McFang – Exercising Futility

Posting drivel that is not of interest to anyone.

Archive for category Hardware

Rockbox 3

Dec 10

Posted by mcfang in Portables, Software | No Comments

Rockbox – the Open Source Jukebox Firmware – has finally released a “stable” release with Rockbox Version 3.0.

Rockbox solved all the annoyances I had with the Original Sansa firmware. The only major feature outstanding form Rockbox is USB support for disk access and charging (currently have to boot into the OF for USB access). But there are people already working on this feature in Rockbox and a full implementation can’t be far away.

Update 2009-04-27:
Sometime around Rockbox 3.2 the USB support was enabled! This means Rockbox and now connect as a USB disk and Charge battery, all without booting into the OF! It was worth the wait.

References

The Rockbox Sansa e200 port

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How to jump start a PSU

Jun 14

Posted by mcfang in Computers | No Comments

Recently one of my PCs has developed a resistance to powering up. I have not been able to single out whether it is the motherboard or the PSU that is the problem – at worst case it could be both. However because the PC is running mostly 24/7 it has not been a big enough annoyance to replace any parts. It only fails to powerup if it has been disconnected from the mains.

With a paperclip (or piece of wire) it is very simple to jump-start the PSU, and this solves the rare occasions that I do have to shutdown the PC:

On the PSU’s cable to the motherboard there should be a single green wire – this is the poweron switch. To jump-start the PSU simply short the green wire to a black wire (any of the black wires). If you leave the short in place the PSU can never shutdown, so for safety sake you should remove the wire after starting the PSU.

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Graphics makers fail at decoding

Jun 11

Posted by mcfang in Computers, Software | No Comments

Both nVidia and ATi tout “hardware decoding” support in their graphics cards for various video formats (including DVD and h264).

Both these vendors have working implementations, nVidia with PureVideo and ATi with AVIVO, however with one major drawback: you have to buy third party software.

What I don’t understand is why at this time neither of these vendors can provide a simple DirectShow implementation to support hardware decoding in a software agnostic manner. Instead you have to buy specific software that includes the necessary decoding libraries (as I recall the choice is Nero or Cyberlink).

While I am greatly disappointed with the limitations on these graphics cards, at least there is an alternative choice – CCCP provides a suite of free DirectShow filters that can decode most (if not all) video and audio codecs you can think to throw at it.

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I Love DTS INTERACTIVE

Jun 9

Posted by mcfang in Computers | No Comments

I’ve been using the digital audio output from my PC to my Receiver/Amplifier for about 10 years now. The sound quality is excellent for normal audio because there is no loss or noise between the PC and Amplifier. DVDs and videos are also excellent because the multi-channel AC3 or DTS can be sent directly to the Receiver without requiring any processing. All this on a simple, cheap Coax cable.

The downside was the lack of support from games (also possibly a limit with Microsoft’s DirectX system). Thus far the only way to get multi-channel for games was to plugin in 6 analogue audio channels from the PC and snake the cables over to the Receiver. Sound quality was not great, and it removed the ability for the Receiver to do audio processing to compensate for room acoustics. You could see examples of this frustration on support forums such as Valve’s, with threads spanning hundreds of posts from users trying to find a solution to this audio gap.

There was one hardware design that solved this – the nForce2 chipset with “Soundstorm”. It could apparently encode multi-channel audio into AC3 in realtime using the onboard audio chipset. The only problems was it has been years since the nForce2 was on the market (currently nForce4 is the de-facto standard). The most common rumour I heard to explain the lack of Soundstorm on subsequent nForce chipsets was problems with licensing the AC3 codec.

In steps DTS to the rescue. Just recently I discovered some motherboards were shipping with new technology called DTS Connect. One of the features, “DTS Interactive”, is a realtime stream encoder that converts multi-channel PC audio into a DTS stream.

Enabling DTS Interactive is as easy as two clicks – open the Audio control panel and switch on DTS. The beauty of this is it works system-wide regardless of what applications. So now I can play Half-Life 2 (and all other recent games) with exquisite multi-channel DTS audio.

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Rocketraid prevents booting

Jun 7

Posted by mcfang in Computers | No Comments

My new GA-EP35-DS4 System would not boot with both RocketRaid and Intel IHCR Raid enabled. If disabling the Intel SATA is not an option, this following solution will allow the system to boot by disabling the Rocketraid BIOS from loading at startup (bolding mine):

Answer: Some motherboards may be unable to load the card’s BIOS into memory, especially if other devices (such as onboard RAID or SCSI controllers) are active. This could prevent the card, or other device, from booting the system
If these additional controllers are not needed, try disabling them using the motherboard’s BIOS menu.
If this is not an option, press the “End” key when the host adapter’s BIOS is first displayed – this will cancel the card’s BIOS load.
This should prompt the motherboard to skip the host adapter card, and proceed to the next device.Arrays and disks attached to the card will still be accessible through the operating system.
To avoid pressing the “End” during every boot session, try disabling some of the card’s BIOS features. To do so, flash (upgrade) the card’s BIOS, and access the BIOS sub-menu.
If you intend to boot from the host adapter card, disable the option listed as “Reallocate EBDA”. If you do not need to boot from the host adapter card, disable both the “Reallocate EBDA” and “INT13″ options. For more information about this upgrade procedure, please download the BIOS User Manual posted at this link:

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/manuals/Updating_BIOS.pdf

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MacBook vs AsusBook

Feb 17

Posted by mcfang in Computers | No Comments

Four years ago Asus produced an “ultralight” notebook computer called the S5N. The most prominent features were the relatively tiny dimensions and a sub-3lb weight (under 1.36kg).

Jump to the present and Apple announces the “worlds thinnest notebook”. Well upon comparing the specs – apart from a few obvious upgrades such as the RAM – the S5N still wins my vote.

Asus S5200N Apple MacBook Air
Year of Release 2004 2008
Screen Size 12.1 inch, 1024×768 13.3 inch, 1280×800
Dimensions 275 x 223mm (width x depth) 325 x 227 (width x depth)
Thickness 17-25mm 4-19mm
Weight 1.35Kg with battery 1.36Kg
Battery Life Replaceable, both standard (24 Wh – 2.5hr) and long-life (48 Wh – 5hr) included. 37 Wh (5hr?), non-replacable
Processor Intel Pentium M (1.4-1.7 GHz) Intel Core 2 Duo (1.6 GHz)
RAM 256-512 MB DDR 333 2 GB DDR2 667
HDD ATA100 40/60/80 GB, 5400 rpm ATA 60 GB, 4200 rpm
Video Integrated Intel 855GME, 64MB VRAM shared Integrated Intel GMA X3100, 144MB VRAM shared
Optical External Slim Combo (USB), included. Sold Separately
Card Reader MMC, SD, MemoryStick, PCMCIA Not included
Fax/Modem/LAN/WLAN Fax/Modem integrated, 10/100 Mbps ethernet, Intel Pro 802.11b wlan. wlan 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, USB adapter for wired ethernet sold separately
Interface VGA, Modem, Ethernet, Audio Out, Microphone In, IEEE1394 (Firewire), 3x USB 2.0 Audio Out, 1x USB 2.0, Mini DisplayPort
Supplied Accessories External DVD-CDRW, RF Mouse, Carrybag

For pictures and benchmarking see the Tom’s Hardware review.

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Wishlist for the Sansa Portable Audio

Apr 26

Posted by mcfang in Portables, Software | No Comments

I love my Sandisk Sansa portable audio device, but after a few months I have noticed there are plenty of things I would love to have more control over:

  • customise the scroll speed of titles
  • remember volume when restart
  • multilanguage font
  • always show the clock
  • allow user to browse files (rather than just the database)
  • allow user to delete files
  • custom user themes (background image, etc)
  • usb charging mode (so you can listen while you recharge)
  • assign names to radio presets

Update 2008-12-10: I have since discovered RockBox! Replacing the software with a stable RockBox port for the Sansa this has solved EVERY SINGLE ISSUE I had with the Sansa’s original firmware.

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