I purchased my 933 used from a friend and it is serving quite well as my primary desktop. I love my laptop, but you just can’t do any serious work on it. The 933 is hardly state of the art any longer, but is a fine PC and properly outfitted runs some very powerful apps quite quickly. For instance, Sim City 4 runs quite smoothly on it right now despite the games legendary power hungry nature. Anyway, back to my main point.

Gateway lists incorrect specifications for the 933’s maximum memory capacity. As you can see on the Gateway webpage for the Intel Solano 82815 chipset they claim the max memory using either 100 or 133 speed RAM is 512MB. This, to anyone who has attempted to fill the 933 up with 133 mhz RAM, is obviously wrong. Doing so causes the system to crash, and despite a BIOS flash upgrade provided by Gateway, it cannot be fixed. It may be an inherent flaw in the design of 133 RAM, I don’t know, I’m not an expert. What I do know is you can’t put that much in the Gateway 933.

However what you can do is put in 384 MB of 133 RAM, and 128 of 100 RAM to max out your slots. Now I was unable to get a straight answer from anyone, including Gateway support (who were otherwise very helpful and friendly) as to whether or not this was a safe thing to do. I read varying articles online that stated it was either an OK thing, a possibly buggy thing, or a horrible system destroying thing.

Well in my case it seems to be an OK thing, the 33 mhz speed difference between the two memory modules is either unapparant, or the system is running the PC100 ram at 133 – I can’t really tell. The system is running fine, and feel satisfied that I am getting the most out of my machine. I don’t know, one day my RAM may bust into flames from being overclocked so to speak, but I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I think it should be fine. Hope this helps someone out who has a similar problem. On a related note, my suggestion to Gateway that they correct their documentation went unanswered.

And I don’t want to hear any jeers about forgetting about it and just upgrading to a new motherboard with some phat 400 mhz DDR ram and a Pentium 4HT. That’s not the point, and besides I’m quite happy with my PC just the way it is. Although I probably will upgrade when I have the money.

I hate to do this, oh so cliche, but I’ve finally given in, so here it goes:

1. Get a Job – indicators: income other than selling blood, not sleeping till noon, etc.

2. Get Healthy – specifically, return to regular exercise schedule, about 4-5 times per week. Indicators: loss of approx 10 lbs, no longer walk out side and wonder what those fuzzy white blobs in the sky are, no longer winded after brisk walk to fridge, etc.

3. Finish both my PHP/MySQL and Python programming books, write at least one useful program using one of them.

Misc goals to consider:

4. Take one self defense or martial arts class.

5. Go to MSU Fencing club meets.

6. Take a general cooking class.

7. Contingent on job – begin studying for CFA exam

8. Contingent on job – begin building a Killer Gaming Rig computer

Ok, that’s it for now, I may add some more as I think of them. Feel free to post your own in the comments section to make them ‘official’.