked him how I could identify which part was overheating and he told me how to run a utility to view the System Even Log.

Now this part gets interesting because my system is not a normal BIOS, it's an EFI system so you can boot to the EFI shell, which is a little like an old style DOS or Unix system. At any rate I had to download the selview utility to a USB drive, then run the EFI shell on my system, and run the selview utility - but it would not run. At that point the guy from Intel said he could not do any more.

After a bit of a break and a chance to think I started reading about the BMC (Base Management Controller). This is basically a separate 32-bit computer separate from the main CPUs that controls the motherboard and presumably where the EFI shell lives. I read up on the EFI shell commands and how it work. It's actually pretty powerful and all computers should have EFI instead of the old BIOS. Eventually I found that I could run selview and dump the logs to a file, so I tried that and it worked. The best I can tell is that selview could not work on my display for some reason because it was a full-screen application.

After looking through the System Event Log I could see all kinds of warnings about fans not working. Back when I upgraded the BIOS it asked me which fans were connected in my chassis and I said all were (without thinking). Anyway, this was one of the things the system was complaining about. Also, there is a status LED at the back of the computer. At first I didn't realize this was a status signal because the Intel decal at the back was labeled incorrectly, but once I realized this was the status LED things became clearer. The light was always blinking amber which means there is a serious problem, and then when my system would power down the LED would be solid amber, meaning a critical problem.

The other thing the System Event Log showed was that the IOH (I/O Hub) was overheating, but it only said 10.0 degrees C - which is not hot, so I was confused. Up until now I had been running my system with the sides off the case because I had not finishes all the wiring. On a hunch I went an got a bit room fan and pointed it at the side of my computer on full. This time the status LED on my system stayed solid green, meaning everything was operating correctly.

Eventually I gave up on getting the RAID to work and just tried to install Windows Vista on a single disk normally. To my amazement it worked and I was able to get Vista running. Unfortunately after Vista was running there was no network connection. I finally fixed this by using the Intel Deployment CD to install the network drivers. It is interesting to note that when installing Windows 7 it already has the network drivers. I ran Task Manager and noted with some satisfaction that there was no pausing problem like I had seen before. Next I installed Second Life and it ran beautifully - no pausing - very smooth. Unfortunately my microphone was not working. I eventually fixed that by installing the audio drivers from the Intel Deployment CD and then fiddling around with the Realtek audio utilities.

After a satisfying couple of nights of running Second Life with my friends I went back to fiddling with the RAID setup again. Eventually I learned that if I enabled the SW-RAID in the BIOS that the Intel Deployment CD would not boot. It would only boot if this setting was not enabled. But I needed that setting enabled to configure the RAID. I had not seen this problem with my previous motherboard. Finally I went back to the BIOS and instead of configuring two virtual disks (which seems to be buggy) I configured a single large 8 TB RAID 8 array. I was able to install Windows 7 and get it running. I solved the pausing problem in Windows 7 by running two network connections - a trick I had learned in Driver Heaven. Again, everything seems to perform well, except my RAID performance is not what I had hoped - but I have no direct experience with RAID 5. Also, my RAID got formatted with MBR (Master Boot Record) layout and I wanted it formatted with GUID Partition Table.

At any rate I am impressed that I was able to create a functioning RAID 5 system with 2 TB disks after Intel told me it was impossible.

Labor Pains - Part 2

Bad Luck is sometimes like rain - when it rains it pours!

I've been taking Fridays off from work this summer, and by Friday August 21 I had thought I had everything figured out.

• I realized the problem I had getting Windows 7 to install on my RAID was that I had not set a system disk - and the Windows installer is too stupid to let you sent one from the UI. But this was something I could set in the S5520SC BIOS.
• I had heard from DriverHeaven that other people had the same CPU spiking problem with Windows 7 and that I should use Visa in the meantime.
• I confirmed that one of my disk drives was defective.
  

I went to NCIX and returned the disk drive - they confirmed it was defective too and ordered a replacement for me. I also bought a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate. When I got home I finally hooked up the rest of the front panel connectors on the computer case, and even managed to get the sides back on so everything looked nice and tidy.

I really took my time and wanted everything to go well for once. I got everything ready and then went into the BIOS to set up the RAID. For some reason the BIOS setup was not working properly this time, it would not let me finished configuring my second virtual disk - it kept freezing and forcing me to reboot the computer - grumble grumble grumble.

Next I thought I would try using the Intel RAID Web Console 2 from the utility CD. I booted the CD, and then upgraded to the latest version of the utility from the network, but I could not get the Web Console 2 to work - nothing would happen. Next I rebooted the CD again, but this time I did not do the network upgrade. Finally I was able to get into the RAID Web Console 2 user interface. This application was pretty crummy too, confusing to use, and buggy in some places. Eventually I managed to define the two RAID 5 virtual disks I wanted and started to initialize them. After 30 minutes I was wondering what was taking so long and then a progress bar finally popped up to show that it was only 10% done. I wish I had selected the fast initialization instead of the full initialization. I was getting tired of waiting so I went off to do some reading for a while.

I came back 15 or 20 minutes later to see how things were and found the screen blank, and the graphics card fan was on full (something that never happened before). I tried power the system off and on, but nothing happened. In fact, when powering the system on the Power On Self Test (POST) LEDs would not even light up at all. That was a very bad sign.

Eventually I found a phone number for Intel technical support and someone talked me through some tests. Mostly it was removing stuff from the motherboard and powering the system back on. Nothing helped and nothing changed so the support person conceded that the board was dead and sent me instructions for returning the board for a replacement.

By this time I felt pretty crushed - the morning had started off so well, and by mid afternoon it looked like I was finally going to get everything working - when BAM - the worst happens. I suppose this it what someone feels like after a terrible child birth and they discover that their child is not only retarded, but blind and deaf too. Of course this was just a computer and could never be the same as a child, but I just felt really depressed and angry. Why me?

The next day I set out to return the motherboard. First of all Intel required that there be some sort of commercial invoice for customs purposes so it took me an hour or so to fabricate something that looked official. Next was the process of removing all the connectors from the motherboard. Taking the water blocks off of the CPUs was interesting - but it was good to see that the thermal compound I had used had spread out nice and evenly across the CPU heat spreader. Of course I had to clean everything off and put the CPUs away safely, then prepare the motherboard for shipping. I took me almost 45 minutes at the UPS store to get all the information right because I was shipping across the boarder. I selected the least expensive shipping method, and that took over a week and cost me $85.00.

Anyway, I've had two weeks waiting for a replacement and today I'm supposed to get my replacement motherboard...

Labor Pains

In some respects building an enthusiast class computer is akin to having a child: conceiving the child is a lot of fun, but the gestation and birth can be very challenging.

On Thursday, August 13 I finally got my computer case back from CoolIT Systems in Calgary. It looks like my photos and measurements paid off cause everything fit perfectly. It also helped that they put one of their best builders on the case - Sean Mutlow - because he really understood what to do.



Friday, the next day, I set forth to get everything working. This was my first time ever building a system from scratch - let alone something as exotic as this. I was mostly worried about installing the CPUs (at $1,500 a piece) and attaching the water blocks. When you attach a cooling system to your CPUs you have to use some kind of thermal paste to make a good thermal connection between the CPU heat spreader and cooling device. I had read a lot of articles and decided on Arctic Silver Ceramique as it showed the best conductive properties for CPUs. I had to remove the thermal grease from the water blocks that CoolIT has installed, then I had to prep the surfaces of both the CPUs and water blocks. I had to further prep the water block surface with Ceramique per the instructions, but it did not seem to make a difference as the surface of the water blocks was like a mirror. Finally a laid down a thin strip of Ceramique on the CPU and attached the water block. This was a bit tricky because the WS-240 cooler had all the hoses attached and it was awkward settling the water block on the CPU with the hoses trying to pull things ever which way.



After finishing what I considered to be the hardest part then came the tedious part of connecting all the power and data cables everywhere. This was extra challenging because the S5520SC is a big board and I really had to stretch some cables and connections.



Finally I had enough together that I could power on Gemini for the first time. This was rather distressing because after powering it on - nothing happened - there was nothing on my computer display to show that anything was working. I did this a few times and still nothing. Whenever I powered it down there was this beeping from the motherboard -which I discovered was the diagnostic beep codes. I looked them up in the manual and it said "DC Power Missing" so I fiddled with the power connectors a little and powered it on again. This time the boot sequence showed on my display and I breathed a sigh of relief. In hindsight I don't really know why nothing happened the first few times I power on Gemini, because every time I power it down I get the same beep codes.

Now that I was finally able to get into the BIOS settings I started exploring the disk system. To my surprise one of the disks was not working. Fortunately I had bought an extra disk as a spare so when I connected that one everything was ok again, and the ICH10R southbridge could see all 5 of my disks.

Next I tried configuring the RAID. I had thought this would be easy because I have configured RAID before on the ICH10R southbridge using the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, but this turned out to be a nightmare. It turns out that the S5520SC board does not use the Intel Matrix Storage Manager like every other civilized computer, but some other piece of crap called Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology II (ESRTII). I design and implement computer user interfaces for a living and I can say with all expertise - the user interface on this utility is total crap. Let's just say that this whole process used about 2 hours of my time and involved a great deal of swearing.

After trying to configure the RAID I could not get Windows to install. I tried using the Intel Deployment CD to set up the RAID, and this was even worse crap. Then I made a bad decision. Because Windows would not installed I enabled a BIOS setting called "EFI Optimized Boot" and restarted Gemini. After that Gemini was a "brick" - that is it was nothing more than a very big paper-weight - it would start to boot - but would not even go into the BIOS setup. By the time Deena got home I was swearing like a soldier and bordering on a depressive mental break-down.

Friday nights is my night for Second Life - and lets just say that my technology woes only got worse that night as I ruined the entire beach. It took excessive quantities of alcohol and hard rock music to hang on to my sanity that night.

By Sunday I had had time to cool down enough to start thinking of solutions. My very good friend Remo (from Second Life) had suggested resetting the CMOS, so after searching through the manual I found a jumper on the motherboard that did that - and finally Gemini booted againg.

Eventually I gave up trying to set up RAID and switched back to a non-RAID configuration and finally got Windows 7 to install. Pretty well the first thing I did after that was run the Microsoft performance analyzer - which gave my a 7.8 out of 7.9 on my CPU and Memory performance. That was a very satisfying result.



My next big goal was to install Second Life and see how well it ran. Well it ran pretty crappy! Every two seconds there was a one second pause - everything froze. Needless to say I was getting pretty disillusioned by now. Not that I have children - but it's sort of like going through a challenging gestation and difficult birth - only to find out your child is mentally retarded. In spite of this limitation, I was actually able to run Second Life, which I cannot do any more on my Sony PCV-RX660; and Deena and I were finally able to be in Second Life together for the first time in 8 months. I was a hell of a lot of fun having her in-world at the same time as me.

For the rest of the week I played with various things, trying to learn more about the problems I had, and was still having. But all in all, it was very satisfying having my dream-system running after 3 years of planning, and 2 months of waiting for the case to be ready after initially ordering all the parts.

To be continued...

The Patience of Job

Well sometimes when you are the first person trying a thing, it takes time to get it right.



It took quite a while for CoolIT Systems to get my Boreas Chassis to me. I had asked them to install the Boreas chiller (for my GPUs), and their new WS-240 chiller for the CPUs. Not only is the 240 a new product, they had never installed one in this kind of chassis before, so things were a little cramped. After they got it installed they realized the fans were a little too thick - 25 mm. After some shopping around they finally found some low profile 20 mm fans.

All this took time to sort out but I finally got my chassis Friday, July 17. Since we had just moved homes the day before our new place was in quite a state of disarray - boxes and boxes everywhere. Finally Saturday morning I had some time and space to open the box and take out the chassis. I spent the morning installing the power supply, BluRay drive, and motherboard; but after installing the motherboard it was clear there were problems.

1. The coolant hose from the WS-240 was blocking the power connector for CPU-2.
2. The pump for the Boreas was blocking the main power connector.
3. The coolant hose between the two CPU water-blocks was too short.

In retrospect I probably should have shipped them the motherboard and these problems would have been obvious to them too. After talking to CoolIT on the phone on Monday they agreed to have me ship it back and correct the problems. They should get the chassis on Friday, and hopefully will be able to get it back to me soon.

While I am incredibly eager to finally get this computer system running, it has been over two years that I have been planning it, so if it takes a few more weeks to get it built right I have to be patient.

In the mean time rumors are the Intel will soon release a Xeon 5590 processor, which will likely be faster than the 5570 processors I bought. I have not opened the boxes my processors are in, so if Intel releases the new ones soon enough, I am hoping I can exchange my 5570s for a couple of 5590s.

Cheers, Eric