Posts tagged "Hardware"

ATi has the good tradition of releasing a new set of video drivers each month, with performance improvements and fixes. Unfortunately owners of Radeon Mobility cards (on laptops) usually cannot benefit of these updates. Here I'll show you a simple workaround.

The problem

The monthly catalyst driver release from ATi's website cannot usually be installed on notebooks: because of some stupid vendor / license / OEM limitation, the installation will be blocked before completion and you'll be redirected to your laptop's vendor website in search for some updated drivers. This would be tolerable, if notebook vendors only updated the drivers on their websites once in a while... Usually you'll be stuck with some really old version for years.

But there is hope... < Star Wars title song >

The solution

It is possible to actually fool the driver installer and let him think that your mobility card is actually supported by ATi. This requires a minor hack to the installer's .inf file (there used to be some kind of automated program that did the same thing, but it seems to have disappeared).

Unpack the installer

First of all, unpack the installer files to a directory of your choice. This is simply done by launching the installer you downloaded from ATi's website (the default directory should be C:\ATI\SUPPORT\[version]-[platform]-etc...). Once this is done, the installer will launch. You can abort it rightaway: if you go ahead it will abort as soon as it finds out that your card isn't supported.

Find out your hardware ID

In order to patch the .inf file, you must first find out what the unique ID of your graphical card looks like. In order to do this, simply open Windows' Device Manager, seek your card's entry, go into its properties and check the hardware details:

The numeric ID you see in the picture above is my graphical card's unique ID (an ATi Radeon Mobility X1700). Just copy it to the clipboard and close the device manager.

Get your hardware's chip name

Each graphical card is usually assembled putting a chip (the GPU) together with some memory and interconnecting the two with a bus (an ATi engineer would probably burst in laughter reading this, but...). Both chipset and memory are variable (type, size, frequency) and determine the final name under which your card is assembled and then sold. In order to install the right subset of the Catalyst drivers, you'll have to find out the exact codename of the chipset running your card.

To do this, you'll have to head to the ATi GPU comparison page on Wikipedia or the card's page on ati.com. In my case, my ATi Radeon Mobility X1700 actually features a RV535 chipset.

Patch the INF file

OK, now navigate back to the folder where you unpacked the driver installer and head to the directory Packages/Drivers/Display/LH_INF. You'll find a couple of files: open the bigger INF file (in the current driver version, the filename is CL_61008.inf) with notepad or a similar program. Ignore the header of the file and head down to the list of hardware identifiers (there's a lot of them). Now, simply try to spot a card similar to yours, mounting the SAME chipset of your card. For instance:

This line means that the card named "Radeon X1700 FSC" will load the driver for the "RV535" chipset. Again, in my case I searched for an "X1600" or "X1700" card and then picked the first line with "RV535" in it. Copy the whole line, paste it on a new line just below and replace the hardware ID with the one of your notebook's graphical card and the name of the card. You should have something like this:

Save and close the file.

Install the drivers!

That should be enough: launch the installer manually (launch Setup.exe in the driver's root folder, where you unpacked the installer, or update your drivers manually through the Windows device manager) and proceed as usual. The installer should recognize your hardware, will assume it is supported and then will install the driver for the chipset you specified. Hope that helps!

DISCLAIMER: as usual when you're doing something not foreseen by the installer, you could potentially destroy your operating system, your hardware, be killed in sleep by your mutated graphical card and so on... Eveything you do after reading this guide is at your own risk!

Today I'm starting another new exciting pet-project of mine! I'm planning to buy some DMX hardware (DMX is a simple protocol to control lighting shows and such) and build a custom piece of software, that I could then use on live shows to give life to the gig with rhythmic lighting, effects and whatnot.

The most immediate use for it would by on gigs of my brother's band, Spasmodicamente. That would be totally awesome.

So, for starts, I went looking for a cheap DMX controller that can be used interactively by a computer. There are several solutions by different companies, but the most convincing seemed to be those made by Nicolaudie-Sunlite. Different models exist, some of them are pretty expensive but they also include much stuff I don't really need. Fortunately, Sunlite also sells simple kits that come with a software development kit to program the thing.

Unboxing

Two days ago I ordered one SIUDI-6C (the cheapest model, since I wasn't completely sure it was going to work). It cost 100 € plus 25 € for shipping and it was one of the quickest deliveries I ever witnessed in my life! This morning at 10 o'clock it arrived safely in my hands (that's roughly a single day from France to central Italy). Thank you Sunlite!

The nice cardboard box is definitely overkill for the three items contained in it:

The little blue plastic box is the SIUDI-6C DMX controller. The disc contains a collection of software (most of which I won't use anyway), the SDK and some documentation (it's not MSDN, but it will do). A standard printer usb cable is also in the box.

Installing

As soon as I plugged the controller in the usb slot, Vista went searching for drivers on Windows Update for almost ten minutes. Without success. Anyway, all drivers are on the CD (and on the website as well).

Just make sure you don't install the drivers in the /drivers folder, but directly install the SDK in /siudi/siudi5-6_developerkit.exe. The first set of drivers cannot be installed (on Vista) because of some error in the INF file. After some hacking around in the file I managed to get them installed (and thought all was well) but the example programs did not work: "no DMX interface installed". Duh.

Then I exumed my old XP disc, installed it on the former Linux partition (won't need that for this project, that's for sure) and tried again: same story. Those drivers simply do not work. I was almost about to send a mail to Sunlite, but I tried the (slighty smaller) driver pack included with the SDK and that did the trick!
Now the little fellow is blinking like mad and responds to some basic DMX command.

So, now I'm ready to do some nice stuff with my new gadget! I ordered some other hardware that can be controlled via DMX today (a DMX dimmer), therefore I will probably have something working by the end of the next week.

My adventures with the DMX Lightshow go on.
After successfully installing and setting up the SIUDI-6C DMX controller I ordered a DMX dimmer on the german Pro Lighting internet shop.

The package was delivered today:
it's a nice Eurolite "EDX-4" 4-channel dimmer, that is, a piece of hardware that has four standard power sockets and can adjust the power output on each of them, on a more or less linear scale from 0 to 100%. An arbitrary number of lights can be connected to each socket (without exceeding the unit's total power limit of course): the beauty of it is that since it uses standard Shuko sockets you can connect almost everything to it (even my old and dusty bedside lamp).

I didn't expect it to be so big. My hand is on the picture for scale reference purposes.

This evening I decided to give the dimmer unit a try and wrote a little .NET managed library that wraps the programming interface included in the SIUDI-6C SDK by Sunlite. Then I quickly threw together a very ugly interface that enables to interactively set the output value on a single DMX channel, hooked the dimmer on the DMX controller, switched the power on and... lo' and behold, it works!

Video hosted by Vimeo.

Ok, the hardware part would be ready... now it's time to get working on the software! I think I'll try to build something using WPF, which is a fairly new technology to me and seems to have a lot of interesting additions in .NET 3.5 SP1. We'll see.

I'm not a big fan of Apple.

But some of their products are simply awesome.

A month ago, Sammy Larbi from CodeOdor.com sponsored the "Learn something new" contest. I decided to submit the DMX Lightshow project I have been working on and... I won! I chose an 8GB iPod touch and received it a couple of days before leaving on holidays.

The iPod is simply a wonderful piece of technology, perfectly put together as only Apple apparently is capable of doing. Its touch interface is very functional and fun to use: scrolling through a list of songs, a list of pictures or a website is always a pleasure.

In the last days I also started loading some TV shows on the iPod in order to watch them on the train or curled up in bed before going to sleep. Very enjoyable.

The only weak point of the whole experience is iTunes: the Windows version is painfully slow. Also, having organized my huge music library with Media Player using almost exclusively WMA files, I now have to slowly convert everything to AAC just to be able to put on the iPod. Video conversion is quite tricky too (iTunes doesn't seem to be able to do any video conversion) and I learnt a couple of things that I will post in the next days.

All in all, I'd totally recommend it. The device is almost perfect and I'm even starting to get tempted by the iPhone. I hope, for my shrinking bank account's sake, to be able to resist temptation... Again, thank you very much Sammy for the wonderful present!

Before leaving for Holland I purchased a copy of Windows Home Server and ordered some hardware. Now that I'm back and all stuff has arrived I can start building the little computer that will backup our home network and store my brother's and my growing music collection.

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As posted before, I installed a Windows Home Server at home using an Intel dual-core Atom processor on a 945GC based motherboard (D945GCLF2). The only problem with this setup is the cooling system. Even if the Atom CPU runs on extremely low power and is surprisingly fanless, the actual chipset on the motherboard (which also includes the video adapter by the way) needs way more power and better cooling.

The fan that comes with the motherboard is very small and extremely LOUD! I mean, it has a really annoying, high pitched, humming sound. All the time. And since the server will be powered on almost always, I needed to change that into something less noisy.

I bought a Zalman ZM-NBF47 chipset cooler: a very cool looking heatsink which should work just fine.

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I have been using a second generation iPod Touch for almost 9 months now and, while being completely satisfied with the player (I'm a bit tempted by the iPhone 3GS, even), the earbuds it comes with are simply terrible.

The iPod earbuds are standard earphones, but have quite low volume (when traveling by train I often couldn't hear most of the songs I was listening to, which gets even worse for podcasts or videos). They also disperse a lot of the sound outside the listener's ear, which forces the people sitting next to you to listen to everything you're shuffling through your iPod (something I hate being exposed to and hate to do onto others). The earbuds also tend to dislodge from the ear quite easily, especially when walking or jogging. And finally, after having used my pair of earbuds to exercise for a couple of months, one of the earbuds started to play at a much lower volume (probably because of the sweat).

Time to throw them away, I decided... So I took a lot of time to decide which model of earphone to get and finally bought the Sennheiser CX-300 II in-ear phones.

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During the next months I will probably be able to stay at home for longer periods and will continue to work (and occasionally study) from there. Since my old ASUS A8Jp laptop started to break apart a year ago (and now I risk to complete the process every time I open or close the screen, by tearing away the last plastic pieces that keep it attached to the rest of the laptop), I either had to buy a new laptop (and would have picked a Mac Book Pro probably) or upgrade my old desktop computer.

I chose the latter, which also is the option with better price/performance ratio anyway. I ordered all components on AvalonPC, they shipped very quickly and today I'm busy putting all pieces together.

Above you'll see the brand new components: a shiny Intel Core i7 920 CPU, an ASUS P6T SE motherboard and two kits of 6 GB RAM (for a whopping total of 12 gigs). The amount of memory is probably overkill, but it being so cheap I simply couldn't resist. And it sounds cool, anyway...

I ripped out every old piece of my previous desktop computer and spent almost two hours dusting and cleaning everything. These computers sure get incredibly dusty! Perhaps my next PC should be with oil cooling?

Then I quickly put the new stuff into the case. By the way, the 1366 socket is quite easy to mount. Quite a difference from the screaky and uncomfortable 939 socket of the previous Athlon X2 (which you have to lock in position forcefully with a screwdriver while risking to destroy your whole motherboard). Also nice, a "power" button on the motherboard itself that works before you wire the case buttons.

Some stress testing with Prime95.

I immediately installed Windows 7 RC and it literally flies! Can't wait for the final version to be released. Gaming performance must still be tested, but since I kept the "old" X1900 XTX Radeon while waiting for an affordable DirectX 11 card, I don't think there will be great improvements. Still, the most fun thing is watching task manager and those 11 gigs of available RAM... how cool is that?!

Now... what do I do with them?

In the last months there has been a silent and progressive change in my family. A slow revolution that has overruled every rational economic decision and forced us to buy Apple computers (I refuse to cite the usual “PC vs. Mac” thingie since it's just not true: Macs are overpriced PCs!).

So, after my brother bought a Mac Book Pro when he left for his school, my mother followed with another Apple laptop. Still justifiable, since both of them do computer design and after all every self-respectable designer wouldn't suit for nothing less than a Mac. But then... we inexcusably also bought a 27 inch iMac!

Unpacking our new 27' iMac.

We started using it in the kitchen to watch movies most of all — a rather underutilized piece of hardware until now. Still, the screen is absolutely gorgeous and watching movies on it is a pleasure.

Anyway, I was “keeping it real” and was standing by my PC-only principles... that is, until the finishing blow struck. For the last months I have been working at some new project for the University of Urbino. The professor I'm working with went on a “we got money, we gotta spend it” buying spree (not really, but quite) and bought some new hardware for the lab I work in. One of those machines was indeed a Mac Book Pro 13, which has then been assigned to me. Yuppie.
An offer I couldn't refuse of course.

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