Sunday, June 14, 2009

Windows Vista Displays the Wrong CPU Device

I recently upgraded a laptop's CPU to a higher clocked model. The bios recognized the new CPU immediately, of course, but the device manager in Vista (Ultimate 64bit) still showed the old dual cores (T6570 @2.1GHz.) Running scans for hardware changes did not help, nor did updating the performance tool.

I did some web searches (though none too thorough) and didn't find any real answers. I felt brave (don't try this at home!) and went into device manager and "uninstalled" one of the cores of the processor and rebooted.

When the box came back up, one of the cores was labeled T6570 @2.1Ghz, but the other core was now labeled correctly: T9300 @2.5Ghz. I repeated the procedure with the second core and rebooted. Voila! Both cores show the correct name and speed.

If you try to do this yourself, you do so at your own risk, of course. It'd probably be smart to do a backup, but I was too impatient.

DB9 - RJ45 Serial Pinouts

I frequently use serial connections for access to network devices. I find it a hassle to carry around the old serial cables... especially with limited space in my bag. On the other hand, I always have a few cat 5/5e cables handy. I decided years ago to just start using the DB9 to CAT5 adapters you can get at places like Radio Shack.

I labeled these pinouts A and B, but those names are arbitrary. You'll find that layout B is most commonly used in the blue cisco cables... particularly the older cables that had a separate connector. In both cases, the green wire is optional (and is soldered to the red wire, at least in the Cisco version) - at least with all the network gear I've worked with in the last few years. Also, pins 1 and 9 aren't used in either version.

The advantage of these two are that you need only two of these adapters (one of each) and a cat 5 or cat 5e cable.

If you need to connect to a piece of Cisco gear (they typically use the RJ45 serial port,) just use the type A connector and a cat5 cable direct to the Cisco box.

If you need to connect to a piece of gear that uses DB9, place one connector on each end of the cat 5 cable.




typePin 1Pin 2Pin 3Pin 4Pin 5Pin 6Pin 7Pin 8Pin 9
A
xblackyellowbrownred (+green)orangewhitebluex
Bxyellowblackorangered (+green)brownbluewhitex