top-quark.blog
Fedora Core 4 Fun & Problems
Thu, 06/16/2005, 12:20I've tried out pretty much every linux distribution on the market, and have always had a handful of complaints. Installation is unclear, with few explanations, the default choices aren't indicated, or aren't sensible, my relatively common hardware isn't autodetected, and package installation is always a Byzantine affair.
Well, I downloaded Fedora Core 4 a couple days ago, and it seems to have addressed most of my gripes above. For an OS, I'm reasonably happy; for linux, I'm ecstatic. It's the best linux distro I've used yet. Except for three issues, for which I've recorded the solutions.
1) Installation would engimatically freeze when it was time to change disks. Click the "Next" button, and the graphic depresses, then everything stops. After about the fifth or tenth time installing, I decided to reburn the CDs at 8x. The very next time was *perfect*. Besides the CDs issue, though, installation was easy and straightforward. I just wish they'd program the installer such that a CD failure would be indicated by an error message.
2) Every other distro on the planet includes mp3 support, and somehow they haven't been sued yet. Drop the ideological crap, and include the decoders, goddamnit. Also, have xmms available on installation; it's the most popular player, by far. Solution? In console, "yum install xmms". Then go to freshrpms and download the XMMS MP3 plugin.
Linux will *NEVER* be ready for the desktop, so long as users have to go on an easter egg hunt to establish basic functionality.
3) The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card is a relatively common sound card. But it doesn't quite work out of the box with FC4 (or previous editions, apparently). When the system autodetects your card as a CS46xx and plays the test sound the first time, lie and say you heard it. I mean, it really is a cs4630, but the settings aren't right. When you boot in, open a terminal and start alsamixer, then enable the external amp and boost DAC to max. You could also use the kde/gnome sound mixer. I struggled quite a bit with making the soundcard work, until I figured the secret out.
International Intrigue with Google Earth
Tue, 06/14/2005, 13:02Google Earth, formerly called Keyhole, is probably one of the most fun and useful pieces of software I've ever used. How fun? Besides Half-life, it's the only software I've ever bought.
Anyhow, I was flying around various points in Taiwan today, and found Ching Chuan Kang (CCK) Air Base, home to a bunch of Taiwan's IDFs. Really neat facility to look at on keyhole, with a lot of planes on the tarmac. Well, in the GlobalSecurity article I linked to just now, it mentions that, "In May 1999 it was reported that China had built a replica of Ching Chuan Kang AB at a site near Dingxin airport".
Whaaa? Well, since I have the capability now, I had to see it for myself. Looking online on google, I couldn't really find coordinates for the mentioned Dingxin Airport, but this page mentions that the airport is 80km southwest of the Jiuquan satellite launch site (41.21 N, 100.21 E). Well, sure enough, the airport is roughly where it should be... and slightly east of the airport...
Taiwan's Air Base on the left, Chinese attack mockup on right.
Looks like it's been scratched out in the desert with earthmovers or something, but it's a full-scale replica of the Taiwanese airbase, complete with aircraft bunkers! A nickle says that if resolution was better, you could see bomb craters.
Open Chinese belligerence, at its best.
Try it out yourself:
CCK Original: 24.264353 N, 120.624340 E
Clone Facility: 40.376895 N, 99.886154 E
AK Build Log, Part 1
Mon, 06/13/2005, 02:37About a year ago, a friend and I bought a couple AMD-65 rifle kits from TAPCO. Price was decent, at around $60 each, which was (and is) a decently good price.
For the uninitiated, AMD-65s are a variety of AK47, endemic to Hungarian tanks. As tanker rifles, they're short, have folding wire stocks, and have both rear and forward pistol grips. Overall, they’re a very compact and effective platform.
The civilian shooter finds they are somewhat more expensive to build than other AK rifles, though. The barrels don't meet the 16" legal requirement normally, and need to be permanently extended. Additionally, since the parts are imported, domestically-manufactured parts need to be purchased to meet 922(r) compliance. Both these issues can be negated, though, if building a pistol (where barrel length doesn't matter, and 922(r) doesn't apply).
Myself.. I’m still unsure of whether I'll build my kit as a pistol or a rifle... Rifle is the authentic configuration, but pistol will make it a much quicker and cheaper build. If I elect to go the pistol route, I'll probably mount a single-point sling on back, Euro SMG style.
Either way, though, the parts still have to be prepped, and progress has been slow on that front. Mostly because I don't have all the proper tools. One of the major sticking points was the old rivets in the rear trunion. I kept bending my cheapie punch set, so I decided to drill the rivets out..
I don't have a drill press, so I used a handheld drill to get as far through the rivets as I could. One rivet went OK, but I broke off a drill bit inside the other. I was thinking I'd need to take it to a machine shop to get it removed with an electronic tap remover. Well, it sat in my garage for a few months, until today, when I decided to try punching them out.
It worked! Huge relief, since the tap/drill removal services are obscenely expensive.
Today's minor miracle brought to you by Craftsman... and the letter "Q". Their punch set is orders and orders better than the junk punches I used to have.
My next step is for my friend and I to order some AK receivers. I think I’ll order my receiver as a pistol, then convert it later to a rifle, if I find my needs have changed. Right now, the best candidate receiver I'm looking at is the Ohio Ordnance Works, though I'm also investigating other possibilities.
Switched Power Supply in the 400 Watt Range
Fri, 06/10/2005, 21:26Skydiving. Running with bulls. Playing inside high voltage power supplies. Except for the first two, I've done 'em all now.
I needed a power supply. Problem is that commercial supplies are a specialty item, and are overbuilt for what I need. The wonderful world of consumer electronics offers a fine solution, ripe for hacking. A casual stroll down the cutthroat world of pricewatch shows about a bajillion cheap PC power supplies. PC supplies offer a buncha different useful voltages; 3.3, 5, 12, -5, -12, etc... The problem, though, is that they need a load to function correctly. I never knew how to handle this.
Then...
I came across an interesting website recently. It's not terrifically detailed, though the author does disclaim that it's not a HOWTO (ten bucks says he's just covering his ass). I also found this website, which is useful in conjunction.
Disclaimer: Don't do this. I'm a junior Electrical & Computer engineering major, and I still wake up at night, in a cold sweat. Chances are that you'll shock the shit out of yourself, and I really, really don't like court. I'm not even going to tell you to be careful; just don't do it.
I went to pricewatch and bought a 400 watt power supply for $10 shipped. Since my PC supply's too loud, and I think the bearings are going to die, I was gonna hack that. Well, as it turns out, the $10 supply was louder, with even dodgier bearings, so I just kept my PC supply where it was.
So, battle plan:
-Keep one drive cable, for computer accessory testing/dev.
-Four terminals: Ground, 3.3, 5, and 12. (black, orange, red, yellow wires)
-Two wires each, for MAXIMUM POWER (well, to preclude any melting)
-Rewire power switch
-Wire and attach load resistor
*giggle*
In the lower-right, you can sorta see some of the dire warnings of fire, brimstone, and firestone tires.
The innards. I want to make some sort of "diversity" joke here, but it'll probably reflect poorly on me in the future.
Note the BigAss(TM) capacitors.
After a little pruning, it's starting to look a little more civilized. Here I've isolated the wires I'll be using into operational clusters.
The power switch (bottom black box on the rear panel) needed a bit of research.
Power control on an ATX supply is actually two-tiered. Not only is there (sometimes) the master switch, controlling the 120v connection, but the motherboard additionally controls the supply though the green wire on the ATX connector. What I did here was bypass the switch's 120V control, to instead use the switch to short the (thin) green wire to ground.
I could have just put in another SPST switch to short the green wire to ground, but I felt this was a cleaner setup.
The 10 ohm, 10 watt sandbar load resistor, across 5V and ground wires. It does a great job, and I'm proud of it. Note the zip ties, as recommended by the pseudo-HOWTO. It's ghetto, but effective. A note for posterity: Thermal compound's messy stuff.
The cover. Spent a little time in CAD, made a drilling template. Center punch with a nail, then drill 1/4" holes for the binding posts. Note that 12-5=7; a fact that's handy for making your computer case fans quieter.
Maybe I'm stupid or something, but I couldn't figure out how fiber washers were supposed to isolate the screw portion of the binding posts from contacting the metal chassis. So I epoxied them in place. Here I baked them under my desklamp, because I'm gangster like that.
The finished product. I'll probably put in an LED power indicator lamp in the future, but as noted on my reference website, the fan is a good indication.
Results? Pretty nice, actually. Positive across the board.
- Voltages on 3.3, 5, and 12 volt lines are 3.39, 5.12, and 12.26 volts, respectively. That's 2.7, 2.4, and 2.2 percent deviation, for the mathematically impaired. I'm not doing anything analytical, so that's more than fine.
- Power dissipated by the load resistor is, I think, about 2.5 Watts. It doesn't get hot at all.
- Cost: $10 for the power supply. $8.30 for the other parts at Ratshack: Silicone thermal compound, at $1.99, a 2-pack of resistors for $1.79, and $3.99 for a 4-pack of posts. The last item makes me feel victimized, but that's what you get for patronizing your local consumerized techie-sellout chain. So, in total, about $18 for a 400 watt power supply, with some supplies that can be reused for another project.
- I didn't die.