Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Windows Azure SDK Tools on Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Reading various blogs, books and documentation on Windows Azure development will lead you to the Azure specific tools such as csypack, csencrypt and their friends. However, most of them points to the wrong PATH in your Windows installation as to the location of those Azure specific tools in Azure SDK June 2012. In Azure SDK June 2012 installation on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64, the path of those Azure specific tools is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\.NET SDK\2012-06>
instead of the path mostly mentioned in tutorials or books, i.e.
C:\Program Files\Windows Azure\xxx

I hope this helps those who starts developing on Windows Azure and longing to know where the Azure specific tools are located on default Azure SDK installation.

Friday, August 3, 2012

OpenGL Bug in AMD E-350 (Brazos) Driver

The old AMD E-350 catalyst driver unable to display a simple triangle rendered in OpenGL, even though the shader requested in the GLSL input is version 1.50. However, the driver did pass Geek3D's GPU Caps Viewer tests for OpenGL 4.0 support, the driver also capable of running combined OpenGL and OpenCL sample application from AMD APP SDK v1.4. Perhaps the problem is only on the GLSL compiler in the driver. I'm now using this driver version:
Driver Packaging Version	: 8.871-110627a-121536C	
Provider	                : ATI Technologies Inc.	
2D Driver Version	        : 8.01.01.1171	
2D Driver File Path              :/REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000	
Direct3D Version	        : 7.14.10.0847	
OpenGL Version	                : 6.14.10.10907	
AMD VISION Engine Control Center Version : 2011.0627.1558.26805	
with this driver, everything worked as expected and I've just noticed that the OpenGL support now increased to OpenGL 4.1. The previous driver only supports up-to OpenGL 4.0.