Mac Pro RAM installation warning

I learned something when I upgraded my new Mac Pro with a 2 GB RAM kit, and this isn't on any Apple documentation that I could find.

The Mac Pro handles RAM on two riser boards that project perpendicularly from the motherboard. Each riser board has four slots for RAM DIMM modules:

This picture shows one of the riser boards, populated with two DIMMs. The board slides into the Mac Pro case; in the picture, the two holes in the board are finger holes you use to pull the board out of its motherboard slot. It's an excellent design (as is expanding the rest of the machine; I installed the two hard drives and the surplus optical drive stripped from my dead G5, and it was incredibly easy). By the way, the DIMMs in the picture look a bit odd and fat because each one runs hot enough to require its own heat sink.

The Mac Pro came with 1 GB of RAM, in two 512 MB DIMMs installed in slots 1 and 2 of the top riser card. The upgrade I bought was two 1 GB DIMMs (you must upgrade RAM in DIMM pairs). Apple's RAM installation instructions told me to put them into slots 1 and 2 of the bottom riser card, which I did.

On reboot, the Finder reported only 2 GB of RAM, not the 3 GB I expected. System Profiler only recognized the two DIMMs in the bottom riser card. And there was a red LED lit on the top riser card, the one with the two 512 MB DIMMs. I knew that RAM was fine, as the machine had just booted from it with no problem.

So I shut down the Mac and swapped the two riser cards, guessing that the machine wanted to see the two larger DIMMS in the top riser card. And it worked. The Mac now sees all the RAM. Something to keep in mind if you're planning to upgrade RAM in a Mac Pro.

A new weblog

There just wasn't a weblog that covered the local scene here in Healdsburg to my satisfaction, so I created one a few days ago. It's called Healdsburgers.

It's a WordPress blog, which is the first time that I've used that software; Backup Brain runs on Movable Type. I've been curious about WordPress for a long time, so I downloaded and installed it. It's amazingly easy to use. I picked up a nice three-column theme, and the whole thing was up and running in just a few hours. Had I known what I was doing, it would have been even quicker.

I've recruited Dori and our friend and neighbor David Morgenstern to help out with the writing chores, and I hope that other members of the community will join us. Healdsburgers is likely to be of interest only to the locals, but please feel free to check it out and make any suggestions. And if you're a WordPress maven, I'd love to hear about plugins that you think I just should not be willing to live without.

Mac Monospaced Fonts

Every so often some coder puts up a blog post about their favorite monospaced font, and every other coder feels a need to chime in about their favorite font. See here and here for two examples.

Me? I've never been able to make up my mind, possibly because there are just too many excellent choices. Here's a screenshot of the candidates—am I missing any good ones?

Happy Birthday to us!

Today, Backup Brain is eight years old.

As we look back over the last twelve months, it's been a pretty good year, all things considered. We've both been fairly healthy, we've released three books and a training DVD, and Sean is doing well at college.

Eight years ago, we were fulminating about Republicans, looking forward to the next year's elections, and wondering why we hadn't made our fortunes off the current Web bubble. Some things never change.

Eight years ago, we hadn't yet moved to Healdsburg. I (Tom) still think it was one of the best ideas I've ever had. We love the town and our friends here. I got to help build Access Healdsburg, the local cable access TV station; I still serve on its Board of Directors.

Eight years ago, we didn't have a teenager. OTOH, nine months from now, that will be true again.

Eight years ago, we hadn't yet gotten married; now, it's hard to imagine not being married.

And finally, eight years ago, we hadn't gotten to know many of you, our readers. Some of you have been here from the start, and shared the journey with us. Some of you are more recent arrivals, and we're hoping to get to know you better. To all of you: thanks for being here, and we look forward to many more years of bloggy goodness with you.

Tom & Dori