Just Another Dang Blog » Hardware

Inkling by Wacom

lopau — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:15:22 +0000

I got an old Wacom graphire2 that I haven’t been utilizing that much since I seldom do graphic work anymore. But I’ve recently been teaching my daughter on how to use Adobe Illustrator. Saw this new product from Wacom, amazing technology jump on how to interact with drawings to be vector images which makes me want to fall in love with drawing again.

Transfer Analog MiniDV to a MacBook Pro with Firewire 800

lopau — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 04:23:05 +0000

If your like me who still uses an Analog miniDV to capture videos on special events, since early 2008 the MacBook Pro now uses a Firewire 800 and went away with the Firewire 400. You would need special cable or adapter to get the job done.

The last MacBook Pro I used which was issued to me when I was working for the local government was an older model around (2007) not the new unibody. Port available to me back then was the Firewire 400. The cable I used was a 4pin to 6 pin to convert my analog miniDV to digital.

Here is my Sony HC 32 cradle for my analog miniDV where I hook up the 4 pin to the second slot marked DV.

So you can either get an adapter that converts Firewire 400 to Firewire 800.

Or get a 4pin to 9 pin Firewire cable.

I got the 4pin to 9pin cable which cost P900( around $21-$22) in a store I found in SM Megamall.

Now I started to convert all those analog miniDVs I have collected and planning to get a digital camcorder in the future or a point and shoot camera that shoots HD videos.

Sun Broadband Wireless for reliable internet backup

lopau — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:37:59 +0000

Last week we moved to our new rented house from our old apartment. And with moving comes transferring of my PLDT DSL line which takes awhile. I have had my Globe Tattoo kit since 2009 which I use for backups. I haven’t used it for exactly three months. I was not thrilled when after hooking it up, it would connect but no webpages open, the download speed is 0.00. Also the I can’t register with it’s SUPERSURF50 promo. It would send but no reply. I wasted alot of load trying to connect, disconnect. I decided to do a quick search so I connected via 3G on my android phone and made a search, turns out there are alot of users having the same problem. It seems Globe’s network is congested as it gets. I called the tech number but no help. After reading which one among Globe Tattoo, Smartbro and Sun Broadband Wireless is the best. Sun Broadband Wireless stands out.

So off to the mall to buy the prepaid kit. They are on promo now and I got mine for 1295 from the regular 1495. Comes with 125 hours internet and 1000 free text.

So far connection is stable and I’m happy with it, a more reliable backup than Globe Tattoo.

DIY: HP Laptop Power Adapter Repair

lopau — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:32:20 +0000

Got my wife one of those netbooks HP 2140 last year, the last couple of months it suddenly won’t turn on. The warranty was out and thought of the worst like motherboard failure etc.. Luckily it turns out the battery was drained and the power adapter was not working to charge it. After some googling it turns out this is common on HP laptop power adapters, there is a break going either on the pin side plug or the strain relief. So I was able to pinpoint the problem and just wiggled the strain relief and then taped it to position so it wont move that much. The strain relief is the rubber on the cable wire after the main power adapter box. Tape fix was not elegant to look at but it worked.

Several days ago the HP netbook went dead again, power supply tape fix is not working anymore, exhausted trying to wiggle the strain relief and cable wire. Using another similar power adapter and netbook charged. So back to the power adapter problem I’m sure you can get a replacement for this online from $10-$25. But here in the Philippines maybe HP service center or distributor it’s pretty much around $20-30. But if your DIY like me, It was time to open it up look in the insides and repair it.

What I needed to do is cut the wires inside the strain relief, remove the soldered wires, strip out portions of the longer wire to solder them back to board.

The tools I used were:
1. Hammer
2. Long flat knife
3. Cutter
4. Soldering Iron
5. Cable ties.

So first position the knife flat on the opening of side of the power adapter and slightly tap it going from base to up. This will open up the case instead of prying it open with a screwdriver. Do that on all sides then it would come off.

Next there is a metal sheet protector, remove them. On the bottom part it’s soldered to an IC. So heat it with a soldering iron and remember that extended IC as you will iron it back later. Now the strain relief is kinda messy, I had to cut it with a cutter to open it up then cut the wire. Next I unsoldered the portions of the wire connected on the board. Total there were three wires. First is the outer wire, white wire and the blue wire inside. So cut the wire and trim it the wires. Solder it on the same location as you did when you removed the old one. Tape the remaining expose wires then put back the strain relief. Put back the sheet casing, iron the IC to the bottom part like earlier. Close the box and zip it with a couple of cable ties to hold in place.

And there you have it, I managed to salvage the power adapter of my wife’s HP netbook.

PS. Pics are kinda blurry as I only took them with my phone’s cam. HTC Hero phone camera sucks at natural and low light!

Fixing power problems with your LG Flatron Monitor (LG1753S)

lopau — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:44:36 +0000

A couple of days ago during the weekend, I booted up my trusted pc lo and behold I heard the Windows startup sound but my LG monitor (LG1753S) screen is blank. I had this monitor for about 3 or 4 years now without any glitch. Used to leave it open for 72 hours sometimes. And this time it had failed to start up. So after checking the power is properly plugged, I shut down my pc again. Turned off the EPS and turn back on, the monitor power lit up(hooray?) but after a few seconds its gone again.

So its final my LG screen is dead. After a couple of googling on my alternate internet device(HTC Hero) I found out it’s easy to fix. Thanks to this website for the amazing archive of fixing LCDs. http://www.ccl-la.com/blog/index.php/lg-l226wtq-bf-monitor-repair/. Just several capacitors failing me, being the jack of all trade that I am I decided I’ll fix it myselft. I went to my trusted electronics shop and purchased some capacitors according to the article, but found I it wasn’t the right one. LOL. I opened up the monitor and upon inspection the capacitor ratings are 4 1000uf 25v, 1 470uf 25v and 1 680uf 25v high temp. So back to the electronics shop. So after removing the old capacitors and soldering the new ones. The Monitor is good and alive again. Took only atleast $3 for the whole thing.

Sorry for no pictures as the pictures got corrupted.

So a little bit of guts and the need to save on service fee, just DIY(Do-It-Yourself), make sure you have the right tools, a philips, screwdriver, soldering iron, soldering lead and check the ratings of the capacitors before purchasing.

Capturing from a miniDV to a PC

lopau — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:27:25 +0000

Well this is sort of a short review and a tutorial on how to capture from a minDV Sony handycam to your PC.

But before that here are some background. I still have this Sony DCR-HC48 camcorder that I bought couple of years ago back when HD camcorder were still pretty expensive about $800-$1500. With the Sony DCR HC series you can transfer video only with a i.LINK cable to firewire. The USB cable is only used to transfer still images. Firewire offers the best quality video transfer unlike USB methods for capturing from still tapes.

To get started on a PC you need to an i.LINK cable, a good capture card and a good capture software, I suggest you go for the PCI-Express capture cards and not the PCI version as it would soon be obsolete, plus PCI-E is more faster.

The one I bought is a Belkin 3-Port firewire PCI-E. So just open up your pc and install it on the PCI-E slot. It’s plug and play so no required drivers when you start your PC.

Belkin 3 Port Firewire PCI-E Card

Installation

i.LINK Cable

For the capture software I used the software that came with the Sony DCR, I found that it offers better depth than Windows Movie Maker. I didn’t try it yet on commercially sold video editors which has built in capture features.

Below is a sample video captured then I re-saved the file using Windows Media Player to reduce filesize but with a bit of quality loss. (btw the one with fairy costume is my daughter)

Overall that is how to get started. The firewire PCI-E is amazingly fast and produced no drop frames. Windows Media Player capture quality is kinda poor so go look into other capture software.

On a different note I used to use an MacBook Pro before for capturing videos. Another reason why I love a Mac which by review comes with almost the complete ports which includes the i.LINK firewire port plus comes with a free powerful software iMovie for capturing and editing movies.

How big is a petabyte

lopau — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:47:02 +0000

I heard about terabytes which is 1000 gigabytes, but not petabyte. With all people storing music, taking pictures, storing videos, HD movies, games etc, documents, database backups etc on to their computer. It’s amazing how storage needs to get bigger and bigger to accomodate these files. Mozy one of the leading online backup services I use posted on their blog an interesting stats and chart on how big is a Petabyte and how much you can store.

Read it here

One petabyte is roughly one thousand terabytes, one million gigabytes, or one billion megabytes. That’s the space of 10,000 laptops, each with a 100 GB hard drive, on which you could store approximately one of the following:

# 13.3 years of HD-TV video
# 10 million yards of books on a shelf
# 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text
# 250 million mp3 songs

Jaw dropping..

HP Mini 2140 unboxing review

lopau — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:30:13 +0000

In the spirit of unboxing new gadgets, I’m posting some unboxing photos and my review for the HP Mini 2140 I got for my wife. After researching the best bang for the buck for what UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) to get. Commonly known as netbook as a more general term but other PC makers don’t want to call their products as such. Narrowed down my choices to the HP Mini 2140 10.1 inch and the Gateway LT3102i Ultra Slim Laptop 11.6″. But after much comparison I went with the HP Mini 2140 considering the sleek aluminum design and the keyboard size plus I prefer HP products.

Here are the some box photos and side by side with my antique reliable Compaq Presario 2100us for size comparison.

Technical Specs:

Model Name	HP B2140 Mini Note
Display	10.1″ WXGA LCD
Processor	Intel Atom N270 processor (1.60 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)
Chipset	Intel
Graphics	Intel Chipset GMA 950
Operating System	Windows XP Home
Ethernet Communication	Broadcom 10/100/1000 gigabit Ethernet
WLAN	Broadcom 4311 A/E/G/N Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0
Memory	1024 MB (DDR2)
Storage (Hard Disk)	160GB Mobile 1.8in.
Camera	Built-in
Audio	Hi-Definition audio Stereo speaker Built-in Microphone
Battery	3 Cells: 5200 mAh, 2hrs* * Actual battery life will depend on actual operations and other settings.
Ports / Weight	1.19 kg / 2 USB 2.0 / 1 microphone in / 1 headphone/line-out / 1 external VGA monitor / 1 RJ-45 / 1 AC power / 1 Express Card/54 / 1 secure digital

The Pros:

Sleek all aluminum lid, solid magnesium alloy chassis makes it durable plus the brush finish gives it an appealing look.
Nice keyboard implementation, almost 92% as big as the normal sized laptop keyboards. Keys popups nicely on each tap.
Weighing in at just 1.19 kg so pretty light.
Fast charging.

The Cons:

Because of the almost fullsize keyboard squeezed in. The mousepad room was designed in pretty a awkward left and right buttons. Requires practice to use with one hand.
The screen resolution is a couple of pixels short 1024×567 from the standard 1024×600
3 Cell Battery life would last only 2.5 hours. Option to get 6 cell but that cost about 4K more.
When charging the undersides gets warm.

At P23,995, it’s worth it from the almost identical specs of netbooks in the market. I shelled out P1,300 more for upgrading to 2G of RAM plus P500 more for the ultra cool HP pouch bag which I think should have just been a freebie.

Enabling a New Installed SATA Drive

lopau — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:24:56 +0000

Just got a new SATA drive, if you have your primary drive as an IDE and install a new SATA drive, it won’t show up instantly when you go to My Computer. That is because the drive is not formatted yet. To fix this you need to format the drive and assign a label. Here are the simple steps.

After the device has been detected and reported ready for use.
Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

Next select Disk Management under Storage. Your new sata drive should be detected. Right click on the drive and choose Format, follow the wizard steps and give the drive a label.

That’s it. Once done your new drive should show in the My Computer and ready to use.

CRAZY 12gb Intel i7 Quad PC Kit

lopau — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:00:46 +0000

This is indeed so crazy, I wish I had the funds to get one of these babies. Imagine the power and speed on working your projects. 12 GB of memory, Intel Core i7 920 / 2.66GHz and 1TB SATA-300 hard disk. whoa!! monster!!

Quoted from Tigerdirect.com

ASUS P6T Intel Socket LGA1366 Barebone Kit
The ASUS P6T barebone kit is ready for extreme performance. The X58-based motherboard that supports both SLI and CrossFireX plus six SATA ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. This kit includes 12GB of Triple Channel DDR3-1333 memory from Corsair, a 1TB Hitachi SATA II 16MB cache hard drive, a 650 watt power supply and humongous clear side case from Ultra. The mobo also has three PCI-Express 2.0 slots operate at x16/x16/x4 to take full advantage of either 2 or 3 graphics cards, allowing up to four GPUs to be used for maximum graphics performance. Whether you are a serious gamer or want better performance for your multimedia, this kit is ready to help you build rocket-fast computer.

The Ultra power supply is 25% more efficient than its predecessor with the sleek new design and a 135mm cooling fan which reduces heat by 20% and noise by 15 dB. The LSP also comes with sleeved finished power cables to provide better air flow and reduce cable clutter. The Gladiator has 10 drive bays. Four tool-free 5.25″ drive bays, one external 3.5″, five internal 3.5″ bays, and two 120mm fan ports.