Finally got a replacement bike! Well a replacement for the loaner i had since christmas 🙂

A big plug for the chaps at Stanmore Cycles, I would definitely return to purchase another bike and bits, service is outstanding.

Whether it’s a repair or the purchase of a bicycle, parts or accessories, if its worth doing its worth doing properly.

208 Parramatta Rd
Stanmore NSW 2048
(02) 9560 5842

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Review Sites here:

http://www.mtbr.com/cat/bikes/xc-hardtail/kona/caldera/PRD_363357_1527crx.aspx

Indian Monsoon Malabar is a typical dry-processed single-origin coffee from south India deliberately exposed to monsoon winds in open warehouses, with the aim of increasing body and reducing acidity

Monsooned coffees are stored in special warehouses until the Monsoon season comes around. The sides of the structure are opened and moist monsoon winds circulate around the coffee making it swell in size and take on a mellowed but aggressive, musty flavour. The monsooning process is labour-intensive: coffee is spread on the floor of the special monsooning warehouse, raked and turned around by hand to enable the green beans to soak in moisture of the humid winds. The monsooning process takes around 12 to 16 months, during which the beans swell to twice their original size and turn into pale golden colour. Then there are additional hand-sortings to remove any coffee that did not expand properly, and the coffee is prepared for export

http://www.stargardentowncafe.com.au

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After many crashes, broken transfers, lost data I got jack of this machine taking a dump on me. In a nut shell, and saving 3 pages of the the process and pain to get there a single BIOS update has sorted out all the issues…

Typically I found the box was almost guaranteed to crash if I was copying data from one harddrive to an external one or a network drive, this developed into sporadic crashes whilst using fairly memory and cpu intensive programs, ie CAD software and sometimes CSS. I put up with this for quite sometime, thinking that it was possibly those dodgy 7200.11 Seagate harddrives, however after flashing the harddrive firmware, which by the way is a first for me and also a very deep breath…and… replacing the hardrive (after it got full) I thought, well hangon, it probrably ain’t the HDD *click*.

So, when i say crashed, took a dump etc, basically I got nothing, nada, nuttin, not even a BSOD! that would have been welcome?! Since things seemed to get a bit worse over time, I thought, why not take this opportunity to updagre to the next M$ version, that so happened to be Win 7. Maybe that will solve my problems. Well after installing windows 7 only to find it crashed with ever so much more with consistent frequency i was ready to smack something. BUT, it did give me some tasty BSOD’s. Some research later and some very wild and varied BSOD’s, for example,

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONE_PAGED_AREA

BAD_POOL_HEADER

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

MEMORY_MANAGEMENT

I began to head towards the idea that my RAM was bad, but handon, didn’t i Memtest that yonks ago to rule that out? Now I was trully stumped, so off to buy some more tasty RAM, fyi i got some of that OCZ DDR2 800/1067 stuff that was pretty cheap and had a lifetime warrnaty. Swapped over the RAm thinking great…time to stop these crashes…..blam..crashed just after I thought that..expletives later…i calmed down and thought very seriously about buying a new mobo.

Well, as a last resort lets update the BIOS, maybe there is a new version out, low and behold, I was running V3.0 and the later version was 3.4

3.2 Update Date 2008-09-02
Description – Update CPU Micro Code.
– Improved memory compatibility.

3.3 Update Date 2008-11-20
Description – Update CPU Micro Code.
– Support L2 function.
– Support 1000GB HDD.
– Improved memory compatibility

3.4 Update Date 2009-03-09
Description – Update CPU Micro Code.
– Improved memory compatibility.

oohhh..this is looking promising me thinks…So its been a few years since i have flashed a BIOS and I am not the kind to do any of this BIOS from within windows flashing crap, so I thought, floppy drives…i aint got one of those stoneage devices in my box…

After tracking one down and finding some dusty floppys and spending an hour trying to get a single decent formated floppy it dawned on me that the 4mb BIOS file was not gonna fit anyway…expletives later….fine then I will burn the bios to a CD and boot using the UBCD into Freedos or similiar. Finally after a few attempts I go FreeDos running and was able to excute the supplied BIOS flash utility and flash the BIOS.

And, zomg, it has been fun and games ever since. I have run Memtest for a whole day with not errors, almost cooked the computer doing it but hey…

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So, at COB we have:

Lost time, probably about 5 nights

Cost: New Hardrives + RAM

OS: now Win 7.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1210538/Pictured-The-incredible-light-graffiti-created-host-light-sources-shine-straight-camera-lens.html

Last month a world-wide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was:-

“Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?”

The survey was a huge failure because of the following:

In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what “honest” meant.

In Western Europe they didn’t know what “shortage” meant.

In Africa they didn’t know what “food” meant.

In China they didn’t know what “opinion” meant.

In the Middle East they didn’t know what “solution” meant.

In South America they didn’t know what “please” meant.

In the US they didn’t know what “the rest of the world” meant.

In Australia they hung up because they couldn’t understand the Indian accent.

cracker of a game – head to head all the way until the last 15 mins!

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If you have not done it yet…its about time you did, having no bike is no excuse, bikes, admittingly alittle rough, can be hired close by at the Boat Shed on Farnell Ave, this is the easist of the rides and you can do as much as you like, even the whole 18km there and back! It is pretty flat – probably best described as ‘undulating’ and does not take too much effort.

Take the time to stop and look at the various sityes and also check out teh river/creek, this time of year after the rain (and all the crap is washed away) it is amazingly clear and tranquil!

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