Regular readers may have already read about my newly resurrected XBox 360. Having a console (for free) is A Good Thing, but having something to play on it is even better.
The Xbox 360 can allegedly play some XBox games. Some, but not all. Unfortunately for me, you need to have at least the 20gig hard drive for this to work, and all I have is a 256meg memory card.
Also, just to make life that bit more fun, I didn't have a controller either. My USB keyboard works the 360 Dashboard, but does sod all in games. Something I've got to say about the 360 is this - the controllers for it are bloody expensive, even second hand. After a bit of shoping around I managed to snag a wired controller for it for £15 (a wireless one would have been around £25).
As for cheap games, there are a couple of places that you can get cheap software. Aside from your friendly neighbourhood back-street games shop, there are a couple of places on the highstreet that specialise in second hand stuff.
Game (formerly Electronic Boutique) sells a mix of new and second hand gear. This was my first stop to get something to test my 360 with. After a brief hunt I walked away with a copy of Blue Dragon for £4.
As it turns out the game is, essentially, Final Fantasy 7 with Dragonball Z artwork. Spread over three DVDs it is a really nice, well paced little RPG, I'm actually surprised at just how good it is.
Of course, one game is never enough, so for our next jaunt I headed over to CeX. A bit unusual this lot, as all of their stock is second hand. You can also drop in your old DVDs, consoles or games and either get back cash, or use them against purchases in store (you get back more for your stuff this way).
I came out with Project Gotham 3 for a fiver, and the XBox 360 Live Arcade compilation for £4. Sadly Project Gotham 3 didn't work, but the Live Arcade disk did, and apart from me playing Uno into the small we hours on XBox Live, the rest of the family were hooked to Boom Boom Rocket.
Trying to return Project Gotham was a bit, well, strange. I still had the receipt for the game so I didn't forsee any difficulties in sending it back. As it turns out the game was physically damaged, and after a fair bit of muttering, huddled employees examining the game disk and "are you SURE you bought it from us?" they replaced the game. I've not had the chance to play it yet (hopefully later on tonight) so fingers crossed.
Looking closely at the game that I've now got in my grubby hands, I've actually ended up with Project Gotham 4 in a Project Gotham 3 box. As this retails for £12 then I'm quids in - assuming that it actually plays!
I also traded in some of my old DVD box sets and used the money to buy a 20 Gig hard drive for the 360 for £35. As with Project Gotham I'll be testing that later on tonight, once I get chance to get onto the 360.
(Later)
It looks like my luck has held out - both Project Gotham 4 and the hard drive work perfectly. So, yay for that!
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Thursday, 12 February 2009
XBox 360 Controller on Ubuntu 8.10
Seeing as I've now got an XBox 360 which uses a USB controller, I thought I'd give it a shot on Linux (or on Ubuntu to be exact).
Most devices these days are plug-and-play in Linux, and this controller is no exception - but. . .
It detects it as a mouse! The left stick causes the mouse pointer to move, which is less than helpful for playing games.
However, help is at hand. To get the gamepad working, open a command window and enter the following:
xinput list
This should give you a list that contains the XBox controller details:
"Microsoft X-Box 360 pad" id=5 [XExtensionPointer]
Num_buttons is 32
Num_axes is 2
Mode is Absolute
Motion_buffer is 256
Axis 0 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Axis 1 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Type the following, replacing [device] with the device ID provided above (in our example 5):
sudo xinput set-int-prop [device] 'Device Enabled' 32 0
And that's it, at least until you reboot.
Update: For those of you on 9.04, good news! The controller works properly without any additional configuration. Nice one!
Most devices these days are plug-and-play in Linux, and this controller is no exception - but. . .
It detects it as a mouse! The left stick causes the mouse pointer to move, which is less than helpful for playing games.
However, help is at hand. To get the gamepad working, open a command window and enter the following:
xinput list
This should give you a list that contains the XBox controller details:
"Microsoft X-Box 360 pad" id=5 [XExtensionPointer]
Num_buttons is 32
Num_axes is 2
Mode is Absolute
Motion_buffer is 256
Axis 0 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Axis 1 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Type the following, replacing [device] with the device ID provided above (in our example 5):
sudo xinput set-int-prop [device] 'Device Enabled' 32 0
And that's it, at least until you reboot.
Update: For those of you on 9.04, good news! The controller works properly without any additional configuration. Nice one!
Saturday, 7 February 2009
DanO vs XBox 360 and 3 Red Lights
I've just been given a "broken" XBox 360. Basically I've been told "if you can fix it, you can have it." As my future brother-in-law has already bought a replacement this was a nice challenge.
Update: Before we go any further with this there is something worth mentioning. Microsoft have extended the warranty on ALL XBox 360s to three years for this problem (and this problem only), so if your XBox 360 is less than three years old and you have the Red Ring of Death then call Microsoft for a replacement first. Read more about this in part 2.
Powering the console on gives 3 Red Lights, otherwise known as The Red Ring of Death (or to be more exact a general hardware failure).
There are a lot of rumours going around on the causes and fixes to the Red Ring of Death, so this looked like a good opportunity to maybe put the myths to bed.
Apparently the "R.R.O.D." can be caused by the soldered connections cracking on the GPU. This can be fixed by re-soldering the GPU (if you can get hold of a micro-solder kit), replacing the X-Clamp that holds the GPU in place with one that gives a tighter fit, or by "baking" the console.
Now, I've already sent off for a replacement X-Clamp (courtesy of EBay), but in the meantime I've been having a bit of a read-up on how the repair takes place.
According to popular rumour, the baking method goes something like this:
Step 1: Remove the hard drive, video cable, memory cards, in fact everything but the power supply from the XBox.
Step 2: Power on and wait for the three lights (making sure the XBox is lying flat).
Step 3: Taking three large DRY bath towels, wrap the XBox up completely, and leave for around 25 minutes.
Step 4: Unwrap the XBox which should still be showing three red lights and power it off.
Step 5: Wait for the XBox to cool completely (30-60 minutes) and power back on.
The theory goes that this causes the XBox to get so hot that the solder melts fixing any cracked joints.
Seeing as the XBox hasn't cost me anything, I'm going to try the "baking" method.
. . .
So after following the above instructions I powered the XBox back on and. . .
Still three red lights.
Just in case it hadn't been hot enough I re-wrapped it again, making sure it was nice and snug, and this time. . .
SUCCESS!!!
One working XBox! At least it was for around three minutes before it locked up. At this point I turned it off for another half-an-hour to make sure that it had cooled completely, and then tried playing a game - after half-an-hour of playing Dead or Alive 4 it was still working perfectly.
Nice one!
It is worth mentioning a couple of things at this point. One, if you choose to do this you do so at your own risk. Two, keep an eye on the XBox, as a house fire isn't fun for anyone concerned. Three, if you have a warranty on your XBox, then for Gods sake use that rather than messing around with alternative methods.
Also, this isn't necessarily a permanent fix. According to some people they have to do this every week or so.
And - just in case you do want to try this yourself. . .
The Towel Fix
NOTE: No, that isn't me in the video. Just so you know.
Another alternative fix - The Penny Fix
And, of course, the X-Clamp fix
Update 2 - Four days later. . .
So, the big question is "Is the XBox still working?"
All went swimmingly for a day or two, right up to the point that I tried to sign up for XBox Live. Half way through the sign-up process the XBox froze. Powering off and back on again brought me back to the three red lights.
Aaaaargh!
One more go with the towels (wrapped up for 30 minutes this time) and I had a working XBox 360 again. One the XBox had cooled I went back and signed up for XBox Live, downloaded a couple of demo games, watched some movie trailers, played a couple of DVDs, set up a UPnP server on my PC, watched a couple of episodes of Family Guy, and basically messed around for a couple of hours whilst waiting for the inevitable return of the red lights.
Not one lock-up.
On Monday I bought Blue Dragon (which I highly recommend to any Final Fantasy fans out there) which, in common with most RPGs shows the game play time on the saves. To date I've had over nine hours of game play with no lock-ups or other problems.
So does that mean that this time the fix is permanent? Who knows, although probably not. Since it turns out that this XBox is still covered by Microsoft's extended warranty for the Red Light problem it will be winging its way back to them should the issue re-occur.
Update 3: 1 week after the "towel fix"
Strange but true - the XBox 360 is still going. I did have one moment of "aaaargh" when the power cable got knocked partly out, followed by the familiar three red lights, but powering off and back on again with the cable securely in place did the trick.
The system has coped with what I'd call normal usage for a console (around three hours usage a night) without any problems.
In a fit of purest optimism I've bought another couple of games, and more importantly a 20 gig hard drive, so hopefully I'll be able to play some of my old XBox games on it too.
I'll be posting some more on my first impressions of the 360 in a different post, so stay tuned.
Update - Around three weeks since the last "towel fix"
The RROD has come back, so this time I'll be sending it back under warranty rather than messing around. Want to know how this went?
Read on in Part 2
Update: Before we go any further with this there is something worth mentioning. Microsoft have extended the warranty on ALL XBox 360s to three years for this problem (and this problem only), so if your XBox 360 is less than three years old and you have the Red Ring of Death then call Microsoft for a replacement first. Read more about this in part 2.
Powering the console on gives 3 Red Lights, otherwise known as The Red Ring of Death (or to be more exact a general hardware failure).
There are a lot of rumours going around on the causes and fixes to the Red Ring of Death, so this looked like a good opportunity to maybe put the myths to bed.
Apparently the "R.R.O.D." can be caused by the soldered connections cracking on the GPU. This can be fixed by re-soldering the GPU (if you can get hold of a micro-solder kit), replacing the X-Clamp that holds the GPU in place with one that gives a tighter fit, or by "baking" the console.
Now, I've already sent off for a replacement X-Clamp (courtesy of EBay), but in the meantime I've been having a bit of a read-up on how the repair takes place.
According to popular rumour, the baking method goes something like this:
Step 1: Remove the hard drive, video cable, memory cards, in fact everything but the power supply from the XBox.
Step 2: Power on and wait for the three lights (making sure the XBox is lying flat).
Step 3: Taking three large DRY bath towels, wrap the XBox up completely, and leave for around 25 minutes.
Step 4: Unwrap the XBox which should still be showing three red lights and power it off.
Step 5: Wait for the XBox to cool completely (30-60 minutes) and power back on.
The theory goes that this causes the XBox to get so hot that the solder melts fixing any cracked joints.
Seeing as the XBox hasn't cost me anything, I'm going to try the "baking" method.
. . .
So after following the above instructions I powered the XBox back on and. . .
Still three red lights.
Just in case it hadn't been hot enough I re-wrapped it again, making sure it was nice and snug, and this time. . .
SUCCESS!!!
One working XBox! At least it was for around three minutes before it locked up. At this point I turned it off for another half-an-hour to make sure that it had cooled completely, and then tried playing a game - after half-an-hour of playing Dead or Alive 4 it was still working perfectly.
Nice one!
It is worth mentioning a couple of things at this point. One, if you choose to do this you do so at your own risk. Two, keep an eye on the XBox, as a house fire isn't fun for anyone concerned. Three, if you have a warranty on your XBox, then for Gods sake use that rather than messing around with alternative methods.
Also, this isn't necessarily a permanent fix. According to some people they have to do this every week or so.
And - just in case you do want to try this yourself. . .
The Towel Fix
NOTE: No, that isn't me in the video. Just so you know.
Another alternative fix - The Penny Fix
And, of course, the X-Clamp fix
Update 2 - Four days later. . .
So, the big question is "Is the XBox still working?"
All went swimmingly for a day or two, right up to the point that I tried to sign up for XBox Live. Half way through the sign-up process the XBox froze. Powering off and back on again brought me back to the three red lights.
Aaaaargh!
One more go with the towels (wrapped up for 30 minutes this time) and I had a working XBox 360 again. One the XBox had cooled I went back and signed up for XBox Live, downloaded a couple of demo games, watched some movie trailers, played a couple of DVDs, set up a UPnP server on my PC, watched a couple of episodes of Family Guy, and basically messed around for a couple of hours whilst waiting for the inevitable return of the red lights.
Not one lock-up.
On Monday I bought Blue Dragon (which I highly recommend to any Final Fantasy fans out there) which, in common with most RPGs shows the game play time on the saves. To date I've had over nine hours of game play with no lock-ups or other problems.
So does that mean that this time the fix is permanent? Who knows, although probably not. Since it turns out that this XBox is still covered by Microsoft's extended warranty for the Red Light problem it will be winging its way back to them should the issue re-occur.
Update 3: 1 week after the "towel fix"
Strange but true - the XBox 360 is still going. I did have one moment of "aaaargh" when the power cable got knocked partly out, followed by the familiar three red lights, but powering off and back on again with the cable securely in place did the trick.
The system has coped with what I'd call normal usage for a console (around three hours usage a night) without any problems.
In a fit of purest optimism I've bought another couple of games, and more importantly a 20 gig hard drive, so hopefully I'll be able to play some of my old XBox games on it too.
I'll be posting some more on my first impressions of the 360 in a different post, so stay tuned.
Update - Around three weeks since the last "towel fix"
The RROD has come back, so this time I'll be sending it back under warranty rather than messing around. Want to know how this went?
Read on in Part 2
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The Best (and worst) of Cooking
The Internet is a great resource for anyone interested in cooking. There are so many different recipes out there, many of which would be unlikely to appear in any regular cook books.
Some, like Latka, have become a regular part of our cooking, others such as Loco Moco have given me a new favourite "junk food" type snack.
There are some great resources out there. Old Scrote's Real Food Cookbook is one of the best old-fashioned cook books going, with a range of UK and International recipes and cooking tips, with the added benefit of a good dollop of British humour.
So, as you can tell, I enjoy cooking, and I definitely enjoy trying out new recipes. Today's new recipe was one for Chocolate Mousse. This is a really easy one to make from scratch and proved to be a hit with the whole family (again, a big thank you to Old Scrote for that one).
Out of interest I had a bit of a search around to see what alternative recipes for Chocolate Mousse they were, and happened upon this "gem".
The crux of the above recipe is this: make up a packet of instant mousse, pour into glasses and eat.
I hate to point this out but THAT IS NOT COOKING!!!
This is one of my pet hates - convenience food that isn't convenient. Let me give you an example: Yorkshire Pudding mix, just add milk and an egg. In other words what you've got is a small packet of very expensive flour with a touch of salt. It is cheaper and just as fast to make a Yorkshire Pudding from scratch. More convenient? Not really.
As Old Scrote appears to be off-line at the moment I'll finish with his recipe for Chocolate Mousse - enjoy!
Update: Old Scrote himself has been in touch, his site is now available at http://www.oldscrote.talktalk.net/.
Chocolate Mousse
There are not many recipes for desserts in Scrote's repertoire but this one is a cracker, very easy, impressive and despite the tiny portions, devastatingly rich. You need a whisk of some sort and a bowl which you can set over a pan of boiling water (i.e. not plastic) to melt the chocolate. For four servings you need a large ½lb bar of plain chocolate (200g) and four eggs. The eggs must be very fresh.
For each person allow 1 egg & 2 ounces of ordinary plain chocolate. (Do not use cooking chocolate, it is a completely different stuff.) Break the chocolate into small pieces and set to melt in a bain marie- a pyrex glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. Meanwhile separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, into separate containers. When the chocolate has completely melted, remove it from the heat and mix into it just the egg yolks (the whites are used later). The chocolate will become stiffer and take on a 'greasy' appearance- this is correct. Cover & set aside for 15 minutes to cool a little. In the mean time beat egg whites with a balloon whisk until eventually the mixture becomes white & stiff, so that it stands up in soft peaks. After the 15 minutes, fold the beaten egg-white a little at a time into the chocolate mixture, mixing very thoroughly.
Pour the resulting creamy chocolate mousse mixture into serving glasses (short glass tumblers or wine glasses are ideal) & put in the fridge to chill for 2 hours and set. Serve with a generous pouring of single cream. (Ruth puts a dash of Armagnac in and then adds the cream to keep the alcohol in!)
Some, like Latka, have become a regular part of our cooking, others such as Loco Moco have given me a new favourite "junk food" type snack.
There are some great resources out there. Old Scrote's Real Food Cookbook is one of the best old-fashioned cook books going, with a range of UK and International recipes and cooking tips, with the added benefit of a good dollop of British humour.
So, as you can tell, I enjoy cooking, and I definitely enjoy trying out new recipes. Today's new recipe was one for Chocolate Mousse. This is a really easy one to make from scratch and proved to be a hit with the whole family (again, a big thank you to Old Scrote for that one).
Out of interest I had a bit of a search around to see what alternative recipes for Chocolate Mousse they were, and happened upon this "gem".
The crux of the above recipe is this: make up a packet of instant mousse, pour into glasses and eat.
I hate to point this out but THAT IS NOT COOKING!!!
This is one of my pet hates - convenience food that isn't convenient. Let me give you an example: Yorkshire Pudding mix, just add milk and an egg. In other words what you've got is a small packet of very expensive flour with a touch of salt. It is cheaper and just as fast to make a Yorkshire Pudding from scratch. More convenient? Not really.
As Old Scrote appears to be off-line at the moment I'll finish with his recipe for Chocolate Mousse - enjoy!
Update: Old Scrote himself has been in touch, his site is now available at http://www.oldscrote.talktalk.net/.
Chocolate Mousse
There are not many recipes for desserts in Scrote's repertoire but this one is a cracker, very easy, impressive and despite the tiny portions, devastatingly rich. You need a whisk of some sort and a bowl which you can set over a pan of boiling water (i.e. not plastic) to melt the chocolate. For four servings you need a large ½lb bar of plain chocolate (200g) and four eggs. The eggs must be very fresh.
For each person allow 1 egg & 2 ounces of ordinary plain chocolate. (Do not use cooking chocolate, it is a completely different stuff.) Break the chocolate into small pieces and set to melt in a bain marie- a pyrex glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. Meanwhile separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, into separate containers. When the chocolate has completely melted, remove it from the heat and mix into it just the egg yolks (the whites are used later). The chocolate will become stiffer and take on a 'greasy' appearance- this is correct. Cover & set aside for 15 minutes to cool a little. In the mean time beat egg whites with a balloon whisk until eventually the mixture becomes white & stiff, so that it stands up in soft peaks. After the 15 minutes, fold the beaten egg-white a little at a time into the chocolate mixture, mixing very thoroughly.
Pour the resulting creamy chocolate mousse mixture into serving glasses (short glass tumblers or wine glasses are ideal) & put in the fridge to chill for 2 hours and set. Serve with a generous pouring of single cream. (Ruth puts a dash of Armagnac in and then adds the cream to keep the alcohol in!)
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
William the Conqueror
Hey kids! Annoy your history teacher with this fun fact: "William the Conqueror" (b. 1028, d. 1087) was known at the time as "William the Bastard" (Guillaume le Bâtard).
He got this name because he was the illigitimate son (ie. a bastard) of "Robert the Devil", Duke of Normandy.
So you could say that the bastard did well for himself...
He got this name because he was the illigitimate son (ie. a bastard) of "Robert the Devil", Duke of Normandy.
So you could say that the bastard did well for himself...
Friday, 23 January 2009
Fun Things to do around the house #1: Repair a washing machine
As you've probably gathered from the sidebar (assuming you've read it), I'm the proud parent of three little nippers. Their ages range from just over three months, to nearly nine years old for our eldest daughter.
Recently our eldest has decided to help out around the house - which is nice. Well, usually it is.
The other day she decided to help mummy out by filling the washing machine. OK, so she didn't sort out the colours from the whites, and God only knows how much washing powder she used, but hey, it's A Good Thing that she is willing to help.
Unfortunately that was when the washing machine started doing a pretty good impression of a machine gun, and then stopped whilst half-full of water, which my wife only discovered when she opened the washing machine's door and flooded the kitchen.
Trying to run the machine again (in a vain attempt to get it to drain the water) just resulted in a red flashing light on the front of the machine. Luckily the machine is only around six months old so it's still under warranty, and we had purchased an extra couple of years extended warranty on top of that.
Of course, where there is an upside, there is also a downside. Where the heck did we put the warranty information, because without it they won't even come to look at the machine.
Whilst in the process of searching around the house I decided to check online to see if anyone else had reported the same sort of problem with their machine and managed to get hold of the user manual which gave me the details on what the flashing light actually meant. . . .
"Unable to drain water."
Gosh, that was helpful. I KNOW that the water isn't draining, my wet feet are a testament to that fact. More useful was the troubleshooting information - check the outlet hose and the filter, and a further note on how to remove the filter.
Removing the filter was a slow process, especially as there was still water in the machine, so it was a case of loosening the filter casing, catching most of the water that gushed out into a tin tray (the only thing thin enough to slide under the filter casing), empty that into a bucket and repeat.
Half-an-hour and two full buckets later. . .
Once all the water had gone I was able to completely remove the filter, and out fell a five pence piece which must have been left in some-ones pocket. Sensing victory, I put the filter back in, crossed my fingers and selected the "Spin" mode and turned it back on.
It worked! Sadly it still sounded like a machine gun, and also made some quite worrying grinding noises when it started up.
I waited for it to finish, eased the tray back under the machine and re-opened the filter, and this time a rather battered hair clip fell out.
Feeling slightly braver, this time I selected a "Rinse" cycle, and it worked, didn't sound like it was ready to explode, and finished without any problems.
We'll still have to find where the warranty is, just in case our eldest decides to help again (aaargh!), but hopefully she'll wait to be shown what to do next time.
Recently our eldest has decided to help out around the house - which is nice. Well, usually it is.
The other day she decided to help mummy out by filling the washing machine. OK, so she didn't sort out the colours from the whites, and God only knows how much washing powder she used, but hey, it's A Good Thing that she is willing to help.
Unfortunately that was when the washing machine started doing a pretty good impression of a machine gun, and then stopped whilst half-full of water, which my wife only discovered when she opened the washing machine's door and flooded the kitchen.
Trying to run the machine again (in a vain attempt to get it to drain the water) just resulted in a red flashing light on the front of the machine. Luckily the machine is only around six months old so it's still under warranty, and we had purchased an extra couple of years extended warranty on top of that.
Of course, where there is an upside, there is also a downside. Where the heck did we put the warranty information, because without it they won't even come to look at the machine.
Whilst in the process of searching around the house I decided to check online to see if anyone else had reported the same sort of problem with their machine and managed to get hold of the user manual which gave me the details on what the flashing light actually meant. . . .
"Unable to drain water."
Gosh, that was helpful. I KNOW that the water isn't draining, my wet feet are a testament to that fact. More useful was the troubleshooting information - check the outlet hose and the filter, and a further note on how to remove the filter.
Removing the filter was a slow process, especially as there was still water in the machine, so it was a case of loosening the filter casing, catching most of the water that gushed out into a tin tray (the only thing thin enough to slide under the filter casing), empty that into a bucket and repeat.
Half-an-hour and two full buckets later. . .
Once all the water had gone I was able to completely remove the filter, and out fell a five pence piece which must have been left in some-ones pocket. Sensing victory, I put the filter back in, crossed my fingers and selected the "Spin" mode and turned it back on.
It worked! Sadly it still sounded like a machine gun, and also made some quite worrying grinding noises when it started up.
I waited for it to finish, eased the tray back under the machine and re-opened the filter, and this time a rather battered hair clip fell out.
Feeling slightly braver, this time I selected a "Rinse" cycle, and it worked, didn't sound like it was ready to explode, and finished without any problems.
We'll still have to find where the warranty is, just in case our eldest decides to help again (aaargh!), but hopefully she'll wait to be shown what to do next time.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
What to do with those old records?
Those of us of a certain age will no doubt remember playing music on vinyl. I remember getting my first "hand-me-down" record player, spending my pocket money on 7" singles, later on hunting down picture discs and other limited edition records, and generally having fun with my music.
Time passes however, and the scratchy old black discs have been replaced by shiny silver coasters. I've not been able to face the thought of ditching my old records and so they've been languishing in storage for the past decade. At least they were until I got the bright idea of trying to transfer them onto my computer.
Now a lot of it I've already re-bought on CD (or in some cases bought MP3s online), but some of it just isn't available in any format other than vinyl. It would be nice to get these lost classics (or old crap as my wife puts it) in an easy to use format. Of course, I've still got a stereo stacker system (remember those?) which I've hooked up to my PC and recorded off an album or two.
There are some disadvantages to this.
One is that the stereo is large, heavy, bulky and pulling it over to where the PC is also means that I'm tripping over the damn thing whenever I'm trying to record from it.
OK, so thats more of an inconvenience than a real problem. So do things get easier once you've plugged the earphone socket of the stereo into the soundcards line-in?
Nope.
The sound levels can be a bit tricky to set up correctly. Once you've set up the graphic equalisers on the front of the stereo to a nice level, found the right volume to avoid clipping when you're recording it back and finally managed to record the album you STILL find an annoying hum (from the stereo's built in amplifier).
Now you can remove the worst of the hum, hiss and crackle from the records using Audacity (or whatever other audio software you use) but sadly the more you need to clean up, the more the sound quality of the final track suffers. (Before any audiophiles get in and start telling me about resisters that need to go between this, that and the other, forget it. I'm trying to record some music, not take lessons in soldering.)
The final results were passable, but still contained a bit of hum, which was certainly noticable when playing them alongside regular MP3s.
So what are the alternatives? Well, these days you can get hold of USB Turntables reasonably cheaply. These plug directly into your computers USB port and allow you to record directly from there. If you shop around you can normally pick up a cheap one from just over £20 (or less if you can get something in the sales). I picked mine up for just over £11 which was a bit of a bargain. They're also small enough to fit on my desk next to my PC when I'm in the mood to transfer some of my music.
If you are using Windows then you can just plug in and go (* see the notes at the end). There is a "drivers" disk supplied with the turntable, which doesn't actually contain any drivers. Instead it installs a copy of Audacity for you. The accompanying instructions take you through recording, cleaning up and exporting your tracks using Audacity.
Using it with Linux was just as easy. I plugged it in, installed Audacity using the package manager and from there on in the provided instructions were fine.
Recording using the turntable is much more straight forward than using the stereo. Firstly there are no levels or volume to adjust, you just plug in, select the USB device to record from and that's about it.
The instructions probably won't be needed for most of us, but it's always nice to see how other people do things. Personally after recording the track I normalise it, use a low level noise reduction to remove the worst of the hiss and clicks, manually split it into separate tracks and then save it to MP3. You can, of course, save to WAV, FLAC, OGG or whatever else floats your musical boat.
For those of you who may be interested, I tested this out with what is probably the oldest album that I've got - Baby Grand's self-titled first album from 1977, which was the first album I owned (I'd won it at a fairground).
The annoying hum from the stereo was totally absent when recording via USB and the overall sound quality on the final tracks was surprisingly good. All in all a good solution to the problem of transferring my old music.
* One last note about Windows and USB turntables. Not all versions of Windows will work with them. Windows XP and XP Pro should be fine, but Windows Media Center ironically enough doesn't contain the necessary drivers and so doesn't work. Apparently Windows Vista doesn't either. Some of the newer ones do have support however, so if you are using one of these versions of Windows, then you'll need to check to see if your OS is properly supported.
Any current version of Linux should work "out of the box" as it were, but if in doubt check with your distro's supplier. Ubuntu 8.10 certainly had no problems. Plugged it in, selected DSP2 as the recording device in Audacity, and that's it. No drivers to install, no problems.
Time passes however, and the scratchy old black discs have been replaced by shiny silver coasters. I've not been able to face the thought of ditching my old records and so they've been languishing in storage for the past decade. At least they were until I got the bright idea of trying to transfer them onto my computer.
Now a lot of it I've already re-bought on CD (or in some cases bought MP3s online), but some of it just isn't available in any format other than vinyl. It would be nice to get these lost classics (or old crap as my wife puts it) in an easy to use format. Of course, I've still got a stereo stacker system (remember those?) which I've hooked up to my PC and recorded off an album or two.
There are some disadvantages to this.
One is that the stereo is large, heavy, bulky and pulling it over to where the PC is also means that I'm tripping over the damn thing whenever I'm trying to record from it.
OK, so thats more of an inconvenience than a real problem. So do things get easier once you've plugged the earphone socket of the stereo into the soundcards line-in?
Nope.
The sound levels can be a bit tricky to set up correctly. Once you've set up the graphic equalisers on the front of the stereo to a nice level, found the right volume to avoid clipping when you're recording it back and finally managed to record the album you STILL find an annoying hum (from the stereo's built in amplifier).
Now you can remove the worst of the hum, hiss and crackle from the records using Audacity (or whatever other audio software you use) but sadly the more you need to clean up, the more the sound quality of the final track suffers. (Before any audiophiles get in and start telling me about resisters that need to go between this, that and the other, forget it. I'm trying to record some music, not take lessons in soldering.)
The final results were passable, but still contained a bit of hum, which was certainly noticable when playing them alongside regular MP3s.
So what are the alternatives? Well, these days you can get hold of USB Turntables reasonably cheaply. These plug directly into your computers USB port and allow you to record directly from there. If you shop around you can normally pick up a cheap one from just over £20 (or less if you can get something in the sales). I picked mine up for just over £11 which was a bit of a bargain. They're also small enough to fit on my desk next to my PC when I'm in the mood to transfer some of my music.
If you are using Windows then you can just plug in and go (* see the notes at the end). There is a "drivers" disk supplied with the turntable, which doesn't actually contain any drivers. Instead it installs a copy of Audacity for you. The accompanying instructions take you through recording, cleaning up and exporting your tracks using Audacity.
Using it with Linux was just as easy. I plugged it in, installed Audacity using the package manager and from there on in the provided instructions were fine.
Recording using the turntable is much more straight forward than using the stereo. Firstly there are no levels or volume to adjust, you just plug in, select the USB device to record from and that's about it.
The instructions probably won't be needed for most of us, but it's always nice to see how other people do things. Personally after recording the track I normalise it, use a low level noise reduction to remove the worst of the hiss and clicks, manually split it into separate tracks and then save it to MP3. You can, of course, save to WAV, FLAC, OGG or whatever else floats your musical boat.
For those of you who may be interested, I tested this out with what is probably the oldest album that I've got - Baby Grand's self-titled first album from 1977, which was the first album I owned (I'd won it at a fairground).
The annoying hum from the stereo was totally absent when recording via USB and the overall sound quality on the final tracks was surprisingly good. All in all a good solution to the problem of transferring my old music.
* One last note about Windows and USB turntables. Not all versions of Windows will work with them. Windows XP and XP Pro should be fine, but Windows Media Center ironically enough doesn't contain the necessary drivers and so doesn't work. Apparently Windows Vista doesn't either. Some of the newer ones do have support however, so if you are using one of these versions of Windows, then you'll need to check to see if your OS is properly supported.
Any current version of Linux should work "out of the box" as it were, but if in doubt check with your distro's supplier. Ubuntu 8.10 certainly had no problems. Plugged it in, selected DSP2 as the recording device in Audacity, and that's it. No drivers to install, no problems.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
On the road again - Part 4
We're heading towards six months of my cycling regime, so it is time for a quick update.
Firstly (and most importantly) I've stuck with cycling to and from work, as well as making sure that I do come home at lunch time. The weight loss has pretty much stopped, or at least slowed down to the point that it isn't as noticable. From a starting weight of 13.5 stones I'm down to just under 12 stone.
I've lost a couple of inches around the middle too.
My fitness levels have continued to improve, and I can now (if I push myself) make the trip in either direction in around five minutes, without breaking a sweat.
This is something else that I was told about that I didn't really believe. Six months ago I'd sweat buckets after the short bike ride to and from work. I'd had to carry extra deoderant around with me (and when the weather got hot I was even carrying a spare shirt). Now that I'm a bit fitter I'm hardly sweating at all on my rides. Apparently this is very common amongst people starting back on cycling.
Something else to look out for if you are riding in winter is your bike chain. Don't forget to oil it (using proper oil rather than WD40). If you don't you'll find the chain starts to seize up
Firstly (and most importantly) I've stuck with cycling to and from work, as well as making sure that I do come home at lunch time. The weight loss has pretty much stopped, or at least slowed down to the point that it isn't as noticable. From a starting weight of 13.5 stones I'm down to just under 12 stone.
I've lost a couple of inches around the middle too.
My fitness levels have continued to improve, and I can now (if I push myself) make the trip in either direction in around five minutes, without breaking a sweat.
This is something else that I was told about that I didn't really believe. Six months ago I'd sweat buckets after the short bike ride to and from work. I'd had to carry extra deoderant around with me (and when the weather got hot I was even carrying a spare shirt). Now that I'm a bit fitter I'm hardly sweating at all on my rides. Apparently this is very common amongst people starting back on cycling.
Something else to look out for if you are riding in winter is your bike chain. Don't forget to oil it (using proper oil rather than WD40). If you don't you'll find the chain starts to seize up
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Re-using old hardware - Mac Edition
I've written in the past about re-using old PCs, whether you use XP or Linux to power them and so forth. But what about the "other side"? The land where the switchers are all young, happy, cool, editing their videos and using iTunes without so much as a backward glance towards us mere mortals?
Well, yes, there are what are affectionately referred to as Low End Macs (or LEMs). As with PCs the low end is a constantly moving target, but realistically to have any chance of doing something useful you'll need to try and get hold of a G3 or higher. In case you are coming from the PC side of things, a G3 is one of those strange breed of CPUs that Apple insisted on using (allegedly because they were better than the Intel line) before mysteriously switching to Intel based CPUs a couple of years ago.
I've just rescued an old beige Power Macintosh G3 off the scrap heap, so let's see what we can do with it.
Stage 1 - what the hell do I have?
So how fast is it? It's a 233mhz Power Macintosh G3. It started off with around 378meg of ram, which I've upgraded to 512meg. As far as G3 Macs go, this is about as slow as you get. To put it into some sort of perspective, when this Mac first came on the scene, a top of the range PC would have been a P2 400.
The default 4GB hard drive is still installed (but blank). USB support is via a plug-in card.
After a bit of a hunt around I installed OS9, which worked well and allowed me to get on the internet without problems. If you are a Mac novice, then you'll need to remember to hold down the "C" key when booting up if you want to install from the CD.
OS 9 only took less than 15 minutes to install, and worked OK. It certainly allowed me to test that the Mac actually worked.
Stage 2 - Installing OS X
However a Mac without OS X is less than useful. After another hunt around I retrieved a spare set of OS X 10.3 install CDs, at which point I encountered my first problem: You need built-in USB in order to install 10.3, which the beige G3 doesn't have. If I had 10.2 or lower I'd have been fine.
However all is not lost. Providing you already have OS 9 installed, you can download XPostFacto which allows you to install OS X on unsupported Macs.
One hint, download the .SIT archive rather than the DMG otherwise you'll have a fair bit of fun trying to open the damn thing. . .
Running XPostFacto allows you to choose your OS X install CD, and away you go.
Just be warned that this will take a while.
A long while.
One hour later. . .
Sorry, but it's still installing. I'll give you a shout once it's done.
.
.
.
While we're waiting for OS X 10.3 to install a quick word about the various versions of OS X. There are one hell of a lot of them, all of them using various large felines for their version.
So we have 10.0 (Cheetah), 10.1 (Puma), 10.2 (Jaguar), 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard). Rumours that 10.6 will be called House Cat are entirely unfounded.
.
.
.
Another point worth mentioning are the things that OS X doesn't support, like internal floppy drives and non-usb printers. Yes, I know that floppies are SO last century, but sometimes people do have things stored on them that they might need to access. Depending on what model of LEM you are using you can either try and install the Open Source drivers for the internal floppy (available from here) or invest in an external USB floppy drive and ignore the onboard one.
.
.
.
The annoying thing about the long install is that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to blitz the install and drop in a larger hard drive anyway, and a lot of the install time is taken up by installing support for languages that I'll never use (for example my grasp of Chinese - simplified or otherwise - doesn't go much beyond "ni hao").
.
.
.
Wow! It's finally installed! Taking nearly two hours, the install has finally completed. After a mandatory registration page (complete with your name, address and phone number) you can get to install the updates and start using the system.
Stage 3 - Post Install
After the install the 4GB hard drive has just under 1GB left, which to be honest is more than I'd expected. There were something like 150meg of updates waiting to be downloaded and installed, but really the whole thing, apart from it being time consuming, wasn't that bad.
I'm not thrilled with the registration process, something that personally I think is intrusive and unnecessary, but hey, this is the price you pay to be one of the cool kids.
So how does it work? It's not the speediest beast that I've ever used, I'll admit that. However it isn't as bad as I'd expected it to be. Moving and resizing windows is fast enough. Browsing the internet is a bit choppy, but not too bad. It's certainly usable, as long as you aren't in a rush to get things done.
So to answer the question posed at the start, yes, you can make use of that old G3. Just don't expect miracles from it!
Bonus Stage - Overclocking the G3
BIG FAT WARNING TIME: You'll probably break your Mac trying this. Honestly. Don't do it!
Still desperate to try? Well you could try the instructions here, and also the full list of jumper settings here, but if you do so then you're on your own. If you manage to fsck up your trusty old G3 whilst trying to get some more speed out of it then that's your problem.
You may also want to have a search on Google too. But just so we're clear on this, I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU TRYING THIS!
I, however, are about to give it a shot, wish me luck.
.
.
.
After following the instructions on the linked page, removing the "VOID Warranty if seal is broken" sticker, and setting the CPU jumpers to positions 1, 5, 6, 7 (which is for a 300mhz CPU) I powered on and. . .
Nothing.
At this point I noticed that I'd set the jumpers wrong (I'd set them to 1, 6, 7, 8 by mistake). After setting them to their correct position I powered up again - and everything worked!
The boot up was noticably faster, the "About this mac" screen claims that this is a 300mhz G3 on OS 10.3.9, in fact, so far so good as far as the overclock goes!
Trying to overclock higher just didn't work.
Ah well, time to test this thing at 300mhz. Internet browsing is better, but not perfect. Youtube sucks on this, but the fact that it is using Flash Player 7 probably doesn't help. Upgrading to Flash 10 isn't possible on this setup, as it is restricted to OS X 10.4 and higher, so that leaves me with upgrading to Flash 9.
Youtube performance still sucks, but not quite as bad as with Flash Player 7.
All in all, for basic browsing, email and the like (as long as you can live without YouTube) the overclocked G3 isn't that bad.
Well, yes, there are what are affectionately referred to as Low End Macs (or LEMs). As with PCs the low end is a constantly moving target, but realistically to have any chance of doing something useful you'll need to try and get hold of a G3 or higher. In case you are coming from the PC side of things, a G3 is one of those strange breed of CPUs that Apple insisted on using (allegedly because they were better than the Intel line) before mysteriously switching to Intel based CPUs a couple of years ago.
I've just rescued an old beige Power Macintosh G3 off the scrap heap, so let's see what we can do with it.
Stage 1 - what the hell do I have?
So how fast is it? It's a 233mhz Power Macintosh G3. It started off with around 378meg of ram, which I've upgraded to 512meg. As far as G3 Macs go, this is about as slow as you get. To put it into some sort of perspective, when this Mac first came on the scene, a top of the range PC would have been a P2 400.
The default 4GB hard drive is still installed (but blank). USB support is via a plug-in card.
After a bit of a hunt around I installed OS9, which worked well and allowed me to get on the internet without problems. If you are a Mac novice, then you'll need to remember to hold down the "C" key when booting up if you want to install from the CD.
OS 9 only took less than 15 minutes to install, and worked OK. It certainly allowed me to test that the Mac actually worked.
Stage 2 - Installing OS X
However a Mac without OS X is less than useful. After another hunt around I retrieved a spare set of OS X 10.3 install CDs, at which point I encountered my first problem: You need built-in USB in order to install 10.3, which the beige G3 doesn't have. If I had 10.2 or lower I'd have been fine.
However all is not lost. Providing you already have OS 9 installed, you can download XPostFacto which allows you to install OS X on unsupported Macs.
One hint, download the .SIT archive rather than the DMG otherwise you'll have a fair bit of fun trying to open the damn thing. . .
Running XPostFacto allows you to choose your OS X install CD, and away you go.
Just be warned that this will take a while.
A long while.
One hour later. . .
Sorry, but it's still installing. I'll give you a shout once it's done.
.
.
.
While we're waiting for OS X 10.3 to install a quick word about the various versions of OS X. There are one hell of a lot of them, all of them using various large felines for their version.
So we have 10.0 (Cheetah), 10.1 (Puma), 10.2 (Jaguar), 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard). Rumours that 10.6 will be called House Cat are entirely unfounded.
.
.
.
Another point worth mentioning are the things that OS X doesn't support, like internal floppy drives and non-usb printers. Yes, I know that floppies are SO last century, but sometimes people do have things stored on them that they might need to access. Depending on what model of LEM you are using you can either try and install the Open Source drivers for the internal floppy (available from here) or invest in an external USB floppy drive and ignore the onboard one.
.
.
.
The annoying thing about the long install is that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to blitz the install and drop in a larger hard drive anyway, and a lot of the install time is taken up by installing support for languages that I'll never use (for example my grasp of Chinese - simplified or otherwise - doesn't go much beyond "ni hao").
.
.
.
Wow! It's finally installed! Taking nearly two hours, the install has finally completed. After a mandatory registration page (complete with your name, address and phone number) you can get to install the updates and start using the system.
Stage 3 - Post Install
After the install the 4GB hard drive has just under 1GB left, which to be honest is more than I'd expected. There were something like 150meg of updates waiting to be downloaded and installed, but really the whole thing, apart from it being time consuming, wasn't that bad.
I'm not thrilled with the registration process, something that personally I think is intrusive and unnecessary, but hey, this is the price you pay to be one of the cool kids.
So how does it work? It's not the speediest beast that I've ever used, I'll admit that. However it isn't as bad as I'd expected it to be. Moving and resizing windows is fast enough. Browsing the internet is a bit choppy, but not too bad. It's certainly usable, as long as you aren't in a rush to get things done.
So to answer the question posed at the start, yes, you can make use of that old G3. Just don't expect miracles from it!
Bonus Stage - Overclocking the G3
BIG FAT WARNING TIME: You'll probably break your Mac trying this. Honestly. Don't do it!
Still desperate to try? Well you could try the instructions here, and also the full list of jumper settings here, but if you do so then you're on your own. If you manage to fsck up your trusty old G3 whilst trying to get some more speed out of it then that's your problem.
You may also want to have a search on Google too. But just so we're clear on this, I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU TRYING THIS!
I, however, are about to give it a shot, wish me luck.
.
.
.
After following the instructions on the linked page, removing the "VOID Warranty if seal is broken" sticker, and setting the CPU jumpers to positions 1, 5, 6, 7 (which is for a 300mhz CPU) I powered on and. . .
Nothing.
At this point I noticed that I'd set the jumpers wrong (I'd set them to 1, 6, 7, 8 by mistake). After setting them to their correct position I powered up again - and everything worked!
The boot up was noticably faster, the "About this mac" screen claims that this is a 300mhz G3 on OS 10.3.9, in fact, so far so good as far as the overclock goes!
Trying to overclock higher just didn't work.
Ah well, time to test this thing at 300mhz. Internet browsing is better, but not perfect. Youtube sucks on this, but the fact that it is using Flash Player 7 probably doesn't help. Upgrading to Flash 10 isn't possible on this setup, as it is restricted to OS X 10.4 and higher, so that leaves me with upgrading to Flash 9.
Youtube performance still sucks, but not quite as bad as with Flash Player 7.
All in all, for basic browsing, email and the like (as long as you can live without YouTube) the overclocked G3 isn't that bad.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
The New Arrival
I've not been in a position to blog much over the past couple of weeks, as the latest member of the family has taken up an awful lot of our time.
The birth (planned C-Section) had been a source of some worry for both of us.
Although both of our other children were born that way, my wife had been given general anaesthetic both times as they were emergencies. This time, however, it was a "planned" one. Not that we had any choice in the matter, even though the pregnancy went smoothly we were told from the start that this one would be born by CS - like it or not.
The big difference this time was that it would be done under local anaesthetic - and I would be there to witness the birth.
On Monday we visited the hospital for the pre-operation check up, and also to talk to the doctors about what would be done. We were booked in for this at around 1.30pm. It was about 4.30 before we were finished, but this was due to them having to rush off to an emergency half way through which meant that we had to sit around for an hour or so whilst we waited for them to come back.
Tuesday was the big day. My wife had been up at 2am to have a slice of toast, as she had been told that she wasn't to eat anything after 3am. At 6am we both woke back up again, had a last tidy round the house before the in-laws arrived to take the children to school, then we hopped in a taxi to arrive at the hospital for 8.30am.
At 9am we were seen by the nurse for the final checks, a last look at the paper work and consent forms, and a quick chat with the nurses who told us that there were only two sections booked in for that morning, but a third "might" be coming from a different hospital, so we could be moved down the list if that happened.
At 9.30am the doctors visited, I was presented with the blue hospital outfit and white wellington boots that I'd be wearing during the procedure and they went back through the checklist with my wife.
At 10am she was taken to pre-op. At this point I was left to my own devices whilst the anaesthetic was administered. This was one of the longest half-hours of my life, sat in one of the post-operative wards waiting to be led into the operating theatre. There is only so much entertainment that can be had from changing into your costume and silly hat ready for the procedure. After looking at all the posters on the wall, the mysterious machines, the taps, the floor, the ceiling, the view over the town, the posters again and so forth, a doctor arrived to take me into the operating theatre.
Any worries I'd had about seeing too much evaporated at the site of the six foot high partition across the middle of the operating theatre (basically a large sheet hung from a couple of poles), with my wife's head and chest poking out through the side nearest the door. I was escorted to a stool at the top and sat back to talk to my wife whilst the delivery was done.
Although we couldn't actually see anything, a lot of the sounds from the other side of the partition were extremely worrying. Even worse was when the partition sheet fell down half way through the procedure. . .
Once they'd put it back up the operation continued, and a few minutes later cries were heard from the other side of the sheet, and we were introduced to the newest member of our family - a beautiful baby girl!
Two days later they both were home, and it has been a steady routine of nappy changing and feeds ever since.
The birth (planned C-Section) had been a source of some worry for both of us.
Although both of our other children were born that way, my wife had been given general anaesthetic both times as they were emergencies. This time, however, it was a "planned" one. Not that we had any choice in the matter, even though the pregnancy went smoothly we were told from the start that this one would be born by CS - like it or not.
The big difference this time was that it would be done under local anaesthetic - and I would be there to witness the birth.
On Monday we visited the hospital for the pre-operation check up, and also to talk to the doctors about what would be done. We were booked in for this at around 1.30pm. It was about 4.30 before we were finished, but this was due to them having to rush off to an emergency half way through which meant that we had to sit around for an hour or so whilst we waited for them to come back.
Tuesday was the big day. My wife had been up at 2am to have a slice of toast, as she had been told that she wasn't to eat anything after 3am. At 6am we both woke back up again, had a last tidy round the house before the in-laws arrived to take the children to school, then we hopped in a taxi to arrive at the hospital for 8.30am.
At 9am we were seen by the nurse for the final checks, a last look at the paper work and consent forms, and a quick chat with the nurses who told us that there were only two sections booked in for that morning, but a third "might" be coming from a different hospital, so we could be moved down the list if that happened.
At 9.30am the doctors visited, I was presented with the blue hospital outfit and white wellington boots that I'd be wearing during the procedure and they went back through the checklist with my wife.
At 10am she was taken to pre-op. At this point I was left to my own devices whilst the anaesthetic was administered. This was one of the longest half-hours of my life, sat in one of the post-operative wards waiting to be led into the operating theatre. There is only so much entertainment that can be had from changing into your costume and silly hat ready for the procedure. After looking at all the posters on the wall, the mysterious machines, the taps, the floor, the ceiling, the view over the town, the posters again and so forth, a doctor arrived to take me into the operating theatre.
Any worries I'd had about seeing too much evaporated at the site of the six foot high partition across the middle of the operating theatre (basically a large sheet hung from a couple of poles), with my wife's head and chest poking out through the side nearest the door. I was escorted to a stool at the top and sat back to talk to my wife whilst the delivery was done.
Although we couldn't actually see anything, a lot of the sounds from the other side of the partition were extremely worrying. Even worse was when the partition sheet fell down half way through the procedure. . .
Once they'd put it back up the operation continued, and a few minutes later cries were heard from the other side of the sheet, and we were introduced to the newest member of our family - a beautiful baby girl!
Two days later they both were home, and it has been a steady routine of nappy changing and feeds ever since.
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