Work woes

[spudtater]

Another hectic day at work, involving three different people trying to get my help at the same time, followed by the entire internet going down. (Or the router, which is almost the same thing). After a frenzied phone call to Telewest, it all miraculously started working again. Typical.

After that episode, I decided to plug in a lovely little machine I'd seen in a back room — one with a transparent-sided case and pointless tricoloured lighting (what is this, a computer or a christmas tree?). This turned out to have a total of six user accounts. All of them 'administrator' accounts. One of which included the word 'Celtic' in the user name, and another included the word 'Hibees'. I did not have high hopes for the health of this machine.

Running a virus scanner on it revealed no less than 24 different types of virus, trojan, worm and malware. You could do virus research on this computer. Most of these viruses I'd never even heard of — w32.rameh? w32.breatel?

Then I wound up the day up to my waist in disassembled computers, trying to put together a working one of acceptable speed. Which involved trying to match different RAM. Let me say now that Hyundai is The Enemy of All Mankind. Their memory doesn't show the capacity, it doesn't show clock speed; it doesn't show anything except a set of serial numbers that make sense only to them. Absolute bastrads, the lot of them.

On the subject of memory, I have a question for fellow geeks. Say I've got a peice of SDRAM that has "pc100-322-620" on it. I know that the first number is the memory clock speed, but what do the other numbers mean? And how much of it has to be matched when mixing different memory in the same computer?

And that's quite enough of that. How are you today?

Comments

[galaxy-girl00.livejournal.com]

dispite the woes you do sound like you are enjoying the challange.

I'm fine!

[scattergather.livejournal.com]

322 looks suspiciously like a timing specification, 3-2-2 (that's pretty common for PC100 SDRAM, too). These numbers specify (in clock cycles) the CAS latency, the RAS-to-CAS delay, and the RAS precharge time respectively. There's usually a BIOS setting somewhere relating to this.

Ideally, you would want to match both the speed and timing numbers, but I can't say for sure other arrangements won't work if you use the most permissive (ie the longest) timing settings, etc.

Haven't a clue about the 620, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Am well, thank you. Had an interesting weekend discovering rats in my mother's attic, or to be slightly more accurate fresh rat turds in my mother's attic, and teaching her how to open her filing cabinets when she's lost the key (which should not be possible, but never mind. Crap design is everywhere.).

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

That would be me. Wretched thing.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Thought it was — recognised your writing style! Was filing cabinet opened via the "paperclip", "credit card" or "swift kick to the lock" technique? Or another method?

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Another method - it's a yale lock, and I've never bothered to put in the practice to pick one. It's usually easier to go around the lock, and in this case less likely to damage anything. So I lifted the locking bar itself using a steel ruler. Takes a few minutes to find where and which way the locking bar moves, and then you're in.

(For a filing cabinet you usually want to have drawers slam locked, if they happen to be open when you turn the key, so the locking bar isn't a deadbolt.)

[brucec.livejournal.com]

On the subject of memory, I have a question for fellow geeks. Say I've got a peice of SDRAM that has "pc100-322-620" on it. I know that the first number is the memory clock speed, but what do the other numbers mean?

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/Support/Label_CodeInfo/SDRAM_DDRModule.htm

It looks like you've got a "66/100 MHz PC SDRAM Unbuffered SO-DIMM"

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Aha! Thank you.

[peerietrows.livejournal.com]

I keep getting loads of evil pop-ups on my computer whenever I go online. You are a knowledgeable type- tell what programme I nee dto use to make them go away!! I have adaware and spybot and they are still a-popping!

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... very odd; I've always found Ad-aware to get rid of them quite nicely. Try this: make sure it's properly up to date, then do a "full scan" instead of a "smart scan". (After you click "Start" once it will present you with a list of options.) If that doesn't work, then it's worth bearing in mind that antivirus programs often get rid of adware as well these days, so try a virus scan.

(That is, when you've got the time!)