Paint Shop Pro 5.0

I wipe out my main system every 6 months or so ... to clean any viruses, slowdowns, or bad installs. It's a habit I have and it keeps my system running in tip-top order. So I rummaged through some of my archive DVDs of software I bought trying re-install all my old programs.

I came across Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 5.0. What a cool little paint program. This was one of my initial purchases and it has more than paid for itself over and over. I haven't found much of a reason to upgrade to newer versions, as with all the new features come the more complicated menus, slower load times, and just plain annoyances. I know my PSP 5 and I'll stick with it thank you, unless Corel (the new owners) decide to go back to the grass-roots of PSP.

Regardless, now that they have gone through 3 more versions they seem to assume there is no more reason to support the old 5.0 version. And I know there was a 3rd and final patch which fixed some bugs and updated some features.

Anyways, since I could not easily find it on the web I am providing a download link to the update (not the actual program!) for those who find this piece of software to still be useful.

Here is the link psp503up.exe

Enjoy! Hopefully Corel doesn't crap on me for doing this.

Replacing the LCD hinges of a Dell Inspiron 4150

My trusted workhouse, the Dell Inspiron 4150 laptop that I bought about 4 years ago had its right LCD hinge broken. Granted 3 years was beyond the useful life expectancy of a laptop (in my opinion) , which is basically when my factory extended warranty ran out. So everything after I considered "gravy". The laptop did its job and did its job well.

So, about 2 months ago the right-hinge broke (the side with the double-leg hinge, opposite the side with the LCD ribbon cable). Now, where do I find somebody to fix it? I was pretty handy and so I decided to search on the Internet for a company to sell me the replacement part.

Most people are under the understanding that at the end of the rainbow is a pot of gold ... in my experiences, eBay is at the end of my rainbow. If you're looking for some obscure object or part, somebody is bound to have sold it or currently selling it on eBay.

Most objects can be had for a bargain on eBay, but there are a group of people ("group" is used loosely) who insist on selling the item for a bargain-basement price, but charge something ridiculously high for shipping & handling. Hence was my case when I needed an LCD hinge for a Dell Inspiron 4150. Most of the sellers were asking $9.99 for a single buy-it-now price but wanted something in the range of $40USD for shipping. I tend to avoid those people at all cost.

Regardless, I found somebody who would ship the replacement part at a reasonable cost for shipping and the part itself. Although the seller indicated the hinge was sold loose (in my opinion, means sold without the LCD panel) it was actually in a condition where it would not hold the LCD panel up.

Dell Poweredge SC420 XP video card drivers

I'm a Dell nut. I admit it. I've had nothing but horseshoes with Dell machines.

I bought a used Dell Poweredge 2300 with dual P2-300 cpus. It was noisy but it was dual CPU system. It also produced a lot of heat, but that warmed up my basement during the winter months.

I bought my next brand new Inspiron 4150 laptop with the works. I loved that laptop. It has a P4 1.6ghz cpu with 512mb memory and a 30gb hard drive. I am still using it today, aside from a temporary setback of broken LCD hinges which forces me to use a docking station and an external monitor (more on that in another post).

Then came the Dimension 2400, the Poweredge 1550, the set of Poweredge 750s and the Dell Poweredge SC420. My reason for buying Dells? They are cheap and I haven't had a problem with one since that first dual cpu system (granted, the laptop had its fair share of problems but due to its age and the wear and tear that it endured).

Regardless I love my Dells even despite their quirks, and trust me every Dell has a quirk. My Poweredge SC420 I picked up for $499 ($575 w/tax) and is my fastest system. A Pentium 4 3.4ghz initially with 128mb of DDR2 ECC memory.

It's first quirk was the requirement to run DDR2 ECC memory. I don't know why I didn't pay attention when I bought it, but ECC memory was expensive and hard to find, not to mention the fact that it was ECC DDR2 ! I did some digging and it turns out that non-ECC DDR2 worked fine so I ordered 2gb worth on eBay for a decent price. Everything works fine.

Remember, this system was labelled as a "server" and was intended to be used as such. This was my second mistake. There were no drivers for the onboard Intel graphic card. Most of you are probably thinking, well you should be using AGP or PCIe anyways. Granted, for all you gaming deadheads who buy $1500+ systems to play games when you should've bought a Sony Playstation/Microsoft XBox ! This system was to be my primary system ... audio, video and development so I needed XP drivers. Unfortunately there were none. Only for Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

I won't go into the lengthy discussion of "hacking" the crippled PCIe slot and what some people on the Internet have risked to achive this hack.

So after some digging I ran across a website called PowerEdge Forums which had an active discussion on the Windows XP video drivers issue. Essentially, the solution was to install a software patch to fool Windows into thinking the onboard graphics chip was actually another almost identical Intel chip with Windows XP drivers. Then, install the drivers for that card and off you go! The tip actually worked and I've been using it since, but after a recent re-install of Windows XP I could no longer find an active link to the drivers and patch.

So, here you go:

1. Unzip and right-click the ".inf" file and select install for the software patch : SoftGMA005.zip

2. Reboot the system (if it hasn't asked you already)

3. Install these Windows XP drivers from another Intel video card that actually works in XP : win2k_xp1416.exe

Enjoy!