I've been intrigued by Ret0bright for some time. This magic cooking recipe makes your old yellowed plastic computers like new again. It is not very clear what the consequences of the treatment are, since it involve chemical reactions and interactions with light and oxygen. The recipe is a bit […]
Fix a Commodore SX-64 floppy drive
I recently got a Commodore SX-64 to play with. Problem; the floppy drive, a Commodore 1541 was working a bit too randomly to my taste. Luckily, it is quite to find good advice (but also bad one) on the vast internet. It came out to be a problem with the drive spindle clamp mechanism. I found a very […]
Hard Drive Geometries
Just a reminder of some of the vintage HDD I still use... Conner CP3044 (40 MB) BRAND MODEL SIZE CYL HDS SECT WPCOMP LZONE Type Where? Link CONNER CP3044 40 MB 980 5 17 0 980 ATA Specs CONNER CP2121 120 MB ATA Compaq Contura 4/25 PDF | Specs TOSHIBA MK4025GAS 40 GB 16383 16 63 0 16383 ATA-100 Specs […]
3.5" Floppy Disk Drive Connector Pinout
I may need to build a 34 (standard) <-> 26 (laptop) connector soon. Source: IBM/PC pinout (common PCs) Pin Name PC Drive Description 2 /REDWC Density Select 4 n/c Reserved 6 n/c Reserved 8 /INDEX Index 10 /MOTEA Motor Enable A 12 /DRVSB Drive Sel B 14 /DRVSA Drive Sel A 16 /MOTEB Motor […]
RS232 DB9 Loopback Plug
Title says it all :) I wanted to build a serial loopback plug compatible with the ancient CheckIt diagnostic tool. It wires serial inputs to serial outputs so that the port may be tested. There is more than one way to wire up a loopback plug - but this is the most common. Pinout front view: From Pin […]
PXE aka Net Installation of a Windows Server
I needed to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on a PC with no optical drive and I didn't have any USB device to put the image on. I resorted on using a network install through PXE. I found a great win app to do so, Serva. Serva is a tiny (~1 Mb), yet powerful Microsoft Windows application. It was […]
ZOTAC 9300-ITX DDR3 compatiblity list
Source : http://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Hardware/carte-mere/topic-unique-zotac-sujet_841219_77.htm ZOTAC 9300-ITX DDR3 Tested CPU list CPU type Speed CMOS CPU power Celeron 420 1.60GHz 65nm 35W Celeron 440 2.00GHz 65nm 35W Celeron Dual-Core E1200 1.60GHz 65nm 65W Celeron Dual-Core E1500 2.20GHz 65nm […]
Secure Erase & Linux
sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdc sudo hdparm user-master u security-set-pass Einstein /dev/sdc sudo time hdparm user-master u security-erase Einstein /dev/sdc Result /dev/sdc: Issuing SECURITY_ERASE command, password="Einstein", user=user 0.00user 0.00system 2:38:09elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata […]
Playing with KeyGen
From http://www.rover12421.com/2014/11/1..., now in C#. Source code attached to this page.
Vintage ISA super I/O card Winbond W83757F
For reference. I'm playing with this card from time to time, although the IDE controller is not behaving well (at least with Compact Flash drives) chip: W83757F (205NA47075) super I/O card FCC ID:ID2-W83757 output ports: COM + LPT onboard ports: IDE + FDC source
Force resolution in Linux using xrandr
Easy peasy! xrandr --newmode $(gtf 1280 1024 60 | sed -ne 's/"//g;s/ Modeline //p') xrandr --addmode VGA1 1280x1024_60.00 source
Can I turn this old Toshiba laptop into a synthesizer?
Some links only... http://dynabook.com/assistpc/download/winxp/readme/sound/a1x10sndx.htm https://www.google.fr/search?q=YAMAHA+DS-XG+msdos https://www.google.fr/search?q=ymf+754b+msdos http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/download/ So this is for later. Maybe...
Enable rtsp conntrack on DD-WRT
source Routeur (pas de la Freebox) et multiposte source OpenWRT-conntrack source MAJ V23SP2 V24 RTSP Conntrack KO […]
Enable Freebox Multicast in bridge mode
French ISP Free provides TV multicast ("multiposte") on top of its own Freeplayer box as long as you use its box in router mode. Unfortunately the Freebox router itself is rather limited; I've got a DD -WRT router behind it and the Freebox is in bridge mode. To enable multicast, Freeplayer […]
The User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.
Run bginfo at VM logon using a GPO
Install BgInfo Download BgInfo: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557.aspx Run BgInfo.exe, prepare the fields to display and then save your template in a mysettings.bgi file Copy the exe and the bgi files on a share accessible to all VM, for example \\network\share In Group Policy […]
Delete ghost network adapters in Windows VM
When migrating some VM from vmware to HyperV, I noticed some strange behaviors that were confirmed by running the bginfo tool: some network adapters were hidden in the background, waiting to cause some weird errors someday (especially because of the MAC address cloning...) Therefore, I found some […]
Isolate an HyperV machine
In order to test some trial software under good conditions -- that is, not a race against the clock, I wanted to isolate an HyperV virtual machine. This is in no way to promote piracy or something, just peace of mind. I'll eventually buy the software. This being said, here is how I did: Forbid […]
Setup OpenVPN Server on Asus RT-N16 with DD-WRT
This is an update of the original article Setup OpenVPN Server on Linksys WRT54G with DD-WRT. Have a look for the certificates generation (easy rsa stuff). I recently bought an Asus RT-N16 router with VPN capabilities. However it turned out that the included VPN was not as slick as I wanted to. Most […]
Log On As A Service related errors
Since the same issue occurred on various occasions, I will summarize it here. It is quite common for applications to create user accounts to run services under. This happens for SQL Server, HyperV, and a bunch of other software. However the service may refuse to start with a "log on as a […]