Step 6)
NOTE: BE ADVISED THAT THIS STEP CAN HURT OR KILL YOU!
YOU ARE WORKING WITH A POWERED-ON COMPUTER AT THIS POINT.
THE COMPUTER NEEDS TO BE OPENED UP, AND YOU NEED TO REMOVE A CHIP
WHILE THE COMPUTER IS ON.
IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE THIS TYPE OF WORK, DO NOT DO IT!
WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS AT THIS STEP.
BEFORE DOING THIS STEP WITH POWER ON, YOU SHOULD TRY IT WITH POWER OFF.
Figure out if you're going to burn the DoC on the build or LinuxBIOS
machine. It has to be the machine with MTD modules.
Open the machine (LEAVE THE POWER ON), yank the flash, and
plug in the DoC. We recommend you practice this first with the
power off. Make sure that whatever you do, you are not shorting
things out. Avoid using a metal tool!
NOTE: YOU CAN HURT YOURSELF AT THIS STEP. We can't take any
responsibility for what happens to you here. If you haven't
done this, or are not trained, or have a history of getting
hurt by hardware, DON'T DO IT.
While I don't think 12 volts will electrocute me, I'm a little reluctant to swap a chip in a running machine. Until this project is at the point where I can just flash the BIOS with a DOS floppy or similar, I'll stick with what works.
That places the swapfile close to the most-used application files and towards the outer end of the disk.
How do you know? One of the features of ext2/3 is the way it avoids fragmentation by randomly placing files all over the partition, unlike FAT16/32 which fills the partition from start to end.
The only way to optimize the location of swap space in Linux is to use a dedicated swap drive, or place the swap partition between/boot and/.
With a jigsaw and some spare time you can do what I did and put an ATX backplate in there. I had an old full tower AT case I converted to ATX a while ago, and recently got the chance to throw the rest of it together. 6 CDROM bays plus 4 harddrives and gobs of room for cables and airflow. No front panel USB, but I solved that with a dremel.
This model, however, depends on software not becoming commoditized. If we get to a point where there is sufficient well-supported, well-documented software out there, which is interoperable and essentially modular, then you no longer need an expert to put together your solution. Once upon a time we needed people to pump gas and operate elevators because it was sorta difficult. Once it got down to punching buttons, those jobs went bye-bye.
That day is decades away, even in the M$ world. With all the millions of different companies all with different needs there's no way you can create a turn-key solution for everyone. There needs to be someone to set it up, maybe someone else to maintain it, and most likely someone else to troubleshoot.
Bosch makes the fuel injectors for most OEMs these days, with the exception of some GM models. In fact, one of the best tweaks you could do to a late model V8 Dodge truck is throw in a set of stock Ford Mustang 19 lb/hr injectors. They're the same size, same brand, just different flow.
It's obvious what auto manufacturers are trying to do. There is no such thing as proprietary parts in cars, besides body, interior, and trim, and even those can be produced with the proper drawings. Parts are supplied by the lowest bidder and assembled just like HP, Dell, and Compaq make computers. This is all about service and support and the auto industry has been fighting the aftermarket for decades.
On my ship we called them the "Dancing Bears". If you failed mandatory PT, you would have to get up on the flight deck an hour before everyone else to excersise. There were a few E-6 and below, but the majority were lardass NCOs that spent most of their time in the Chief's Mess.
Most local electrical codes require outlets every 6 feet along the wall anyway, so running empty conduit just for power would be unnecessary. I'd just make sure there are at least 4 seperate circuits coming from the breaker box to each room and insist on 12/2 for everything except for what 14/3 and 12/3 is meant for: 3 way light circuits. It's funny how people buy all */3 then wonder why it's against code to have 2 seperate circuits on 1 neutral.
Don't a large number of ISPs have upstream firewalls anyway? I'm on Comcast, and I'm pretty sure that there is a firewall upstream.
A lot of ISPs block certain ports, but which ones? Where are they blocked? Are they blocked all the time, or only during peak hours? You may be safe from a Shields Up scan, but are you safe from the 3|337 hax0r down the street?
Trusting my ISP to keep my computer secure is like trusting public transportation to be on time. If I *must* be somewhere at a certain time, I'd rather leave a little early or drive just in case.
I'm not sure about the DI-604, but I had an old DI-704 that would stealth 113 given the proper tweaks. I'm also surprised the 604 didn't show up to ICMP scans since I had to manually set mine to not reply.
The Zone Alarm results are confusing too. I just installed the free version on a friends machine, but had to disable it temporarily because it blocked the outbound request to access my file server. I assume there are many options you can configure to secure any hardware or software firewall, but you need to have the knowledge and patience to sit down for a day, preferably within a protected network, set them up and hammer on them with nmap.
Actually most home cable/DSL routers run a small embedded Linux distro, though I've found most are less robust than my old Pentium. My friend has to restart his Linksys almost daily, while my machine (Red Hat 8.0 minimal install) has 200+ days uptime. I've never tested the Linksys, but my setup gets a thumbs up from Shields Up.
The way I was taught was to ground the metal tip of a screwdriver, and hold onto the insulated end and let it probe around the coils on the back of the CRT and such. Expect sparks. BIG ones.
You were taught wrong. Shorting out caps like that is a good way to destroy them, especially electrolytics. The proper way is a big resister, preferably 5 - 10 watt, about 50 ohm, on the end of a plastic rod. That way you drain the caps without damaging them, your eyes, or your screwdriver.
Geez, take a look at aftermarket radios, If they could standardize on anything it could be that.
They are standardized as far as the general wiring and chassis sizes go, with the exception of the power and battery leads. I just RTFM and pay the $15 for the harness adapter.
Auto manufacturers OTOH tend to throw standardization in the trash when they design dashboards and wiring setups. Ever have a look at a mid 90's Taurus or Sable? The radio is oval and the face is integrated with the climate controls. The other nightmare is wiring, whether it be radios or alarm systems. Multiple modules located all over the interior, sometimes buried so deep in the dash its easier to just make your own harness and bypass all the crap.
As my EM prof put it - putting tin-foil into your microwave turns it into a spark plug, and god help you if the sparks strike any explosive elements.
Thank goodness you posted that. I've been storing gasoline in my microwave for years thinking it was safe.
F.Y.I. The worst you could do to a microwave by putting metal inside is break the magnatron, and when it breaks, it will just die, not explode or any cool shit like that. This urban legend was debunked like last season. I can't even find the listing for it anymore.
I doubt many average computer users would know what to do with Linux if they got it. I also doubt many of those who want it want it preloaded with whatever distribution you decide to load.
The average computer user wants an "Intarweb Appliance" they can plug in and use without having to install an OS. As long as everything works they won't know or care what goes on under the hood. Its only power users that will buy a system sans OS due to the amount of useless crap OEMs install on their retail images.
you're always much better off getting them separately from some other vendor - it's much cheaper.
I agree, but if you ever need warrantee support you'll have to pull that stuff out before putting in the Hardware Diagnostics CD. For some stupid reason my school purchases it's PowerBooks from a 3rd party vendor who puts in extra RAM, but it's not from Apple. Guess who Apple blames when we send it back in with a hardware error code?
Somewhat OT question: is there an equivilant to IBM's Gold Service for Apple, or at least some form of Apple Tech support that has a clue?
What about power cables, or is going to be a wind up keyboard and mouse?
I don't think this is a bad idea. Think of all the money saved in batteries and/or chargers. I wouldn't mind winding them up, as long as they generated power quietly and my mouse doesn't shoot across the room after I let go like my old Evil Knievel stunt cycle.
It's just a fact of life that certain things are cheaper to provide in the big city (e.g. comm infrastructure) and other things are cheaper to provide in the boonies (e.g. land). People make their choices accordingly.
You probably never been to NYC, have you? It took forever and a day to get broadband to homes due to the massive outdated infrastructure providers had to cope with.
CTU is the type of school that advertises during the Jerry Springer show (and it really does)... it may sound elitist, but I think that sends that wrong message on a resume.
So does Chubb but most of the slackers usually quit when they realize they have to do some work. Adverts on crappy shows are more a stupid upper management move than an indication of quality (or lack of it). My class started with over 20 people and graduated with 12, and from what I heard, we were one of the largest night classes to finish.
Been there, done that, got the shit tech support job that I quit after 3 weeks. Most of them are some sort of tech support which requires all of 5% networking skills, 5% Wintel troubleshooting, and 90% self control. The rest are actual Network Engineering jobs which require 5 - 10 years of Win2K AD, Netware, or Cisco experience with certs and only pay $30,000 - $40,000 a year. Part of problem is the result of large companies blowing their IT budgets on Y2K fixes, the burst of the dot com bubble, and 9-11.
But fear not, the longer these companies neglect their IT infrastructure, the more money Net Engies will get when the next big "Must Have" hits the business magazines.
With sysv, it's just natural to type/etc/init.d/whatever restart or/etc/init.d/whatever stop &&/etc/init.d/whatever start. I suppose BSD has ways to do this, but sysv's way is more elegant IMHO.
Red Hat systems, and probably other SysV based distros have a service command.
service foo stop/start/restart/status
I also find it amusing how everyone using BSD initscripts seems to think a mess of symlinks is a bad thing, and that there's no easy way to manage them.
chkconfig --list foo
chkconfig --level 345 foo on
chkconfig --level 2345 foo off
chkconfig --add foo
chkconfig --del foo
There's no need to mess with or even look at the symlinks, just use the proper utility to manage them.
I do have one RH/Fedora rant though: networking profiles. When I edit ifcfg-eth0 to change from static to dhcp or vice-versa I don't want some stupid script setting up my card to the last configuration. My quick fix was to copy ifcfg-lo to the real network-scripts directory and symlink/etc/sysconfig/networking to/dev/null.
Kits?? Back in my day we got the specs for the driver, broke out the slide rule, jigsaw, sheet or two of medium density particleboard and made our own speakers.
Kids these days...
With the invention of the Intarweb Thingy, I've since retired my slide rule and entrusted my calculations to various online resources.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 6)
NOTE: BE ADVISED THAT THIS STEP CAN HURT OR KILL YOU! YOU ARE WORKING WITH A POWERED-ON COMPUTER AT THIS POINT. THE COMPUTER NEEDS TO BE OPENED UP, AND YOU NEED TO REMOVE A CHIP WHILE THE COMPUTER IS ON. IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE THIS TYPE OF WORK, DO NOT DO IT! WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS AT THIS STEP. BEFORE DOING THIS STEP WITH POWER ON, YOU SHOULD TRY IT WITH POWER OFF.
Figure out if you're going to burn the DoC on the build or LinuxBIOS machine. It has to be the machine with MTD modules.
Open the machine (LEAVE THE POWER ON), yank the flash, and plug in the DoC. We recommend you practice this first with the power off. Make sure that whatever you do, you are not shorting things out. Avoid using a metal tool!
NOTE: YOU CAN HURT YOURSELF AT THIS STEP. We can't take any responsibility for what happens to you here. If you haven't done this, or are not trained, or have a history of getting hurt by hardware, DON'T DO IT.
While I don't think 12 volts will electrocute me, I'm a little reluctant to swap a chip in a running machine. Until this project is at the point where I can just flash the BIOS with a DOS floppy or similar, I'll stick with what works.
That places the swapfile close to the most-used application files and towards the outer end of the disk.
/boot and /.
How do you know? One of the features of ext2/3 is the way it avoids fragmentation by randomly placing files all over the partition, unlike FAT16/32 which fills the partition from start to end.
The only way to optimize the location of swap space in Linux is to use a dedicated swap drive, or place the swap partition between
With a jigsaw and some spare time you can do what I did and put an ATX backplate in there. I had an old full tower AT case I converted to ATX a while ago, and recently got the chance to throw the rest of it together. 6 CDROM bays plus 4 harddrives and gobs of room for cables and airflow. No front panel USB, but I solved that with a dremel.
This model, however, depends on software not becoming commoditized. If we get to a point where there is sufficient well-supported, well-documented software out there, which is interoperable and essentially modular, then you no longer need an expert to put together your solution. Once upon a time we needed people to pump gas and operate elevators because it was sorta difficult. Once it got down to punching buttons, those jobs went bye-bye.
That day is decades away, even in the M$ world. With all the millions of different companies all with different needs there's no way you can create a turn-key solution for everyone. There needs to be someone to set it up, maybe someone else to maintain it, and most likely someone else to troubleshoot.
Bosch makes the fuel injectors for most OEMs these days, with the exception of some GM models. In fact, one of the best tweaks you could do to a late model V8 Dodge truck is throw in a set of stock Ford Mustang 19 lb/hr injectors. They're the same size, same brand, just different flow.
It's obvious what auto manufacturers are trying to do. There is no such thing as proprietary parts in cars, besides body, interior, and trim, and even those can be produced with the proper drawings. Parts are supplied by the lowest bidder and assembled just like HP, Dell, and Compaq make computers. This is all about service and support and the auto industry has been fighting the aftermarket for decades.
On my ship we called them the "Dancing Bears". If you failed mandatory PT, you would have to get up on the flight deck an hour before everyone else to excersise. There were a few E-6 and below, but the majority were lardass NCOs that spent most of their time in the Chief's Mess.
Most local electrical codes require outlets every 6 feet along the wall anyway, so running empty conduit just for power would be unnecessary. I'd just make sure there are at least 4 seperate circuits coming from the breaker box to each room and insist on 12/2 for everything except for what 14/3 and 12/3 is meant for: 3 way light circuits. It's funny how people buy all */3 then wonder why it's against code to have 2 seperate circuits on 1 neutral.
Don't a large number of ISPs have upstream firewalls anyway? I'm on Comcast, and I'm pretty sure that there is a firewall upstream.
A lot of ISPs block certain ports, but which ones? Where are they blocked? Are they blocked all the time, or only during peak hours? You may be safe from a Shields Up scan, but are you safe from the 3|337 hax0r down the street?
Trusting my ISP to keep my computer secure is like trusting public transportation to be on time. If I *must* be somewhere at a certain time, I'd rather leave a little early or drive just in case.
I'm not sure about the DI-604, but I had an old DI-704 that would stealth 113 given the proper tweaks. I'm also surprised the 604 didn't show up to ICMP scans since I had to manually set mine to not reply.
The Zone Alarm results are confusing too. I just installed the free version on a friends machine, but had to disable it temporarily because it blocked the outbound request to access my file server. I assume there are many options you can configure to secure any hardware or software firewall, but you need to have the knowledge and patience to sit down for a day, preferably within a protected network, set them up and hammer on them with nmap.
Actually most home cable/DSL routers run a small embedded Linux distro, though I've found most are less robust than my old Pentium. My friend has to restart his Linksys almost daily, while my machine (Red Hat 8.0 minimal install) has 200+ days uptime. I've never tested the Linksys, but my setup gets a thumbs up from Shields Up.
The way I was taught was to ground the metal tip of a screwdriver, and hold onto the insulated end and let it probe around the coils on the back of the CRT and such. Expect sparks. BIG ones.
You were taught wrong. Shorting out caps like that is a good way to destroy them, especially electrolytics. The proper way is a big resister, preferably 5 - 10 watt, about 50 ohm, on the end of a plastic rod. That way you drain the caps without damaging them, your eyes, or your screwdriver.
Geez, take a look at aftermarket radios, If they could standardize on anything it could be that.
They are standardized as far as the general wiring and chassis sizes go, with the exception of the power and battery leads. I just RTFM and pay the $15 for the harness adapter.
Auto manufacturers OTOH tend to throw standardization in the trash when they design dashboards and wiring setups. Ever have a look at a mid 90's Taurus or Sable? The radio is oval and the face is integrated with the climate controls. The other nightmare is wiring, whether it be radios or alarm systems. Multiple modules located all over the interior, sometimes buried so deep in the dash its easier to just make your own harness and bypass all the crap.
As my EM prof put it - putting tin-foil into your microwave turns it into a spark plug, and god help you if the sparks strike any explosive elements.
Thank goodness you posted that. I've been storing gasoline in my microwave for years thinking it was safe.
F.Y.I. The worst you could do to a microwave by putting metal inside is break the magnatron, and when it breaks, it will just die, not explode or any cool shit like that. This urban legend was debunked like last season. I can't even find the listing for it anymore.
And he's always serious . That's so cool.
I doubt many average computer users would know what to do with Linux if they got it. I also doubt many of those who want it want it preloaded with whatever distribution you decide to load.
The average computer user wants an "Intarweb Appliance" they can plug in and use without having to install an OS. As long as everything works they won't know or care what goes on under the hood. Its only power users that will buy a system sans OS due to the amount of useless crap OEMs install on their retail images.
I agree, but if you ever need warrantee support you'll have to pull that stuff out before putting in the Hardware Diagnostics CD. For some stupid reason my school purchases it's PowerBooks from a 3rd party vendor who puts in extra RAM, but it's not from Apple. Guess who Apple blames when we send it back in with a hardware error code? Somewhat OT question: is there an equivilant to IBM's Gold Service for Apple, or at least some form of Apple Tech support that has a clue?
I don't think this is a bad idea. Think of all the money saved in batteries and/or chargers. I wouldn't mind winding them up, as long as they generated power quietly and my mouse doesn't shoot across the room after I let go like my old Evil Knievel stunt cycle.
You probably never been to NYC, have you? It took forever and a day to get broadband to homes due to the massive outdated infrastructure providers had to cope with.
It's a Network Engineering course, not Corporate Management. I don't think they have any non-technical courses anymore, except for multimedia.
So does Chubb but most of the slackers usually quit when they realize they have to do some work. Adverts on crappy shows are more a stupid upper management move than an indication of quality (or lack of it). My class started with over 20 people and graduated with 12, and from what I heard, we were one of the largest night classes to finish.
But fear not, the longer these companies neglect their IT infrastructure, the more money Net Engies will get when the next big "Must Have" hits the business magazines.
Red Hat systems, and probably other SysV based distros have a service command.
service foo stop/start/restart/status
I also find it amusing how everyone using BSD initscripts seems to think a mess of symlinks is a bad thing, and that there's no easy way to manage them.
chkconfig --list foo
chkconfig --level 345 foo on
chkconfig --level 2345 foo off
chkconfig --add foo
chkconfig --del foo
There's no need to mess with or even look at the symlinks, just use the proper utility to manage them.
I do have one RH/Fedora rant though: networking profiles. When I edit ifcfg-eth0 to change from static to dhcp or vice-versa I don't want some stupid script setting up my card to the last configuration. My quick fix was to copy ifcfg-lo to the real network-scripts directory and symlink /etc/sysconfig/networking to /dev/null.
Kids these days...
With the invention of the Intarweb Thingy, I've since retired my slide rule and entrusted my calculations to various online resources.
Insensitive Clod!
P.S. Please shoot me.