Efficiency Tech

ASRock Z68 Setup Issues - Dual Boot XP/Kubuntu

2011-09-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I built a PC, but as I wanted a state-of-the-art system that runs Windows XP, I purchased an ASRock Z68 Pro3-M motherboard along with an Intel Core i7 2600K processor, 8Gb of memory and a couple of 2.5" drives (64Gb 6Gb/s SSD + 750Gb 3 Gb/s). I also obtained a Sentey mATX case that turned out to be a disaster as the power supply radiated so much electrical noise that it interfered with the doorbell and other devices. It was also useless as a desktop as there was insufficient heat extraction and the front LCD panel did not work completely. The Sentey case was returned.

I could not find a mATX desktop case locally, so I swapped the guts around of a few old computers and ended up with a reworked HP DC5000 case that has one external 5.25" bay, one external 3.5" bay plus an internal 3.5" bay. I've used a 3.5" converter to two 2.5" bays for the internal 750G drive and a StarTech trayless hot swap mobile rack for the SSD drive (external 3.5" bay). I replaced the existing power supply with a 1U Athena FlexATX 300W unit and ordered two 60mm x 25mm fans and two 40mm x 25mm fans, both from SilenX, to replace the existing fans I added, or in place, that are rather noisy.

After several attempts, I installed XP on a 17Gb partition and Kubuntu 11.04 on a 30Gb partition of the 750Gb drive; when everything is loaded, I'll transfer these OS's to the 64Gb SSD.

Installing these OS's proved to be something of a challenge as I was unfamiliar with the BIOS settings required. After numerous attempts I discovered that I had to have the BIOS PCI/ROM priority set to EFI. When running the Kubuntu install CD, select UEFI [DVD_drive] to install it in GPT mode. For XP, I set the SATA mode to [AHCI] and when booting with the XP CD, select AHCI [DVD_drive] to install it in MBR mode. If these setting are changed after installation, XP will not boot.

The XP install CD does not contain the necessary drivers for this SATA mode, and I had to temporally plug in a 3.5" floppy drive and create a SATA/SATAII/SATA3 driver diskette. This is done using the ASRock DVD that is packaged with the motherboard. During POST at boot-up, press F11 and select DVD/CD device. Press 'Y' when prompted if you want to generate a Serial ATA driver diskette. When the XP installation CD starts, it loads a range of drivers with the comment to press F6 to add additional drivers. Pressing F6 allows the SATA driver to be loaded after loading its own drivers. There seems to be no option but to use a floppy diskette for this purpose unless you can slipstream an XP install CD.

Loading XP after I had installed Kubuntu meant I had no dual boot or Grub loader. I loaded a Parted Magic CD, selected the Extras Menu and ran the Grub2 bootloader. I then selected "Find OS's" so that I could boot into Kubuntu. Once up and running I re-installed Grub2 and installed a Grub bootmanager/configuration utility, chose XP as the default Boot OS, and rebooted.

A Simple Low-Cost HDTV Antenna

2009-07-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

Prior to the recent digital TV changeover, I was using several 7.25” ring antennas mostly made of thick copper wire. Since then, I’ve noticed that the reception was rather poor on some stations. I tried making a few of the bow-tie antenna’s that are shown on video and pictures around the web, but found them to be clumsily large for an indoor antenna, as well as hit and miss on a few dimensions.

While experimenting with a few shapes of formed metal rods, I came across a 16” by 4” steel rectangle that used a quarter inch rod. After connecting the split ends to a 300/75 ohm transformer (balun) and then to a TV input, I was amazed that all the local channels came in.

I’ve made a few others using copper wire and three-eight’s inch tubing, and they work great. With tubing, simply cut out a right angle section at each corner so that when bent inwards, it forms a 90 degree corner. Place a wooden or plastic dowel between the open ends at the connection. Coat hanger wire and thin copper wire will work, but not as well as material between one quarter and three-eighth’s inch diameter metal.

If this size does not work well, try an 8.25” x 8.25” square.

So far I've mounted the frames on wood or plastic with hot glue.

Here are the dimensions:

Review of PMP using a 2.5" SATA HD

2009-04-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

The unit is advertised as a 2.5" High-Definition PMP SATA Hard Disk Enclosure with 1080i Component Video +Remote +RM/RMVB. I bought this during April of 2009 and at the time seemed to be the best of what was available in terms of resolution, connectivity, HD size, and capacity.

It's essentially a Personal Media Player (PMP) when hooked up to a monitor and the included 100~240V AC adapter or 12v car plug converter.

The $80 price is for a USB 2.0 hard disk enclosure that includes a portable media player with remote control. Output connectors support CVBS (composite video), VGA, and YPbPr (Component Video) for use with modern TV's, or a computer monitor in the case of VGA.

Additional inputs come in the form of an SD card reader and a USB slot. A mini-USB connector is provided for host PC interaction and operates independently of the additional inputs.

The user has to insert their own 2.5" SATA hard disk, and I added a 250GByte drive. The specification allows for drives up to 500GBytes.

Having spent a couple of weeks playing with this device, it seems I could write a book about its features and shortcomings, but as-is, this unit is not for the uninitiated.

My first challenge was to switch to an English language display--Chinese is the default. After several hours of trying numerous combinations, it switched! The manual is all but useless and their website at www.netviom.com is only in Chinese.

The on-screen display is essentially pathetic. It seems that someone rushed a quick conversion of a limited Chinese character display to accommodate English. The next challenge came in the form of supported video. What many people do not know is that when the terms AVI, MPEG, MP4, etc are mentioned, these are containers for specific video and audio formats which can vary tremendously. So I then spent days trying to determine what formats worked as a lot of my video collection was in a number of formats. Also, I had a 1280 resolution video, which I quickly surmised to be too high. I eventually found a few formats that worked, as well as a 720 by 576 limit.

A very useful and free video converter is AVIDemux, and a chap at their site was extremely helpful. He pointed me to the most common formats of video containers, which are:

* MPEG-2 video + MP2 (TwoLAME) or AC3 (Aften) audio in MPEG-TS container
* MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid) video + MP3 (LAME) audio in AVI container
* MPEG-4 AVC (x264) video + AAC (FAAC) audio in MP4 or MKV container

I found their MPEG-2 requant and MP2 (TwoLAME) in an MPEG-PS container worked OK, as well as MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid) and MP3 (LAME) in an AVI container. One format that works directly are the main (non-protected) VOB's on a video DVD (as found in the VIDEO_TS folder).

You can download AVIDemux from http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/

The next challenge came in the form of directory structures and the number of files contained therein. The unit supports NTSF that is nice for large files, but the unit won't look at anything above a couple of Gigabytes. It refused to play a 3GByte file, but breaking it down with AVIDemux worked OK. At times, some characters in directories or file names were simply missing, but I managed to improve this somewhat by limiting the number of directories at each level up to around ten. There's very limited room for character display, but when a file is highlighted with the remote, characters traverse to the left after a short while.

A limited description of a highlighted file appears to the right of the listing, and if there is anything missing from the audio or video format, it won't play. If the wrong combination is present (no clue given), that file won't play either. I've never seen anything in the thumbnail window.

Another issue was that I converted a large video into some 50-odd chapters (files). When I played the video, it was totally out of sequence, indicating the unit has a problem ordering files by name if the quantity exceeds some level. I didn't have a problem playing seven or so files in sequence. If a video contains multiple languages, it will try to play them all, so extra languages must be stripped before copying to the unit.

I haven't done much with connecting external media, but I read on one forum that someone tried an 8 GB MicroSDHC, with adapter, and it worked fine. One can apparently copy files to and from external media without connecting it to a PC. I've also yet to try audio files like MP3 or WMA, but this seems a waste when one can use a dedicated and more efficient MP3 player. The interface is awkward when selecting media from any available source and I found myself at the very root of everything most of the time.

The unit tends to run rather hot in PMP mode, so I made a couple of cooling-fin plates, one underneath and the other rests on top. I've even matched the curvature.

It would be nice to have additional features such as an effective menu structure, sleep mode and a media playlist. However, even though this unit needs some serious firmware development, I’m happy to be able to at least consolidate my video media into one source (with backup!).

Insignia NS-C5112 Wiring Harness

2008-08-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist snapping up a couple of Insignia HD Radio's recently from EBay at a bargain price. A lot of these units don't come with a wiring harness, so here is a workaround for those who need a harness. Note that the four (4) additional audio connectors are pre-amp output, presumably for a power amplifier.

Creative Zen Problems

2008-08-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

Even though Creative Zen [MP3 Player] units tend to produce good quality sound, some of their design and marketing strategies leave much to be desired.
The Zen V suffers serious lockups when uploading a large number of files. Most Zen units cannot display embedded images (Album Art) within mp3 files.
The idea behind sealing the rechargeable lithium battery is a nickel and dime tactic, as is the policy of only allowing the battery to be charged with the data lines active, so they can sell an over-priced charger. Actually, you can use any USB charger in conjunction with most non-powered hubs to activate the data lines for charging!
Their service and postal charges agitate me (totally free with Sansa), so they've lost me as a customer!

On a lighter side, here's some Dave Allen clips...

Digital Radio

2008-03-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

I seem to have the bug, having discovered how great HD radio is. I was apprehensive at first, mainly because most HD radio’s cost between $200 and $300. However, a search of ebay revealed a number of low cost units. I was initially surprised to discover that bidding on most of these ready to use items went to a level that I thought was rather expensive, but I found an alternative.

While scanning for units, I noticed a number of HD Radio Component Car Tuner Kits for sale. These units are essentially an add-on for existing car radio’s. I figured that so long as I could provide the 12-volts input power, and the output stereo, I could basically make up my own system.

I placed a bid for a couple of Visteon HDZ300 units and won both of them for $10 and $25. The lower cost unit was missing some cables and remote, which was not a problem as I made my own connections. One of the neat features of this add-on unit is that one has the option of using either a line-in for the audio or an FM modulator to send a signal to an in-dash radio receiver.

One of the units has been placed in the Low Cost Entertainment Control unit I mentioned earlier in this journal. I placed a spare transformer and the component tuner box inside the unit, and added a diode to the 12-volt transformer to yield 12.6-volts instead of 13.5-volts which I considered to be a bit high.

I hooked up the RCA cables from the component tuner box to an existing outlet on the Entertainment unit and an outlet lead for the aerial. The controller with its digital display was mounted on the front of the unit, using velcro after making a hole for the interface cable. The Entertainment unit's RCA outlet was then connected to an external audio/video switch box, that feeds the signals to a wall TV, and the audio to an amplifier.

The sound I get is awesome, and I can scan for both analog and digital signals on both AM and FM. Stations using the HD radio technology often multicast a number of channels so you can receive several alternative genres or programs.

The Visteon radio canseek (scan) both conventional signals or just HD signals. The remote is convenient while relaxing.

If I kept my old Chevy, it would be a great replacement for the large radio/cassette player installed in many GM cars that have a very narrow depth. One could easily make up a face plate, add an HD Radio kit, a 12-volt amplifier, also available on ebay, and a dedicated socket for an MP3 player.

Rowan Atkinson - The Wedding

Stagnation

2008-02-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

This entry is political this time because I’m quite concerned that the present Federal government is wasting so much money that it goes beyond inefficiency. The latest is the really dumb idea that throwing money back at taxpayers is going to get us out of an impending recession. How will spending this money on a few extra gallons of imported gasoline and goods going to help in the long run? It’s not, and so I’m voicing my opinion.

I reckon that if the Fed’s spent $150 billion on development assistance to create fuel cell plants, alternative energy jobs, the country will be much better prepared for the next economic downturn.

If you examine how downturns seem to happen, one thing you’ll notice is that every 10 years we get into a lull. The next lull will likely occur in the next year or so and with the property market being so severe, it will probably, at it’s worst, trigger a depression.

During the last great depression, the Fed instituted massive changes, including construction and reconstruction programs to provide employment.

Instead of waiting for the potential of bad times, why not implement such programs now, because becoming independent on energy would be a wise investment anyway.

An MP3 Player for the Car

2008-01-17T01:28:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased an integrated MP3 Player/FM Modulator for a car. This unit is very convenient! – no battery to charge, wires to hook up and switches to turn on, you simply plug the device into a cigarette lighter connector in the car and listen via the radio.

While you can control the frequency, playback, and volume on the unit, it also comes with a small remote making adjustments much easier. It’s designed to use an SD card or USB memory stick containing MP3 and WMA audio files. A line-in jack is also included.

I use the device with 1G or 2G SD cards which creates a lower profile, although all three inputs can be connected simultaneously. In such cases, line-in takes priority followed by SD and then the USB memory stick.

I haven’t experienced much frequency overlap, but changing the frequency is quite easy. You can scroll up and down or press, say, '9' '8' '5' and "Ch Set" which switches the channel to 98.5 MHz. The FM frequency ranges from 87.5 MHz to 108.0 MHz in 0.1 MHz steps.

Pressing the EQ key on the remote rotates playback conditions of ROCK, POP, JAZZ, CLASSIC and NORMAL. Pressing say '1' '2' '5' the device followed by the "Pick Song" key plays track #125.

The backlit monochrome LCD display has two lines. The top line shows the FM frequency, logo for the input device and the track time counting up. The lower line shows only the song title.

On the downside I’ve found that when powering off and on, the device remembers the track number and plays from the beginning of the track. This can be a problem when playing books on tape or long audio files. Even though the unit doesn’t have a shuffle mode (it plays in a directory ordered manner), I found a Windows utility called ‘Reorganize’ which can order the files alphabetically (up or down) as well as randomly.

The player seems to have some difficulty with foreign language characters, which is not an issue for me. The stereo sound quality is very good,and quite clear.

I purchased the unit for under $10 from ebay, and the reason may be that it could be an early version as similar units are more expensive, $20 and up, yet with more features.

Low Cost Entertainment Control

2008-01-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing how much energy vampire electronics can consume. A DVD player powered on while playing a DVD can draw about 12 watts and half that when turned off and still plugged in. A computer on standby takes about 65 Watts.

As I have several entertainment systems, including a laptop, plugged in all year the cost can be over $100 (power modules for laptops are notoriously inefficient as are most transformer-less power supplies). Buying a control center can be very expensive, so I decided to convert an old entertainment system as a power center. Someone gave me an old TV satellite control unit to which I stripped out all of the inside parts, yielding some useful components to stash in my parts draw. On the back, I cut out some slots to place six power sockets. On the front I mounted four switches, one to power the entertainment systems, one to power the laptop, one to power a transformer to switch on a hurricane lamp fitted with LED’s and one to power a 5-volt transformer to energize a USB socket. The USB socket only has the power lines connected and together with a headphone socket mounted on the front I can plug in an MP3 stick player.

The transformers are mounted internally and on the back I placed appropriate connectors for the lamp as well as audio sockets for the MP3 connection to a power amplifier.

So now I can control several devices with the flick of a switch.

Post Note: I've also added an HD radio to this.

Lithium Batteries

2007-12-11T00:26:00.000-08:00

I’m trying to use rechargeable lithium batteries everywhere I can these days, and I’ve found uses for them in flashlights, motion sensors, radios, portable power sources, wireless keyboards and mice. The trick to using these 4.2-volt batteries in say a 3 or 6 volt application is to make up a dummy battery with a diode connected to the plus and minus ends. The diode provides a voltage drop of just over one volt.

The most common cylindrical lithium battery is the 18500 type, although they can be obtained in AA and AAA sizes.

Using a lithium batteries this way is much better than NiMh batteries as they tend to lose their power over time and their maximum voltage is only about 1.3 volts. I don’t like to use standard alkaline batteries as they often leak and the cost can be rather expensive as well as they have to be recycled. Even though lithium batteries have to be recycled, they last so much longer.

My source of lithium batteries is often the local computer swap meet. I’ve found that I can usually buy a laptop battery pack quite inexpensively, pull it apart and use the batteries individually or combined in some way. Buying batteries this way can be risky, as you could end up with a lot of exhausted batteries. I’ve been fortunate so far in that I’ve managed to extract just over 50% of good batteries this way.

Gerald the Gorilla

Not the Nine O'clock News - Gerald the Gorilla - The funniest home videos are here

Batteries and MP3 Players

2007-11-12T14:33:00.000-08:00

I like to play with Audio, especially cleaning up and creating MP3 songs. The device I use is commonly a Zen player. The sound quality of Zen players is really very good and I prefer to use a Zen rather that an IPod because I dislike the proprietary nature of these devices.

There is however, one major downside to the Zen players that utilize a rechargeable lithium battery. These units require a USB power source with the data lines active, meaning that if you try to charge them with say a USB car charger, the USB connector only has the power lines connected and no data lines. This means that most people will have to buy an expensive charger from Creative, who make the Zen, or use the USB port on their computer. The latter is a very expensive method of charging the Zen player if it requires many hours.

There is however, a very simple and inexpensive workaround. I’ve found if you buy a USB car adapter/charger and a low cost 4-port hub (no power source and even USB 1.0) you can connect the hub to the car charger and then the Zen player to the hub, and it will usually charge the device. I have come across a few hubs that won’t work, so buy locally so you can return the hub for something else. I bought my car chargers from a local computer swap meet and was given some sample hubs for free (maybe because they were USB 1.0).

I’ve gone a stage further and this may also interest MP3 player users who have the type of player that doubles as a memory stick and has the USB connector built-in, which is revealed by removing a cap. These units generally also use a AAA battery and replacing these batteries all the time is frustrating and possibly expensive, as well as polluting the environment.

Using a spare USB car adapter/charger, I took the unit apart and removed the PCB/connector. I also unsoldered and removed the 12-volt spring connections used to make contact in the cigar lighter socket. Using a 4" x 2" x 1.5" plastic box, I cut out slots for the USB connector on the car charger board, and a slide switch for power. I also placed two Li-Ion 18500 Cylindrical Cells (3.7V 2200mAh, approx. 18mm Dia. x 65mm long) in series inside the box. I leave it up to your own creative imagination as to the method of securing these parts (I mainly used hot glue, heavy copper wire and tight fits). I also added a 3.1 mm power socket to charge the 18500 Li-Ion Cells. These Lithium-Ion cells will actually charge up to 4.2 volts, but I generally don’t like going over 4.0 to 4.1 volts so as to extend their life. Two of these cells in series yields just over 8 volts which is enough to still produce the 5 volts at the USB connector, and the cells won’t discharge to below their critical 2.5 volts.

This newly created USB adapter/charger can now serve a number of purposes:

As a Zen charger by using the aforementioned USB hub.
Plugging in a memory-stick type MP3 player without the AAA battery and as soon as power is applied it works just like a player because there are no data lines. This is great for my garage where I leave it on for endless hours.
As a charging device for any other USB charging device such as a cell phone.

The only remaining challenge is a reliable method for charging the two Li-Ion 18500 Cylindrical Cells. I was fortunate to have an 8.4 volt Li-Ion charger, made by Canon for a video camera, but I also have a number of solar panels that will do the job. Without a specialized charger, it is very important not to let the batteries overcharge. A low cost method is to build an electronic timer and a constant current generator—which can even be a low voltage incandescent bulb that can handle 1 or 2 amps placed in series with the Li-Ion batteries and a low voltage DC source.

I've just bought a refurbished Creative MuVo 2GByte MP3 player (for $29 on the Creative site) and this also works with the newly built Li-Ion USB adapter/charger.

Using LED's

2007-10-29T01:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve been playing around with LED lighting for years now, getting hold of non-working flash lights, removing the LED’s and using them in a variety of applications. The most common application has been with motion-sensing night-lights. I remove the incandescent bulb and replace it with several LED’s inside a reflctor. I also use NiCad or lithium batteries as the power source.

These days, one can buy LED motion-sensing night-lights, but these use conventional alkaline batteries, such as the Globe LED Motion Activated Locker Light. The cheapest I’ve seen so far are sold at CVS pharmacy for about $7.50. What I do with these lights is that I remove all of the connectors for the batteries, cut out a slot in the top of the battery compartment, and place a couple of flat strips to connect a lithium battery whose dimension is around 47 x 33 x 8 mm. This replaces the three AAA batteries and lasts a lot longer.

Another use I’ve had with LED’s is with the 110v screw-in light bulb replacement. However, these seem to be rather unreliable due to thermal runaway as each LED is wired in series without any current limiter. I’ve actually broken down some of these and re-built them using a plastic funnel and old screw bases. Using my own bridge rectifier and smoothing capacitor helps a little as well as placing two bulbs in series yielding some 60 LED’s is better than a single light with 30 LED’s, a limiting capacitor in series and no smoothing electrolytic capacitor. It’s easy to use two bulbs in series within a couple of hurricane lights that normally use two conventional incandescent lights. This setup uses just over 4 watts of power per lamp, instead of some 60 watts, or 25 watts using florescent lights.

I’ve also placed 5 sets of LED lights within a low level outside wall with each set comprising 4 LED’s in series triggered by a motion sensor and a 12-volt line that is solar powered.

Here's an interesting site that shows how to replace the lithium batteries in a laptop battery pack, something I've done several times.

I've always had an interest in steam locomotives, here is GWR 6024 at Abergavenny.

A La Carte TV?

2007-10-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

This topic is an update to one I created a few months ago on a different journal.

I’ve made the decision to cancel my cable TV service because there are too many ads which are too loud, there’s too much paid programming, I can’t select specific channels (a la carte cable) and what I have is very poor variety and quality entertainment—even from over 100 channels!

It seems that an hour of television can carry about twenty minutes or more of commercials. Add on this all those Paid Programming sessions and I’m paying $75 a month to essentially have ads thrown at me. Considering that cable providers interject local ads, I figure that they must be making more than the oil companies.

I plan to make better use of my time and if I want to watch the News, a movie or a documentary, there are plenty of Internet videos to choose from. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of web sites providing World-wide streaming of TV and Radio stations. However, I’m not comfortable with sites that charge a one-time fee as I’ve noticed that they don’t list any channels.

C-Span, Fox News, CNN, BBC and ITV all have a decent amount of news clips. I’ve also been playing with Live-TV and Miro that offers some interesting and easy ways to view video.

Although I have a small Zen Portable Video Player (PVP), it does not have a video-out socket. Rather than continually transferring video through a PVP, I've bought some modern refurbished laptops for $400 each so that I can store and play programs and movies on a TV (using S-Video)--such as this:

The Laptops are Compaq Notebook C500 types and connected wirelessly within a home network.

I've spent a fair amount of time playing with receiving local TV transmissions and I'm amazed at the number of additional channels I can receive with a digital signal. I've placed a simple 7.25-inch ring antenna in the attic, together with a 15Db amplifier (powered by the 12-volt solar/battery line that runs the length of the attic) to supply 4 HDTV's via a 4-way splitter.

I've also discovered a neat program called VEOH which allows me to view and/or store video. The nice thing about this program is that it allows me to to select from a series of videos, and it automatically plays the next in the series.

Check out Zap2it, it's a great TV listing guide.