October 2004
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
7h 44m
English
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 1. Basic System Board Hacks
Introduction: Hacks #1-10
With the exception of your PC's unhackable power supply, hacking your PC starts with the lowest level of detail within your system board—from how fast the clock is that makes the CPU tick to how the I/O bus is configured for your hard drives and peripherals. Hacking starts with the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) setup program, which affects the CPU, memory, chipset, and peripherals.
While some PC users think in terms of exotic mice, expansive flat-panel LCD screens, and high download bandwidth speeds, there are myriad mysteriously-named parameters and features within the system BIOS. These parameters may control everything from CPU and memory clocking to I/O device configurations and system passwords. The right amount of parameter tweaking at the BIOS level can squeeze another few million-instructions-per-second (MIPS) or microseconds of faster video or hard drive performance out of the bones of your system.
Of course, like anything functional, the right bones or foundation elements have to be in place—in this case reliable and capable system components (CPU, chipset, and memory) and a BIOS, the essential innards of any PC, that can be tweaked. Tweaking or hacking a system board is done with software settings in the BIOS setup program, hardware jumpers, or dual-in-line-package (DIP) switches, so you must have the manual for your system board handy to be able to locate the correct jumpers and switches. I recommend you ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.