The topic of week 45 in Sari’s photo Projekt 52:
Electricity
Bitchy board
Didn’t imagine that a mainboard (in this case an MSI X38 Diamond and for testing a P35D3) would be so bitchy when the CPU revision (in this case a Wolfdale E0) is a bit newer than the old BIOS supports – at least it should start DOS to allow a BIOS update, but no, it’s gotta hang with full-screen logo during memory or USB initialization and ignore any keypress, except when occasionally asking whether to reset the BIOS setup, just to hang after that, or sometimes turn itself off and back on every few seconds until you unplug it, or… or… or…
So it’s remove CPU, search an older one, install, update, remove, install new one, phew, works. The first major step towards my new work PC is done…
Funiculì, Funiculà
From nature to technology – to the funicular Territet–Glion (about 300m above the lake). (The Italian title is from the song about the opening of such a train on Mount Vesuvius, see Wikipedia.)
One of the cars and a look at the mechanism:
On the ride down a look through the window (in which my bright t-shirt is reflected) shortly before passing the other car going up; and a bridge along the way (photographed through the opening of a small horizontally pivoted window at the top):
One view from the very top and two from the very bottom:
An old car still to be seen in the lower station (already partly visible on the previous photo):
And speaking of railroad vehicles, let’s turn quickly to the Glion station of the cog railroad from Montreux to the Rochers de Naye (the Mountain behind Montreux), right next to the funicular station:
And further below where it passes a bridge at the top edge of Montreux:
Speaking of the Rochers de Naye: One current photo from lakeside and one from four years ago when I was up there:
More opposites
After the old house being reconstructed, I got another photo that fits Projekt 52’s current week topic “Opposites”.
Since I had no big tripod in my photo equipment yet – which I won’t need that often – it was a good opportunity that a local electronics store had a budget tripod on sale for 14,99€, and for the fun of it I mounted my little pocket cam on it:
48 Spaces
Warning: It will be a little techical here 
– but maybe just ignore the details, you still can get what’s odd here, so in case of doubt just read the bold print…:
From the SMBios/DMI info for memory modules that are supposed to be set by the BIOS, ideally taking the info from the modules’ SPD EEPROMs:
Manufacturer: 48spaces
Part no.: 312345678901234567890123456789012345
Serial no.: 31234567
And the same for all four slot info items. How did that go, did someone say to his colleague programmer: “Nobody cares about these fields anyway, just write 48 spaces into them”?
Photo: Lev Olkha – Fotolia.com