nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

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HDD for PS2

January 19, 2003

Okay, so I did it. I put a hard drive in my PS2. And guess what? Nothing happened. The disk spun up and there would be occasional activity on the IDE bus, but nothing beyond that. I was hoping there’d at least be a new menu option or something that showed up. Oh well…

Just FYI in case anyone feels like playing with it, a Quantum 840MB disk fit in there perfectly. I would have tried something bigger, but that is all I had to play with. See the previous post for information on the Maxtor disk.

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PS2 HDD

January 19, 2003

Hrm… So I got a Playstation 2 network adapter. The curious thing is, it seems that there are connectors for an IDE hard drive as part of the adapter. It doesn’t fit a Western Digital hard drive that I have, but maybe another? Possibly Quantum… They seem to make a lot of disks for OEM applications like Tivos, etc.

UPDATE: This picture make it look like a Maxtor disk along with a bit of hardware to mount the drive more securely. I just need to see if I have a Maxtor disk around anywhere…

UPDATE PART DEUX: Okay, I should do a little more digging next time. The PS2 Linux dmesg output from this page indicates the following:

PlayStation 2 IDE DMA driver
hda: Maxtor 4D040H2, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0xb4000040-0xb4000047,0xb400005c on irq 41
hda: Maxtor 4D040H2, 38146MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=4863/255/63, (U)DMA

So… Yeah. It is a Maxtor. And since the PS2 Linux kit ships with the same network adapter, all I need to do is find one of these drives. Or any old Maxtor. I wonder what the machine will look like then… Or how the disk needs to be formatted for games to support it… It’d be nice to have the QCast Tuner also support playing from a local disk. It’d be nice to be able to play off of both the network and the local disk. Or imagine if there was support to rip audio right into the local disk… Mmm… I wonder how fast the PS2 would actually be at doing audio compression?

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Nixie Tube Clock

January 8, 2003

Well, I just pretty much let the auction evaporate at $125 for the clock. I think what I’m going to end up doing is building this clock right here. There’s a couple of reasons for this… A) I’d really like to actually build my own clock, I just hope I do a good job soldering and such. I’ll probably have to practice beforehand on some old motherboards or kits or something. B) I’d like a clock where you can see at least some of the circuitry. C) This clock listed here is built to sync off of the WWVB transmissions, much like a few of the other clocks in my house. This is a GREAT feature. D) This clock uses huge Z5680M 100mm high tubes (50mm numbers) which will be nice from reading across the bedroom. I’d also be able to finish the base in a color which would better match my bedroom, where the clock will live.

So… Yeah. No clock for me tonight. It’s probably better for my pocketbook, anyway. Oh, I just checked and the auction jumped to $154.25 at the last minute. So, it’s good that I didn’t bid. Oh well, I’ll build one eventually. Maybe after this current computer job that I’m working on for my dentist. That job is paying about $500 and is for upgrading three computers. That extra $500 should pay off my CC. Maybe with whatever is left over I’ll get the necessary stuff for the nixie clock. While I want to work on the bed, I need to wait for it to get a little warmer out. This would be a good winter project.

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Nixie

January 8, 2003

So I want a Nixie tube clock… Here’s the problem. There are some really nice clocks up on eBay, likely to go for the same price as it would cost me to build a clock. The question is, how soon would I be able to build a clock? I’d love the warmth of a nixie clock in my bedroom, but should I wait and build one and hope I do it right, or spend the same amount for a nice looking, finished, functional clock?

electronicsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

Local News Sucks

October 17, 2002

Gee. WDIV / Channel 4 just had an aweful story about war driving. What a load of garbage. Hey, guess what? You just learned more about war driving from this post. Yep, that’s how detailed it was. I’ve captured it and I’ll upload it somewhere later. I screwed up and made PCM audio, so I have to rip that out, redo it as MP3 and readd it. Aww, screw it. I’ll just up it now. It’ll be at http://www.nuxx.net/files/wardrive.zip once it’s done uploading. Feel free to take it. It’s ~58MB, though.

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It’s @713

October 16, 2002

This probably should have been handled as a continuation of this thread, but, oh well. Does anyone here remeber Swatch’s Internet Time. It came to be around 1996 if I recall correctly. I’ve always thought something like this would be a great idea, but we could all do it with GMT. If everyone always worked on GMT, things would be a lot easier. Of course, this would be easy for geeks to get a grasp on, but imagine trying to tell ‘normal people’ that Friends comes on at 0100 and that they get up for work at 1130. Oh well. Just another point where tradition takes the lead over techonological innovation. Like Imperal and Standard measurement over Metric.

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XXX-XXX-XXXX

October 15, 2002

I think the whole world needs to use 10-digit dialing. The 248 area code almost got it right, as you need full the full 10 digits for local calls, but you still need to dial a 1 for inter-lata and interstate long distance. Why can’t the phone companies just tell people to suck it up and use full 10-digit dialing (without a +1, ever) for all calls everywhere? Just like cell phones, it’d work great. The only reason I can think of is that then people won’t know precisely if a call is long distance or not, but I’m sure an automated “Enter the number you want to call and we’ll tell you the rate” service could be set up.

computersmoved from livejournal

Homey Stuff II

October 15, 2002

Well, today I went and got the moulding for putting around the ceiling of my bedroom. I also got a router. A router is the one thing I’ve been needing in order to finish working on building my new bed. The best part of getting the router, though… I’ll start from the beginning. When I was at Home Depot earlier today getting the moulding, I saw this $59.99 Ryobi router that seemed to be just about everything I needed. It locks so bit changes are easy, pistol grip handles with a locking on/off switch on the handle, 1 1/2 HP, easily adjustable, and cheap. So, that all works out. I go home, get the $25 Home Depot Gift Certificate that I got from my sister and brother-in-law for my birthday, then head over there. Well, when I was grabbing the gift certificate, I found another one gift cert that I thought had maybe $1 or $2 left on it. I took it along, figuring I’d use it up. When I got to the cash register it turns out that this gift card somehow had $50 on it. So there we go. Free router! Woo!

I’m going to borrow my dad’s Black And Decker Workmate and his chop saw. Then I’ll be able to cut the moulding, route out the mortises on the bed, and generally keep progressing towards a nice looking, comfortable bedroom, complete with a big, soft, comfy bed. Yay!

But now, it’s time for bed. I’m Mr. Sleepyhead and tomorrow night is the Underworld show. Woo! I took Wednesday off, that will be a good day of rest. Maybe I’ll get started on the bedroom then. I need to pull everything away from the walls, wash the walls, patch the little nail holes, clean up calk overflow from when the place was build, then start tacking up the moulding. After that comes the hardest part. Picking out colors. Then painting, then I’ll move all the furnature out, clean the carpet with my parents steam cleaner, then it’ll be all good to go.

Somewhere in there needs to be time to clean the bathrooms, eat, do laundry, and just generally live. Gah! heh.

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Saturday Afternoon Wardrive

October 12, 2002

This afternoon and I are supposed to go war driving around the Detroit area. I’m just putting the finishing touches on the notebook for logging everything. I’m getting Ethereal (a wonder packet capture/analyizer program) going, so Kismet can log to it via Wiretap. After this all I’ll go clear out my car, hook everything up, then head down to the prearranged meeting place. < giggle >

Ethereal is compiling away in the background, and empty bowl of Raisin Bran is sitting next to me, and some random programming from FoodTV is coming off the TV. I think I’ll go change the channel. You know, I really hate waiting for software to compile. It’s the best way to do things, though, I guess… Oh well…

computersmoved from livejournal