I had an old Palm m515 lying around, and even though it's not that old, it is fairly obsolete. It can accept MMC/SD cards for expanded memory, but I just don't know what to do with it! The sluggy Motorola 33MHz Dragon Ball processor is just way too slow to do anything useful at all... JPG images (with 3rd party software, of course) packing a modest 640x480 resolution load in about 10 painful seconds, there is no sound (only an annoying piezo beeper), the screen is only 128x128px in size (thus - drawing on it is very limited), so it's only good for what it was meant to be used for in the first place - writing down quick notes, creating to-do lists and using it as a phone book. I'll pass.
Now, since this thing is still a gadget, I was thinking about bringing it back to life for the purpose of doing something actually useful. I came across some Winamp controller applications, but they required a COM port cable (and all I've got is an USB cable that is active only when performing HotSyncs), and besides, who the hell wants to lean towards a tiny Palm screen with a greasy finger/stylus just to play some tunes? Later on, I found PalmOrb - a fairly decent LCD+Controller emulator that actually works over USB!
I have changed the ugly default PalmOrb green background to plain white+black with the largest font available, so it's nice and visible from a bigger distance.
To rotate the screen, I used XMaster (or any other Palm-hack app will do) with FlipHack (since the ugly and bulky USB connector won't let you keep your Palm standing up without it disconnecting accidentally). This step is unnecessary if you have a dock.
And, finally, to control the whole thing, I am using LCDSmartie. Works fine, has loads of features and the support forums (although outdated) have some nice ideas for creating the perfect LCD status screen. It's free, too! If I were using Linux as my primary OS, LCD4Linux should do the trick, although I haven't tried it yet.
Note for the anonymous lurker who probably wants to try this: Be aware that LCDSmartie has not been updated since 2007, and PalmOrb is no longer maintained either, so don't expect any active support if you run into any kinds of problems.
At the end of my usual lecture today, I sneaked to the back of the classroom to take a peek at some yummy old electronic components... Little did I know - a well known consumer computer, yet to be dubbed a PC/Mac, was just standing there, and my eyes just started to open wide...
And, there you have it... The sparsely arranged arrays of integrated circuits on a PCB next to a huge power supply that make up a piece of art. This Apple ][ version has an "Europlus" suffix next to it since it was modified to run on the PAL system and on the European standard voltage - 220V @ 50Hz. Everything else is identical to the original one.
Interestingly enough, even here in my technology dull hometown, ATA based devices are finally dying off. It was expected, sure, but not at this rate... On one day, every store in town has loads of ATA HDDs or CD/DVD drives available at very reasonable prices, but the next day, the price shoots up and the only two HDD capacities available are 160GB and 200GB (I have no clue on why is that so). DVD writers? Yeah, sure... "Call us in a week or two" is the usual response for trying to purchase one of these...
I needed to repair a low-end PC today that had an old Maxtor Slim 30GB IDE drive barely running inside (a sh**load of bad sectors was the culprit). I assume it was the unbelieveably high temperature that it was generating that finished it off, since my last repair session involved having to place a passive cooler mount on it just to lower the temperature to 50C (otherwise, it would climb up to a whopping 70C!). Who could imagine that such a slim piece of metal could almost boil water? With all the stores around not wanting anything to do with ATA's, I had to visit a crappy store that sells "el' cheap'o" and "use for a day, then throw away" components... When a sweaty guy appeared from behind the curtain (wizard of Oz, anyone?), I immideately noticed loads of HDDs stacked up on a shelf behind him... "Got ATA HDDs?" - I asked? "What kind?" - he replied with a "you just ran over my dog" attitude, "Any kind" - I politely mumbled, adding that a 160 or 200Gig capacity will do just fine. I waited while he printed out my warranty and placed the HDD in a LiteOn CD-ROM anti static bag (WHY!?)... Well, despite that, everything went just neat-o... It was a Hitachi DeskStar (formerly IBM). I'm running the poor lil' bastard as I'm typing this, and it's way queter and cooler, thank god.
Whoever invented IDE cables should have at least thought about curling them up by default, because those god damn wide cable stripes block every vent inside the chassis! Also, their size limitation and immence width really make my day when I need to squeeze them in there without damaging them or catching an active cooler...
What can I say... A 1m SATA cable I have in my PC is a dream come true, since connecting it does not involve breaking your fingers and watching out for damaged pins, and the MASTER/SLAVE configurations with those pesky jumpers are a thing of the past.
As much as I got pissed off today because nobody has ATA drives anymore, I can only say good riddance, it was about time...
Loads of streaming electrons, oscillating on one frequency, and jumping up and down in amplitude to be broadcasted on a really wide area and get received by an AM radio - what's not to like? The shear simplicity of AM radio is just astonishing and it's ability to jump up off the ionosphere and reach much farther than it usually should is only a bonus.
Inspired by the Conet project, I found an old AM/LW Russian transistor radio that was lying around, attached 3 AA bateries to it (yes, TO it, because the battery leads inside it were corroded really badly), and got cracking!
It's interesting to see, uhm... hear that AM radio broadcasters still play radio talk shows, educational stories and radio dramas, even though probably very few people listen to them. In comparison FM stations are usually crammed with music, and nothing else. (which is pure crap, in my opinion, since local stations can and should do more than just broadcast music)
What's even more interesting is that I found some weird stations on both AM and LW bandwidths that emmit morse code signals. I placed the transistors near a 80m long wire that's hanging from my window over to my neighbors window, and maybe that's why I picked up more stations than usual.
One broadcaster was present on the ~620KHz frequency and was sending out ".- .-. -.." ("ARD" in Morse code) and the second one was present on ~300KHz and was sending out a long beep, followed by ".--. ...-" ("PV" in Morse code) and then a long beep again. I have absolotely no idea what these stations do or what they may be used for, so I'll just keep on checking.
Be sure to check out the "Conet" project that I mentioned earlier! You can download the whole CD pack for free, and if you are a radio nut, you will enjoy hearing all sorts of different number stations (most likely used by spies on foreign territory) which give out a warm "cold war" feeling
Attached: A quick walkthrough from the 600-1600KHz bandwidth, and the recordings of the weird stations that I caught.
Got a bluetooth dongle today... Small - black - cheap. Hooked it up to my usual USB port out back and inserted the mini CD that came bundled with it... imiddiately the autorun.ini launched setup.exe and installed all the needed drivers for my device. The software driver is called "BlueSoleil". And why the hell is this the only type of software that comes bundled with any bluetooth device?! It's slow, buggy and crashes so frequently that you have to launch the task manager while transferring a simple file accross the air! Fortunately, version 6 of BlueSoleil is allot more user friendly and integrateable with Windows Vista. Unfortunately - it costs money and imposes a 5MB limit on data transfer. Damn.
Just for the sake of it, I launched MacOSX to see if it will at least try to recognize my Bluetooth device. Needless to say - it did. And the simplicity of the built-in solution for MacOS was so astonishing that it made me cry when I went back to that piece of crap that BlueSoleil is! It creates a Bluetooth icon next to the volume section on the title bar and contains a few basic options - Send, Browse, Options + some additional features... but certainly NO functionless bloat that BlueSoleil carries!
Why can't every hardware manufacturer create a software driver for their device that does not introduce 5 links on your desktop, a background service with so much bloat that it gobbles up tens of megabytes of RAM, at least 1 system tray application to advertise it's presence and all the instability, crashes and even bluescreens that you can imagine?
Although Microsoft Surface looks tempting, Touchlight is the bleeding edge when it comes to user interaction! Grabbing touch commands from a simple projection just looks too good to be true and brings memories about the "old" technology you could see in pre Y2K movies... Indeed - this device will eventually create the ultimate user-PC for everyone to use without a single hour of getting used to, by emulating the usual desktop environment you would experience at your typical office setting. The video says it all.
I got a Pentium 4 Dual Core based PC from a friend who needed it fixed up and brought on it's feet. It was a custom built PC - therefore - no OS. Obviously, the BIOS was not so much fun to use, so I proceeded with installing Vista... After a successful boot-up from the installation DVD, I quickly reached the end of the quick "next, next, next" based wizard, and was all set to watch my washing machine do it's thing while Windows was installing.
However, I wouldn't be writing this if something didn't go wrong... It did. Windows setup reported that it couldn't make the partition bootable, so setup was canceled. That was the first time I actually saw that kind of error message... strange... Luckily, a quick reach towards my trusty GParted live CD solved the problem by letting me flag the only partition available as "Boot" (why was it not flagged after I used the built in partitioner in the first place!?). At least I thought the missery was over, but when Windows went on to boot for the first time, it died on me. A black screen - basically nothing there to inform me about what happened. Next step: safe mode - didn't help - the boot process froze when loading crcdisk.sys (hm... a clue? See title...)
To make the long story short, I booted the Vista installation DVD again and used the command prompt to start "chkdsk"... Needless to say, hundreds and hundreds of bad sectors popped up. Oh, goody... How typical is this? I could have saved about 4-5 hours by just using a disk check routeine to diagnose the problem! But, wait, aren't hard disks supposed to be reliable these days? How about S.M.A.R.T.? Nope - no reports about a dying disk. So, while I'm typing this, the LOW level formatting bar is at 95%. Very slowly, it will reach 100% (I hope, gulp), and I won't have to horse around with making Vista work. But, the main rule is - if a hard disk gets any bad sectors, the situation will eventually get worse - allot worse, posing a threat to every piece of data on it, and putting me in jeopardy of having to fix the mess a few months later! The funny thing is, I am now actually hoping to see a few bad sectors so that I can return it as broken... Although, I'm not laughing. Actually, I'm hoping to see some god damn SSDs soon! Why oh why must we have such fragile rapid moving parts inside storage devices...? Oh, and, here's one for Microsoft: I know it's not your fault for the busted hard disk drive, but how 'bout a warning? Something like... Oh, I dunno... "Bad sectors detected", perhaps? Or maybe a blue dot on a red screen... Anything! Just cut the users some slack - no black screens.
Edit: It turns out that the HDD was faulty as a wooden leg caught on fire... I got it replaced fairly quickly, and everything is just peechy. Thanks goes out to Asus for notifying me about the failing HDD even though I have S.M.A.R.T. monitoring turned on... (pause)... NOT!
