Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

Thanks to a link from Gringod, I downloaded the ‘New Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP’ from the M$ website. This great tool finally gives you control of the colour profiles installed on your system and switching between different profiles for different tasks is a simple matter of selecting what you want.

The real benefit for me came in the added bonus side effect of the tool overcoming an issue with the ATI X800 graphics card installed in my system. By reading the ‘Readme’ file after installation (something I never do but may start now) I discovered that it is possible to use flags on the application. By altering the application to start with a /L flag, the tool will load up the default profile in stealth. This shortcut could then be placed into the startup folder to be run when logging in to Windows.

I was keen to try this because I have been having a long term problem with the ATI drivers. My calibration tool has a profile loader that will load the profile when the computer starts but the ATI drivers would then override the proper profile with something akin to nothing! I discovered a year ago that I had to remove the profile loader from startup, wait for Windows to load then use the loader. All would be well with the LUT (Lookup table) and I could continue as normal… this was a complete pain though and now that this has been solved on my PC, I am quite pleased!!

• From the M$ site, the tool has the following features;
• • Install and uninstall ICC color profiles
  • Inspect, rename, and compare two different color profiles
  • View a 3D graphics plot of color profile color gamuts
  • Associate color profiles with devices such as printers, monitors, and scanners
  • Apply custom color gamut adjustments to one or more displays on the fly
  • Set up display calibration reminders at intervals you specify

Apple are at it again! It seems that as soon as I let my impulses cool… a few weeks later I want to spend money on their website again. After the recent announcements of new iPods and an amazing new iMac, there are now new Powerbooks and PowerMacs.

As soon as I saw the new iMac G5 last week, it was very tempting to actually go ahead and buy one, after all, it does everything and a lot more. For a regular use computer, there would be no additional accessories required (well… maybe a TV tuner!). The specs and features are way above anything that the usual programming and web browsing might throw at it. The all in one design and new software make it very desirable. The built in iSight and remote control are just extra bonuses on top of an already well presented bit of kit. It seemed that it would be the ideal stop-gap before the Intel PowerMacs were released…. until today! I mean… who wouldn’t want a PowerMac with 4 processor cores running? The processing power of the new PowerMacs is nearly pornographic in it’s appeal. For the rest of the year, I will have to walk around telling myself to believe myself about not wanting one just yet… but I do! I cant imagine how the Intel based Macs could top the performance of these beasts. It can only be described as REAL power.

The new Powerbooks have seen some nice enhancements aswell such as new displays and longer lasting batteries. Perhaps this is to make them better suited for working with Apple’s new software aimed at photographers. Aperture is a completely RAW based workflow, editing and printing tool. Is this software alone enough justification for a new PowerMac quad? Maybe… the recommended system specs are a Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 or faster, 2GB of RAM, a powerful graphics card and 5GB of disk space just for the application, templates, and tutorial. I am thinking that it must be good!

I have written a small article about NMEA and our plans for installing a Multiplexer on Mystere. If you are interested in these… head over to thesailingbug.com and have a look. This is a subject which I am learning about and so I put this together to try and clarify a few things to myself. If anyone else finds it interesting or useful then great!!

Over the last few days, I have been getting to grips with my new BenQ 23″ Widescreen monitor. One of the things that I have discovered to be vital is proper calibration. This is not to say that I have bought a professional solution for this task involving hardware, in fact, I merely used a free downloadable program and ran it to see what would happen. The results were much better than default. More experimention is now needed in this area to see what can be done. When I have settled on the best solution, I will let you all know and post details about it here and what programs I have used to achieve it.

My new ‘Motorola Razr V3′ is proving to be a very capable phone. I struggled with it for a day initially because the ergonomics are completely different to the family of Sony Ericssons I have previously owned. All it takes to get to grips with technology is sitting down with the, dare I say it, user manual (Honestly, I very rarely do this as can be proved by the number of problems I have!). You can personalise the phone in a lot of ways, choosing what buttons will do what and when they should do it. The phonebook took some time to convert from Outlook but now my contacts are much better organised. The only issue I am seeing at the moment is battery life. It has only been charged a few times and as such will not be at its peak but still, it has been dying after two days of heavy use. My Sony could get through at least 4 days with Bluetooth switched on. It may have something to do with the 100m range of the RAZR vs the 10m range of the T610. Either way, I tend to charge the phone each night so I don’t think I will have too much of an issue. There can be no argument on build quality, it is the nicest phone I have used in that respect and the image quality of the screen is great. The final test will come later when I get to try out my new Bluetrek G2 Bluetooth headset that I bought from Mobilefun. With any luck it will all go to plan… I will write my views here later.

This is the CMOS sensor from inside a Canon EOS 10D. It is the very source of all the image information that the camera captures and must therefore be kept clear of any contaminants. There are 6.5 Million individual pixels crammed into the 22.7 x 15.1 mm area. Just a tiny spec of dust on the sensor turns into a monster dark spot on an image when viewed. I have just had the pleasure of rubbing my CMOS sensor to remove this and I really hope it wasn’t the wrong way! This is not an issue that really concerns film cameras as each time a photo is taken, the film moves along and in a worst case scenario, only one frame is likely to be ruined by a contaminant. As the sensor of a digital camera does not move, any debris that settles, has to be removed. For me, the cleaning process started out as a methodical ‘follow the instructions’ then turned into a bit of a Brehaut special with the photographic equivalent of a Brillo pad being used to clean the surface of the sensor. To get an idea of why my blood pressure was higher at the end of this operation than at the beginning… read on!!

The instruction manual clearly states that only a very small rubber air blower should be used to clean the sensor, under no circumstances should you use a brush, cloth or canned air as these may each damage the sensor. As it turned out none of these or worse appears to have done much harm to mine but I will know more over the next few weeks! Looking into the body, I could just about get my eyes to focus on the specs of dust that were visible on the sensor. I took my trusty rubber blower and started squeezing and aiming the tiny jets of air at the sensor. A few minutes of this and the dust was still there. More pressure was needed and I calculated that if I held an air can away from the camera, it would probably be ok so I tried that. This operation went on for a few minutes aswell and ended with the nozzle heading into the camera body and getting very cold in my hand. Another failure, the dust was still where it had started. Apparently, slightly more aggressive measures were needed so I reached for my ultra fine weave lens cloth and very lightly pulled it across the sensor. Yet again, the dust was still there. By now I am thinking that this is slightly more than your average surface dust and something extreme must be required. All logic apparently gone, I gave a good old breath onto the sensor to fog it up a bit and used a cotton bud to wipe the dust off. The operation actually involved a bit of rubbing followed by more rubbing to remove the smear marks! All in all… it ended up looking as good as before less the dust. I will try taking some pictures in the near future and see if I have caused any lasting damage. As Canon have just released the EOD 20D, perhaps a replacement would not be so bad!

Investigation into the cause of this problem has shown that perhaps my storage technique is partially to blame. I own a LowePro Orion Trekker rucksack that is spilt horizontally inside which my camera fits tightly with the lens facing up towards the top. This has proved to be the easiest way to put the camera in and out. What I hadn’t realized was that with the camera stored in this way all the time, the dust would follow the laws set out by Newton and fall directly down onto the sensor in the back of the camera. It is apparent that my plan for buying a new bag is now justified. The next bag will have a design in which the bag is split vertically to get to the camera. This will also allow me to get a magazine inside which I cannot currently do and should be considered vital when travelling. In the meantime, I have turned the camera over so that the lens faces down. The bag pictured here is a LowePro Dryzone bag. These can actually be thrown into water and the gear inside will stay dry. As my camera spends quite some time at sea, perhaps a model like this should be considered.

Finally got the Bluetooth hub installed and working properly. My phone has jumped to life and synchronising with the PC… excellent!

If you are having difficulty installing a Logitech Bluetooth desktop because of Windows XP SP2… you need to do the following ;

1. Remove all files starting with ‘bth’ from ‘windows/system32/drivers’ and ‘%windir%/inf’ (Type the latter into the Run dialog box)
2. Download the latest software from Logitech.
3. Connect a PS/2 mouse to the pc, remove batteries from BT mouse.
4. Restart and install the downloaded software… reboot
5. When Windows has started again, wait while the wizard thinks for a while… eventually a box pops up behind the wizard which requires you to click ‘next’ on… this is why you connected a PS/2 mouse… the Bluetooth hub will not be operating at this point.
6. Reboot again and all should be well… put the batteries back in the mouse… get back to the manual and follow the wizard!

Let me know if I should expand on this. I have put it together very quickly!!

When I tried to install the Logitech software, I was informed that there was already a Bluetooth stack installed. I previously had a NewLink adaper but it was uninstalled some time ago. Essentially, because of this existing piece of software, I am unable to install the Logitech Bluetooth suite or use the hub for anything other than the keyboard and mouse (Which are still working even though I keep deleting system files!).

Searching the Logitech site provided no answers and the forums weren’t much help either which was unusual and indicated that the problem must be new or unique to me. What have I done recently?? Hmm.. installed Windows XP SP2 with its new and improved Bluetooth functionality. I think this might be the cause. After some searching and attempts at disabling the M$ Bluetooth I came accross a Knowledgebase article that seemed to have the information I needed. When I get around to trying this, I will be sure to post my findings as I doubt I will be the first person to have this problem. My first tutorial… since the last one anyway!!

The Bluetooth keyboard is really nice; it is a very sexy almost metallic, titanium colour. The MX900 mouse is the same style and fits in very well with my other peripherals that all seem to follow the same colour trend… this was not by design but it definately looks good!! It’s such a relief that the keys in the lower right quarant no longer stick when pressed, I will not let Gringod around this setup with a beer!!! The Bluetooth hub/charger has integrated Caps/Num Lock lights which is an absolute godsend. I followed the connection procedure and all worked fine when I started the PC. It was at this stage that the positive experience started to take a run downhill!

First impressions on the Lexar Pro 1GB Cf card are good. It appears that the 80X Write Acceleration actually works and is more than just marketing hype. I am able to get 1 more shot into the buffer when on continuous shooting, the buffer quickly recovers and you can actually see that the CF card access light is only flashing for very short periods of time indicating that it is writing very quickly! The free recovery software came pre-loaded onto the card so I had to copy it off before I formatted. All in all after taking 100 photos of my floor and wall, I am quite pleased. I will give it a hammering in Spain and we will see how well it really holds up!! I can see a few tests coming along in the future as I want to see if it was just the nice golden colour that made it seem quicker!!

As IBM supply the G5 chip to Apple, does that make Mac’s IBM compatible??

Now I don’t know if it was just a sign from above that I need to clean and tidy my computer area more, but yesterday I received a pleasant surprise for doing just that!! My rear center speaker started working again. It hasn’t emitted so much as a pop since I used a heavy duty electric staple gun to attach/implant the wires cleanly to the ceiling! It seemed quite clear at the time what the issue was and since then, I have been on the verge of taking it down and throwing it away a number of times if I could have been bothered to remove the staples! It is not clear exactly what I did when cleaning to actually solve this problem, but it now works perfectly! It was either the static held in the dust or alternatively, perhaps I just pushed a connection home that was previously loose. The latter seems more likely but very coincidental timing that it stopped and started working at these times.

For doing Math calculations, what is the most powerful bit of kit in your PC? … Whats that you say?… Your 64Bit 3GHz AMD Athlon 64! Nope.. try your graphics card. On average today, a PC’s main processor is capable of 5 or so gigaflops, the same as the Cray 3 Supercomputer in 1989. A cutting edge graphics card is generally capable of about 40 gigaflops or more. The innovative company, BionicFX, noticed this and has created the world’s first commercial application to process non-graphic data on your GPU. The new application relies on Audio Video EXchange (AVEX), a technology which transforms real-time audio into video and performs effect processing on your NVIDIA GPU. It will be interesting to see what the next stage of this revolution will be! Good work guys!!

As I will be travelling to Spain on holiday in the very near future, I have been getting my camera and accessories ready. Unfortunately, my Archos AV340 has broken(ish) and I am left without the ability to backup the images from my 1GB Compact flash card. This would limit me to about 400 pictures. Sounds like a lot but that is only 40 pictures per day. Again, sounds like a lot but my Canon EOS 10D could eat through those in about 12 seconds worth of continuous shooting (4 lots of 9 shots at 3 seconds each set). Now I am not saying I am a true Japanese tourist but when I go on holiday I try my best to take a lot of pictures. Remember that every picture taken is a memory that will be used for years to help me remember the holiday. And since I am shooting on digital, I can delete anything that is rubbish so why not go Jap for 10 days??

To get to my solution, I have ordered a 1GB Lexar 80X Professional CompactFlash card. These cards have a 12MB/s Minimum Sustained Write Speed which will help my camera take pictures more quickly, I am sure this feature will be very useful at the rodeo!! Another benefit of these cards comes by way of the included application, Image Rescue 2.0™. This is Lexar software that can recover seemingly “lost” or deleted images from memory cards. I will be testing out the speed claims as soon as it arrives and I will post back to tell you about my findings!

You may notice that the title says upgrades implying plural… that would be correct. I have also acquired 512MB DDR ram to upgrade my PC at last. It has been sitting with 512MB RAM for an eternity waiting for the memory. After losing so many UT2004 matches last weekend at a LAN party, I felt I had better get myself back in the game!!! To summarize the issue, I was waiting twice as long as everyone else for the levels to load and by the time I entered the game, they were all kitted with flak canons and rocket launchers!!!

“I decided on and bought a Linksys wireless adsl gateway. It was installed easily and everything worked perfectly first time. I hope that it really is a ‘fit & forget’ item like the Vigor unit I used to have.

Linksys is now owned by Cisco Systems, Inc. and as such, brandishes the name all over the hardware which I like the look of!! The kit also came with a PCMCIA card to make use of the 802.11g technology. The 54Mbps transmission is noticably quicker than my existing 802.11b (11Mbps). All good so far!!

I had read a couple of bad reviews about features not working or no wireless connectivity when it has been installed. I think issues like this can really come down to knowing about the technologies. I have set up wireless systems, routers and firewalls before and I breezed through this system. Everything worked perfectly, first time! Now I just need a laptop with 802.11g built in as standard… dont Apple make one of those??