After an E107 update the zip files in my download section were corrupt. It was something to do with the php zlib.compression setting but it is fixed now.

We upgraded an old HP dual Quad E5335 server to a newer generation E54?? Quad for our ESX system in work which allowed more features.

I thought I'd try the old E5335s in my Mac Pro as I'd read online that they were compatible. Unfortunately it didnt work quite as I'd expected. It took me about an hour to get the flippin thing apart to gain access to swap them out. There is a panel over the heatsinks which just pops out. Then the hardest bit was removing the front system cooling fans. There is one screw near the hard disks and then it takes a good 'yank' (pull not American) to remove. I was scared about breaking something but it was fine.

The RAM boards have to come out so you can get an allen key in to undo the heatsink bolts, it takes some patience and persistence but they eventually come loose. Once installed I put it back together and booted and it 'chimed' I got the Apple logo and the OS started but then.... KERNEL PANIC... the error mentioned something about the wrong number of CPUs. I tried the CPUs in reverse and this time it didn't boot at all. When I examined the E5335s closely I discovered they were not the same stepping version. One was a SLAEK and the other a SLAC7.

I wasn't going to be defeated so I searched ebay (other auction sites are available). After a couple of weeks I finally won a second SLAEK E5335 on ebay for £90. I installed both the E5335 SLAEK processors. Pressed my power button and 'dong' it turned on. The OS loaded. I logged in, assigned 4 cores to by VMWare Bootcamp and it has been working a week.

I cannot benchmark test on OSX but Windows 7 'Experience rating' has gone from 4.5 to 6.6 for my CPUs. With the graphics card upgrade and doubling my RAM the Windows 7 'experience' has gone from 2.5 to 6 for graphics and 4.5 to 7.2 for RAM.

I have played Left 4 Dead 2 with full graphic settings in full screen on VMWare Bootcamp and it feels as good as a dedicated Intel Quad core standalone PC with Windows 7.

I like new TV, I like science fiction. I don't like it when US TV networks fail to take risks on very good shows and cancel them after the pilot or after they haven't got a significantly high enough rating for the first half a series.

These short shows then don't make it to the rest of the English speaking world or dubbed for everyone else. Often shows that haven't made it in the US are then very popular everywhere else. If we go back quite far then 'Space: Above and Beyond' is a case in point. More recently 'Journeyman'. If you don't know the later then you will find it on your local cable network or SyFy at 3am.

Anyway, to 'Pioneer One'. It is low budget at only $6,000 but the script, the set design and the special effects belied its budget. I think the only thing that was cheap was the costumes. Obviously the cast were told to put on their best 'TK Maxx' suits. Or even wehat they wore for the audition!

The sound for peripheral background conversation was a bit tinney.

It reminded me of the early X-Files episodes. The story had no holes, was occasionally whitty and seemed realistic.

I can't wait for the next episode. Many have speculated this is the future of TV, no networks, made by those that are interested in the subject matter. I look forward to the future.

My old VMWare Fusion had an experience rating of '3' with my original NVidia 7300GT in my Mac Pro and one of my Mac engineers had discovered a hack to flash the firmware of a PC grade 1GB ATI Radeon 4870 so that it would work in an Apple Mac Pro.

The benefit to this is that the official Apple Store version is about £286 whereas we bought a 1GB PC model for less than £120 from CCL in Bradford. We chose the 1GB version as there is an issue with the card firmware rom size. This is strange as the official Apple versions all seem to be 512MB, even CCL sell an official Apple 512MB one at over £300.

You need a Windows PC to apply the modified Apple/Windows firmware (the card will then work in Bootcamp and on a normal Windows PC). The card also has dual 6 pin power connectors so you'll need a splitter (most retail versions come with one in the box). This graphics card power splitter was fiddly to fit into the Mac Pro.

After rebooting there is an error message at the OSX logon screen that the graphics card does not have enough power which you can ignore. If you cannot get dual screens to work then there are some patched kexts to download and install to fix this.

Back in VMWare Fusion and bootcamp I ran the experience test and my graphics has jumped to '6'. I can now play Left 4 Dead 2 in VMWare Fusion on my Bootcamp partition.

There is a great guide with some downloads here and I have some of the files on my site here.

I have just replaced my Boot Camp XP with 64bit Windows 7. Twice today I have had a BSOD with a stop Error 0x0000007e dxgmms1.sys.

After some googling it appeared it was a graphics card issue. I searched Apple and found that there is a graphics card firmware update for iMac and Mac Pro systems with Nvidia 7300GT video cards here.

I've rebooted and started up Fusion. So far my Windows 7 is behaving and can play back video which it couldn't do before. There also appears to be less flicker when opening applications.

I had problems trying to play L4D2 and the only way I found to get it to get passed the loading screen is to right click on the icon, select properties, click on the compatability tab and tick the 'Run this program as an administrator'. If your account is not an admin you will need you network adminstrator or parents to let you make this change.

Good luck playing.

Just started playing this coop and it is brilliant. Also found a game server launcher here:
http://paul.luminos.nl/updates.php

With help from my 2nd cousin Drew in Canada and my mum I've compiled a family tree using PhpGedView. You can view it publically by clicking on my 'Family Tree' menu item. If you want to see more details and are a member of the family please register on the site.
Paul

I found that the ULi 6.3.0.0 drivers I extracted from Vista 64 did not work on both my Shuttle ST20G5s so I went on the hunt again and finally found the last released ULi 6.3.0.2 drivers which I have now put in my downloads section. Help yourself.
Paul