Wednesday, August 26, 2009

PCI Express 3.0 is delayed.

There have been a lot of product delays in the tech industry lately - which is a good thing in my opinion because the core reason for most of them is improvements in the product quality. The latest technology to suffer a delay is the PCI Express 3.0 specifications, which were due in about month - and now would be finalized sometimes around during the second quarter of 2010.

The reason like I said before is that the PCI Special Interest Group intends to enhance the user experience quality of the product by making in backward compatible with current standards - task which may take a while to complete. The new standard which primarily bumps up the transfer speeds to about 8 billion transfers per second, needs to be able to support older hardware which uses PCI Express and PCI Express 2.0 architecture.

The delay would most probably mean that the next generation graphic cards, like the Radeon 5000 series and the GeForce 300 series wont be able to take advantage of the newer bandwidths. This might be a positive sign for those of us who wanted to build new systems but were waiting for technologies like USB 3.0, Sata 3.0 and PCIe 3.0 etc. While the first two would be in the market with the latest Intel P55 based motherboards, you would have to wait until about 2011 to get your hands on PCI Express 3.0 equipment.

WiMAX in Pakistan: What are they doing wrong?

I have been following WiMAX advancement in Pakistan for the last 2 years and it seems that apart from a big hoopla and hype, there is not much in offering here. Wateen being the first mover and the largest network owner of WiMAX in Pakistan, has yet to impress the market and attract the consumer segment. Mobilink is the second major player in the industry but they too are facing issue with their network. Whatever the cost maybe, Pakistanis tend to join the bandwagon without thinking the result and impact on themselves.

The Problem

Simple, the problem is that we are a nation of zero R&D and shit loads of money for investment. I fail to understand why don’t these companies put up a small division only for R&D. GSM took 10 years to actually start using the actual potential of the network and services in Pakistan where as in other countries, the services were in the offering way before that. I am not an expert in R&D but common sense, which is not really that common, is something I posses in abundance and it helps me understand things which normally people do not.

Ever since the WiMAX was launched, there was a common issue faced by people, i.e., network coverage, sales without identifying the coverage, billing, customer services. Without all of the above ready, how can one company launch a service. Even in a beta phase, all of the above should be tested before the launch and should be improved upon after it. If you think that customer is stupid then you are sadly mistaken as now the customer is more informed then ever with the availability of broadband or at least easy to get Internet services. You can find virtually everything about anything if you search it or what is commonly said, “Google it!” So please stop try to take advantage of the customer with lame excuses for covering up your own mess.

Mobilink is the biggest example of covering up with lame excuses for their, now dying, GSM network. Remember the famous call center conversation between a customer and CSR where the customer was driven to the extent due to poor network that if you censor his conversation, all you would hear will be “beep”.

Solution

I suggest the following should be done by any company coming with WiMAX in Pakistan in order to avoid or at least prevent major disasters to happen.

  1. Do your research: Please do a proper research before actually launching. Following other company’s packages (like Mobilink copying Wateen’s packages) is not something which requires brains (which means you should fire your strategy and pricing people). Ask for what people actually want, performance versus reliability or price versus quality. These questions should be answered before hand. Every Market is different but every market also follows more or less same principals.
  2. Do not over staff: In order to get the best resource, at times companies tend to hire people left and right. The idea behind is that more people will do work in less time thus will save time to market its products and services. Okay, so when the product is launched, what will become of those extra helping hands. Simple, they will become load on the cash flow of the company. So think before you hire people. Have a more efficient approach. Hire experienced people at start, there is no room for a fresh grad in a new company.
  3. Focus: It is the most important thing you should have. If you want to launch WiMAX, then see which services your network can support. Start with broadband, stabilize it and then introduce new services one at a time. If you jump into launching a bouquet of services then chances are that most of them will fall flat on their faces resulting in company incurring heavy losses.
  4. Have Value Added Services: The best example for Pakistan is World Call. Although they launched Internet only but they offered movies, music, gaming as a value added service through their local network thus keeping the load off the International IP connectivity. Content is king and more the content, more people will be willing to join your services. For Pakistan, Bollywood content is very important but so is the frequency of update and quality. You must also watch out for legal issues regarding pirated content. VAS is one of the most important features for the companies in the west but its the opposite story here in Pakistan.
  5. Define your segments: Do you really want to target all the segments at the same time just because everyone else is doing so? If yes then I suggest you should rethink and reevaluate your strategy. It should be clear what you want to achieve, market share or profitability? Normally the strategy is simple, do what your competitor is doing, you don’t want them to succeed and in result of your efforts, the whole market is screwed. Take time, give each segment a phased approach with quality and reliability of service rather then launching in hap hazard in all segments thus not satisfying a single one.

The above 5 points should be very clear in the minds of a new company coming up with WiMAX in Pakistan (for that matter any Internet service in Pakistan), as I know that if implemented properly, the bad name on the technology can be washed off very easily.

BIOS Password Recovery From Windows

CmosPwd is a cmos/bios password recovery tool.
It can be compiled under Dos, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. It gives you the ability to change the BIOS password from windows. Its can be very useful for hackers.
click to download the CmosPwd-5.0

Friday, August 21, 2009

How to flash nvidia 8600GT BIOS

Why to flash BIOS?

There are many reasons to flash the BIOS your bios is corrupted, you want to overclock the card or underclock some reasons. Some time there are bugs in the in BIOS when new card comes in market, manufacturer sends the new versions of BIOS and you can use them to remove the bugs.

Required tools

1. USB stick (used of booting in DOS)

2. NiBiTor 5.1 or higher

3. NVFlash 5.80 or higher

4. BIOS you want to Flash

Step 1

Always backup you’re original BIOS (BIOS currently in your card). Start NiBiTor Tools=>Red BIOS=>Select Device (Select your Card)=>Read into NiBiTor. Check the integrity if it is green then your BIOS is most probably fine. Then save click File=>Save Bios.

Step 2

Now Open the BIOS you want to flash modify if you want to. For example if you want to overclock your card. Mostly you will get BIOS from net in *.bin extension. After modification again check the integrity if it is still green then ok otherwise don’t even think about putting it in your card. Save the modified BIOS in *.rom extension.

Note: Don’t put your nose in other tabs if you don’t have much idea about what you are doing.

Step 3

Now you have to create a boot able usb disk however you can use bootable flopy, CD or any other mean but I found it easy. Creating bootable USB is very easy use HP USB Stick format tool v2.0.6 you can get it from www.bootdisk.com.

Extract this ZIP file and point the "using system files" location to it.

After formatting you have to put win98 files into usb stick that is available on.

Finally put the NVFlash and modified bios file *.rom into usb stick.

Step 4

Now you have to boot your PC that usb. Go into bios and select boot from usb (or some times your usb stick name appears i.e. Kingston etc). Actually every BIOS has different way to do that don’t worry you can easily figure out that. Now when you have successfully booted from your usb stick you have to give some commands since you are working in the DOS you don’t have much choice.

nvflash -- Protectoff

nvflash bios.rom (Replace ‘BIOS’ with the name of your BIOS that you have saved in USB stick).

It will prompt you that you want to continue press ‘y’. After 15 to 20 sec bingooo you have upgraded the BIOS. It’s as easy as its looks.

Warning: If there is anything goes wrong you can seriously damage your card.like if pc goes down while you are flashing your card it might not boot.