Fettled any computer stuff today?

[Kim]

Probably worth noting that you can use any random USB keyboard on a Mac, you just have to scratch your head over what some of the modifier keys do, and play hunt-the-punctuation-character^[1].


_{[1] Presumably you can tell OSX you're using a normal BRITISH 104 key PC keyboard and it'll sort itself out to match the keycaps without too much drama.}

[Wowbagger]

We haven't got another working USB keyboard, sadly. I have a couple of Bluetooth ones, but they won't work as the bluetoothy bit isn't switched on when you want to press Command-R to get into install mode. But the installation seems to be done and it's now taking about half an hour to boot up for the first time.

[Jaded]

I’d imagine it has a spinning disc, which would make it very slow on modern versions of MacOS

[Wowbagger]

It has. It also won't install anything later than Catalina.

[Feanor]

Had a bear of a time with one of the visiting Junior's non-working laptop.

It was an Honor branded thing (a Huawei brand name), AMD-based, with no model name or number on it, which had suffered terminal bit-rot attempting a windows 10 to 11 update.
So I  did a bare-metal re-install of Win 10 from a USB stick.
Half the devices banged out as unknown in device manager, including the WiFi network card. <sigh!>

Could not get any correlation between the product I had in front of me and the driver downloads available on the Honor website.
Total nightmare. Google provided a maze of contradictions.

None of the Wifi drivers I downloaded and sneaker-netted over to the stricken box would install. Wrong hardware, I think.
Probing the PCI Device IDs told me it was a Realtek RTL8822 or some variant.
Tried all manner of generic-ish Realtec drivers for that series, but none would install, 'no matching hardware found'.
Possibly it was because there were drivers missing for some of the AMD chipset gubbins it was connected through.

Anyways, I remembered I had a generic USB WiFi dongle somewhere.
<rummage rummage> Ah, here we go...
Bingo, I have a working network connection and can get the thing online.
Against my normal better judgement, I let Windows search for drivers for all the missing things on Windows Update.
And it magically Just Works.
And there it is, a Realtec RTL8822 sitting pretty in Device Manager.

I let it finish installing all the remaining drivers, and all outstanding Win10 updates, and leave it at that, with Device Manager all happy.
Done.

[Mr Larrington]

Decided not to wait until Macrium Reflect Free fell completely into the “No further updates” Pit ov Doom and forked over a hundred-odd smackers for a 4-pack licence.  Nuked the contents of the NAS yclept FATBOY, which was surprisingly quick, and am moving divers backup sets across from the NAS yclept MRCREOSOTE.  Which, unsurprisingly, isn't.  ETA about 22:30.

This will enable the retention of MOAR backups.  And at least if the wretched things fail when trying to automagically delete old sets to make space for new ones I can complain officially.

[tereck]

Failed to update the ROM on my cheap Chinese spyware phone. Boot loop. I need to understand more about A/B system partitions I think.

I managed months ago to get it off stock to a custom ROM but I was yesterday attempting to flash a different ROM. I love those 'oh darn' moments when you realise you've got to dig yourself out of a hole. In truth, it's when/where I do most of my learning.

Fortunately, I'm back to pre-yesterday and ready to try again. Got to love a trier.

[MattH]

The fan in the pain cave has been bugging me for a while. It's out of arms length once I'm sat on the trike on the trainer, so I either need to turn it on first and freeze until I get into the session, or stop and turn it on part way. The obvious solution would be to plug it in to the four way strip next to me, that is in easy reach.

However, I've been playing with a Megalodon 16 key + 3 knobs macro pad keyboard (I use QMK on my main keyboards, so am used to it) to give easy control of the computer when on the trainer; rotary knobs for prev/next/volume for media, big buttons for pause/mute, focused keypad with just the hotkeys I need rather than a full sized keyboard. So, the obvious thing to do was put the fan onto a smart socket and, rather than use a Zigbee button to turn it on and off, program up a key on the keyboard to do it.

So reprogram the keyboard so pressing one knob presses F13 (a function key that isn't likely to collide with another use). Then figure out AutoHotKeys on the Windows machine I use for the trainer (I'm not normally a Windows sort of person anymore). So that can now run a script automatically when I press F13. Figure out how to access the HomeAssistant API from the command line in Windows (went the simpler route of generating an authentication key in HA, then using curl to POST a command), and set that to toggle the smart socket on/off when F13 is pressed. That took an irritating amount of time to figure out the incantation of single and double quotes and backslashes.

But now it works. So rather than plugging in the fan or flicking a switch on the extension board, I now
Press a key on the macropad, where the QMK programming determines the keycode to send dependent on how long I hold the key (a long press is used to maximise the Zwift window, short press toggle the fan), which talks over USB to the laptop next to the fan.
The AHK on the laptop intercepts the keypress and triggers a script to call HomeAssistant (running on a Raspberry Pi elsewhere in the house) over the network.
HomeAssistant does its magic, then sends out a signal over Zigbee to turn on the socket.
The fan starts to turn.

Rube Goldberg would approve, I feel.

[Mr Larrington]

Nerdvana

[grams]

Putting it on a button robs you of the simple joy of telling your favourite corporate voice assistant “will you start the fans, please”.

[TPMB12]

Hey PC fettlers, A quick call out for assistance on my old Linux thread. If anyone had a few moments spare and felt like reading my questions re linux and hardware I would much appreciate any advice offered.

On a more fettling thread I have been updating and checking out old laptop. HP envy 15-ah151NA or SA, AMD A10 with 5400rpm HDD. I have caught up on the updates except for the feature update for W10 22H2 . About third attempt to get it done. 6pm to 12pm and still not fully updated last night. 8:30 today I restarted doing it and it is still running. Glad it isn't my work laptop!! Currently off today so free to fettle in my limited and unknowledgeable way.

The envy looks good but I believe it might have been involved in the HP dodgy battery recall. Not sure as the HP diagnostic app thing didn't work or download. Tried a manual check but jeez! how do you find the battery code? The website shows you how to open the back up to check. Is that the only way? I need the battery bar number I think it said.

Anyone know if the envy 15-AH151 laptops have the dangerous battery issue? Currently the battery simply stays on zero charge and I can only run off cable. Is this a safety lock / bypass thing going on and the battery is dodgy? Should I change it? Can get replacements online I bought one for my ancient work laptop on amazon decade ago. Worked out a very simple swap over. Took 3 cells out and 5 went in for a much better battery performance. No issues at all!!!

[freeflow]

If its more than 5 years old just replace the battery. Flogging dead horses etc etc.

[Tim Hall]

Added a 2TB SSD to my Rasperry Pi to supplement the current 2TB spinning rust.  The Pi is running Kodi and also does some NFS type sharing, so some random poking of keys until it wasn't broken editing of the /etc/exports file and /etc/fstab was needed, plus a bit of mkdir here and there.  Had to provide a beefier psu for the Pi, as the SSD gets all its juice through the USB lead and was causing the Pi to crash.

Nearly fell at the last when the Ubuntu box I use for other stuffs and which is a client of the NFS shares wouldn't boot as it couldn't mount /etc/fstab.  After a bit of panic, I noticed a rogue character in the first line. Removed that and all was well.

[MattH]

More keyboard (or, more accurately, footpedal) stuff. I got hold of an Olympus dictation foot pedal controller - three foot switches, used by transcribers to play, rewind, fast forward dictated recordings without pausing typing.
I took out the original controller, and put in a USB AVR board (a bare BadUSB bare board I had kicking around). Rather than just write some dedicated HID controlling code as I've done in the past, I had my first go at doing a full QMK/Vial build for it. I've used both previously, so had the build environment, but only used them on keyboards that someone else has designed - so just modify the keymap.c file to suit me and build. In this case I was telling QMK and Vial what my hardware is, how that maps onto the switches, and then for Vial how to present that in its app for run time editing, so a full set of configuration files. It's quite a cool concept that the keyboard stores enough information in itself that the editing app can read it and present you with a nice GUI of your layout to remap, without the app being built for or having any prior knowledge of your board.

Took a while (mainly due to me misunderstanding how one of the JSON files works), but I now better understand how Vial is configured and can change keymapping on it without having to do a full firmware rebuild. Doing it on a simple three column one row layout simplified the first time a bit; it'd have been seriously annoying editing files with dozens of keys rather than just three.

Now I'm wondering if I can do the same on my Kinesis Adantage boards, for which I've built Stapleberg controllers and run QMK. As someone has already done the hard work of putting the layout into http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/ , I can use that to generate the bulk of the JSON for the runtime editor. I build the controllers with Teensy 4.1 controllers, so there should be plenty of memory in them.

[Kim]

I have defeated the wretched CSS and associated Devil's Scripting Language functions.

New! Improved!  BHPC championship points tables coming to a webby SCIENCE near you some time after I've applied more vigorous unit tests^[1] to the underlying bistromathics than the Time Team's standard parity check^[2].


[1] ie. a Mk 1 barakta mit Taschenrechner in der Hand
[2] "Does it say Slash is winning?  And he's not upside-down in a hedge?  Best check the numbers on that..."

[Mr Larrington]

Successfully restored traffic to a large chunk of Scandiwegia.

[Kim]

like who bothers having a printer at home nowadays?

[...]
- Selected pages from device datasheets when mucking about with electronics.  I should really get round to sorting out a cable and sone kind of bodged VESA mount so I can connect an additional monitor in a suitable position to my computer for this sort of thing.

Achievement unlocked: 5m HDMI extension, plus 1.5m HDMI to DVI-D cable means I can now drag windows from my desktop over to the crappy monitor that lives on top of the server rack (for dealing with bad server days and plugging in computers on the electronics bench).

Marred slightly by the fact that I can't read the bloody thing when sat at the bench.  I even swapped the 15" crappy monitor for a 17" crappy monitor, which greatly improved the murk, if not the readability.  VESA mount fettling required to lower it methinks.  [Or glasses - Ed]

My wireless mouse works fine from the other desk, so that's a win.  I spectacularly failed to get the Devil's Other Radio™ keyboard/trackpad from my fondleslab to pair with my desktop, chiz.  Should probably sort out an equivalent USB extension and fish something out of the ergo-bollocks box...

Still, three monitors (four if you count the part-time BHPC babbage-engine running Barrier).  I should just go out and buy a hacker hoodie at this point.


ETA: And it appears that my desktop doesn't get rearranged inna Windows laptop being docked style if I power down the new monitor via the turn-the-whole-bench-off master switch.  W00t.

[andrewc]

The parental Epson XP215 inkjet wasn't recognising the 3rd party cartridges they'd put into it.  I tried various combinations of power cycling & button mashing but nothing worked.  I then replaced the cartridges with another set , lo & behold,  it sees them & recognises them as full.  However now whenever we try to print anything it just grinds away & says paper jam, even though I can't see any problem.  To be continued.......

[Feanor]

I am an idiot.
I spent half a day trying to configure a firewall appliance and failing.

I factory reset the device and it popped up on 10.0.0.1, as expected. I set the IP address of the PC to10.0.0.10 to configure it. So far so good.
After setting the device's final IP address, I need to change the PC's IP address to the same final subnet.
Only the device is not responding to pings or http on the new address.

Multiple factory resets and much swearing, I finally notice that the IP address of the firewall is the *lowest* in the subnet, not the *highest* as I had thought.
I'd been setting the PC address below the address of the firewall, not above, putting it out-of-subnet and hence unreachable.

Pay more attention, idiot.

[Feanor]

New toys! Starlink. Much as I dislike giving my cash to Space Karen, it's a unique product which works very well. There's no prospect of FTTP here, and my VDSL is poor. Bit of work to get it mounted. It's just a standalone WiFi connection at the moment, because the router does not have an Ethernet port to connect it to the rest of my network.  Optional Ethernet adapter on order.

Love the way the dish spins around to find the optimal signal!


What's in the box by Ron Lowe, on Flickr


Starlink_install by Ron Lowe, on Flickr


Finally all bolted down by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

This wall-mount bracket is an optional item which is purchased separately.
(The dish comes with the X-shaped ground stand seen in the first photo)
Rather annoyingly, the offset of the mount was just insufficient to clear the coping stones on the top of the chimney.
So it's stood off from the wall of the chimney by a stack of large washers.
I'm using 70mm long 10mm Multi-Monti masonry screws for this application. Rock solid.


Starlink_speedtest by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

I was previously gettin 18 down / <1 up on VDSL.
Now about 250 down and 25 up.

Yay!

[Feanor]

So with the new starlink connection, I've had to upgrade the disgusting pile of various switches in my computer room, many of which were only good for 100Mbit.
3 switches were retired, replaced by a single gigabit switch which I rescued from a corporate move some years back.
I've been planning to do this for a couple of years, but finally did it.
Entire network now Gigabit.

After un-plugging all the kit, I cleared out the Massive Rats Nest of some dozen or so stray network cables that went nowhere, and about 6 IEC power leads that also went nowhere.

Cleared it all up, and re-cabled to the new switch.
This switch serves the computer room only, there's another similar that serves the Rest Of The House.
(Yes, you can see it's IP address, but it's firewalled out from the Internet. Plz not to be hammering on my firewall, you won't get through!)


Computer room network by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

[barakta]

Unnaturally tidy!

Fab photos and neat job 

[Kim]

On a whim (largely because it involved sitting still and not inhaling any more pollen than necessary), found some documentation on the Impinj Speedway's GPIO port^[1], and wasted a few hours going down the LLRP rabbit hole to work out how to interact with it.

Wanky someone's-tripped-out-the-tag-reader-with-a-TEA-urn / generator-has-run-out-of-petril / backup-flattery-is-bat warning feature coming soon to the official BHPC jam-filled babbage engine, once assorted electro-tqt (to molish the afore-mentioned flattery backup option) arrives courtesy of AliExpress.  I was just going to use an obnoxious beeper, but large unfriendly error dialogs are harder to ignore.


_{[1] Which deserves some sort of cursed connector award for putting (amongst other things) a serial port on a DE-15 socket.}

[Mr Larrington]

Moved old laptop upstairs to replace very old (and currently u/s) laptop, that it might provide sounds and moving pictures in the Grand Bedchamber.  Having uninstalled a Several of unwanted programs and deleted a metric fuckton of cruft it's now* engaged in applying nine months of Win 10 updates and there isn’t any Ethernet in there at the moment chiz.

* or was when I came downstairs to have us tea

[Jaded]

Surviving a broadband whiteout.

Thank goodness for 4G when a radio component on the area basestation fails.