Archive for January, 2014

Dell UltraSharp 24″ 4K UP2414Q on Mac

Monday, January 27th, 2014

Just a quick note: The affordable, and color accurate 24″ 4K display from Dell (UP2414Q) does work on recent Macs. Even my not so recent mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro. However, on these, and even the later Retina MacBook Pro it only runs the full 4k resolution at 30 Hz. On the newer it should work with 60Hz, but this currently looks to be a Mac driver limitation.

Switching to HiDPI mode requires some hackery, as Mac does neither do this automatically according to the DPI that could be derived from the DDC EDID data, nor does it offer a UI option to do so, … :-/
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Posted in Software, Hardware | 113 Comments »

Harpertown Xeon do not work in MacPro 1,1-2,1

Wednesday, January 15th, 2014

Some posts scattered on the web claimed a Intel Harpertown Xeon, like the X5470 could work in a MacPro 2,1 (or eve 1,1 - they are hardware identical, just different firmware) given they still use the same LGA 771 socket. There even is a post where someone claims that he got a voice message from Apple confirming Harpertown support for his MacPro 2,1.

However, yesterday I tried that (Mac Pro 2,1 with the newer firmware) and I can assure you they do not work. The main logic board led indicator CPUB failure would light but nothing much else would happen.

Another note: Before you pull like crazy on the front fan assembly: mine were fixed with a second screw, the disassembly guides I found only mentioned one at the main logic board, however I had a second screw holding it in place just at the bottom side, where the CPU heat sinks end.

PS: It was actually still quite good that I disassembled the beast. With the original Xeon’s it still works (puh!), and considering that after some 6 years of 24/7 server load it was full of dust and so an internal cleanup was more than overdue ;-)

Posted in Hardware, Life | No Comments »

The bubble waiting to burst 2.0 :-/

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014

Unfortunately there are followups to my precious notes about the current .NET bubble. Google buys Nest Labs for a whopping 3.2 billion $US no less.

Nest has a niche product, currently only operating in the US, and not even with any international sales.

There are profitable, serious, big, decades in business companies that value for significantly less, …

But then again Google Ventures is a previous investor, so my understanding is Google Ventures would get at least a bit of that money back?

Posted in Life, Services | No Comments »