Technology at a glance!

So you want to know which version of Linux you are running..
Easy!

Just run the following command:
uname -a && cat /etc/*release

Benjamin Sølberg Uncategorized unix

I found two dnt UHF 69 70cm radios a week ago at a garage sale. The seller didn’t know much of them and sold them both for only two bucks including a Rubik’s cube in an almost mint condition.

Thinking about my 443MHZ PMR and the “hold two buttons” trick while powering on to access factory menu I tried the same here without much success besides annoying the family with a lot of beeps.

A quick google search didn’t give much, besides a TX power mod.

A TX POWER MOD!
That’s better than a factory menu!.

I bumped it from about 400mw to 750 mW.

It now draws about 300 mA and even if that is 125 mA more than before I really think it is well invested.

Open it up and turn the TX power adjustment potentiometer all to the left

Check it out here : dnt UHF69 TX POWER MOD.PDF

Benjamin Sølberg Radio

I have a SpeedSteam 4100 Ethernet ADSL modem in spare after changing ISP as they didn’t want it back. But it seems like my previous ISP had there own firmware downloaded to the modem as I couldn’t get any contact via telnet or http to it. I guess it has been configured as pass-through.

Natually I opened it up to try to locate a JTAG / 3.3v serial port. I found two unpopulated headers and started to poking around with my new Rigol scope while booting it again and again. I found a data pin after a few tries.

I measured a puls width about 115Khz using the the Cursor function in the scope. A simple baudrate “guess” on 15200N81 proved right.

I connected my Nokia DLR-3 data cable converted into a 3.3V JTAG to the pin an beautiful console data showed up in good old Windows HyperTerminal. The RX pin is next to the TX pin. I couldn’t get it to work and a quick view with the scope showed that the HIGH was only about 1.7v, not enough to leave limboland between 0 and 1. It seems like either it draws to much current or it isn’t a normal RX pin. But I was able to send data to the console, although filled with garbage.

I might return to solve this issue another day, but anyway, it was fun poking around in the SpeedSteam 4100 Ethernet ADSL modem.

The console dump shows that my assumption about the ISP specific firmware were correct. This device was populated with a TDC specific firmware.

Benjamin Sølberg FON

Installation guide

Rigol DS1102E firmware version 2.01 SP1

Benjamin Sølberg Electronics

Trio Dual-Trace Synchroscope CS-1554.

For more than 15 years I have been the happy owner of a 20 MHz Trio Dual-Trace Synchroscope model CS-1554 anno 1972. A complete noob can use it, and i have been pleased with it. It didn’t cost that much (used+old=cheap) and have saved me many timed and served me well. It’s not that it is broke or anything but I wanted a new one with capture.

Note to self: Never ever buy a bitscope again

First I bought a BitScope and a MSIWind. This was NOT a success in any way, not even close, but that’s another story and WAY “off topic”.

Rigol DS1102E 2 Ch, 1 GSa/s, 100 MHz

But today is a fine day. My Rigol DS1102E 100 MHz oscilloscopes has arrived and has been in use for the first time.
Both the build quality and packing alone shows that this is not your ordinary Hong Kong product. This is a professional product to a fraction of the price. So how much is it, you may ask. Only $799 here

I must say that I am very pleased with it.

EDIT: It didn’t take long to get used to, I now use it is as easy as my old one and I am SO pleased with the long mem capture function!

Benjamin Sølberg Electronics

I might just be that I have a build in sound intolerance. But hearing bip-bip-biiiiip when ever my multimeter shifts between ranges in auto range mode has annoyed me for years.

So yesterday I finally made it a priority.

The easy solution would have been to remove the piezo element (that’s the black thing you normally would call a speaker). But then i would sacrifices the audio feedback on the continuity tester.

Instead I placed a sticker over the sound escape, without much success.

Neither two nor three pieces did the trick….

Last solution was to insert a resistor in series with the positive wire from the instrument to the piezo element. (I can’t really any reason why I couldn’t have used the negative instead)

I ended up using a 39K ohm resistor but only after I had been doing a lot of hardcore math.
[To be honest, I didn't calculate anything; it was pure trail and error]

Sound damping

Anyway, I now enjoy using the multimeter much more.

Did I mention that I have a toaster that has a build in piezo with a REALLY annoying sound, especially early in the morning!

Benjamin Sølberg Electronics

Hacking the Commodore 64 DTV isn’t a new thing and neither is adding a PS/2 keyboard to it.
Never the less, that’s exactly what I have been doing for the past few days.
A job that was scheduled only to take a few hours.

As you might have guess it hasn’t been without problems.

To be short, very short:
The PS/2 keyboard doesn’t work if you were booting to Basic via the Easter egg. It only works if you hold LEFT CTRL down upon turning on your device. This will btw. boot directly into Basic.

Then it struck me… This is the perfect chicken and the egg problem.
The keyboard will only work if you hold down a key…..
A bit like “Keyboard error. Press F1 to continue”

Think about that.

Anyway, I hope this helps you if you areoing to add a PS/2 keyboard to your Commodore 64 DTV.

Links:
http://picobay.com/dtv_wiki/index.php?title=DTVTrans copy files to and from the C64 DTV

http://www.kahlin.net/daniel/dtv/ Transfer Cable

http://www.geocities.com/dtvhacking/ everything about the internal

Benjamin Sølberg Commodore 64, Retro

Today I had a full production stop on a system under my command.

A simple delete statement was blocked. I normally fire up TOAD when this occures.
But I found (read: google) a more simple way to do this in plain sql:

SELECT s1.username || '@' || s1.machine ||
' ( SID=' || s1.SID || ' )  is blocking ' ||
s2.username || '@' || s2.machine ||
' ( SID=' || s2.SID || ' ) ' AS blocking_status
FROM v$lock l1, v$session s1, v$lock l2, v$session s2
WHERE s1.SID = l1.SID
AND s2.SID = l2.SID
AND l1.BLOCK = 1
AND l2.request > 0
AND l1.id1 = l2.id1
AND l2.id2 = l2.id2

It produces a nice result:

BLOCKING_STATUS

user@host ( SID=24 )  is blocking user@host( SID=31 )
SYSTEM@host( SID=42 )  is blocking user@host( SID=68 )
SYSTEM@host( SID=42 )  is blocking user@host( SID=24 )
SYSTEM@host( SID=42 )  is blocking user@host( SID=45 )
user@host( SID=45 )  is blocking user@host( SID=43 )
user@host( SID=68 )  is blocking user@host( SID=44 )
It seems like our DBA was generating a HUGE index in daily production hours.

Somthing he usually knife other pure souls for.

Shame on you Mr. DBA, shame on you.
Never the less : Today I knifed him, and what a feeling!

Benjamin Sølberg Oracle

I have once before written about how to convert a Erisson data cable into a generic JTAG cable.
Only problem was that it needed 5V and the hardware I use only supplys 3.3V.

Nokia DLR-3 JTAG

So when I found an old Nokia DLR-3 data cable i immediatly turned to my frind Google. What I found was that it used 3.3V which was perfect. The Erisson data cable got its supply from the power adapter (5V) while the nokia flavor got it from the mobile phone.

I found some homemade schematics for a DLR-3 look alike which indicated that it should be possible to use the TX and RX pins alone. I fired up the soldering iron and as the optimist I am, I started to solder female test leads, which i scavenged from the 5V Ericsson converted counterpart.

Half an hour later (thats a lie, nothing only takes half an hour) I was done and ready to test it.

I opened my (working) FON router and after swapping RX and TX test leads everything worked perfect.

The nice part of the DLR-3 is that it gets its supplie from the two other testleads as well, meaning that I didn’t have to use an external powersource as I had to with the Erisson version.

The layout of the Nokia pins I used is : 1(3.3v), 7(RX), 8 (TX), 9 (GND)

Links:

http://www.nokia-tuning.net/index.php?s=cabledlr3 points to a DLR-3 schematics

http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Fon/Fonera points to the FON JTAG pinout

http://www.pinout.net/browse.php?conid=66 points to a (now old) Nokia pinout connector.

Please note that the the supply voltage is 3.3V. Luckey for me, thats what is available in the FON router.

Benjamin Sølberg Electronics, FON

I happens to have a LEGO Mindstorms NXT.
I just love it!

I have been doing/playing with LEGO all my life.
Today my youngest wanted to build robots with me.
He is 3½ years old, so we build parts of it together but I do the programming.
Soon he will learn or at least so I hope.

But when updating the firmware from version 1.03 to 1.05, things went bad.
Somehow the flashing process failed and I ended up with a bricked “brick”.

At the time I didn’t see how funny this actually was. But I was lucky to find a way to
fix this after a bit of googling. The process involves hitting a hidden reset switch.

The blog suggested that this switch is the one under one of the batteries.
That didn’t help anything, the NXT brick keeps saying “click click click”.
I actually assembled the NXT brick just to see if the switch was broken.
Which it wasn’t, and to be honest I really didn’t believe it my self.

But then i found another switch…

It turns out that the right switch to press with batteries inserted and no USB
attached is locate on the backside of the NXT brick in the upper left hole just
below the USB plug.

Holding it for 5 seconds did the trick.

The NXT brick now correctly boots into flashing mode.

Start up your Mindstorms NXT software and flash the (new) firmware
via the menu “Tools -> Update NXT firmware”.

If I just knew that from the very start…

Hope this helps you.

Benjamin Sølberg Lego Mindstorms NXT