Simple, non-incremental breakthrough for desktop PC

While Intel keeps getting their CPUs slightly faster each year, and slightly less power hungry each year, Microsoft keeps making Windows slightly better going from 7 to 8 and then 8.1 (yes, I think Windows is getting better despite Metro UI) – the elephant question in the PC universe is “why sales go down each year?”. Wintel tried netbooks and failed. They tried ultrabooks and failed to reverse market trends. Many people were quick to declare death of PC, but I think that PCs are more mature than ever, they are more powerful than ever, and we see decline in the “renewal” purchases, because experience with PCs purchased 3-5 years ago is still good. There is no incentive go out and buy new PCs unless you are into extreme overclocked dual- and triple- GPU gaming or bitcoin mining. If anything, PC sales were eaten by cheaper RAM and SSDs. For most home users 8GB RAM is a lot, and by replacing HDDs with SSD, any PC gets tremendous boost, which is enough to delay purchase for another 3-4 years. I personally use Core2Quad overclocked to 4GHz , with SSD, and only thing that I might need to upgrade, is gaming GPU (HD5870).

That was prelude, however. What I would like to emphasize now, is that “normal” users usually do not know GigaBytes from GigaHertzs and couldn’t care less. For them, incentive to upgrade will come solely based from feeling rather than from technology buzzwords. I suggest, that the next upgrade wave will be triggered by fully silent and fanless PCs. Note here, I am not talking here about laptops or ultrabooks, those still got many things to improve technologically, e.g. speed/battery life, and for F### sake, outdoor display readability.

Intel’s BayTrail Quad core CPUs in the J2000 series look like a very close hit. I have used 2 previous Atom generations for htpc, and this one, finally, seems like a non-compromise htpc for family movie/web usage. It is powerful enough to simultaneously show several movies and keep torrenting in background, along with a cloud file sync and even host my web development projects. And it is fully silent, and low-power, so that I can keep it on 24x7.

Let’s revisit this in 3 years time and see how it went, ok?

Bootable ext4 Micro SDHC card reported as “Damaged SD card” by Android phone

TL/DR – if you have ext3/4 partition on your Micro SDHC card (e.g. you boot some Linux from it) and then try to put this card into Android phone, it will complain about “Damaged SD card” until you erase (zero out) bootloader from ext3/ext4 partition.

 

Android phone complains about damaged sdcard after bootloader installation. But not just any bootloader. It actively dislikes any bootloader on ext3/4 partions. It complains and refuses to mount sdcard. If you force mount in terminal/ADB - it will mount, but bootloader will be corrupted (do not know exactly why, but has to do something with security and signing of Android system bootloader). My card is multi-partition, and while I mount PRT1 (FAT32), Android corrupts Partition Boot Record (PBR) on PRT4 (EXT4). To avoid this problem I zeroed out PBR on PRT4 (where Linux resides) and Android immediately stopped compaining about the card. Mounts it, scans it, uses for camera/gallery storage, etc.

NOTICE AGAIN: ZERO OUT EXT3/4 PARTITION BOOTSECTOR to allow mounting of FAT32 partition in Android. Strange, I know. I think Android is crazy cautious about EXT3/4 bootloaders, to prevent booting unsigned ROMs from any EXT3/4 filesystem, no matter if it is on internal or external sdcard.

I couldn’t google up anything on this topic, and spent couple of days understanding and then solving this issue. Here goes more detailed explanation. Hopefully it saves time to other people trying to read bootable FAT32/EXT4 card in Android (keywords: USB multi-boot, Micro SDHC, Android, SD Card is Damaged, bootloader, grub, mbr)

I use Sandisk Ultra Micro SDHC (UHS-1) 64 GB card in my phone (LG Optimus 3D, ICS 4.0.4) and in compact Lexar USB3.0 card reader on a keychain.

On Android, I use excellent app DriveDroid to expose bootable IMGs to PC via USB cable (mostly Windows Defender Offline x32/x64, and Windows 8 Install/Recovery). But I also use USB 3.0/MicroSDHC reader with  multiple ISOs, Porteus Linux and a real installation of Linux Mint on EXT4. It is fast enough. Boots in a minute. Speed is OK, feels like a slow laptop HDD of 2010.

Card is partitioned into:
MBR  with BOOTMGR (here and in other cases, installed with BOOTICE (free Windows app) 
PRT1: FAT32 -50GB with BOOTMGR (NT6) - Largest partition for data - compatibile with most devices
PRT2: NTFS - 1GB NTLOADER*
PRT3: NTFS - 1GB NTLOADER*
PRT4: EXT4 - 12GB - used to be GRUB2, now empty boot sector

*PARTITIONS 2 and 3 are small stubs between FAT32 (max space) and EXT4 (limited space at the end of  card). I figured that one day I might want to reduce FAT32 and experiment with another or two partitions, without having to move EXT4. I guess PRT2 and PRT3 are not relevant further to this topic.

I played quite a lot with the PRT1, it boots Windows 8 BootMgr, and from there I have added syslinux and grub4dos and can go between them, chainloading each other in circles.  What is interesting, is that I can put any bootloader on FAT32 (PRT1) and it will not affect my card when I put it into Android phone.

THE PROBLEM BEGAN AFTER INSTALLATION OF LINUX ON PRT4(EXT4). Android refuses to mount the card. I forced it through terminal with
su
mount -t vfat /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /mnt/sdcard/_ExternalSD

File explorers then can see the card but message about Damaged SD Card still hangs there in notifications. When I unmount the card and try booting Linux, it freezes silently. Turns out bootloader of GRUB2 in PRT4 is corrupted.

In order to solve this problem, I booted Mint's vmlinuz/initrd directly from GRUB4DOS on PRT1 and reinstalled GRUB2 on PRT4, then used BOOTICE to copy PBR from EXT4 partition (512 bytes) and save it into file on FAT32. Now I can boot it from BOOTMGR directly into GRUB2.mbr file and use Linux. Then, I used BOOTICE's sector editor functionality, to fill first sector (512 bytes) of PRT4 with zeroes. After doing, this, Android stopped compaining about the card and happily mounts FAT32 partition.

Enjoy, and share in the comments your weird and geeky setup. I am really interested in miniscule and versatile computers and what you use them for.

Windows Mobile 7 device specifications

Believe or not believe? I tend to believe, seeing that HTC HD2 is made to satisfy these specifications and that it was promised that HD2 will get upgrade to WM7. And just to put those specs into perspective, my Raon Everun UMPC ran Windows XP with just 6GB SSD and 600MHz CPU. Just asked Eldar if so high requirements may mean that Windows Mobile 7 is a some kind of light weight rehash of Windows XP, and he replied that it really looks so.

So will we get XP compatibility in new Windows Mobile 7 phones? Not 100% I think, but with some UI adjustments, recompiling existing XP code might be an option.

Intel SSD Gen.2, continued

So, I got 2 80GB units from cartft.com (via ebay). Price was fair (194 EUR/piece) and shipping was only 16 EUR for UPS ground (4 days) delivery. I have to say that these babies delivered on all the hype that surrounds them, and that’s why their price still exceeds MSRP without any signs of decline.

Boot time in laptop (Windows 7, Core 2 Duo, 2.1GHz) went down from 40 seconds to 15. Desktop (Core 2 Quad 4GHz) boots in mere 6 seconds (without motherboard POST time, which begins to look too long at 5 sec). Overall, system responsiveness is butter smooth. Level loading (MW2, L4D) are a breeze at around 4-5 seconds. I am satisfied. Very satisfied.

Upgrades

Ordered Intel X-25M (80GB, 2nd generation) in Lithuania. Price is 180 EUR, which is better than in Latvia (205 EUR), and have to wait around 1 month for delivery.

Also, purchased the latest and the greatest from ATI. XFX HD5870. Had to upgrade PSU too.

Now, all my games have very friendly framerates (Core 2 Duo E7300 overclocked to 3.2GHz, 4GB RAM, XFX HD5870), and it became much easier to make headshots in 3d shooters (Left4Dead, TF2, Bioshock). Another strange, but pleasing side effect appeared in a racing game (GRID). It was very difficult to keep a car on the road while racing, but now motion is very smooth, and controlling the car is much easier. Probably, has something to do with the fact, that previously, with lower frame-rate, by the time when I saw car loosing traction, it was too late to react. Nice.

Want a super fast SSD for your lappie? Live in Latvia? Bad luck.

Due to economical crisis, prices of computer hardware been falling faster than usual. But. For a small country of Latvia, full of unemployed and bankrupt citizens, that means that sometimes, you can't buy nice things, because nobody imports them here.

Here I am, tried to order Intel X-25 80GB SSD (generation 2) and got answers from all shop that damn thing is not available in Latvia, minimum order from Poland or Estonia is 10pcs, and, obviously, nobody cares to order it for Latvia, 'cause they are not sure that they can sell 10 pcs. here? C'mon Intel, try harder...

If you've got any idea how to get SSDSA2MH080G2C1 for about 200 EUR in Riga, ping me. :(

Update. After failing to get it anywhere in the usual retail channels, I turned to ebay. Found 2 sellers that shipped from European country (Germany) and ordered 2 units (on 3rd of January,2010). Cost is 194 EUR x 2 for the goods, plus 16 EUR for shipping to Latvia with UPS. It arrived today (8th of January). Yeehah!