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From my research and experience your advice on WinXP is spot-on. The only thing I'd add is that the swap file itself can become fragmented (though not so much when you make min/max sizes the same) and the Windows GUI and commandline defragmenters don'don't touch that protected space. If you want to keep the swap file defragmented the only solution I know of is to use the excellent Diskeeper defragmenter. Diskeeper also tidies up the MFT (master file table) which can also speed up memory paging if the swap file is on the same drive as the OS or data.

Finally, I would recommend putting the swap file on a separate physical drive than the system partition, or from disk-intensive applications like a database or game. However, WinXP becomes unstable if there is no page file on the system drive so you should create at least a 256MB file on C.

This extensive and fantastically informative guide on tweaking virtual memory was a huge help and a fascinating read.

it would be nice not having to purchase a top-notch CPU, GPU, and PPU (Physics Processing Unit) in the future, rolling the PPU and GPU together

http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=304 &pgno=1

Well, I would take this with a grain of salt, but look at Nvidia's performance measurement slide:
http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=303 &pgno=2

The slide claims that on the same test system (identical CPU and GPU), their "15,000 boulder" benchmark ran at 6.2 fps using CPU physics and 64.5 fps using GPU physics.

Untrue. If you have 2GB of RAM and aren't doing things way beyond power user usage (ie, you're playing games, run word and excel, play with email and browse the web) you'd never hit the 2GB limit. If, however, you edit video or RAW photos or do other high memory usage tasks, and you exceed your 2GB limit, then in the windows world you need a swap file.

What you're saying makes perfect sense, but who says Windows makes sense? There are many Windows apps, first and third party, that assume you have a swap file. I've tried disabling the swap file (I have 1.5GB of DDR) which had horrendous results after a short time. I've also tried creating the minimum swap file allowable (2MB) which was annoying as well. Both scenarios yielded an error message saying "Windows has run out of virtual memory".

You're 100% right that the swap file is often overrated (whoever made up the 250% swap file to memory ratio was from a bygone era where RAM was $100\meg) but it's not completely worthless. Windows loves swapping so you gotta do it to some extent. I find 512MB on a separate fast hard drive, or on the system partition if you only have one drive, works best.

For the king of all swap file guides, check this out - http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=143 &pgno=0

Since WinZip does not handle .7z, .ace or .rar files, it has lost much of its appeal for me. With my old serial no longer working, I now have absolutely no reason to use it. Now when I need a compressor for Windows I choose WinAce & 7-Zip. Between those two programs, I can de-/compress just about any format you're likely to encounter online.

Turn off javascript, and visit http://www.rojakpot.com/freebog.aspx

That link redirects, infact it is this location: http://www.rojakpot.com/freebog.aspx

I am not trying to start a flame war... Before modding this or the parent, consider this... The "doctor" that wrote this so-called "book" is a medical student...(although nearly done) http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=7&va r1=2 Details on the MBBS program: http://www.manipal.edu/kmc/institutions/twinningpr ogram-aua.htm Also consider this: When does a PhD in CS/ECE write a book on BIOS settings? That wouldn't even qualify as a MS thesis topic unless someone's entire committee didn't understand it. If the "Editors" didn't even give this half a though, then why are the EDITORS???

The actual thing:
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=7&va r1=18

If you google around you'll find this thing really is freaking fast . This isn't just an ad, it is the fastest flash drive around. And you can get them for $25 + S/H . I've got one and I must say, they are solid (metal casing) and noticably faster than any other flash drive I've used.

Sorry. Is there an article linked? I saw some preamble and some advertising and some gratuitous web dross, but an article? I'm afraid I missed it.

It's a horribly designed web site. Here are the links:

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=0
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=1
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=2

Sorry. Is there an article linked? I saw some preamble and some advertising and some gratuitous web dross, but an article? I'm afraid I missed it.

It's a horribly designed web site. Here are the links:

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=0
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=1
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=2

Sorry. Is there an article linked? I saw some preamble and some advertising and some gratuitous web dross, but an article? I'm afraid I missed it.

It's a horribly designed web site. Here are the links:

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=0
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=1
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=249&var2=2

not to win the cooler tho.. but just a pair of Mushkin RAM. Linkie -> http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=244 &pgno=0

Which ones, those Checkbox and Radio controls that won't work if javascript is *disabled*?

KillerRobot said that he "hasn't seen non-Flash controls styled like this before."

I pointed him to examples of said styled controls.

An example of the DOM Walking techniques he's using are the annoying adverts like on this page. If your browser has JavaScript disabled, the links won't appear. But with JavaScript enabled, the links are automatically created from text extracted from the page.

My point is that this scheme has been known for awhile, but most developers don't bother with such attempts at backward compatibility. If your application is going to replace the standard controls with DHTML ones, then it's probably too complex to work without JavaScript and CSS anyway.

There's nothing really new here, but it is a nice tutorial on gracefully degrading functionality. :-)

I remember some time ago Adrian's Rojak Pot ran an editorial about their site and ad-blocking. They say that 89% of their ads are blocked.

Oh lucky you guys, here's the link: http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=19&var2=0

Windows XP doesn't swap, it uses a page file, which preemptively makes copies of the least used pages in your ram to your disk so that if there is an unexpected jump in memory usage, it can wipe those pages from memory quickly and just put them back from disk when they are needed. There really isn't a performance hit since it's a pretty much passive system in reference to RAM writes. Adrian's Rojak Pot has a great guide on Windows virtual memory at http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&va r1=143&var2=0

-Julius

I've been trying to find out what actually changes. It doesn't seem like any extra circuitry is enabled when "upgrading" a Radeon 9800 to a FireGL X2. Benchmarks show an impressive increase in performace of CAD-type applications but the 3DMark score actually decreases. It seems like maybe this is just a change from a driver optimised for gaming to a driver optimised for professional use.

I also found the FORSAGE driver which should supposedly allow one to "upgrade" to FireGL without any soldering or a new BIOS.

Auld Monitors: Monitor World

PCI Vendor and Device lists

( maybe you can get Knoppix to tell you, with "lspci", what a device is, for the previous one...

Many know of Adrian's Rojak Pot BIOS guide, sometimes useful for weird BIOS 'features' like the older "Format HD" that doesn't tell you this is for old RLL drives... even though no ESDI/RLL drives were sold in the year the mobo was made... (ouch)

I bookmarked, but haven't bothered with yet, HardwareSecrets.com, maybe it's got the stuff youse want...

-sigh- I USED to have a link to a (Russian?) site that listed all sorts of old drives' jumpers ( not the clothing ), dunno what happened to that one...

If you find more such gems, add 'em, eh?

Cheers,

-me

Go relax with some good ol' Adrian's Rojak Pot.

Yellow thingies?!

If you don't want your geek license *permenantly* revoked you better read about the bose noise cancelling headset

When I forget a command, I start typing a command that sounds appropriate and keep hitting the TAB key (auto completion) until the right command shows up. From that point adding --help usually brings up the switches you need and if all else fails man [command] does the trick. While this will not work on a test, it is a good method when you are on the actual machine.

The only sure-fire method to remembering a certain command is use. I bet no one here has forgotten about ls (to the point that I always end up typing it in DOS too) but some of the other obscure commands that you might use once in a blue moon are easily forgotten so you just need to use them more.

Disclaimer: TAB completion doesn't work in all shells so YMMV.
For Windows 2000 users out there, never fear. You too can have TAB completion with nothing more than a simple registry change.

I believe when they say Palm compatible, it means you can flash it with PalmOS and it'll work ! :) ...

This device looks just like the one mentioned in this article: http://www.rojakpot.com/Other_Articles/Rumours/Pal mClone.htm ... which is manufactured by PC-Chips .. see this link.

Many hard disks have a "quiet mode".

Here's some good info

You give up some performance, but sometimes that would be worthwhile.

Also, here's a bunch of reliability vs. heat info from pc power and cooling