Computer recycling

Introduction:
Over the years, tons of electronics equipment with hazardous materials have been thrown away with standard garbage. Over time, these materials leak out of the electronics causing damage to the environment. In order to try and reduce the threat, many local, state and federal governments are enacting legislation that requires proper disposal of old electronics.
Most computer equipment becomes outdated anywhere from one to five years after its purchase. This puts a burden on consumers to try and properly dispose of old equipment lying around the house. So, what are the different avenues that we can use to get rid of all this equipment properly?
Government Programs:
Several prominent states including California, Maine, Maryland and Washington have all enacted laws dealing with electronic waste. In addition to laws in these states, many cities and counties also have laws dictating the methods of electronic and computer disposal. It is important before throwing out any old computer parts or electronics to check with the appropriate government agencies to determine the proper methods.
The easiest method for determining the proper laws governing the region that you live in is to contact your local waste management company and local governments. Often times, government web sites will list the e-waste disposal rules under the terms "waste management", "recycling" or "environmental agency". Programs for disposal may be free or carry fees depending upon the item being turned in for disposal.
Manufacturer Recycling Programs:
Many of the larger computer and electronics companies have begun offering recycling programs. Often these programs will take older computer parts in exchange for credits towards the purchase of new equipment from the manufacturer. Other programs may be a simple pickup and recovery service that they charge a small fee for. Be sure to check all of the details regarding the program with the company before using them. Some of the companies will simply refer the customer to the state disposal due to government regulation.

Boot Order

Boot Order:
This is the most important setting for when you first build your computer. The boot order determines which devices the motherboard will look at for an operating system or installer. The options typically include Hard Drive, Optical Drive, Floppy Drive, Network and Other. The standard order at first startup is Floppy, Hard Drive, Optical Drive and Other. This will generally cause the system to find the hard drive first which will not have a functional operating system on the computer.
The proper sequence for the installation of a new operating system should be Floppy, Optical Drive, Hard Drive and Other. This allows the computer to but from the OS installation CD that has a bootable installer program on it. Once the hard drive has been formatted and the OS installed, it is important to then restore the boot order of the computer to the original of Floppy, Hard Drive, Optical Drive and Other.

Drive Settings:
The settings for the hard and optical drives that run off the ATA controllers is another area that users may need to alter. In most modern drives, the PIO and ATA modes are automatically detected and used. There are some cases that it may be necessary to set the controllers to a specific setting to properly function. This is usually only the case with older components.
To properly set the PIO and ATA modes for the drives, refer to the documentation from the manufacture of the hard or optical drive being installed. Once the settings are known from the manufacturer, the proper settings can be placed in the BIOS. Once again, this should only be done if there are problems with the computer when the AUTO settings are used.

Problems and Resetting the CMOS:
On some rare occasions, the computer system may not properly POST or boot. When this occurs, typically a series of beeps will be generated by the motherboard to indicate a diagnostic code. Pay close attention to the number and types of beeps and then refer to the motherboard manuals for what the codes mean. Generally when this occurs, it will be necessary to reset the BIOS by clearing the CMOS that stores the BIOS settings.
The actual procedure for clearing the CMOS is fairly straightforward, but check with the manual for the steps to double check. The first thing to do is power off the computer and unplug it. Let to computer rest for about 30 seconds. At this point, you need to find the reset jumper on the motherboard. This jumper is moved from the non-reset to reset position for a brief moment and returned back to its original position. Plug the power cord back in and reboot the computer. At this point, it should boot with the BIOS defaults allowing the settings to be redone.

Bios settings

Bios settings:
The BIOS or Basic Input/Output System is the basic controller that allows all of the components that make up a computer system to talk to one another. But in order for this to happen, there are a number of things that the BIOS needs to know how to do. This is why the settings within the BIOS are so critical to the operation of the computer system. For about 95% of the computer users out there, they will never need to adjust the BIOS settings of their computer. However, those who have chosen to build their own computer system will need to know how to modify the settings.
Some of the critical things one will need to know are the clock settings, memory timing, boot order and drive settings. Thankfully the computer BIOS has come a long way in the past ten years where many of these settings are automatic and very little needs to be adjusted.

How to Access the BIOS:
The method for accessing the BIOS is going to be dependent upon the manufacturer of the motherboard and the BIOS vender they have selected. The actual process to get to the BIOS is identical, just the key that is needed to be pressed will vary. It is important to have the user manual for the motherboard handy whenever changes will be made to the BIOS.
The first step is to look up what key needs to be pressed to enter the BIOS. Some of the common keys used to access the BIOS are F1, F2 and the Del key. Generally the motherboard will post this information when the computer first turns on, but it is best to look it up before hand. Next, power on the computer system and press the key to enter the BIOS after the beep for a clean POST is signaled. I will often press the key a couple times to make sure it registered. If the procedure has been done correctly, the BIOS screen should be displayed rather than the typical boot screen.

CPU Clock:
The very first setting that needs to be made in the BIOS is to adjust the motherboard to utilizing the proper clock settings for the CPU installed in the computer. Most modern BIOS vendors can detect the type of CPU and automatically set the proper timings. Refer to the documentation from the CPU and motherboard vendor for the proper settings.
The CPU speed is comprised of two numbers, a bus speed and a multiplier. The bus speed is the tricky part because vendors may have this setting done either at the natural clock rate or at the enhanced clock rate. The natural front side bus is the more common of the two. The multiplier is then used to determine the final clock speed based on the bus speed of the processor. Set this to the appropriate multiple for the final clock speed of the processor.
For an example, if you have an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ processor that has a CPU speed of 1.82GHz clock, the proper settings for the BIOS would be a bus speed of 166MHz and a multiplier of 11. (166MHz x 11 = 1.826 GHz)

Memory Timings:
The next aspect of the BIOS that needs adjusting is the memory timings. Typically it is not necessary for this to be done if the BIOS can detect the settings from the SPD on the memory modules. In fact, if the BIOS has a SPD setting for the memory, this should be used for the highest stability with the computer. Other than this, the memory bus is the setting you will likely need to set. Verifying that the memory bus is set to the appropriate speed for the memory. This may be listed as the actual MHZ speed rating or it may be a percentage of the bus speed. Check with your motherboard manual about the proper methods for setting the timings for memory.

Top 4 PC Technology of 2007

2006 was a really major year in terms of PC technology. 2007 on the other hand was more of an incremental year in terms of advancements. There weren't any earth shattering break throughs that really changed the market as a whole. Still, there were some significant technology items that were released. Here are some of the PC technologies released during 2007 that I feel are noteworthy.
ASUS Eee PC:
There has been lots of talk about low cost portable computers that can be easy to use and accessible. This has been the goal of the OLPC, but it has a number of issues around it. ASUS has finally delivered a product that seems to meet those goals. The Eee PC is an ultraportable notebook with solid state storage and very low cost that allows for general computing that is very easy to use. They do this with a variant of the Linux operating system, but the system can also be used with Windows XP if the user cares to go about buying and installing it. This is a great portable system for those who need to stay connected when traveling or just need a simple system for basic computing tasks but don't want a larger more expensive PC.
LED Backlighting:
Flat panel displays are ubiquitous for a personal computer now. They of course were developed for portable computers but have migrated into the desktop market. Now portable flat panels are getting a boost with a new form of lighting. Previous florescent lighting was used behind the LCD panel. This is general low power but it has harmful chemicals and a limited lifespan. LED lighting is now being implemented and providing a greater life span and larger power savings than even the florescent backlit displays. The displays can also be thinner thus taking up less space. Some forms of LED backlighting can even create greater color depth than before. It is now widely used in many laptops and even starting to make its way into desktop displays.
Intel P35 Chipset:
Intel's Core processor architecture has been a huge success and regained much of the market share they lost to AMD over the years. The P35 desktop chipset made a huge impact in the mainstream desktop market this year. The chipset offered a great level of performance and flexibility for Intel's processor lineup that was widely implemented by manufacturers. In fact, the performance from this chipset is so good, that it really overshadowed the X38 enthusiast chipset market. After all, why purchase a motherboard with a chipset that costs roughly twice as much for only a few additional features. About the only drawback to the P35 chipset is the lack of SLI support for NVIDIA graphics cards, but that only affects a small group of people.

Top PC Tech Blunders of 2007

Top PC Tech Blunders of 2007:
2007 seemed to be a year of minor improvements in the PC world along with a few ideas that were set to revolutionize the world. Of course, more than not a few of these ideas didn't catch on with the industry or with the computing public. With that said, let's take a look at some of the items from 2007 that I feel deserve the title of PC Blunders of 2007.

DDR3 Memory :
This isn't really so much a failure as a false start that happens to a lot of new technology. DDR3 is set to offer performance gains to computer memory that DDR2 supposedly can't offer. The problem is that the adoption of DDR3 has been slow and as a result the costs for the memory are extremely high. In fact, most of the early releases were only for performance memory. DDR2 memory modules are available that offer similar performance for as much as half of what the DDR3 costs. Similarly things happened when DDR2 and DDR were orginally introduced. Over time, DDR3 production and performance will improve such that the prices will fall and more people use it.

Hybrid Hard Drives:
Hybrid hard drives were set to change mobile computing by providing the large capacity of a traditional hard drive with the power savings and performance boost of solid state drives. Of course, these drives wouldn't really see these benefits without a compatible operating system in the form of Windows Vista with its SuperFetch, ReadyDrive and ReadyBoost features. This would allow the system to take commonly used files and put them in the faster flash than from the traditional drive. The end result was a drive that was more expensive than a traditional drive but really didn't have all that much of a performance boost. It did save some battery life, but most solid state drives look to be the more popular and expensive alternative.

AMD Quad FX Platform:
Tecnically the AMD Quad FX platform was launched at the end of 2006, but 2007 was when products really became available. The design combined two new AMD Athlon 64 FX dual core processors on a single board to provide four cores to provide extreme performance. While it did boost performance for a limited number of applications, the general consumer was left looking at the cost. The chips weren't compatible with the rest of the AMD processor lineup and were extremely expensive. This resulted in a platform that was ridiculously expensive yet didn't give much of a performance boost for the average consumers uses. Needless to say it didn't take off and AMD officially dropped the product line at the end of 2007.