What made we write mbm, I had a Asus P2L97S (I think that is the right number)
and found this DOS program that could show me some temps and voltages under
win95
I did some searches and found info about the isa port $295 $296, with a friend
who was a student programmer (I wasa bakker back then), he explained me the
basics of port in/out and I started off with a little temp meter,
MBM 1.0 was nothing more then 1 VUMeter
(we are talking end of 1997)
I posted that and soon got requests from people saying what about the voltages,
I also remember 1 person who said that this 1 vumeter totally crashed his system
and it was all my fault, I almost stopped then, that guy made a big big fuss in
the newsgroups (asus one I posted back then)... that when I started adding the
"at your own risk bla bla bla" when you install or 1st start the program.
anyway next to the 1 VU meter came a voltage box, then a fan box, a button to
change from C to F. that was MBM 2.0 really, of course it only worked with 1
sensor chip, the LM78
by then I had all the asus TX board users nocking on my door, their board had a
LM75 that could show the CPU temp !!! yes sir !!!
so searching again I found this LM75 was located on something called the smbus,
which again was located on the PCI bus, I knew about the last one, it where
those white slots on your board... right ???
I found some german code samples about the LM75, it was all hard coded, the
smbus at adres $E800 and that was it, but hey I had LM75 support. al the time I
added options and settings and MBM 3.0 was born, it also had the system tray
option, now that was probably the best idea I ever had <G>
Those tabs with the pull down box (like on the screenshot in the general tab),
that idea I had from the Diamond 3D voodoo drivers, they had that to put all the
options on the tabs, I liked that
, this was also the 1st one on a cover CD of a magazine.... man was I proud.... these days I just answer back "feel free to
put mbm on your cover cd"... how you get used to things
Next came the winbond Winbond W83781D, that was a LM78 clone and also on the ISA
so no worries, however around then more and more boards started to move their
sensor chips from the ISA to the SMBus (I still don't understand why, ISA is/was
so much more stable)
So I needed to get my head around the smbus, only to find out it was diffrent on
each chipset, many weeks later mbm 4 was born, could scan the pcibus for the
smbus and then the smbus for sensor chips. also had the 1st sort of dashboard,
you could make the display bigger or smaller. had more logging, cpuidle, shdn,
e-mail, up/down etc. etc.
note the above screenshot has no temp selected, also not that it was multi
language and you can hook up more then the fixed few sensors that mbm 3 could,
you could make it smaller
or even like mbm 3 only show the temps
the smbus code proved so populair/sollid that I ended up selling it to 4
diffrent US companies, I was shocked at what they payed for it.... !!!!
and so we reached 2000, and I was starting mbm 5, unlike 1 to 4, 5 was a total
re-code and I totally underastimated that big time, I even anounced I would stop
as 1st beta's where pretty awefull. People did not like the new look at all,
but then if your doing freeware and people don't pay you can do as you please
the idea behind 5 was that it's memory footprint should be as little as possible
when running in the tray, all the previous version where 1 program, so even if
you only had it in the tray you where still using memory for the big look with
all the options and settings, you only did not see it.
5 is a exe with all the stuff in DLL's that are loaded and unloaded when needed,
the mbm 5 footprint is about 2mb (about the same as lcdc) and less then the
winlogon screen <g>
and so mbm 5 was born and is still growing, I have not sold the smbus code in
years as it's becomming more populair and more people know how it works
next on the list is SiS smbus support, that is one chipset I can't get my head
around.
Did I think mbm grew this big, no not really, and I have had good competition,
Hmonitor (shareware from a russian I think) is pretty damn good code wise,
MBprobe from Jonathen the, we shared a lot of code
shame he stopped. Speedfan is the latest, I got Alfredo started with his small tool back then and
it turned into a big MBM killer
, but then if mbm can't stand competition then it is not worth it......
MBM this big, is that good for MBM, nope, I spend atleast 1-2 hours a day -at
time- answering mail and forum, I used to code, so in a way mbm right now is a
victim of it's popularity <g>
Regards, Alex
Thanks for reading and thanks to Alex!
Don't forget to check out our case gallery.
http://www.lcdforums.com/forums/viewfor ... forum=9&43
_________________
Henry J.
Head of Technical Support
Matrix Orbital
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Henry on 2002-09-18 11:59 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: henry on 2002-09-27 12:02 ]</font>
