Category Archives: hardware

from Sparcs to Ipods, with other gear and gadgets

Cox, “Yes we’re a wasteful business.”

2008.06.14 – 4:10 pm PDT

Dear COX, What a waste of resources.  I do not have a cable box from you assholes, therefore I cannot watch your VOD, ONDEMAND programming.  “YOU have the power with Cox Digital Cable. Watch what you want, when you want.”

Let’s clear the air here.  I have the power to watch what I want when I want because of my and .  I know you’re sad I’m not paying you $12/month for you’re set top box, get over it.  Please stop contacting me and further wasting resources on customers who are unable to utilize your service.  No I won’t switch.

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By px | Also posted in media, thoughts | Tagged , , , , |

netgear ps121 usb print server notes

2008.04.10 – 3:31 pm PDT

I had one while I was living with my , and got used to not having to walk to the printer, plug in the laptop and wait.  Over the weekend I ordered a refurbished Netgear PS121 USB Mini Print Server for cheap and got it up and running in minutes not counting my fruitless searches to find the default log-in and password.

Hopefully this page will rank high for those searching for the default log-in, password, and settings of their new Netgear print server.  I am using CUPS on Linux.  Right now using Ubuntu, and Gentoo primarily.

By default it uses DHCP to request an available address from your network.

Also by default the user-name is “admin” and password, “password” both with no quotes.

LPR Queue name “P1”

IPP URL “http://ip:631/ipp/p1” (Connects; unable to print; reason below)

AppSocket/HPJetDirect “socket://ip:9100/p1” (Works; Read Update Below.)

Also to print a test page, hold down the reset button for 2 seconds.

To reset back to factory default settings, hold down the reset button for 10 seconds.

The web based configuration tool for the Netgear isn’t that involved, and certainly isn’t as “smart” as the banner proclaims it.  There isn’t even a way to control jobs via the web interface.   If you do not know how to configure your DHCP server to assign a static IP address reservation, the only important thing to configure security wise is the password.

After a quick nmap scan of the new device on my network, it revealed several open ports which you may want to firewall from outside networks as there is no password authentication required to telnet, or print to the device.

PORT     STATE SERVICE
23/tcp   open  telnet
80/tcp   open  http
139/tcp  open  netbios-ssn
515/tcp  open  printer
631/tcp  open  ipp
9100/tcp open  jetdirect

UPDATE:

I’ve had the printer server for about a month now, and I have to say that it pretty much sucks.  I would not recommend it to anyone.  I haven’t really been able to print anything reliably without multiple attempts or wasting paper from printing garbage.  I have only had luck with the AppSocket/HPJetDirect, LPR/LPD methods.  I have not been able to get IPP to work either.  This post from 2005 confirms it’s apparently by design.  Pretty lame.

By px | Also posted in notes | Tagged , , , , |

forced upgrade cycle, how bored must I be?

2008.02.01 – 2:13 pm PST

R.I.P 2006-2008 - 2nd hand Pentium 4 2.4Ghz CPU and ASUS Motherboard.

This morning I awoke to the peculiar sounds of my home server turning on and off rapidly. I didn’t have time to do any digging into the issue before physical therapy so I just flipped the power switch off. When I got home, fearing that my somewhat new and very expensive Antec super efficient power supply had failed, I got out my trusty power supply tester. Luckily the tester showed everything was fine, which means it’s the motherboard. *sigh* more rubbish. I guess I need to start shopping for a new(to me) one. It is about that time when all my computers start to walk off the cliff like lemmings. Hopefully I can salvage the RAM to sell and or determine if the CPU is still good and reincarnate the system again. Maybe it’s time I round up all the hardware I have and just get rid of it all in order to buy brand new stuff and make it a complete upgrade cycle. With hard drive density soaring and Moore’s law continuing to show no mercy, my aged technology is whooping my ass. The most rugged piece of technology I own is a 15″ Mag Technology DX1595 Color Monitor which I purchased in 1996. 12 years isn’t bad. Hopefully this year I will replace it with a LCD.  Who can say they’ve had a piece of technology for that long which still works.  I’d like to know.

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a switch to ubuntu.

2007.10.23 – 2:31 pm PDT

A couple days ago I accidentally(and I did the first step of it on accident, truthfully. ) switched the on my ’s laptop from Windows XP Home*barf*, to . In that process I later decided to try out the encrypted drive option on the alternative install CD. With little hesitation after I decided on moving my ~/ stuff over from my Gentoo system running on a to the new Ubuntu system I easily setup for my dad. I was running a drive over usb which is only practical for so long, it really makes the drive feel slower to me. The only major configuration issue I had with the move was that not all my buttons were working the way I like them to. With a quick edit, by adding a new Input Device section to my xorg.conf, I was content.

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "USBMouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 8 9"
    Option         "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7 10 11"
EndSection

I wonder why this isn’t standard info for the Microsoft Intelimouse Optical USB/PS2 when it’s found plugged into my system.
I also gave him the Windows XP Home in a innotek virtualbox so he can run a certain proprietary piece of software which he needs.

By px | Also posted in Gentoo, Ubuntu | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Aloha Nokia N810!

2007.10.18 – 5:11 am PDT

If there was ever a good enough reason to get rid of my loaly N770, it’s now. Nokia let the lid off of the newer sexy version, the N810. Ebay is my friend.  Gotta get that top dollar for it.  :)

By px | Also posted in personal | Tagged , , , |

bored on a saturday afternoon.

2007.09.15 – 4:38 pm PDT

Current Mood:Bored emoticon Bored

It’s been a few weeks since I actually posted more than a link, or tweet. I don’t feel like writing a lot about anything important. So here is an update, and enjoy the pix.

Today is a gloomy day in Sierra Vista. The weather report online says it should rain later, which is cool. It didn’t seem to rain much for our monsoon season this year.

I’ve spent the last hour or so finishing up watching a really cool DVD I started watching a week ago, called Walt Disney’s Tomarrowland. It has some really great old school Disney animation, and effects. I’ve really enjoyed the first 2 of 3 episodes on this disc.

My dad went to go see his College team play. So today I’m pretty bored and alone, and the dog is mopping around the house too. Coming out to the living room whenever there is a noise outside.

I’m kinda getting hungry so maybe I’ll go get something to eat later if I can decide on somewhere to eat. It’s amazingly difficult to choose where to eat in a city this small. I don’t know if that’s saying a whole lot for the choices around, but more or less where do I feel less disgusted eating at. Thinking of food, man-o-man was the food at Neil’s wedding good and tasty. This makes me wish there were more ethnic food places locally to patronize. Cheap mexican food is likely on the menu again tonight.

image012.jpgimage004a.jpg

An observation I’m having right now…

There is a flat bed tow truck across the street, it just pulled a car out of the garage. The thing is, the garage is like 3 feet raised above the street level, and the driveway is short, so the angle is like 30-40 degrees. It’s been interesting to watch for the last 10 minutes. Had I thought more about the flat bed truck, I would have made a video with my camera.

Ah, I know what else I can write about. I got a new phone when I was in California at the end of August. After just under 3 weeks with it, I finally decided it was not worth another 2 year contract to me. The Nokia 6085, just did not like my mp3 collection, and the quality of the camera phone was foul at best. I did manage to capture a couple nice pictures on the ride home from California though. I need to figure out the html code, or whatnot to get the pictures and text to line up better.

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By px | Also posted in personal, weather | Tagged , , , , , , |

I’ll be offline for a while.

2007.08.06 – 9:34 pm PDT

Current Mood:Sad emoticon Sad

My laptop has kicked the bucket. I’m unhappy about this for a couple reasons.
1. I just purchased new stuff for it. a DVD-RW, 1GB of RAM, all in the last month.
2. The new 8800 mAh laptop-battery I purchased not long ago, about a year ago, is now worthless.
3. It wasn’t a spectacular-failure, eg no fire or explosion.

Writing this post with my nokia-770 is OK. It certainly isn’t as easy as using a full computer operating system.

I need a new laptop. *sigh*

I am happy it lasted as long as it did, about 4 years. Pretty good for my first laptop I suppose.

By px | Also posted in personal | Tagged , , , |

wrt54g serial port pin out.

2007.07.30 – 12:54 am PDT

With nothing better to do at almost 1am, and because I had already written up something on my , I decided I’d post the pin out information, for my usb to serial adapter on my .

I bricked my router a couple days ago, when I flashed the wrong device in CFE. Smooth eh? Well I’ll write up something when I get the adapter and patience to fix it. For now here is the pin out for my setup serial port. I soldered on the j-tag pins when I put on the serial port a few months ago. I don’t remember why I used different pin types.

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The pins are numbered so here is the information.
Pin 9, Pin 5, Pin 3, ttyS1
Pin 10, Pin 6, Pin 4, ttyS0
GND, Tx, Rx
Red, Black, White

Serial connection info: 115200,8N1

By px | Tagged , , , , , , , |

La Fonera serial port pinout.

2007.07.06 – 3:22 am PDT

I finally figured out the pinout of my la Fonera in relationship to my USB serial adapter. Now I can use RedBoot to unbrick my fonera. The connection is a bit wonky, and works 95% of the time. I have to make the serial connection before turning on the Fonera.
DSC00533DSC00534

From the power connector.
Pin 1, Pin 2, Pin 3, Pin 4
GND, Tx, Rx, VCC
Red, Black, White, No Connection.

Serial connection info: 9600,8N1

You should also be able to change the serial configuration by using the RedBoot command fconfig caution as you can make your Fonera not automatically boot if you change the boot script. Thanks to shadowyandy for this tid bit of information.

By px | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

early morning fun with my nokia 770

2007.07.05 – 6:41 am PDT

I’m really bored ok? Anyway…

With all the craze of iphone madness i’m quite content with my newest toy. It’s got wifi built-in, along with bluetooth, and many more bells and whistles yet to be explored.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Read More »

By px | Also posted in internet, software, thoughts | Tagged , , |

I’m writing this post with my DS Lite.

2007.06.24 – 8:07 am PDT

As the title implies, this post is being written using a Nintendo DS Lite and the touch screen mini-keyboard. I personally think it’s better than thumbing out words in T9.
So far I really am impressed with what the browser is capable of. It worked perfectly with pwdhash.com, only lacking a cut and paste buffer. I reccomend turning off the sounds or the clicky click will drive you nuts while writing anything longer than a few words.

The start page is rather neat also, the “start links” feature is handy for links to your XBMC remote, or DS Portal.

The first thing I changed when I got into the preferences was to make Google the search provider instead of Yahoo!. Next I made a couple bookmarks for useful purposes, like an XBMC remote control, a DS Lite Portal, and my blog.

One more thing about a thought I’ve been having… The mobile internet as I see it now, acts, behaves, and mimics the ‘net of the late 90’s.

PS. I want a wireless keyboard now for my Nintendo DS Lite.
PPS. The Wordpress interface could be bit more friendly to this quaint device, perhaps an admin theme or Wordpress Plugin?
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By px | Also posted in WordPress, internet, personal, software | Tagged , , , |

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