digitalcyanide.co.uk

Well this is a quick update to just say two things.
First of all I purchased Final Fantasy XIII for the XBOX 360 Yesterday, I have not been able to put it down today. This is the First Final Fantasy Game I have played in about 5 years, I now wish I had played the others.
JRPG’s are in a league of their own, They do not conform to the normal RPG Rules (Well this one don’t). The Graphics are outstanding and although at first it was a little boring, once I got into it the cut-scenes and storyline is fantastic.
Another shocking thing about this game is that its 4 Discs Long. Once you see the quality and length of the cut-scenes you will understand why.

On another note, The XBOX 360 has been on ALL day and has withstood everything I have asked of it. 8  – 10 hours of Final Fantasy should be enough to test any console. I write the date inside the console so if it does throw a fit at a later date at least I can see how long the modification lasted.

Well over the past few days I have been tweaking a few settings and getting software installed.
I cannot tell you all how pleased I am now that everything is setup and working. I have done a few tests and screenshot below will say it all.

Screenshot Running Geek-Bench and showing "About This Mac" Screen

I have the CPU very slightly Overclocked from 2.8Ghz to 3.2Ghz but have Turbo mode still enabled and running on stock voltage settings. I had a few issues to start with, The RAM as standard is clocked at 1333 with this board and when the profile is enabled in the bios this coursed the Geek-Bench score to barely reach 4000. The Simple cure for this was to set the clock speed manually. As it is, I now have the clock speed set back to 1333 as standard but with the overclock brings it back up to 1550. I have also been able to “Backup” a DVD to H.264 in 30 minutes, when comparing the system against my old Q6600, 8GB RAM which gave a decent Geek-bench score of 4100 and did the same DVD “backup” in 53 Minutes Will see if I can re-do the tests and get screen-shots to show.

A XBOX 360 Showing the Famous Three Red Lights

well it was going to happen at some point to at least one of my consoles (Why the one that’s out of warranty).
I Finally got my very own personal experience of what it is like to get the Three Red Lights of Death on an XBOX 360, I had been playing it without any issues the day before and came completely out of the blue.
At first it would boot into the Dash but would not let me connect a controller, once I reset it was then that it gave me the famous Red Lights.

I had three choices, Fix it myself, Pay Microsoft some stupid amount to have it fixed or throw it out the window. I Refused point blank to give my hard earned cash to Microsoft and did not fancy just chucking it without at least trying to fix it.
After about 5 minutes on the internet it came very clear what the problem could be, I set about taking apart the Console (Which Yes I know is technically illegal) Ready to Fix it.
After about an hour and quick trip to the hardware store for a few bits I had stripped down the whole console, Removed the Heat-sinks, Re-Applied new Thermal Paste (Arctic Silver 5), Re-Seated the Heat-Sinks and Modified The X-Clamps. I ended up not using metal washers but instead I used rubber O-Rings that are used in Plumbing, I could not get metal washers the right size and the O-Rings will not conduct either.

After another 10 minutes of putting the console back together I Connected everything up and turned it on for the first time, NO MORE RED LIGHTS.
The whole repair has cost me in total about £2 and has worked out just as good as what I would most likely been charged £100+ for Microsoft to do. If anyone is reading this and has the same problem, Checkout YOU-TUBE.

I will update again once I have had the console running for a while and let you know if it is still going strong.

well over the last week I have been building configuring my new computer, An Intel I7 Powered Hackintosh.
This is an upgrade from my Intel Q6600 System which is being kept and will be used for other things.
I had a few issues whilst building the system, the main problem being faulty RAM, This has since been RMA’ed and replaced.

The legalities of this from what Ive read very much depend on where in the world you live. If you live in the america then from what I can tell Apple have you by the short and curly’s, If however you live in Europe then this is a different story. I know at the moment there is a company in Germany offering systems with OSX Pre-Installed, due to a loophole in German law.
I would also think that if ever apple was to bring proceedings again any one company or individual then I think there may be a good argument due to monopoly laws etc.. (we all know were this has landed Microsoft in the past). Another interesting fact is that you are not able to agree with the EULA until you have already opened the software packaging, This is located inside the box and therefore cannot be read and agreed to before hand.

One thing that I would like to make clear before I get any further is that I did in fact buy a retail copy of Snow Leopard to do the install, This in fact made my life easier in the long run as the disc that came had the latest updates on which meant the installer had pretty much native supported my chipset and Processor.

I did a lot of research before finishing up with my current build list, I wanted a system that was going to be as vanilla as possible and stable. The key to this build was going to be in the hardware used, I ended up using many parts that had been tried and tested, Aswell as being very well supported by both the operating system and the hackers behind the boot disc etc…
The motherboard is in fact the same motherboard that one of the hackers uses him self, this made life a lot easier when it came to getting hardware working etc…

I cannot tell you how happy I with this setup and after a bit of research I finalised my build, the specs are as follows:

• Intel i7 860 2.8GHz
• Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2
• Corsair XMS3 4GB PC3-12800
• Corsair H50 Water Cooler – Modified using 2x replacement 120mm fans (Push / Pull – Exhausting)
• Cooler Master Storm Scout Case – Front and Rear Grills Cut and Additional 140mm Intake fan in 5 1/4 Bays
• Cooler Master Silent Pro 700W Certified Modular PSU
• Intel X25M 80GB SSD Hard Drive – Installation + Every Day Apps
• Hitachi 500GB Hard Drive – Data + Large Apps / Non Every Day Apps
• Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT 512MB
• Belkin USB Bluetooth Dongle

I would like to first thank tonymacx86 and the other hackers (Website and More Details Here) for putting in the amount of effort that has gone in to bringing all this together.
I will update again once I have had a good play around and got everything tuned to my liking.