It would seem from this article that BBC has not received its weekly briefing on "bleeding edge" technology. The article talks in depth how the recent "upsurge" in wireless communication signifies a new era… But what is that? Windows 2k? Does Windows 2000 even have wireless support? And unless I am very much mistaken, that is a low-end $99 Palm.. The color screen barely made that model; wireless? I don’t think so!
NeoSmart Technologies has teamed up with digitalfive to bring you the first and the best of the Vista 5270.60 screenshots for all the various editions, from business to ultimate, to server! Click on each image to see the full-screen capture. Hover over each picture to read a brief description. Continue reading
It is Build 5308! No, not the same 5308 that was released last week, a different 5308! The build released last week was 5308.17; where .17 means recompile number 17. On February 28th, 2006, a new build was released, just days after the first. This build, 5308.60, is the 60th recompile, and purportedly more stable, less troublesome, smoother, faster, and without the memory leaks. Though the reports of its stability and near perfection may have been exaggerated, NeoSmart Technologies has obtained proof of it’s release.
UPDATE:
As far as we can tell, the changes have been made to the server OS. Apparently 5308.17 server edition had many issues, and so MS recompiled and re-released it. However, in doing so they also recompiled the core kernel, meaning that the Vista Client was also updated at its heart…
Our hosting company has been experiencing issues on our server, but they have been kind enough to reply ASAP and offer to move NeosMart Technologies + it’s sister companies to another server in their cluster.
Apparently this one is overcrowded or glitchy – to pull this off I am theoretically supposed to lock down any changes… Which means disabling commenting and posting on the blogs, forums, and the wiki. However, thanks to Tim of Upitfree, we have Ramblings of a Computer Guru, the most popular portion of NST & Co., using Upitfree’s SQL servers to host the blog, meaning that you can continue to ping, comment, leave trackbacks, and enjoy new posts, during the next 72 hours without a problem! But like always, nothing comes free.
This time the cost is (much) increased page load time, which goes right alongside remote databases.. Unfortunately that is just how it is, but it is only temporary… The host is kindly getting right on the job, hopefully this will be ancient history in a couple of days :) In the meanwhile, show your thanks, visit Tim’s site, and get your images (up to 3 MB!) hosted.. for free!
While Windows Vista may tout a “all-new and improved” audio stack with superb quality and resonance, it’s of no use if you don’t have the right sound card drivers for Windows Vista. The biggest problem with audio drivers for Windows Vista is with Digital Audio – most people can get their SPDIF or Digital outputs to spew analog sound – which just doesn’t work with hi-fi, digital speakers. NeoSmart Technologies has compiled a list of audio drivers for the most popular sound cards that experience trouble with Windows Vista, in hopes that our readers will find it useful.
The last two entries do not support Digital Audio, and are simply a manner of finding the right drivers compatible with your chipset; making them at once the easiest to solve due to the lack of complications, and the hardest due to the large variety of AC ’97 implementations.
While our beta testers are breaking Vista and bending it backwards as far as it will go, we have put together a little (oh come on, its not THAT long..!) survey for you guys to answer.. We look forward to seeing your responses!
A) Do you have 5308?
1) Yes
2) Yes, as Main OS
3) Yes, but not going to install
4) Yes, but going to uninstall
5) No
6) No, but going to get it
B) Did you get 5308 from…
1) Microsoft Connect
2) MSDN Subscription
3) Other
C) Graphics impressions:
1) Awesome! (5)
2) Much better than before, definitely good (4)
3) OK (3)
4) 5270 was better (2)
5) Going the wrong way! Gimme 5270 back! (1)
D) Stability Impressions..
1) Never crashes (5)
2) Can go a day without crashing (4)
3) Always crashes (3)
4) Won’t Boot (2)
5) Won’t Install (1)
E) Install Speed
1) X minutes off of DVD
2) X minutes off of virtual DVD
3) X minutes off of extracted folder
F) Vista Speed
1) Very snappy, no lag whatsoever (5)
2) Faster than 5270, but still needs work (4)
3) Same as 5270 (3)
4) Much slower than 5270 (2)
5) Unusable due to lag in interface (1)
G) Driver support
1) Everything supported! (5)
2) One item not supported (4)
3) Two to three devices not supported (3)
4) Most thing don’t work (2)
5) Vista refuses to install on my hardware (1)
H) Application support
1) Everything supported! (5)
2) 2+ Programs install but don’t work (4)
3) 2+ Programs don’t install (3)
4) Most thing don’t work or install (2)
5) Vista refuses to install (1)
You all know the “Axe Effect,” right? I think someone needs to make a commercial out of the “Digg Effect.”
My god!!! Servers are taking a severe hit right now, they go offline for 5 minutes at a time as the backend goes down.
As soon as the load starts to settle for the hour (before my next article goes up :P) I’m going to optimize the MySQL Database, run a couple of queries to clean it up and stuff.. I’m backing it up nightly as well, don’t know when this host will give!
Anyway, yeah, if traffic keeps like this, I know a good host. If you have any suggestions, I could do with all the help I can get!
Macintel Articles @ NeoSmart:
What’s wrong with us!? With me? Windows was my first OS, yet it never crossed my mind to modify Windows to work on EFI? Instead I’ve been taking the super-long, weary, and winding road of getting an iMac to become BIOS compatible. Well, I’m back on familiar terrain, modding XP is where I think I can make it work. Instead of using BIOS emulators or chain-bootloaders and what not, how about just making XP run on EFI? What is NTLDR??
To put it real simple, the NTLDR is activated by the BIOS in order to boot an NT-based OS. NT based OSes include Windows XP, our current focus. NTLDR requires a bootsector in the MBR. EFI requires that a null MBR exist, so using fixntfs as highlighted in my previous post activates the MBR, and allows the booting of XP. After you activate NTLDR, ntdetect.com is run, which gathers hardware information and creates the low-level hardware information layer, which in turn is where Windows XP sends its BIOS-related commands! From Wikipedia:
NTLDR runs ntdetect.com, which gathers information about the computer’s hardware (if ntdetect hangs during hardware detection there is a debug version called ntdetect.chk which can be found on Microsoft support […] Starts ntoskrnl.exe, passing to it the information returned by ntdetect.com.
Macintel Articles @ NeoSmart:
What started off as a simple post with my ponderings has kicked off quite a stir and now I am deeply motivated to find a fix.. Call it OCD, call it perfectionism, call it (uber)geekiness, I need to find out what can be done to make it work….
Hardware Background
What I am trying to do here is to find a way to do this short of adding another motherboard to the box. Obviously a cheap hardware solution is better than an extremely time consuming software fix, which is still better than buying another mobo just for Windows :) OK.. First let’s establish some facts on the mobo used in the MacBook Pro and the iMac Core Duo (sorry about the naming confusion earlier guys!).
So VERY simply from what I have been able to determine… Mac programmed the EFI and flashed it to a EPROM/Chip on a mobo that supports EFI and/or BIOS. The solution to booting XP on a Macintel is one step:
But, there are obviously (immediately visible) issues.
Obviously that is not what we want…. But then there is more that can be done to make it work… Now I *presume* OS X won’t boot on a non-EFI platform.. But I highly doubt that Apple would be so naive as to use security via obscurity. After all, soon enough EFI is coming to the PC world too (hurry up Dell!). I believe the key to stopping people from using Macintosh on a PC is the TPM chips encrypted with Apple’s private key. But nevertheless, it boils down to one question: When they compiled the BSD kernel for Mac OS X for Macintel, did they just add EFI support or actually go back and strip out BIOS commands?
Logic would say that they only added EFI and not removed BIOS, simply for compatibility reasons; and should they ever want a BIOS Macintel, they have the compatible code already. What’s more, to actually remove BIOS support from the BSD kernel is like finding needle splinters in a haystack. So long as the code is in an IF bracket that is only activated if BIOS=true it doesn’t slow done the operating system any. So assuming the above is true, you should be able to boot Mac OS X on a BIOS’d version of an iMac or MacBook. Now what if it isn’t true? This is a “guaranteed to work & much work required solution.”
Now where to find someone that knows asm that well? Intel, AMD, Apple, Soyo, Award, or AMI would be my guess, but why should they make it anyway? Yeah, so the above was how to do a hardware base solution for XP on Macintel. Why a Hardware Solution is Best
Why NOT a Hardware Solution
Actually, so long as Mac OS X runs on BIOS as well as EFI it’s quite easy to implement… If it doesn’t.. Well I told you what needs to be done, the problem is implementing it.
This solution is outdated. Use EasyBCD instead.
Macintel Articles @ NeoSmart:
The Problems
OK… So step by step. Where is the BIOS used? For what? How? The OS sends low-level calls to the BIOS that tell it exactly how to deal with the hardware. Now I don’t have the Windows XP source code at hand.. so all I can tell you for a fact is that NTLDR uses it to access the drive at first to boot Windows, and Windows uses it at *least* once more when it is mounting the drives.
The Required Programs and Stuff
Most of the problems can be theoretically quickly dealt with.
title Windows XP rootnoverify (hd0,1) chainloader +1