It's not rocket science... I used to do that for a living. I worked at this place for a few years. Swapping boards on drives is Standard Operating Procedure, we had a whole rack of boards with different firmware revs.
The only trick is matching the firmware to the software written behind track 0 on the drive. Newer drives usually have a good portion of the internal "firmware" actually written at reserved tracks that are only accessed at spin-up.
A really tricky data recovery is when you have a burnt spindle motor. You can't replace those, because the platters are indexed to the hall-effect sensor, embedded in the motor. Lose that alignment and your data is toast.
So, the trick is to go into the clean room, remove the top of the drive - drill a hole in the top directly over the spindle motor, drill, tap and thread a shaft onto the motor, and attach an external motor to spin the drive. You need to attach the external motor to the drive electronics so it can control the speed. And, to make mounting easier, we normally mounted the external motor upside-down and rewired it to spin backwards. You need a solid mount to reduce jitter. You also have to inject some signals into the logic of the drive to fake out the processor so it doesn't realize the original motor is dead. Then power the franken-drive up and back off the data.
I've got a few other horror stories doing data recovery, but swapping boards is childs-play.
Thoroughbred's don't even allow artificial insemination (AI) much less embryo transplant, they are strictly live-cover only.
In other breeds/diciplines it's fine.
I'm not a breeding expert, but my wife and I own a stallion and we've shipped semen a few times to mare owners. A friend of ours runs a large operation this ships frozen and cooled equine semen. It's pretty interesting, actually. The technology is pretty advanced, and the recordkeeping / auditing requirements when dealing with million-dollar horses is staggering.
In the late '80s I did hard drive repair and we used Wilson and Flexstar equipment for testing and burn-in. I can't find any links to Wilson equipment right now. Flexstar had a more extensible architecture and sounds like what you need. I've used the 2550 series RLL and EDSI Flexstar modules (this was the late '80s, we all thought that IDE was a passing fad at the time) and I can verify that the programming language for this equipment was very straightforward. The Flexstar equipment was very reliable. The only trouble we ever had was the cable ends that would naturally wear out from constant plugging and unplugging. We just replaced all the cable ends every two or three months.
The parent post is correct as I understand the law. Here is a informative article that goes into more detail about what rights and fees a company may have relating to playing music or television on premises.
The fees are broken down by square footage and number of speakers. A short example from the article:
"Let's take the example of a small bookstore, under 2,000 square feet. The store plays CDs through two speakers, and does not have live entertainment, does not sell CDs, nor does it have a café. This owner will pay an annual sum of $488 in licensing fees: $177 per year to ASCAP (which bases its basic annual fee on the number of speakers); $141 per year to SESAC (which bases its basic annual fee on square feet); and $170 per year to BMI (which bases its fees on square feet)."
Lemme get this straight... You get a vacation *for a month*, to an exotic location, and you want to code? Just "code"? Did you have an actual project in mind, or is it just "coding"? Hey, I program for a living too, but I don't look for an excuse to be a geek when there is something better to do... Like say, look up from the screen for a while and see some new sights.
Try changing "coding" with "auto mechanic":
What devices does Slashdot recommend for the mechanic on the go? Recently I went on vacation to Vietnam. Before we left my wife asked what I would do if I couldn't work on cars for a month. I tried to assemble an inexpensive and portable grease-monkey environment using a matchbox car, magnifying glass and jewelers screwdrivers, but it was less than satisfactory.
And if we'd quit buying athletic shoes, cheap plastic toys and all the other assorted crap we buy from China, they wouldn't have the money to buy our old machines.
Oh, and give me a break. You expect me to belive the Chinese government buys our old computers, pays to ship them over there, trucks them out to the back country and dumps them in the river? What, are computers cheaper than cement and they need a new dam? At least give me some reference if you want me to buy into this bunk.
The coax terminates at the radio and the antenna, both are entry points for EMP. Sure you could put both the radio and the antenna inside a Faraday cage, but it sorta defeats the purpose of having a radio.
We've been at war with Iraq for 12 years now. We called a cease-fire in '91 before Saddam even came to the table to negotiate terms. We've been shooting back and forth at each other ever since.
We've laid seige for the last 12 years to try and force him out of power. We've used just enough force to keep him from attacking anyone else. It's a mostly-cold-war, but it has never actually ended. Nobody "won" the conflict in '91. In reality it has never ended, regardless of what terms the media and the goverment use to describe it.
I might get as much as $20, unless a lot of people sign up. If my share of the pot drops to less than $5, nobody gets anything. (I understand of course, that "nobody gets anything" isn't exactly true, but for purposes of the game I personally don't get a check for any amount.)
Part 1 of delimma: If some kind soul had not posted this story here, I might not have seen it at all. So should I sign up and reduce his chance of getting anything?
Part 2 of delimma: Should I tell my wife about this, so she can claim her legimate damage also? After all, I share in her gain - I live in Texas so it's community property.
Part 3 of my delimma: Should I tell my brother, who also deserves to get his award? I will not share in his gain, and his participation reduces my award.
Hmmm. What if my participation in the settlement is what moves the award from $5.00 to $4.99? Of course, I'll tell you later what I actually did.
---
Hey, you know what ya call a one-liner joke with no punch-line?
My ISP started deleting spam last month, and I lost a lot of important email.
I forward all mail from a domain I own to my primary address at my ISP. Unfortunately, there are open formmail scripts also being hosted on the same machine my domain is hosted on, so all the mail forwarded from my catch-all falls into the SpamCop blacklist. (I've tried to track them down, but no luck... any advice on finding the culprit so I can report them to my hosting co.?)
This wasn't a problem in the past for me, as my ISP was simply putting "X-Spamcop" headers in the mail, which I could filter against. My filter was roughly "If ('X-Spamcop' in header) and (address != '*@mydomain.com') then it's spam."
One day last month, without warning, they started dropping all mail that was on the SpamCop blacklist - no bounce message, nothing.
It took two hours on the phone before I got them to pull the filter off my mailbox. They said it wasn't possible to pull the filter, but I managed to convince them to do it, so I guess it was. I only lost 3 days worth of mail, but it was during an active eBay auction... argh!
We sent this out to the big-six accounting firms in our tax-compliance application several years ago:
"Shut 'er down Clancy - She's pumpin' mud."
Another year this one went out:
"So sad, too bad, nighty night, zzzz."
Re:Game board/peices?
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 1
I've seen a fairly nice set at Wal-Mart for around $15.00.
I usually play one game a day or so on my Nokia cell phone. It's called "Bantumi" for some odd reason on the Nokia 3390, but it's the same game and rules. I can normally beat the highest level on the phone about 25% of the time.
Another tip for a cheap set - Use an egg carton and pennies. I used to play this way when I was a kid.
KDS has active cables for 20 bucks that go 80 feet. 20 bucks (with a return policy) is worth skipping the hassle of soldering together a cat5 hack.
On the subject, I've been looking for a source for cheap "APC Smart cables" for my UPS. I have pin-outs, so I know I could run down to Fry's and buy cable and ends. The cheapest I've found pre-built cables is 50 bucks, which seems extreme for a simple cross-wired DB9 cable. I need three of them, so I'm stuck between being too lazy to solder together three cables or paying $150. So far my solution is to skip the whole subject and wish really hard for one.;)
That's not entirely true. There have actually been court cases where they have ruled that linking to a URL can be infringing.
Such as the 2600 case.
<SoundFX>Sound of joke flying over nohup's head</SoundFX>
Been there, done that. Got the scars to prove it.
on
PC Fan of the Future?
·
· Score: 1
Maybe I'm missing something... I used these fans back in 1987. I don't remember the brand, but I remember a co-worker holding it out the car window while going down the freeway and getting magnet shrapnel in his hand when the outer magnets blew off the fan tips and exploded against the outer frame. These were power-supply size, not CPU size, but still... Simple idea, it's been done before.
Re: By this same logic, it is our second amendment right to have encryption software and to encrypt anything we wish.
Although I may personally find it distasteful, the Congress and the Courts have been able to successfully regulate and restrict ownership of arms. I am no longer allowed to own "Destructive Devices" such as military grenade launchers or full-auto firearms without a submitting to a two-year background investigation by the FBI and a special tax per weapon. Zip guns, drop-in auto sears, pipe-bombs, etc. are outlawed completely.
The right to bear arms no longer means the right to bear any sort of arms I wish. For more in-depth information, check with the NRA.
So, by this logic, the Clipper chip was perfectly fine. If you tie this argument to the 2nd Amendment, you'll end up with government-regulated encryption.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not rocket science... I used to do that for a living. I worked at this place for a few years. Swapping boards on drives is Standard Operating Procedure, we had a whole rack of boards with different firmware revs.
The only trick is matching the firmware to the software written behind track 0 on the drive. Newer drives usually have a good portion of the internal "firmware" actually written at reserved tracks that are only accessed at spin-up.
A really tricky data recovery is when you have a burnt spindle motor. You can't replace those, because the platters are indexed to the hall-effect sensor, embedded in the motor. Lose that alignment and your data is toast.
So, the trick is to go into the clean room, remove the top of the drive - drill a hole in the top directly over the spindle motor, drill, tap and thread a shaft onto the motor, and attach an external motor to spin the drive. You need to attach the external motor to the drive electronics so it can control the speed. And, to make mounting easier, we normally mounted the external motor upside-down and rewired it to spin backwards. You need a solid mount to reduce jitter. You also have to inject some signals into the logic of the drive to fake out the processor so it doesn't realize the original motor is dead. Then power the franken-drive up and back off the data.
I've got a few other horror stories doing data recovery, but swapping boards is childs-play.
I'm sorry, I forgot I was posting this to Slashdot, I thought you guys could handle it.
The answer to your question is that we pay a large animal vet to do the collection. Actually the mare owner pays, but that's not really important.
I'm sure a google search would satisfy you perverts, but here's a direct link for your private pleasure.
Thoroughbred's don't even allow artificial insemination (AI) much less embryo transplant, they are strictly live-cover only.
In other breeds/diciplines it's fine. I'm not a breeding expert, but my wife and I own a stallion and we've shipped semen a few times to mare owners. A friend of ours runs a large operation this ships frozen and cooled equine semen. It's pretty interesting, actually. The technology is pretty advanced, and the recordkeeping / auditing requirements when dealing with million-dollar horses is staggering.
In the late '80s I did hard drive repair and we used Wilson and Flexstar equipment for testing and burn-in. I can't find any links to Wilson equipment right now. Flexstar had a more extensible architecture and sounds like what you need. I've used the 2550 series RLL and EDSI Flexstar modules (this was the late '80s, we all thought that IDE was a passing fad at the time) and I can verify that the programming language for this equipment was very straightforward. The Flexstar equipment was very reliable. The only trouble we ever had was the cable ends that would naturally wear out from constant plugging and unplugging. We just replaced all the cable ends every two or three months.
The parent post is correct as I understand the law. Here is a informative article that goes into more detail about what rights and fees a company may have relating to playing music or television on premises.
http://news.bookweb.org/news/534.html
The fees are broken down by square footage and number of speakers. A short example from the article:
"Let's take the example of a small bookstore, under 2,000 square feet. The store plays CDs through two speakers, and does not have live entertainment, does not sell CDs, nor does it have a café. This owner will pay an annual sum of $488 in licensing fees: $177 per year to ASCAP (which bases its basic annual fee on the number of speakers); $141 per year to SESAC (which bases its basic annual fee on square feet); and $170 per year to BMI (which bases its fees on square feet)."
Not a big NASCAR fan?
I know a lot of mechanics that are more passionate about cars than most programmers I know are about code.
I never saw a mechanic with a printout of some lovely perl hanging on the wall...
Lemme get this straight... You get a vacation *for a month*, to an exotic location, and you want to code? Just "code"? Did you have an actual project in mind, or is it just "coding"? Hey, I program for a living too, but I don't look for an excuse to be a geek when there is something better to do... Like say, look up from the screen for a while and see some new sights.
Try changing "coding" with "auto mechanic":
What devices does Slashdot recommend for the mechanic on the go? Recently I went on vacation to Vietnam. Before we left my wife asked what I would do if I couldn't work on cars for a month. I tried to assemble an inexpensive and portable grease-monkey environment using a matchbox car, magnifying glass and jewelers screwdrivers, but it was less than satisfactory.
And if we'd quit buying athletic shoes, cheap plastic toys and all the other assorted crap we buy from China, they wouldn't have the money to buy our old machines.
Take a look at this, here are the stats.
Oh, and give me a break. You expect me to belive the Chinese government buys our old computers, pays to ship them over there, trucks them out to the back country and dumps them in the river? What, are computers cheaper than cement and they need a new dam? At least give me some reference if you want me to buy into this bunk.
So how do I get my radio inside the coax?
The coax terminates at the radio and the antenna, both are entry points for EMP. Sure you could put both the radio and the antenna inside a Faraday cage, but it sorta defeats the purpose of having a radio.
We've been at war with Iraq for 12 years now. We called a cease-fire in '91 before Saddam even came to the table to negotiate terms. We've been shooting back and forth at each other ever since.
We've laid seige for the last 12 years to try and force him out of power. We've used just enough force to keep him from attacking anyone else. It's a mostly-cold-war, but it has never actually ended. Nobody "won" the conflict in '91. In reality it has never ended, regardless of what terms the media and the goverment use to describe it.
So, as I understand the rules of the game...
I might get as much as $20, unless a lot of people sign up. If my share of the pot drops to less than $5, nobody gets anything. (I understand of course, that "nobody gets anything" isn't exactly true, but for purposes of the game I personally don't get a check for any amount.)
Part 1 of delimma: If some kind soul had not posted this story here, I might not have seen it at all. So should I sign up and reduce his chance of getting anything?
Part 2 of delimma: Should I tell my wife about this, so she can claim her legimate damage also? After all, I share in her gain - I live in Texas so it's community property.
Part 3 of my delimma: Should I tell my brother, who also deserves to get his award? I will not share in his gain, and his participation reduces my award.
Hmmm. What if my participation in the settlement is what moves the award from $5.00 to $4.99? Of course, I'll tell you later what I actually did.
---
Hey, you know what ya call a one-liner joke with no punch-line?
My ISP started deleting spam last month, and I lost a lot of important email.
I forward all mail from a domain I own to my primary address at my ISP. Unfortunately, there are open formmail scripts also being hosted on the same machine my domain is hosted on, so all the mail forwarded from my catch-all falls into the SpamCop blacklist. (I've tried to track them down, but no luck... any advice on finding the culprit so I can report them to my hosting co.?)
This wasn't a problem in the past for me, as my ISP was simply putting "X-Spamcop" headers in the mail, which I could filter against. My filter was roughly "If ('X-Spamcop' in header) and (address != '*@mydomain.com') then it's spam."
One day last month, without warning, they started dropping all mail that was on the SpamCop blacklist - no bounce message, nothing.
It took two hours on the phone before I got them to pull the filter off my mailbox. They said it wasn't possible to pull the filter, but I managed to convince them to do it, so I guess it was. I only lost 3 days worth of mail, but it was during an active eBay auction... argh!
We sent this out to the big-six accounting firms in our tax-compliance application several years ago:
"Shut 'er down Clancy - She's pumpin' mud."
Another year this one went out:
"So sad, too bad, nighty night, zzzz."
I've seen a fairly nice set at Wal-Mart for around $15.00.
I usually play one game a day or so on my Nokia cell phone. It's called "Bantumi" for some odd reason on the Nokia 3390, but it's the same game and rules. I can normally beat the highest level on the phone about 25% of the time.
Another tip for a cheap set - Use an egg carton and pennies. I used to play this way when I was a kid.
KDS has active cables for 20 bucks that go 80 feet. 20 bucks (with a return policy) is worth skipping the hassle of soldering together a cat5 hack.
;)
On the subject, I've been looking for a source for cheap "APC Smart cables" for my UPS. I have pin-outs, so I know I could run down to Fry's and buy cable and ends. The cheapest I've found pre-built cables is 50 bucks, which seems extreme for a simple cross-wired DB9 cable. I need three of them, so I'm stuck between being too lazy to solder together three cables or paying $150. So far my solution is to skip the whole subject and wish really hard for one.
Given the huge outcry about GTK+, I'm impressed that MS has had the same flaw, but for so much longer, with no one talking about it.
I knew there was some advantage to closed-source...
That's not entirely true. There have actually been court cases where they have ruled that linking to a URL can be infringing.
Such as the 2600 case.
<SoundFX>Sound of joke flying over nohup's head</SoundFX>
Maybe I'm missing something... I used these fans back in 1987. I don't remember the brand, but I remember a co-worker holding it out the car window while going down the freeway and getting magnet shrapnel in his hand when the outer magnets blew off the fan tips and exploded against the outer frame. These were power-supply size, not CPU size, but still... Simple idea, it's been done before.
PhysicsSongs.org
Re: By this same logic, it is our second amendment right to have encryption software and to encrypt anything we wish.
Although I may personally find it distasteful, the Congress and the Courts have been able to successfully regulate and restrict ownership of arms. I am no longer allowed to own "Destructive Devices" such as military grenade launchers or full-auto firearms without a submitting to a two-year background investigation by the FBI and a special tax per weapon. Zip guns, drop-in auto sears, pipe-bombs, etc. are outlawed completely.
The right to bear arms no longer means the right to bear any sort of arms I wish. For more in-depth information, check with the NRA.
So, by this logic, the Clipper chip was perfectly fine. If you tie this argument to the 2nd Amendment, you'll end up with government-regulated encryption.
I found the story at the AP, but I couldn't find a direct link that worked there. (frame-hell)
I can't find a better article, but I'd love to read more. Anyone have more info?