Machine Readable Passport Zone · 29 December 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Ever wondered about the bottom of the last page of your passport? It is called the Machine Readable Passport Zone and this site has a great introduction to it.
Award Bootblock BIOS · 29 December 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Today I tried reviving an old system for LinuxBIOS hacking: a Chaintech Apogee 7NJL1 board, which was never used, still in the original packaging.
After the first boot an unusual screen appeared which told me the following: ROM checksum failure. It was the Award Bootblock BIOS, a recovery system, which reads the AWDFLASH utility and a BIOS image from a floppy. It took a bit to find an appropriate bios image, as the manufacturer quit the motherboard business and no longer operates a support website. Shame.
So I had a floppy prepared (found an old 3com install disk and finally found a use for my USB floppy drive :) and the AWDFLASH ulility started up, until the next screen: The program file’s BIOS-Lock String does not match with your system!
Funny, the image in the flash is corrupt and the recovery utility stops because the mainboard identification string – which resides in the corrupted region – does not match.
My final fix was to hack the AWDFLASH utility and disable the check. In version 8.22A (file size is 39180 bytes, md5: 003f66c91f25744168a9814ddf04b22c) at byte offset 0×7dba change 0xf9 to 0xf8.
(Technically, 0xf9 is set carry flag, while 0xf8 is clear carry flag. This flag is used in the code later to determine error conditions. We report no error in any case, but the message itself will be displayed.)
MITS Altair Replica · 29 November 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Wikipedia: The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975, based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Sold as a kit through Popular Electronics magazine.
Now in 2007 – 32 years after the release – a geek by heart created a kit of 8800 and 680 replicas.
On the Creation of a kit subpage it is explaned how the design was copied:
- scanning the boards
- scanning the x-ray of the boards
- lot of manual hacking
- creating the boards
- debugging
- fixing the bugs introduced by the scan
Kudos, great way to preserve history :)
(via mr herpai)
This Page Intentionally Left Blank · 25 September 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Hehe, tricked how many already. I write “This Page Intentionally Left Blank” in the 31337th row of every Excel table I am forwarding. These bastards are just printing it without care, resulting in a twenty centimeter thick empty block of paper.
And this guy is of course a member of HuWiCo. The group could be renamed to BOFHC.
If you are not familiar with the above, see the dedicated This Page Intentionally Left Blank site.
Pearl Crescent Page Saver · 20 September 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
After switching back from the Mac, I really missed the Paparazzi! tool, which captures rendered web pages to image files.
Until now. Just found a Firefox plugin which does the same. Worked perfectly for doing some test captures.
Comment [2]
Legacy of Voyager · 15 September 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Some days ago a Seven Wonders of the IT World article was posted, where Voyager 1 was named as ‘Computer farthest from Earth’. This started an interestin browsing for me.
Looking at the Voyager FAQ reveals a lot of interesting stories. Some are:
- when the satellite reached the border of our solar system, the cameras were turned back and captured the first pictures how it looks like from outside
- the data about the earth which is contained on golden phonograph records was released as a book and on cdrom too. see Carl Sagan: Murmurs of Earth
- part of the original team was frightened about sending so much information about us on the discs out there, however we are already giving life signs with the pollution our satellites create
and the most relevant part:
There are three different computer types on the Voyager spacecraft and there are two of each kind. Total number of words among the six computers is about 32K.
Computer Command System (CCS) – 18-bit word, interrupt type processors (2) with 4096 words each of plated wire, non-volatile memory.
Flight Data System (FDS) – 16-bit word machine (2) with modular memories and 8198 words each.
Attitude and Articulation Control System (AACS) – 16-bit word machines (2) with 4096 words each.
According to my calulations, that’s a total of about 541KB, or small potatoes compared to today’s microprocessors.
(Well, I think that is only ~541 kilobits or 66 kilobytes)
Triplenine geek clock · 15 September 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Yet another geek clock. This time it comes from the mysterious Triple Nine Society and can be purchased at Cafepress.
(via szaboat)
Comment [1]
Arduino Pong · 15 September 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Arduino Pong is the classical PONG game implementation using the Arduino board. It was featured in last months Makezine.
The nice part in it is to create the analog video signal from software. Do not think this is a impossible task to do, I can remember seeing a simple clock, pong (here is a newer implementation) and tetris written in PIC controllers and creating the video signal in chip.
Well, finally Arduino has a use now :)
Exmixer: simple audio mixer panel · 8 September 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
DBMix is a simple open source digital audio mixer (“DJ mixer”) software.
Interesting part is the clever idea of creating an analog input device: exmixer for use with this software.
Exmixer is a box connected via the joystick port, which can be assembled at home without any expensive equipment. (Two pictures of a ready device: outside and inside.
Kudos.
Comment [2]
Community based computer recycling · 4 August 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Nowadays it is a big issue that used computing equipment is a big source of hazardous waste.
In Hungary electric shops are forced (?) to collect used equipment, which were bought there. For older stuff you have to pay for recycling. Not everyone can afford this and in Budapest we even have a “used trash collection week”, where people just move their unused belongings to the streets and the garbage company will transport it for no fee. Well, this is the idea, but gangs are just fighting for to them interesting stuff found in trash.
Free Geek Vancouver, a canadian geek group solved this problem for computing equipment: they collect hardware for free, only charging $10 for monitors (which are the real hazard).
WTFPL · 4 August 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
The Do What The F**k You Want To Public License is a free software license.
A funny prank on the GPL. Even Freshmeat has a WTFPL license category, says the site.
Comment [1]
Geeky HP service center · 1 November 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
I had to visit the official hungarian HP service center, three times, for solving a simple problem.
And the second time I noticed how geeky they are: they have a big red LED binary clock on the wall! Similar to the one offered at ThinkGeek.
I dont think many customers or employees understand it :)