Continuing professional development plays an important role in assisting Compucon channel members to remain current and develop new competencies in information technology practices

4:30pm  System Platform & Roadmap Update (TN Chan)

3rd Party Hardware

We will briefly look at the latest development of the following:

o Adaptec SAS RAID controller
o LTO4 tape drive & Backup Exec Quick Start
o Solid State Disk
o SCSI phasing out
o ITX for Non PC

Server Virtualization

Both Intel and AMD have progressively introduced hardware features in the CPU to assist bare metal virtualization as against software based virtualization.  This session will focus on what AMD describes as the virtualization eco-system covering 4 steps so far.

o Direct Connect Architecture
o Integrated Memory Control
o Nested Paging
o I/O

CPU & Chipset

Intel has stirred up the industry by announcing X48 chipset when X38 is barely introduced.  The move is to bring in Quad Core processors with 1600MHz front side bus to compete with Phenom from AMD.  AMD has made big thunders last year about Barcelona and Phenom but has not really delivered so far.  Its latest effort was hit by a hardware bug and full release is expected to be not earlier than March.  Quad Core Barcelona is worth waiting for.  It has many performance merits over its Intel counterpart.  In this session, we will learn about a few performance features that most people are ignorant of such as SSE and Hyper Transport.

Compucon System Roadmap

Compucon is well known for management of system platforms in addition to the highest level of reliability and compatibility.  This session will cover the evolution of 3 models that have served our channel and customers very well for over 12 months (Yes, most vendors change motherboards every 3 or 4 months). This session will cover Diamond (Process PC Intel), Thunderbird (Knowledge PC AMD) and Workgroup Server (Intel).  We will learn about the gains of each step of evolution.

Download System Platform & Roadmap Update

1. The Flash Utility that corresponds with the motherboard BIOS chip (usually AMI or Award). This will be an executable e.g. afudos.exe
2. The binary file used by the flash utility for programming the BIOS chip. It is usually in an 8.3 file numbering format with the extension indicating the version number. E.g. 0310.rom - version 0310 BIOS for the Asus M2N-VM HDMI motherboard.

Procedure 1 - for flashing the BIOS

1. Create a bootable DOS-formatted USB drive.
2. Copy or extract the 2 required files onto the USB drive.
3. Boot the PC/motherboard using the USB drive.
4. Enter the following command to flash the BIOS - this is usually just the name of the flash utility file followed by the binary file: "afudos /i0310.rom"
5. Once the programming is complete you can remove the USB drive and restart the PC.
6. The first reboot will result in a message similar to the following: "The CMOS has been reset; press F1 to enter setup or F2 to continue with default settings". Press F1 and follow the Procedure 2 (Step 2) below.

Procedure 2 - for configuring the BIOS

1. Press [Delete] key during POST screen to enter BIOS setup.
2. Go to 'Exit' menu. Choose 'Load Setup Defaults'.
3. Change each of the settings listed in Procedure 3 below as applicable - for the specifications of the PC.

Procedure 3 - BIOS Settings

You MAY need to change the following options after loading 'Setup Defaults':

(1) Main menu -> Lagacy Diskette A -> 1.44M, 3.5 in (by default).
Please disable if your system lacks a floppy drive.

(2) Advanced menu -> Chipset -> SouthBridge Configuration -> Front Panel Select -> HD Audio (by default).
Please set this option to AC97.

(3) Advanced menu -> Onboard Devices Configuration -> Serial Port Address -> 3F8/IRQ4 (by default).
Please disable if your system lacks a COM port.

(4) Advanced menu -> Onboard Devices Configuration -> Parallel Port Address -> 378 (by default).
Please set this option to Disabled.

(3) Boot menu -> Boot Device Priority.
Please customise this according to your requirement.

(4) Boot menu -> Boot Settings Configuration -> Full Screen Logo.
Please Disable this option.

End.  Go to 'Exit' menu and choose 'Save and Exit'

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