your current PSU—it might come in handy for
troubleshooting in the future.
POST TOASTIE?
My Abit SR8-7X motherboard died on me
after two years of service, and Abit—to its
credit—replaced it under warranty. The only
trouble is that I can’t get the new board to get
past the POST—it keeps giving me a “CPU has
changed, go to setup” error message. I replaced
the 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with an identical part,
but it still gives me the same error message.
I even asked Abit to send me a third mother-
board—which it did—and installed both CPUs in
it. I got the same result, even after resetting the
BIOS. Upgrading to a newer-model motherboard is
not an option, because it would also entail replacing
the CPU and the 1.5GB of memory I already own. Any
help would be greatly appreciated.
—Paul Lichtenstein
The Doc can’t find any info on Abit SR8
mobos, so he’s going to assume you actually
have an Abit SR7-8X. The first step in your
recovery should be to download and install
the latest BIOS. Once you’ve flashed the BIOS,
perform a “load defaults” and save the chang-
es (you should also make sure you don’t have
any auto-overclocking features enabled). If
the board is still giving you the error message,
try replacing the CMOS battery. If that doesn’t
do the trick, make sure the board is correctly
identifying the installed CPU, and verify the
BIOS’ CPU configuration (the correct setting
for your CPU is a 21 multiplier x 133MHz
front-side bus. Set the multiplier manually, if
you have to). If none of these steps solve the
problem, search the BIOS settings for a halt-
on-errors feature. If it has one, set it to “halt
on none” and the POST should skip right over
the spurious error message.
NORTH, TO ALASKA!
I just bought a new Dell Dimension with a fast
processor, a good Sound Blaster card, acres
of memory, and a bottomless hard drive. I’ve
used MusicMatch Jukebox 9.0 to rip music at
64Kbps ( Jukebox calls this “CD Quality”), and
some of it sounds great, but a lot of it sounds
distorted and sub par. I have good ears—I DJ
and produce for KHNS-FM, in Haines, Alaska—
and I can’t figure out why these files sound so
bad. Can you offer any insights?
—Mike Bradac
Ripping audio from a CD and encoding it to
any format other than uncompressed WAV
always entails a trade-off between file size
and audio quality. Using low bit rates results
in smaller files, but the intense compression
also results in music that sounds like crap.
It’s no surprise that you’re unhappy with the
audio quality you’re getting by ripping at just
64Kbps—you’re losing a lot of detail at that
rate. The Doctor recommends ripping at a
minimum rate of 192Kbps. If you’re concerned
about file sizes, consider enabling the soft-
ware’s variable bit-rate option. In this scenario,
more space will be used to store complex pas-
sages, and less space will be used for simpler
segments. You might also consider using one
of the lossless codecs, such as FLAC; just
make sure the playback devices you intend to
use also support that codec. (For more about
ripping flawless MP3s, see page 30).SECOND OPINION
You said in your February column that
there’s no way to convert component
high-definition video—such as from
an Xbox—to a VGA signal that can
be displayed on a computer monitor.
But I’ve found a product that does
just that: The VD-Z3 Component-to-
VGA Transcoder ($60), from V-Digi
Electronics ( http://www.vdigi.com ). And if
you want to uses your PC mouse and
keyboard to control your Xbox, you
might try the Smartjoy Frag ($20), from
Lik-sang ( http://www.liksang.com ).Ripping digital audio tracks
requires you to strike a balance
between quality and storage
consumption. Using variable bit
rates comes close to delivering
the best of both worlds.