Getting 1280x768 on my TV

Ive bought a new TV. It came down to a Samsung vs Sony fight but after a few rounds at the store I came home with a new black 32" Sony Bravia U2530. The first thing I did was to hook it up to my HTPC and start fiddling with the settings.

In order to produce 1280x768 (this is whats the TV is limited to on the VGA port) with my radeon 9200 i had to change drivers in Xorg.conf. From vesa to radeon.

The tv specific parts in the Xorg.conf that I want to share with the world are:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 47.4
VertRefresh 60
EndSection

And the:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Voila, everything working fine. :)

More HTPC adventures

After having a wlan card working for my HTPC it was time for something more. More specifically a "Video Capture Card". Seeing how we barely watch TV anymore and the few shows we want to see we mostly download. But some things on TV are worth watching but I want to watch them when I have the time. Not at a specified time and date.

I looked around and found a excellent guide about the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 card. So ordered it and picked it up the same day at a local computer store.

Its awsome, the remote works fine and the picture rocks.

Ubuntu RT73 and WPA2, should be simple eh?

Some months ago i built a HTPC in a shiny case of spare components I had around the apartment. For networking I used the standard ethernet and had a bunch of ugly cables on my floor. After redecorating a bit i finally managed to go wireless everywhere except on the HTPC and so I needed to fix this.
I bought two cheap Linksys WUSB54GC for about 15 dollars each and they worked great with windows, Mac OS X and FreeBSD. Now it was up to Linux to get the challenge.
My HTPC runs Ubuntu 7.04 with standard settings and a mythtv slapped on top. Nonthing fancy, its functional.
The RT73 driver that is included in the standard kernel for Ubuntu does not support WPA2(!).
So I had to google. The answers all pointed to the CVS version of the RT73 module to get it working.
So i downloaded it. Compiled and installed. A quick rmmod on and modprobe on the module brought the interface back up with the new shiny driver.
As for configuration i edited /etc/network/interfaces and added:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
pre-up ifconfig wlan0 up
pre-up iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
pre-up iwconfig wlan0 essid YOURSSID
pre-up iwpriv wlan0 set AuthMode=WPA2PSK
pre-up iwpriv wlan0 set WPAPSK=YOURKEY
pre-up iwpriv wlan0 set EncrypType=AES


And voila the sucker now works even when rebooting. No more stinking cables on the floor. Sussis is gonna be thrilled when she gets home from Stockholm.

Im terrible of updating this thing...

Even though I spend all my day in front of the screen I never get around to updating this thing. Well, news so far. My vacation is over and a new project has brewed at work.

In the private life, Ive gotten engaged to my girlfriend so now Im wearing a ring. Yay. :-D
And im reading a new book, "iwoz". So far so good. :-)

Me as a south park figure

This is what I would look like if I ever got put into South Park.
Created using http://www.sp-studio.de/ a sweet way to spend a few minutes.

Currently reading

I'm three weeks in on my vacation and reading in order to stand reality. Joel Spolsky has once again made me a slave to the couch with his book "Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent". Its a great book and I recommend it to everyone involved in the making of software. Joel delivers with a sense of humour and its very interesting.

Some notes on ARM development

My development of NetBSD and crosscompiling for Mac os X has continued and I think its time for some small notes to be placed here.
Check out NetBSD sources from the CVS as stated on their homepage., I follow the -CURRENT since I love bleeding edge.
To build the tools in order to crosscompile simple fire upp Terminal.app and do:
cd netbsd-current
./build.sh -j 3 -u -U -m evbarm tools
This should build the tools and place them in a dir called tooldir.Darwin-8.10.1-i386.
Try to build the release
./build.sh -j 3 -u -U -m evbarm release

Just wait and see the results. Hopefully it has built and a obj/releasedir/evbarm has been created.
Now its up to you to continue. :)

ARM9 board

Oh, the ARM board i ended up ordering is from kwikbyte. Its really nice.

Vacation

I shall become better of updating this blog. Im currently enjoying my one month vacation by eating icecream and watching some series ive downloaded. Sussi is in the northern parts of Sweden fixing flowers for a friends wedding.

My ARM project is going smoth, ive succesfully crosscompiled on mac os x for my board and with some further development I shall be ready to write a small article about it and publish.

Currently reading

My good friend Mappo brought me a book on his last visit. The zombie survival guide. Everything i needed to know about surviving a class 3 zombie infestation! :D

Moved

So, moved in to the new apartment and getting settled. Been to Linuxforum2007 in Copenhagen, to bad Copenhagen was occupied by left wing nuts with nothing better to do then throwing rocks. Busy coding at job, my contract is extended for another 6 months so I'm probably doing something right. :)

Back

Im back from yet another conference. Many new ideas spinning around my head at the moment. :)
The new apartment is almost ready, got some pics taken when we where there last time.

Nice windows, the view isnt much at this time. But all that mud is getting turned into a park.

In other news, busy with my driving license. Hopefully it will be done soon. :)

Now in stereo :D

Gotten the sound on the evil ICH8 to work. Heres a small guide i ripped from the forums.

1. Delete AppleHDA.kext:
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext
2. Edit AppleAzaliaAudio.kext for matching codec's proper ID:
sudo vi /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext/Contents/Info.plist
in Realtek ALC880/ALC860 Codec Driver key
change the string to:
0x11d41988
3. Edit AppleAzaliaController.kext for matching ICH8 HDA interface proper ID:
sudo vi /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAzaliaController.kext/Contents/Info.plist
Search for (use hotkey= ctrl + w):
IOPCIPrimaryMatch
change the string to:
0x284b8086
4. Refresh kext caches
sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
kextcache -k /System/Library/Extensions/
5. reboot

Currently reading

The art of UNIX programming. Its also avalible free as PDF on the web. :)

Mac OSX86 up and running

Well im back to posting after quite an adventure installing Mac OS X onto my standard grey PC.
http://forum.insanelymac.com Is a great resource for this kinda hacking.
A bit of fiddling with the ethernet at first, but someone was nice enough to have written a driver for the realtek chipset. :)

Next thing was to get my extra ATA133 controller card working, looked around and found out the ven id: 105A and the dev id: 4D69. Now all I had to do was hack it into the correct .kext file.

Only thing remaining is the damn Intel HDA for sound. I guess its gonna be a all nighter for this one. :-(

Wiiiii

Well i passed the damn driving license exam, barely. ;)
Not much new on the front, playing around with OSX86 on my new computer. I'll update with results in a few when its up and running. :)

New company blog up.

Over and out.