Darwin Mach

Hello everyone.

Today, I bring to you… How to overclock the Nokia N900! Since the first sighting of an overclocked Cortex-A8 processor has appeared, the folks at maemo.org have managed to flash the N900 with customized kernels in order to allow the CPU to be overclocked up to 1.2GHz (DSP up to 500MHz)! But due to liability concerns, only the kernel images of up to 930MHz have been posted.

Technically, the battery life would be less, but the N900 dynamically scales the CPU speed down to 250MHz when it is idle. The custom kernel allows it to go down to 125MHz.

Personally, I have flashed the 850MHz / 450MHz DSP kernel via XTerminal and the phone is definitely a lot snappier & responsive. So far, it’s been stable for me. As with any overclocking, you are on your own and accept the fact that you may cause hardware damage. In no way is anyone liable for such modifications. Period. You have been warned.

The kernels require N900 firmware PR1.1 or greater to run. However, since PR1.2 is coming soon, I highly recommend you restore the stock kernel before upgrading to the newest firmware or you may see some problems. As a side note, these customized kernel images were based off of PR1.1.1 and will almost definitely be incompatible with PR1.2. So once the new firmware has been released, WAIT for a new version of the custom kernels!

If you’re still interested, here’s a link to the guide that jakiman (thanks!) over @ maemo.org has put together: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=595582&postcount=774

Props to lehto and titan @ maemo.org for their work in creating these wonderful mods. I will update you guys if anything interesting shows up with the overclocking between now and PR1.2.

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You can use an Vista or Windows 7 upgrade key to do a clean install of their respective operating systems.

How? Do a clean install of Windows. Then run the installer (from the DVD) inside the unactivated copy of Windows you just installed to “upgrade”. Your installation is now marked as an upgrade and you can activate Windows with your upgrade key. Make sure you pick the same version of Windows & architecture (x86 vs x64) you are licensed for both times.

What this means for you? You never have to pay full price for Windows, unless of course, if you can’t wait for the second install.

Additional tip: Create a bootable USB flash drive (at least 4GB) from the installation DVD and use that instead. Each install can then be done in about 10-15 minutes since it’s not using the optical media.

Cheers.

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So, my laptop is a Dell Precision M6400. For a while now, I’ve been experiencing some weird issues with the sound card (IDT HD Audio)

Some examples:
- Random audio hiccups
- Every time I open Adobe Soundbooth, open a file in soundbooth, or change my microphone settings, I get a brief, but loud piano slamming noise. Also any music or sounds I was playing in the background kept switching between stereo and mono output

Seems like the issue was that the default formats for the speakers and the microphone didn’t match up. In Windows 7 (and Vista), there’s an “Advanced” tab when you open up the sound properties and double click a device. This allows you to set the default format. Make sure the microphone inputs (particularly the “Microphone Array”) and the “Speakers / Headphones” have matching formats.

For the audio hiccups fix, you need to disable the power management option in the IDT’s control panel applet. (Preferences “tab”)

Also as a note about an earlier issue: Sound won’t play back through the built in speakers…
- You need to disable the “Independent (R.T.C.) Headphones” device or the sound driver will get confused.
- You also need to make sure the “Speakers / Headphones” device, “Custom” tab has the “PC Spk Mute” unchecked. What this option really means is to mute the built-in speakers, not to get rid of the annoying PC beep that occurs once in a blue moon. Redundant of course since plugging in external speakers or headphones already accomplishes this.

Now that the sound card works like it should, audio entertainment has been much more enjoyable

Driver Version as of writing: 6.10.0.6229 (Dell A12, they’re from the M6500 download page)
Default Format I’m using: “24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality)”

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