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Saturday, January 13, 2007Couldn't find anything on the Edimax website for my Print Server, a PS-EU01. Following the instructions in either this doc or this one on their website. It's over two years since I last used it and I vaguely remember having to telnet in and set the IP address by hand. Couldn't find anything on the web about it but managed to dig out the manual - this was a minor miracle as after Power Supplies these are the thing I find easiest to lose. After a paperclip reset to the factory defaults I was able to telnet in and set it up on the network - the password was The last obsticle was getting the TCP/IP port for the printer set up on the laptop that I want to print from. It took me a while to realise that the Queue Name needed to match the name of the USB port on the Print Server. I only noticed this was configurable when I connected to the web interface on it... Thursday, July 27, 2006Cool Flight CaseSunday, July 23, 2006Testing BlogJet, Rocket Post and wBlogger
Spending a lot of time on planes recently. This means time offline and since the blogs are getting behind I thought I'd take another look at the ecto offline blog software and see if there are any other clients out there. I downloaded what I thought was the latest version (1.8.8) from here but it was way too flakey to use. I mailed a bug report to the author who suggested I download the latest version (2.3.1) from here. I was a bit miffed by this as firstly I'd done a check for the latest version from within 1.8.8. and been told I was up to date and secondly, having two competing latest versions available for download makes a nonsense of version control and release management. To be honest by the time the reply from the author had come back telling me I was on the wrong version I'd already looked at the competition and decided on a different client... After posting the bug report on ecto, I had a look at BlogJet. The UI is a bit poor. Recent Posts are hidden away in a seperate window and it seems to have to go back to the server everytime you want to see the list. w.blogger suffers from a similar UI problem. RocketPost. has a better UI but it doesn't seem to recognise the formatting in existing blog posts so you get the raw HTML appearing in the 'design' view. The work around seems to be to cut and paste it into the code view. Next on the list is Zoundry. This one has the best UI so far and seems pretty feature rich. So far it's been working really well so I'll try it for the next few days. Friday, July 07, 2006Posting
Well know I know what it means when a PC is Posting. The guy in the computer shop used this expression the other day and I didn't know what it meant. Tuesday, January 17, 2006IRIX Desktop
Tuesday, January 03, 2006Dead Thinkpad
A great start to the new year...my Thinkpad has died again. It's actually a replacement TP but it's died all the same. Wednesday, November 16, 2005System Rescue CD
Before I forget, this System Rescue CD is great for installing linux, doing the disc partition etc... Saturday, November 12, 2005Cool Sysadmin GuyTuesday, September 06, 2005Winmodems under Linux
Need to get the Software Modem in my Thinkpad T30 (2366-57G) to work under Linux for some dev work we are doing... A quick Google yielded a bunch of success stories. First off I went for the same version of the SmartLink drivers as one of these examples had used. This didn't work as it required a 2.4 Kernel, barfed on the absence of: /usr/src/linux/include/linux/modversions.h Went instead for the latest version of the drivers, from the SmartLink website. Following the instructions in the README, I couldn't modprobe the drivers, slamr, got this error instead: stinkoman 2.6.12-gentoo-r9 # modprobe slamr FATAL: Error inserting slamr (/lib/modules/2.6.12-gentoo-r9/extra/slamr.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg) Decided to follow this guy's suggestion and use the ALSA driver that comes with the Kernel so... stinkoman 2.6.12-gentoo-r9 # slmodemd /dev/ttyS0 SmartLink Soft Modem: version 2.9.10 Sep 4 2005 18:31:53 symbolic link `/dev/ttySL64' -> `/dev/pts/4' created. modem `ttyS0' created. TTY is `/dev/pts/4' Use `/dev/ttySL64' as modem device, Ctrl+C for termination. sym linked /dev/modem to /dev/ttySL64 as latter was not appearing in KPPP and... It appeared to work, KPPP could find the modem and displayed a bunch of diagnostics. However... When I tried to dial out, no dice, or rather 'NO CARRIER' emerged minicom to investigate further... Turned out I hadn't read the SmartLink README properly and had not compiled slmodemd with ALSA support, bit miffed as to what it was trying to use as a modem before hand, if the driver module was not inserted into the Kernel and ALSA support had not been compiled into smodemd... Recompiled with ALSA support and ran it up again: stinkoman modem # ./slmodemd --country=UK --alsa hw:0 SmartLink Soft Modem: version 2.9.10 Sep 5 2005 22:46:20 symbolic link `/dev/ttySL0' -> `/dev/pts/2' created. modem `hw:0' created. TTY is `/dev/pts/2' Use `/dev/ttySL0' as modem device, Ctrl+C for termination. Looks good until minicom trys to dial, then you get: error: cannot set channels for playback: Invalid argument On the advise of this FAQ I downloaded alsa utils in order to run some diagnostics This is what I got: list of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: I82801CAICH3 [Intel 82801CA-ICH3], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel 82801CA-ICH3] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 looks like it can't see the modem... Decided to go back and look at the Smartlink drivers again. The problem in the past had been modprobe'ing the slamr driver, it always came back with the error discussed above... This Post put me right. You need to use the 2.9.9d version of the SmartLink drivers _not_ 2.9.10. Re-built from 2.9.9d and am now able to dial up to my ISP... It now dials up and connects no problem. Tuesday, July 19, 2005Indy bag in LA
Tuesday, June 28, 2005New Zune MP3 Player from Microsoft
Sunday, June 05, 2005Back in Denver last week for work - this is the mini test lab that fits on a hotel breakfast bar... 
Well the Thomson was fine in the end, since the mod I've had a full on YLD twice and both times following pedrovski's instructions on Digital Spy have sorted it out. Sunday, April 10, 2005More fun and games with the Thomson... Came home to find a green light, a/v working fine but no response from the remote control save the flashing red r/c light in response to a button push. Power cycled but the unit firmly stuck on the yellow light of doom Bugger. After removing the new HDD from the Silent Box, removing the new connecting cables and plugging it stright into the PVR using the existing power and data cables I finally got a working unit. The question is, what caused it and can I recover from it? Opening up the Silent Box I found the HDD to be very warm indeed and the gel plate not so warm - had I put it on properly? Hmmm... Sunday, April 03, 2005
 Time to put the Thomson DHD4000 PVR Hard Disk into the Silent Box:  L-R i) The Disk in the Silent Box, the circuit board has to be facing the heat plane which goes on top ii) Adding the Gel Sheet iii) Enclosed in the Silent Box. The PVR is now back in situ on top of the video:  The idea is that the heatplane dissipates the heat onto the chassis of the PVR, if it were installed in a PC it would use the PC case for this. The lid finally went back on the PVR a week or so ago. Whilst I was away in the states for work Toni took the mod a step further by placing a copy of Glamour magazine between the HDD and the Chassis to reduce the "really annoying" noise: 
Monday, March 14, 2005The Thomson DHD4000 PVR now looks like this:  I was going to take the existing drive out of the caddy and then mount it in a 'Silent Box' I bought for it from quietpc Then I thought, I might as well upgrade the Hard Disk to 120gig whilst I'm at it, that way I also don't invalidate the warranty. I've unplugged the fan and have my new Samsung SV1203N sitting on top of the existing Hard Disk Caddy. The drive is connected to the motherboard with a TA23A 40pin/80 ribbon cable from Maplin. For the power I used a A27AB ATX Power Extension Cable also from Maplin. It's been running like that for over a week now with no problems, and is a lot quieter - just some clicking from the drive when it's recording or playing back. The next stage is to put the Samsung drive into the silent box and put the lid back on the PVR... Monday, February 28, 2005The Yellow Light of Doom:  Quite glad to have had one of these before I start modding the hardware. Wednesday, February 16, 2005Some non SGI stuff.... Bought this Thomson DHD4000 Freeview PVR, it's great apart from the noise of the HDD and the Fan which are unbearable. Have a look inside:  Note disconnected HDD Power Supply. Unplugged the drive and took the caddy out, gave myself heart failure when I plugged it back in, got a flashing, then constant orange light, where it should be green or red, on the front. I'd got the ribbon cable for the HDD the wrong way round - it's completely symmetrical. Tuesday, January 04, 2005Back in the office today so had a look for the 1998 Install Tools CD. It occured to me that it just _might_ be in the old CD-ROM drive I had on approval from 13w3 so I powered it up an out it popped. It's always a relief when the solution to a problem comes from a missing piece of the puzzle... Got through the disc reparitioning okay but then stuck with the following: So out to the shell to make the filesystem by hand The rest of install went fine and now I finally have a working 6.5 Indy. Friday, December 24, 2004Superstar Sys Admin Tim Gibbon got in touch to suggest I stick the hinv and printenv info in the blog...I've posted on google groups and nekochan so hopefully someone will come to my aid. Thursday, December 23, 2004Okay, once more, with feeling, from the top, a complete re-install... Following the Gospel according to Ian Mapleson. First difference, it's asked me for a hostname, rather than defaulting to calling it IRIS... Selected the mainenance stream as it "ensures compatibility of new hardware components" Oh dear, conflicts - something's wrong here... Closed the "Installation Tools" CD and re-opened it, this time selecting the feature stream. On reflection this makes sense as I am installing onto a clean system. Rest of the install went fine, no problems but on re-booting I was met with the all to familiar: Tried a resetenv in the command monitor but no dice.Wednesday, December 22, 2004Well despite emails to Ian M. and a Google of the newsgroups I still don't have a fix for my reboot problem. What's so anoying about this is I've done a 6.5 install onto this machine in the past, why should it be so difficult now? Going to leave it till the new year and then have another crack at it. Not all bad news today though, the 13w3 to HD15 adaptor I bought from deepspacecables for the Indy works fine on the Indigo2 so I was able to get the o2, Indigo2 and Thinkpad KVMed through the big ole 21inch Monitor. Which was nice.   
Tuesday, December 21, 2004Trying a network install from the O2, which was the original reason for buying it... Following Ian Mapleson's network install howto I configured the O2 and the Indy to act as Client/Server on a little test network through a switch. I couldn't get the Indy to see the O2 so I put my Thinkpad on the network and tried to ping the O2 and vice versa. No dice. Turned out the O2 was set up with an IP address of 192.0.2.1 which as some special meaning which was preventing it from working. Once I'd changed this, as per the instructions in /etc/hosts, to .10 it worked. The network install tends to go quiet a lot, just throwing up ec0: no carrier warnings, which are a bit disconcerting when there is no other sign of anything going on. It looked like it had all installed okay but when it restarted I got the following error: Restarted Inst and had a look in /root, everything looks like it is there - is it somehow in the wrong place? Perhaps I screwed up the disc partitioning. Part of the £100 lot I got from eBay was an external CD-ROM drive. I thought it would be simpler to do a local install of 6.5 onto Zoidy and Zoidberg then doing it over the network from the o2. So far the process has been somewhat fraught with the system reporting intermittent Media Errors from the CD-ROM. Originally I thought this might be down to one of the CDs being damaged but there doesn't seem to be any consistency to the errors... After each time it gave up with a 'retries exhausted' message I took out the CD, gave it a clean with some Bib Compact Disc Restorer Polish and popped it back in again. This seems to work _most_ of the time, but then it gives up and won't read the CD anymore. I'm beginning to wonder whether the Indy might have a shagged SCSI adaptor, given that I couldn't get Ian Butler's CD-ROM drive to work... Don't look now but it's actually read all four CDs without any problems! And the magical invocations of Passed off without incident, as did the pre-install and space requirements checks, so on to reading the Foundation 1 CD...and our first Media error...I'm going to persist with this. Pop out the CD, give it a clean, pop it back in again...same errors! Pop it out, back in again. Same errors. I don't think this is going anywhere. At the same time over on the Thinkpad I'm encoding some video to go on a DVD. MPEG encoding
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Saw this fscked display at Heathrow this morning, ten years on and still going strong...or perhaps it's Microsoft's new portable media player?