After my old PC popped its clogs, I needed to recover some data from the HD's that were in it. I was originally thinking of getting some sort of caddy, but then found this...
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143274
This thing is great. I plugged in the drive, powered up, plugged in the USB and hey presto - instant disk based gratification! Data transfer was pretty quick (>10MB/s) too. No faffing around mounting in a caddy, just plug it in and go. Fantastic.
Haven't tried it with DVDROM/CDROM/RW drives yet, but no reasons to think it won't work.
It supports 3.5" and 2.5" IDE, and also SATA.
Not bad for £12.35!
Monday, 22 February 2010
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Acer Revo 3600
Just bought one of these for my father who's aging PC is starting to suffer. I've been quite impressed so far. Went for the Linux based one as only £149 with 1GB and 160GB HD, but have immediately installed Ubuntu Linux (9.1 Karmic Koala) instead. - the installed Linux is a bit pants.
The Atom 230 processor uses hyperthreading, so appears as two cores to Ubuntu. I installed an extra 2GB RAM in addition to the 1GB it came with - not sure how necessary that will be. Getting the case open was a pain, but there are YouTube videos to show you how to do it. (and it probably invalidates the guarantee). Probably best to use some sort of plastic blade rather than a flat screwdriver as you can scratch the case quite easily!
The Ubuntu install went completely without a hitch - it found the wireless h/w without any problems. I needed to run the Hardware Drivers menu option to get it to install the Nvidia drivers, and the final result looks pretty good! Using the Nvidia drivers reduced the load on the processor considerably when doing anything graphicy.For example, the System monitor CPU load reduced from 15% to 4% or less.
Haven't tried the HDMI out yet - might be worth a go on our 1080P telly just to see how good it is. Also untried is the audio.
The thing itself is tiny, I bought a USB DVDRW drive to go with it (it has no optical drive), and the drive is bigger than the Revo! Using the drive made installing the new OS very easy, but you can also install from a USB stick, so getting the drive isn't vital.
Quite impressed so far. Will report back on my fathers experiences as he starts to use it!
I also bought a new PC at the same time - a cheap Acer Linux desktop (Athlon 215x2, 4GB RAM, 1TB disk, DVDRW, GeForce 9200, £289)- as my ancient Athlon XP2000 has finally given up the ghost. Power supply failed and appears to have taken the mobo with it. New PC came with a dodgy version of Linux, so installed Ubuntu on this too. Again, very pleased with the result so far. Appears considerably faster than the old one!
The Atom 230 processor uses hyperthreading, so appears as two cores to Ubuntu. I installed an extra 2GB RAM in addition to the 1GB it came with - not sure how necessary that will be. Getting the case open was a pain, but there are YouTube videos to show you how to do it. (and it probably invalidates the guarantee). Probably best to use some sort of plastic blade rather than a flat screwdriver as you can scratch the case quite easily!
The Ubuntu install went completely without a hitch - it found the wireless h/w without any problems. I needed to run the Hardware Drivers menu option to get it to install the Nvidia drivers, and the final result looks pretty good! Using the Nvidia drivers reduced the load on the processor considerably when doing anything graphicy.For example, the System monitor CPU load reduced from 15% to 4% or less.
Haven't tried the HDMI out yet - might be worth a go on our 1080P telly just to see how good it is. Also untried is the audio.
The thing itself is tiny, I bought a USB DVDRW drive to go with it (it has no optical drive), and the drive is bigger than the Revo! Using the drive made installing the new OS very easy, but you can also install from a USB stick, so getting the drive isn't vital.
Quite impressed so far. Will report back on my fathers experiences as he starts to use it!
I also bought a new PC at the same time - a cheap Acer Linux desktop (Athlon 215x2, 4GB RAM, 1TB disk, DVDRW, GeForce 9200, £289)- as my ancient Athlon XP2000 has finally given up the ghost. Power supply failed and appears to have taken the mobo with it. New PC came with a dodgy version of Linux, so installed Ubuntu on this too. Again, very pleased with the result so far. Appears considerably faster than the old one!
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
New Wii Games
Well, Christmas (and a preceding child's birthday) produced a few more games for the Wii. First out of the box was Cars - Race'O'Rama. It's OK, but graphics are a bit flakey. Consiudering its a gmae for young children, its a right pain getting it all set up ready for them to use. Second was F1 2009 - this is a great game. Really good graphics (for the Wii), and the controller work really well. Two player mode is great fun. really difficult on the more advanced settings too.
Finally, and best, is Wii Sports Resort. Love this one. The Wii Motion plus seems to work well, much more accurate. Not tried everything yet, but enjoy (as do the boys and other half!) the free flight mode in the seaplane, just looking around for stuff. Great fun, and a well produced game overall.
Also got a couple of second hand games last November - Twilight Princess and Prince of Persia. However, time has been limited so not much to report on those! Second hand prices on Ebay are pretty good for Wii games, especially the less wwell known ones. Just have to watch out for scratched disks!
Finally, and best, is Wii Sports Resort. Love this one. The Wii Motion plus seems to work well, much more accurate. Not tried everything yet, but enjoy (as do the boys and other half!) the free flight mode in the seaplane, just looking around for stuff. Great fun, and a well produced game overall.
Also got a couple of second hand games last November - Twilight Princess and Prince of Persia. However, time has been limited so not much to report on those! Second hand prices on Ebay are pretty good for Wii games, especially the less wwell known ones. Just have to watch out for scratched disks!
Monday, 28 December 2009
Using Gendan Engine software in Linux
Some time ago I bought a Gendan USB OBDII engine management code reader, which I needed to check some fault codes on the Civic.
Anyway, the software that comes with it is Windows only, and since I upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu, if obviously stopped working. A quick Google didn't show up any data on getting it to work, so I took a punt, and tried it in Wine.
It installed OK, and ran, but couldn't find the USB reader, so some more googling to find out how to map the COMn style ports ID's to the Linux device provided the following information. You need to symbolically link the ~/wine/dosdevices/COM1 port to the /dev/ttyUSB0 device (where the reader hardware appeared when plugged in - check the /dev/ folder for more information). This allows the Windows program running under wine access to the USB reader, and Hey Presto. The software worked!
Removing labels from beer bottles
I've been experimenting with making my own beer since October time, with some acceptable beers being produced. I've tried making Woodefords Wherry, which took ages to clear, but is now drinkable, and some Coopers Bitter, which fermented very quickly, and was drunk almost as quickly.
Anyway, I have a batch on the go at the moment which I want to bottle, and I had a load of used bottles from which to remove labels and clean. I soaked all the bottles (and they are from a number of different breweries), and on some the labels just fell off, and the remaining glue was easily removed using hot water and a small scrubbing brush. However, the bottles from Adnams proved to be a total nightmare. They are plastic, and peel off OK but left a really sticky residue. I tried, in this order...
- IPA (not the beer - Isopropyl Alcohol)
- Brake and clutch cleaner.
- Meths
- MEK (Metyl ethyl ketone - this usually shifts anything)
- Petrol.
The petrol finally did the trick! Using a cloth and plenty of petrol, the glue dissolved quite quickly, and a quick wash in detergent finished them off. Use gloves for this - not latex as this dissolves in petrol - use nitrile gloves.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Servicing my 2002 Honda Civic
The Civic seemed to be down on power, so a good service was planned. A quick look at air filter showed it was pretty cacked up, and I cannot remember the last time I changed the plugs, so new bits ordered for both. Oil was very low -this is probably the main culprit for lack of power!
Anyway, did the jobs last weekend - the plugs that came out were completely knackered - 1.6mm gap so 0.3mm out of spec, and the electrodes were very rounded. Air filter was a really quick job. Service list also says value clearances should be adjusted at this mileage (140k), so thought I would give it a go. Getting the rocker cover off isn't too bad, the only difficult bit was removing the TDC sensor plug so that the cam belt cover could come off. I had to use a mirror to see how it was attached, then used a right angle circlip pliers to compress the clip on the fitting so it could be removed - the gap between it and some piping meant I could not get my hand in. The service manual just says "remove the connector". Ha Ha.
Once off I was amazed how complicated the valve system is. The VTEC doesnt help, nor the 4 valves per cylinder. Still, adjustment was pretty easy, one inlet was too tight, and a couple of exhausts were a bit loose, but nothing too bad - amazing given the mileage on the engine!
Bolted it all back together and hey presto - engine much torquier at low RPM, and almost silent at idle. Hurrah!
Anyway, did the jobs last weekend - the plugs that came out were completely knackered - 1.6mm gap so 0.3mm out of spec, and the electrodes were very rounded. Air filter was a really quick job. Service list also says value clearances should be adjusted at this mileage (140k), so thought I would give it a go. Getting the rocker cover off isn't too bad, the only difficult bit was removing the TDC sensor plug so that the cam belt cover could come off. I had to use a mirror to see how it was attached, then used a right angle circlip pliers to compress the clip on the fitting so it could be removed - the gap between it and some piping meant I could not get my hand in. The service manual just says "remove the connector". Ha Ha.
Once off I was amazed how complicated the valve system is. The VTEC doesnt help, nor the 4 valves per cylinder. Still, adjustment was pretty easy, one inlet was too tight, and a couple of exhausts were a bit loose, but nothing too bad - amazing given the mileage on the engine!
Bolted it all back together and hey presto - engine much torquier at low RPM, and almost silent at idle. Hurrah!
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Koala again
Well, Ubuntu is still finding ways to upset the apple cart. Had a usual upgrade window come up, so pressed OK, but it also included a kernel version upgrade, and once again, I ended up with a system that wont boot. Eventually I had to boot from a LiveCD, edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and change "nvidia" to "vesa". Once back in to Ubuntu, I cleaned out a lot of rubbish from said file, and then reinstalled the nvidia drivers.
There does appear to be an issue with my system not recompiling the nvidia stuff for any new kernels that get installed, yet other people seem to be OK.
Most odd.
Although this was on Koala, I did have the problem with the previous version Jaunty as well, so its probably time to reinstall the OS from scratch to get back to some sensible setting. Possible that cleaning out xorg.conf may have helped though.
There does appear to be an issue with my system not recompiling the nvidia stuff for any new kernels that get installed, yet other people seem to be OK.
Most odd.
Although this was on Koala, I did have the problem with the previous version Jaunty as well, so its probably time to reinstall the OS from scratch to get back to some sensible setting. Possible that cleaning out xorg.conf may have helped though.
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