Life is pain or something

I'm sidelined. Holy crap. I thought my scabs were started yesterday, but no such luck. The pain medicine basically does nothing and I'm running on two hours sleep. I can't even nap so I'm working on computers as usual.

I finished the laptop I have been working on for my Dad. I can say entirely without ego that it's the finest machine I've built. It will serve him well. It's not every day you can kill a clan of ninjas and check your email with the same device.

Right now, I have a PDF reader and the Maintenance manual for my Tecra M7 open on my C840's UXGA screen to figure out how to get it apart to do the thermal compound right the second time around (first time being the factory).

Well I'll be damned. No freaking thermal compound left on the dies of either the CPU or GPU to speak of. I'll fix this.

While I've got the system open, I'm going to get some data on the VRAM chips to see exactly what the hell they are rated for: SAMSUNG K4N56163QG-ZC2A

According to Samsung, themselves, the chips are GDDR2 and are rated for 350MHz. Really? I've had them running 418,5MHz. I got some serious creampuffs here. Each one is 512 megabits. Funny thing is it looks like I have four of them. That would be 256MB of VRAM, but I have 128MB. O RLY? I must delve deeper but not now.

I looked at the spot where my motherboard would have had the 3G MiniPCI-E slot and there was no card slot installed there, but the pads were present. That means I have another USB port available to me.

Interesting, another little discovery. I could replace the button panel to the left of my keyboard with the one from the Satellite R20 and have three more buttons if I were willing to tap directly into the wires. They'd normally control a CD, but I have no use for that. I'd like to have a button to activate a custom ThinkLight type device and one to activate the receiver for an Xbox controller installed inside the system. As for the third extra button, I don't know.

Now running Prime95 to seat the coolers and tune for undervolting. It is beyond gay that Intel decided to be dicks about undervolting. While I was able to take my Pentium M systems down far below the P-state 0 default voltage, the .95VDC of P-State 0 on my Core 2 Duo is the lowest selectable voltage. Dammit! What harm is there in a CPU lasting longer? I can understand not wanting people to overclock, but to artificially limit undervolting and the battery savings that comes with it? Stupid as hell, especially when I'm cranking away with no problems at 2GHz with .975V input.

I was glad to find out that the Tecra M7 really is built upside-down. While the motherboard is usually fastened to the bottom of the case, it's fastened to the top in this one. This is a good think because it means the crack in my case bottom can be remedied very easily. And I did check the composition of the case piece to find that it's AZ91D Magnesium alloy after all.