Ignite Oslo, Rapid Prototyping

On Thursday I hold one of the most difficult presentations of my life. I was representing Robotica Osloensis, a student community which I am deputy chairman of, at Ignite Oslo. I talked about Rapid Prototyping which we use as our main method at Robotica in our projects. Ignite is a style of presentation where participants are given five minutes to speak on a subject accompanied by 20 slides. Each slide is displayed for 15 seconds, and slides are automatically advanced. The Ignite format is similar to Pecha Kucha, which features 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each.

The Ignite Oslo was a very nice event. They had 5 minutes presentations about different topics(list over topics) which were very interesting. Presentations about art, film making, music composition with applications on iPad, 3D printing, air balloons and fashion, etc. It was pretty stressful when it came to my turn. The whole idea of 15 seconds intervals and having a lot to say about a subject that actually belongs to the nerd world made me very nervous. Thanks to my friends Magnus Lange and Ole Jacob, who helped me both about the content and preparing in advance for the presentation, I was well prepared. Also I should thank my friends who came there to support me when I was actually holding the presentation. My presentation can be downloaded by clicking here.

Category 5, cable standard

Category 5 cable (Cat 5) is a twisted pair high signal integrity cable type. This type of cable is used in structured cabling for computer networks such as Ethernet and ATM, and is also used to carry many other signals such as telephonyand video. Most Category 5 cables are unshielded, relying on the twisted pair design for noise rejection. Category 5 has been superseded by the Category 5e specification.


I usually use these cables in my robotic projects as well, as they come in a well packaged easy way and one can easily setup one protocol to use one color for one kind of signal :-)

Removing a printer @ VISTA

HINT : Don't bother yelling at the printer why the hell that you can not remove it !!! Do not blame Vista for it like I did neithere !!! Do not curse Microsoft neithere ... Simply printer has hanged somewhere and there are some documents still in the queeue(My case, other users had it, so I could not see it) and that's the reason you dont get to remove it ...

Microsoft hint : You can't remove a printer if you have items in the print queue. If items are waiting to print when you try to remove a printer, Windows will wait until printing is complete, and then remove the printer. If you have permission to manage documents on the printer, you can also cancel all print jobs and then try to remove the printer again.

File Systems for Harddisk, which one to choose ?

There are two different file system formats compatible with Windows operating systems – NTFS and FAT 32 (MS-DOS). Use the information below to determine which format is best for you.

Use NTFS if…
...you will be using the drive only with Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista (performance will generally be greater when compared to FAT 32). This file system is compatible in read only mode with Mac OS X 10.3 and higher. See technical note at left for information on the 2TB volume size limitation under Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 2000.

Use FAT 32 (MS-DOS) if…
...you will be using your drive with both Windows and Mac OS X 10.3 or sharing the drive between Windows 2000 and Windows XP or Windows Vista. Maximum single file size is 4GB.

source : Lace documentations on the RAID product

2TB limit on 32bits Windows systems

Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 2000 do not support volumes greater than 2TB. Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista Enterprise/Ultimate (32- and 64-bit versions) do, but in order to create volumes bigger than 2TB from these operating systems, you must convert the disk to GPT file system.

FAT 32
FAT is an acronym for File Allocation Table, which dates back to the beginnings of DOS programming. Originally, FAT was only 16 bits, but after the second release of Windows 95 it was upgraded to 32 bits, hence the name FAT 32. In theory, FAT 32 volume sizes can range from less than 1MB all the way to 2TB. It is the native file system of Windows 98 and Windows Me, and is supported by Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. When FAT 32 is used with Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista though, volume size is limited to 32GB (by the Windows partition utility, i.e. Disk Manager), and the individual file size is limited to 4GB.

NTFS
This acronym stands for New Technology Filing System, and it is the native file system for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. NTFS offers several features that are not available with FAT 32; i.e. file compression, encryption, permissions, and auditing, as well as the ability to mirror drives and RAID 5 capabilities. The minimum supported volume size for NTFS is 10MB, with a maximum of 2TB when initialized in MBR format or without a limit when initialized in GPT format, with no limit to file size. Volumes created in NTFS can only be directly accessed (not through shares) by Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista without resorting to help from third-party products.

source : Lace documentations on the RAID product

Turned OFF machine that sends network signal ....

Something intresting came up last week here at work and it was that I patched up a network connection to patching panel, at the same time the equivalent network switch started lighting orange first and after a while lighted green. This is normal if there is a machine that is ON on the other side(where the cable ends up to), but the point here was that the machine was OFF and was just connected to the electric contact on the wall. So it means although the machine is off, but the signal can already be sent and it is logical as long as the machine can be turned on by a signal on network.

Installing Windows XP on the Asus EEE 1000HE

Installing Windows XP on the Asus EEE pc using a single USB flash drive.


Please note this tutorial works on all computers not just the Asus EEE PC.
To complete this tutorial you need a 32bit version of Windows XP or Windows Vista installed on your home PC.

What you'll need:
USB_PREP8 (alternative download)
PeToUSB (alternative download)
Bootsect.exe (alternative download)
Special Note: If you use the program Nlite be sure to keep the manual installation files as the USB_prep8 script relies on these files.

Extract the files in Bootsect.zip
The next step is to extract USB_prep8 and PeToUSB.
Next copy the PeToUSB executable into the USB_prep8 folder.
Inside of the USB_prep8 folder double click the executable named usb_prep8.cmd.

The window that opens will look like this:

Press any key to continue

You next window will look like this:These settings are preconfigured for you all you need to do now is click start.
Click Yes and go on ...
Once the format is complete DO NOT close the window just leave everything as it is and open a command prompt from your start menu (type cmd in the search bar or run box depending on your version of windows.).

Inside of the command windows go to the directory you have bootsect.exe saved.
(use the cd directoryname command to switch folders)

Now type "bootsect.exe /nt52 F:" NOTE F: is the drive letter for my USB stick if yours is different you need to change it accordingly. What this part does is write the correct boot sector to your USB stick, this allows your PC to boot from the USB stick without it nothing works.
Please note: When running the bootsect.exe command you cannot have any windows open displaying the content of your USB stick, if you have a window open bootsect.exe will be unable to lock the drive and write the bootsector correctly.

If all went well you should see "Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes."(screen shot below)
Now you can close this command prompt (don't close the usbprep8 one by mistake) and the petousb window.

You window you see now should look like this:

Mine looked like this : (T: as temp drive, F: as my USB and the XP directory as I:\, which was a virtual drive)If it doesn't try pressing enter.

Now you need to enter the correct information for numbers 1-3.
Press 1 and then enter. A folder browse window will open for you to browse to the location of you XP setup files (aka your cdrom drive with xp cd in)
Press 2 and enter a letter not currently assigned to a drive on your PC
Press 3 and enter the drive letter of your USB stick
Press 4 to start the process.

The script will ask you if its ok to format drive T:. This is just a temp drive the program creates to cache the windows installation files. Press Y then enter.
Once it's done formating press enter to continue again
You can now see the program copying files to the temp drive it created. Once this is done press enter to continue again.
Next you will see a box pop up asking you to copy the files to USB drive yes/no you want to click yes.
and then you will observe copying operation ...
Once the script has completed copy files a popup window asking if you would like to USB drive to be preferred boot drive U: select YES on this window.
Now select yes to unmount the virtual drive.
Ok we are done the hard part, close the usbprep8 window.
Now make sure your EEE pc is configured with USB as the primary boot device.
Insert your USB drive and boot up the EEE.

On the startup menu you have two options, select option number 2 for text mode setup.

From this point on it is just like any other windows XP installation delete/recreate the primary partition on your EEE pc and format it using NTFS. Make sure you delete ALL partitions and recreate a single partition or you will get the hal.dll error message.

Once the text mode portion of setup is complete it will boot into the GUI mode (you can press enter after the reboot if your too excited to wait the 30 seconds)

Once the GUI portion of setup is complete you will again have to boot into GUI mode this will complete the XP installation and you will end up at you XP desktop. It is very important that you DO NOT REMOVE THE USB STICK before this point. Once you can see your start menu it is safe to remove the usb stick and reboot your pc to make sure everything worked.

This method has advantages over all current no cdrom methods of installing XP to the EEE. You do not have to copy setup files in DOS to the SSD and install from there. It gives you access to the recovery console by booting into text mode setup, and it gives you the ability to run repair installations of XP if you have problems later on.

I hope this worked out for you and please post feedback to the comments section.
Please note due to the amount of comments this article has received you must now click on "Post a Comment" below the existing comments to view the most recent feedback in a popup window.

Learnt at this Source but implemented for 1000HE with extera notes that you should take care of for this version by ME

My Review, Eee style ...

My review of my new brand Asus Eee 1000HE ...

The Asus Eee 1000HE comes in dimensions of 266mm(W) x 191.2mm(D) x 28.5mm~ 38mm(H) and weights 1.45 kg. You can find it in black, white, blue, pink and silver but I have not heard anyone ever seen that silver out of picture. The computer's design can make every single person confess to its beauty and stately at the same time. The shining black lid gives her a gorgeous look and at the same time can be counted as one of its cons(-). Although the shining black is fascinatingly beautiful, it can get easily the fat from your fingerprints very easily on her and it is not the best thing you want to see on a black beauty. But you don't need to worry as it comes with a cool soft handkerchief to clean it.

The screen is a 10” LED Backlight WSVGA screen (1024x600) and I really liked it. The best resolution you get 1024x600 while actually you can have 1024x768 but don't bother it doesn't fit the screen. I mean the resolution is good enough for Windows but not for Linux. For Linux it actually is a little bit too small ... Specially for the terminal, you dont get to see all the info on the screen by default unless you change the fonts size.

The most fascinating part of this pc is its battery. It does have a 6-Cell Li-ion Battery which is being advertised to last 9.5 hrs, and of course it is mentioned that operation lifetime subject to product model, normal usage conditions and configurations. Learn more about battery life >> My experience showed around 7-8 hours battery life which is lovely to go around with a charger free laptop and enjoy it :-) I should mention battery life under Linux OS is less than Windows.

If I want to keep talking about the stuffs around this black beauty I would have to talk about the I/O devices which can be mentioned as followed :
1 x VGA Port (D-sub 15-pin for external monitor)
3 x USB 2.0 => (2 on the right and one on the left side)
1 x LAN RJ-45
2 x Audio Jack (Head Phone / Mic-in)
Card Reader: MMC/ SD(SDHC)

On the top, the keyboard is not the best keyboard I have had(IBM) but it is okay I guess. With a double Fn buttons which the extera one is not placed well enough. Also another negative point of this keyboard is a replaced and smaller shift button beside the new Fn one that makes things worse and takes its time to get used to it. The keyboard also suffers from lack of direct Page up,Page down, Home and End button ... I do doubt the good quality and solid built of it as well. It just doesnt look very stable and a quality keyboard ... But come on the whole damns thing is very cheap and even the keyboard is not that bad ...

The touchpad is the other pros of this machine. It is kind of an Apple touchpad with poorer quality. You can scroll with 2 fingers and this will mostly prevent a lot of bugs that nearly every single other brand notebook suffers from. They all mix up Zooming in and out in the browsers and it is really bothersome ...

And the last and not the least is a tiny little 1.3M pixel webcamera which is just okay and will never reach Apple webcam quality(IT IS CHEAP :-D).

Now that we covered the outfit, lets get in the beautiful box then ;-)

The CPU is a Intel® Atom N280, the memorry is by default a 1 GB DDR2(which I made it 2 GB) and finally the H.D.D which is a 160GB HDD plus 10GB Eee online Storage. The Eee Storage service is complimentary for the first 18 months. You can register account information for 6 months extension (depend on country). The computer also has very good Wifi and Bluetooth units. The device enjoys having WLAN 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth2.1 + EDR.

The worst part of the computer was a very NOT STANDART Bios which took me 2 hours to find out how to boot my computer from USB. The complicated non standard BIOS configuration does not recogonize USB memorry as a removable device but a H.D.D !!! So it leads to this that you should first choose the USB as the first Hard Disk and then choose to boot from this hard disk from the boot menu.

My computer in Norway came out with Win XP Home edition. My problem with it was that it did not have an English version and I had to choose between Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Samisk !!! Well I formatted the whole disk and installed a XP pro on it from USB(Tutorial comes in the next post) for emergency use and a nice Fedora Linux as my first O.S. :-)

That's it and I can come to conclusion here ... Although I underlined all the negetaive points I found but this is my dream pc after my IBM crashed last November(3 years old). Since then I had changed 4 different computers and was not sattisfied with any of them and thansk to a very good customer service of an IT shop here in Norway, I could give them back in 30 days trying period :-) The machine is small, light, good looking and has nearly everything I need.

What is a DMS-59 ?

Well it took me a while to find out what the hell this port is @ work but I post it here, so it might helps others and prevent wasting of time ...

Wiki describes DMS-59 as followed :

DMS-59 is a 59-pin electrical connector generally used for computer video cards. It provides two DVI outputs on a single connector. An adapter cable is needed for conversion from DMS-59 to DVI or VGA, and different types of adapter cables exist. The connector is four pins high and 15 pins wide, with a single pin missing from the top row, in a D-shaped shell, with thumbscrews.

The application for DMS-59 is to support a higher density of video displays, in a similar amount of connector space to a DVI connector. DMS-59 supports two DVI Dual Link digital channels or two VGA analog channels from a single connector. The compact size lets a half-height card support two high resolution displays, and a full-height card (with two DMS-59 connectors) up to four high resolution displays.

The DMS-59 connector is used by ATI, NVIDIA, and Matrox for video cards sold in Lenovo Thinkcentres, Viglen Genies and Omninos, Dell, HP, and Sun computers. Some confusion has been caused by the fact that vendors label cards with DMS-59 as "supports DVI", but the cards do not have DVI connectors built-in. Such cards, when equipped with only the VGA connector adapter cable, cannot be connected to a monitor with only a DVI-D input. A DMS-59 to DVI adapter cable needs to be used with such monitors.

The DMS-59 connector is derived from the Molex Low Force Helix connector, which can also be found on some (presumably earlier) graphics cards. These ports are similar to the DMS-59 port, but have all 60 pins present, whereas DMS-59 has one pin (pin 58) blocked. You cannot put a connector plug with all 60 pins (such as a Molex 88766-7610 DVI-I splitter) into a properly keyed DMS-59 socket.

The photo is taken from wikipedia.

9th of July 2008 - 10:30
Source : Wikipedia

Different screen ports ...

The Digital Visual Interface (DVI) is a video interface standard designed to maximize the visual quality of digital display devices such as flat panel LCD computer displays and digital projectors. It was developed by an industry consortium, the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG). It is designed for carrying uncompressed digital video data to a display. It is partially compatible with the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) standard in digital mode (DVI-D).

More info Wikipedia

Laptop Maintenance

1) Clean Your Hard Drive

Over the course of a month it is easy to accumulate a lot of unnecessary files on your laptop hard drive. Take the time once a month to go through your hard drive and examine the files there. Determine which should be saved elsewhere for future reference and which can be trashed. If you download programs on a regular basis to try new things or just to have access to new programs for projects, properly un-install those programs when no longer needed. A cleaner hard drive runs smoother.

2) Defrag Your Hard Drive

Defragging your hard drive is another step to ensuring your laptop will run more efficiently. Taking the time to defrag once a month will allow your programs to run more quickly and make better use of the space on your hard drive. When you defrag your laptop hard drive on a monthly basis you should notice fewer software crashes or freeze ups and programs will run better.

3) Keep Your Laptop Clean

Cleaning your laptop helps prevent overheating and those nasty dust bunnies from building up inside your laptop fans and exposed ports. Cleaning the screen also means you'll always view your data clearly and it's much easier on the eyes. Keeping your case free of dust and dirt buildup will help your laptop by preventing that dirt from getting inside the laptop.

4) Full Back-Up

Full back-ups should be conducted on a monthly basis and you should have a secure, fire-proof location to store your back-up. There are a variety of software and hardware options available. You should chose the method that is easy and can be done without fuss on a monthly basis. It may require trying different methods before you find the best back-up system for your needs.

More: Prevent Data Loss

5) Software Updates

Just as you keep your anti-virus and firewall software up-to-date, you should also keep your software programs updated. For many programs the updates will address security issues which help keep your laptop and data protected while on the road.

Source : About.com
Cartoon : Photosearch.com