This time, I've started keeping my CD rips in a lossless format. Next time (which will put me around 0.75TB) I will probably start keeping raw DVD rips. After that, I don't know what else I might keep that could use so much room. Until now, audio and small video clips have taken the bulk of the space.
How about raw RGB video rips from scanned cinema tapes? Plus raw 48khz 24bit whatever number of channels audio of course.
Seriously though, my previous HD was a Seagate 40GB 7200RPM. Clicked to death one day (yes, i've learned the lesson, MAKE BACKUPS). I had Windows 2000 (10GB), Linux(10GB (/)+10GB(/home)+whatever swap), stuff (14GB FAT32). Now I have a 120GB drive and I've got it more than half filled already, without having Win2k (all linux now). You'll always end up filling all your space, want it or not.
I always build my own, simply because I get to choose what goes in it. (e.g. maybe I want a top-notch processor to do [insert CPU intensive task here] plus tons of memory but I don't need any super-mega-6.1-surround soundcard or the latest ultra-geforce-7-nvidia graphics card. Or I run a Squid proxy and need large amounts of RAM and a fast HD, but any processor will do.) Plus it's cheaper, too. Plus you get no O.S. preinstalled, blank harddrive, ready to get whatever I like to put on it.
And you get to make little adjustments/details that might actually make a difference (master/slave settings on IDE drives, adding on some decent -silver- thermoconductive grease instead of the crappy stickers to get the CPU colder, what PCI card goes where because the cables are short/they are farther apart/whatever, etc...)
These things are why I build my own, added to the fact that I like building my won for countless other detailt (stupid, maybe, but I like my cables wrapped neatly, makes adding/removing pieces much easier), plus the fact I like building it:)
I can keep on talking but I guess you get the idea;)
True, plus the people who build their own computers witho no OS preinstalled, and don't tell me there are few, anyone who knows how to screw things and plug in IDE cables knows how to build one.
I know nobody who has had linux preinstalled, OTOH, I've had quite a few friends install it beside windows (of course they still want to keep their games, but they use Linux for everyday tasks)
I only restart under linux, aside from every day since I don't keep my PC 24/7 (but then it's for no special reason), is when I reinstall/upgrade the kernel, or when some subsystem crashed and I haven't got it modularized (in which case I reconfigure, make it a module, and reboot, and I never have to restart for that reason again.) (e.g. the bttv module was crashing with mplayer trying to grab nonstandard-sized frames, and would, once I tried, spit out ioctl errors every time I tried to grab, including with standard sizes. Might as well be a problem with mplayer not resetting it, though.) Remember I have a pretty non-vanilla 2.6 kernel with a bunch of patches applied which obviously isn't as stable, and I do pretty annoying things to it too:)
It's really a pain in the neck to be rebooting every time I install software under Windows, here I just (Gentoo) "emerge" the program and start using it, at most having to manually start a daemon or the like. Updating the system is just as simple.
If your Jabber server has the right transports it can handle Yahoo, AIM/ICQ and MSN.
Actually, you can use any transport you want, you aren't restricted to your own server in any way: This is Jabber's beauty, that many servers can coexist instantly and (as long as it isn't deactivated, of course) talk to each other. Transports are just "servers" which you see as having all Yahoo/MSN/whatever users, with @ changed to % (e.g. fred%msn.com@msn.thetransport.net)
Yes, and many dsl routers/whatever use ARMs, and my Sharp Zaurus uses ARM, and probably many other embedded devices use ARM (what processors do postscript printers use? Probably ARM would not be a bad guess)
I get a large tomato can (empty), drill a hole at the right distance from the back, slip it over my current antenna, and it doubles or triples the range. Soooo easy.
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
On my Spanish keyboard it's Alt Gr (Right Alt)+the key left to the 1. Used to be a pain under Windows. But / is just slighty easier, it's Shift+7. At least Shift is used more often.
The absolute worst is ~ for home, since under windows I had to type ALT+NUMPAD1,2,3 at lest on old ones (ASCII code) and you know those 8-letterized filenames under DOS. Now under linux AltGr+4 is much easier (it works under Windows but it's treated as an accent i.e. you need to type a space after it, for example typing ~n makes ñ) but still, it's annoying when you type # or ½ due to missing the 4.
Spanish keybords are, IMHO, a complete mess symbols-wise. What's more important, or #? Well they've got mapped to shift+3 and # mapped to altgr+3.
I just learned that AltGr+7,8,9,0 is {[]}. They're usually AltGr+the keys left to Enter (so there are 2 possible ways of typing them). What a mess. '=' is also wretched, you need shift. Backticks are a grave-accent and thus need space.
I'd remap them, but I'm too used to standard keyboard and I wouldn't be able to type on others, let aside the fact that I don't know how to type without looking every once in a while, and having keys do something other than printed would be a mess.
Then the patent must be invalid, since if you move the mouse while doubleclicking it doesn't work e.g. it must stay on the same button/icon/whatever. Shouldn't it?
OR, make a motor out of the magnets. I haven't actually, but I opened up a motor with a HDD-like magnet, played 12V though it, wow, did it spin fast.
Make sure they don't get close to your TV or CRT monitor though... I onde got a _normal_ magnet too close--it took about a month of on/demagnetize/off/wait cool down/repeat each day for it to go. Better not try a supermagnet.
Actually sound from computers can come from many places, and sometimes you han make out a hell of a lot of info about what a user is doing.
Typical CPU HLT execution either by the O/S (linux and w2k or so i thought... w2k didn't do it too good when I tried it) or by an external program (on ring 0) e.g CpuIDLE will cause several things, from what I've experienced:
Variable fan speed: Typical cheap comes-with-case power supplies regulate +5V whiwh surprise! gets a greater power draw when CPU is busy. Result, you fan sounds higher pitched when you ger a greater CPU load since +12V isn't regulated and the draw on +5V affects it. My newer power supply (old one died) doesn't seem to do this anymore, my old one, especillay with my old CoolerMaster fan (pretty noisy) was exceptionally good at this.
Transformer/inductance/capacitor hum: when I turn off the main CPU fan you can distinguish some hums from several places in my pc, exclusind the power supply fan. Causes can be anything from sound being played thorugh some soundcard transformer to CPU drawing more power though something.
Also, MANY other noises plague PCs:
HDD head movement. I'm sure someone has developed a way to measure approximately what area of an hdd a user is accesing by listening to head noise.
CDROM spinning/head moving/tracking/focussing. Wow do these 52x drives make a helluva lot of noise!
Modem. Surely a mike placed next to the modem transformer could pick up the signal, and it then could easily be decoded to get the stream of PPP packets.
speakers/soundcard. If I crack up the volume, depending on inputs selected, etc I can easily hear different noises, when I move a window, when I scroll something, etc they all make different noises/click rates. Of course it scares the hell out of me when someone IM's me through Jabber with that ding-dong noise.
Take that and keyboard/mouse/CRT monitor/whatever noise and you have a wealth of information which you can use to predict what a user was doing.
Tomorrow i'll download them, at least they'll take less time to load than mozilla which leads us to the modem thing... Nope, it isn't line quality related. i.e. be it compiling, configuring, running Mozilla (takes a short while to startup at high cpu use) makes it reestablish carrier (if it lasts long enough like a compilation, it ends up haging up) and it isn't line quality. When I do cpu intensive tasks while connecting, the clue is in this part of the "carrier start" thing, you know, the highpitch....-low....-highlow..-high...-whitenoise part just before connecting (sometimes it buzzes after that during some phase check or something too after that, but otherwise it's basically the last part you can hear). The initial high may get prolonged or so, and it goes slow, and confuses the ISP modem. It is clearly cpu related, sometimes getting to be 2x as slow than normal. Besides, in WinDoze it doesn't happen.
I downloaded again the latest driver (2.9.6) and recompiled my kernel and everything else (and updated to 2.4.24 btw, I was using.23, I know, I oughtta get 2.6! This weekend, maybe...), this time making sure it all used the same gcc version for everything (I have 2.96 and 3.1 both installed, sometimes depending if I use su, or login as root, or singleuser, or whatever, it has different path and chooses the other one, since 3.1 is un/usr/local and 2.96 is in/usr) because it had caused me problem before, and rebuilt the modem driver (not fully, since it's mostly a binary core part with some wrapping around it). It didn't work, the userland segfaults (curiously) just before the previously mentioned part of the carrier, or even before dialing if I use debuglevel 2 or greater (strange). The kernel module then is half-open and I have to reload it, and still, the modem doesn't hangup and I have to either reload everything and stop dialing before it segfaults to let it hangup properly or unplug the plone cord. Previous version (2.9.5) does the same thing. I'll try the ones before, but I don't have much hope....
BTW, the one with the CPU use problem is this one.
I'll check out FireFox, although I currently use Mozilla mail, I can easily change to somthing else (that supports HTML mail please, I hate it when someone sends me a message which I can't view correctly (I still send plaintext email, but I like to be able to receive HTML!))
On the never drivers, it has a userland process. But on the old driver, the one I use, it doesn't; it's all kernel module. It isn't pppd, it's a carrier thingy and not the ppp lying on top (during high CPU activity it sometimes fails to even DIAL (not carrier, just plain DTMF dial, it fails even on THAT part (typical "soundcard" effect where it repeats the buffer since it hasn't received data, and it dials wrong)and I get a "no such number" recording on the speaker). The newest release didn't work for me, although I will download all others and try them in decreasing order until one works (hopefully one that has a userland program). I knew about process priority and nice;) I use it sometimes to e.g. give some visual thingy or some such graphic program (e.g. sueprkaramba) less priority than REAL work;). my problem is with Kernel priority on the module. It will withstand a short high CPU (it re-gets the carrier, although I've watched a significantly smaller data transfer rate each time it repeats, like the quality seems to get degraded, and in the end it goes at 7kbits/s instead of forty-something and I have to reconnect). I doubt it's a mobo thing or H/W issue. The modem shares IRQ with my mobo's integrated soundcard, but it disconnects whether I'm listening to music or not. I'm pretty confident it's not getting enough priority. Well I'll try newer drivers (not the newest though, those didn't work) and see if it works. then I can nice -18 the userland process or something and see if it gets better;)
This uncle of mine has used Basic Stamp, it works quite well, although I stil think ASM is better and much faster. I used PICBASIC (kinda like BS but compiles and gets programmed inside a standalone PIC, not a module PIC+E2PROM like BS) but I think it was too slow, mainly because I was being stupid and not precalculating stuff. The ASM version had everything precalculated (except a couple shifts) but it had some problem, i think it was some overflow or something. Working with 16 bit tables and such is a pain in the neck in an 8 bit uC *lol* The retard thing surely helped, I'll contact him and make a new versio of the thingy, see if it works (now I have the cheapo PC oscilloscope working too, so I can now get real time measurements and captures and not what i could see with that damn strobe lamp that worked whenever it felt like it)
Ah, so it actually got sent! I should've changed the last line to "and Mozilla 1.5 crashes for no apparent reason" lol;) I think I should switch to 1.6... anyways it's the first crash in months.
I haven't gone much into the subject, but I was building a simple PIC microcontroller circuit with my own program (fist programmes in PICBASIC, later remade in assembly, since the PICBAASIC one didn't work) to run the spark at the apropiate time. I am not into the subject much, but it was a little project my second-uncle assigned me;) anyways thx for the info, i'll have a look. For testing, I use a strobe lamp and a hi-speed DC motor with an electromagnetic pickup and a filter circuit for the incoming pulses.
P.D. my winmodem just hungup again, when CPU use is above a certain threshold it fails to maintain carrier. (kernel module gets too little CPU? how can I make it have a greater priority? It's like hell during locatedb updates) It's a Smart Link modem, with the propietay drivers (they have several versions with a binary core and a open source wrapper that compiles against the current kernel. I use the version labeled stable, the latest "unsupported" one didn't work (crashed). Any suggestions? Aside from buying a new modem, which I would, but i (hope) to get DSL shortly (I *think* they just added coverage of my zone now, but I think it's still not finished)
P.D.2: I just looked at the megaspark and it gave me a great and stupid idea. My program waited 1 revolution-x degees to advance, but I just realized, move the pickup befor N degrees and I only have to retard not advance. Silly me *lol*
Infrared protocol works by modulating a pulse train with the encoded information at some 50khz and sending i t to the diode. Al least Sony SIRCS works by sending a 2.4ms carrier start pulse followed by 0.6ms no-carrier spacer, then x-ms high (carrier) and 0.6ms low (no carrier) where x is 1.2 if it's a 1; x is 0.6 if it's a 0.
So there. I know hoy the IR works; I like to know how things work.
The car ignition system, I have a decent idea of how it works. Besides, I designed a control circuit for a motorcycle ignition system, preciseley, the delay part (the point where it ignites), using tables for the data. It never worked correctly, though.
The same way, I like to know that when i'm typing this post, my keyboard is sending RF pulses to my receiver which in turn sends keyboard scancodes to my PC, and to the keyboard controller circuits inside whatever microchip in my motherboard, which Linux reads and sends to the X server and to Mozilla, which tells the X server to draw then on the screen (which really means tell my graplics card to draw them on the graphics memory; and the RAMDAC will send the pictures to my monitor) and saves them in the textbox input buffer. And when I click send, my mouse will send movement and click event sto my pc, and linux reads them, and tells the X server to move the pointer, and click the button, which tells Mozilla to send this post via a POST HTTP(80) request through my closed-source winmodem which nobody knows how it works (but I guess it's an ADPCM audio codec) and sends them to my telephone line and my ISP blah blah blah blah blah. See, I told you I liked to know how stuff works.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called "access time".
Although not much of a change, it IS a change.
Anyway, he might've done a straight image copy--that's what I would have done.
KDE has one :)
This time, I've started keeping my CD rips in a lossless format. Next time (which will put me around 0.75TB) I will probably start keeping raw DVD rips. After that, I don't know what else I might keep that could use so much room. Until now, audio and small video clips have taken the bulk of the space.
How about raw RGB video rips from scanned cinema tapes? Plus raw 48khz 24bit whatever number of channels audio of course.
Seriously though, my previous HD was a Seagate 40GB 7200RPM. Clicked to death one day (yes, i've learned the lesson, MAKE BACKUPS). I had Windows 2000 (10GB), Linux(10GB (/)+10GB(/home)+whatever swap), stuff (14GB FAT32). Now I have a 120GB drive and I've got it more than half filled already, without having Win2k (all linux now). You'll always end up filling all your space, want it or not.
Or you like building computers :)
:)
;)
I always build my own, simply because I get to choose what goes in it. (e.g. maybe I want a top-notch processor to do [insert CPU intensive task here] plus tons of memory but I don't need any super-mega-6.1-surround soundcard or the latest ultra-geforce-7-nvidia graphics card. Or I run a Squid proxy and need large amounts of RAM and a fast HD, but any processor will do.) Plus it's cheaper, too. Plus you get no O.S. preinstalled, blank harddrive, ready to get whatever I like to put on it.
And you get to make little adjustments/details that might actually make a difference (master/slave settings on IDE drives, adding on some decent -silver- thermoconductive grease instead of the crappy stickers to get the CPU colder, what PCI card goes where because the cables are short/they are farther apart/whatever, etc...)
These things are why I build my own, added to the fact that I like building my won for countless other detailt (stupid, maybe, but I like my cables wrapped neatly, makes adding/removing pieces much easier), plus the fact I like building it
I can keep on talking but I guess you get the idea
True, plus the people who build their own computers witho no OS preinstalled, and don't tell me there are few, anyone who knows how to screw things and plug in IDE cables knows how to build one.
I know nobody who has had linux preinstalled, OTOH, I've had quite a few friends install it beside windows (of course they still want to keep their games, but they use Linux for everyday tasks)
I only restart under linux, aside from every day since I don't keep my PC 24/7 (but then it's for no special reason), is when I reinstall/upgrade the kernel, or when some subsystem crashed and I haven't got it modularized (in which case I reconfigure, make it a module, and reboot, and I never have to restart for that reason again.) (e.g. the bttv module was crashing with mplayer trying to grab nonstandard-sized frames, and would, once I tried, spit out ioctl errors every time I tried to grab, including with standard sizes. Might as well be a problem with mplayer not resetting it, though.) Remember I have a pretty non-vanilla 2.6 kernel with a bunch of patches applied which obviously isn't as stable, and I do pretty annoying things to it too :)
It's really a pain in the neck to be rebooting every time I install software under Windows, here I just (Gentoo) "emerge" the program and start using it, at most having to manually start a daemon or the like. Updating the system is just as simple.
All objects fall with the same acceleration.
...
Try getting two identical balls and thorwing one towards the ground, while you just let go the other. Surely the first will go faster
Unless of course you drop them from enough altitude, where termnal velocity would eventually cause both to stabilize at the same speed
If your Jabber server has the right transports it can handle Yahoo, AIM/ICQ and MSN.
Actually, you can use any transport you want, you aren't restricted to your own server in any way: This is Jabber's beauty, that many servers can coexist instantly and (as long as it isn't deactivated, of course) talk to each other. Transports are just "servers" which you see as having all Yahoo/MSN/whatever users, with @ changed to % (e.g. fred%msn.com@msn.thetransport.net)
Yes, and many dsl routers/whatever use ARMs, and my Sharp Zaurus uses ARM, and probably many other embedded devices use ARM (what processors do postscript printers use? Probably ARM would not be a bad guess)
I get a large tomato can (empty), drill a hole at the right distance from the back, slip it over my current antenna, and it doubles or triples the range. Soooo easy.
On my Spanish keyboard it's Alt Gr (Right Alt)+the key left to the 1. Used to be a pain under Windows. But / is just slighty easier, it's Shift+7. At least Shift is used more often.
The absolute worst is ~ for home, since under windows I had to type ALT+NUMPAD1,2,3 at lest on old ones (ASCII code) and you know those 8-letterized filenames under DOS. Now under linux AltGr+4 is much easier (it works under Windows but it's treated as an accent i.e. you need to type a space after it, for example typing ~n makes ñ) but still, it's annoying when you type # or ½ due to missing the 4.
Spanish keybords are, IMHO, a complete mess symbols-wise. What's more important, or #? Well they've got mapped to shift+3 and # mapped to altgr+3.
I just learned that AltGr+7,8,9,0 is {[]}. They're usually AltGr+the keys left to Enter (so there are 2 possible ways of typing them). What a mess. '=' is also wretched, you need shift. Backticks are a grave-accent and thus need space.
I'd remap them, but I'm too used to standard keyboard and I wouldn't be able to type on others, let aside the fact that I don't know how to type without looking every once in a while, and having keys do something other than printed would be a mess.
Then the patent must be invalid, since if you move the mouse while doubleclicking it doesn't work e.g. it must stay on the same button/icon/whatever. Shouldn't it?
OR, make a motor out of the magnets. I haven't actually, but I opened up a motor with a HDD-like magnet, played 12V though it, wow, did it spin fast.
Make sure they don't get close to your TV or CRT monitor though... I onde got a _normal_ magnet too close--it took about a month of on/demagnetize/off/wait cool down/repeat each day for it to go. Better not try a supermagnet.
Also, they can be used for building a magnetic levitation device.
Actually sound from computers can come from many places, and sometimes you han make out a hell of a lot of info about what a user is doing.
Typical CPU HLT execution either by the O/S (linux and w2k or so i thought... w2k didn't do it too good when I tried it) or by an external program (on ring 0) e.g CpuIDLE will cause several things, from what I've experienced:
Variable fan speed: Typical cheap comes-with-case power supplies regulate +5V whiwh surprise! gets a greater power draw when CPU is busy. Result, you fan sounds higher pitched when you ger a greater CPU load since +12V isn't regulated and the draw on +5V affects it. My newer power supply (old one died) doesn't seem to do this anymore, my old one, especillay with my old CoolerMaster fan (pretty noisy) was exceptionally good at this.
Transformer/inductance/capacitor hum: when I turn off the main CPU fan you can distinguish some hums from several places in my pc, exclusind the power supply fan. Causes can be anything from sound being played thorugh some soundcard transformer to CPU drawing more power though something.
Also, MANY other noises plague PCs:
HDD head movement. I'm sure someone has developed a way to measure approximately what area of an hdd a user is accesing by listening to head noise.
CDROM spinning/head moving/tracking/focussing. Wow do these 52x drives make a helluva lot of noise!
Modem. Surely a mike placed next to the modem transformer could pick up the signal, and it then could easily be decoded to get the stream of PPP packets.
speakers/soundcard. If I crack up the volume, depending on inputs selected, etc I can easily hear different noises, when I move a window, when I scroll something, etc they all make different noises/click rates. Of course it scares the hell out of me when someone IM's me through Jabber with that ding-dong noise.
Take that and keyboard/mouse/CRT monitor/whatever noise and you have a wealth of information which you can use to predict what a user was doing.
Yup, Pajero in Spanish would be like "masturbator".
Wow-- their A/V remote uses linux.. or did I read wrong?
Tomorrow i'll download them, at least they'll take less time to load than mozilla which leads us to the modem thing... Nope, it isn't line quality related. i.e. be it compiling, configuring, running Mozilla (takes a short while to startup at high cpu use) makes it reestablish carrier (if it lasts long enough like a compilation, it ends up haging up) and it isn't line quality. When I do cpu intensive tasks while connecting, the clue is in this part of the "carrier start" thing, you know, the highpitch....-low....-highlow..-high...-whitenoise part just before connecting (sometimes it buzzes after that during some phase check or something too after that, but otherwise it's basically the last part you can hear). The initial high may get prolonged or so, and it goes slow, and confuses the ISP modem. It is clearly cpu related, sometimes getting to be 2x as slow than normal. Besides, in WinDoze it doesn't happen.
I downloaded again the latest driver (2.9.6) and recompiled my kernel and everything else (and updated to 2.4.24 btw, I was using .23, I know, I oughtta get 2.6! This weekend, maybe...), this time making sure it all used the same gcc version for everything (I have 2.96 and 3.1 both installed, sometimes depending if I use su, or login as root, or singleuser, or whatever, it has different path and chooses the other one, since 3.1 is un /usr/local and 2.96 is in /usr) because it had caused me problem before, and rebuilt the modem driver (not fully, since it's mostly a binary core part with some wrapping around it). It didn't work, the userland segfaults (curiously) just before the previously mentioned part of the carrier, or even before dialing if I use debuglevel 2 or greater (strange). The kernel module then is half-open and I have to reload it, and still, the modem doesn't hangup and I have to either reload everything and stop dialing before it segfaults to let it hangup properly or unplug the plone cord. Previous version (2.9.5) does the same thing. I'll try the ones before, but I don't have much hope....
BTW, the one with the CPU use problem is this one.
I'll check out FireFox, although I currently use Mozilla mail, I can easily change to somthing else (that supports HTML mail please, I hate it when someone sends me a message which I can't view correctly (I still send plaintext email, but I like to be able to receive HTML!))
On the never drivers, it has a userland process. But on the old driver, the one I use, it doesn't; it's all kernel module. It isn't pppd, it's a carrier thingy and not the ppp lying on top (during high CPU activity it sometimes fails to even DIAL (not carrier, just plain DTMF dial, it fails even on THAT part (typical "soundcard" effect where it repeats the buffer since it hasn't received data, and it dials wrong)and I get a "no such number" recording on the speaker). The newest release didn't work for me, although I will download all others and try them in decreasing order until one works (hopefully one that has a userland program). I knew about process priority and nice ;) I use it sometimes to e.g. give some visual thingy or some such graphic program (e.g. sueprkaramba) less priority than REAL work ;). my problem is with Kernel priority on the module. It will withstand a short high CPU (it re-gets the carrier, although I've watched a significantly smaller data transfer rate each time it repeats, like the quality seems to get degraded, and in the end it goes at 7kbits/s instead of forty-something and I have to reconnect). I doubt it's a mobo thing or H/W issue. The modem shares IRQ with my mobo's integrated soundcard, but it disconnects whether I'm listening to music or not. I'm pretty confident it's not getting enough priority. Well I'll try newer drivers (not the newest though, those didn't work) and see if it works. then I can nice -18 the userland process or something and see if it gets better ;)
This uncle of mine has used Basic Stamp, it works quite well, although I stil think ASM is better and much faster. I used PICBASIC (kinda like BS but compiles and gets programmed inside a standalone PIC, not a module PIC+E2PROM like BS) but I think it was too slow, mainly because I was being stupid and not precalculating stuff. The ASM version had everything precalculated (except a couple shifts) but it had some problem, i think it was some overflow or something. Working with 16 bit tables and such is a pain in the neck in an 8 bit uC *lol* The retard thing surely helped, I'll contact him and make a new versio of the thingy, see if it works (now I have the cheapo PC oscilloscope working too, so I can now get real time measurements and captures and not what i could see with that damn strobe lamp that worked whenever it felt like it)
Ah, so it actually got sent! I should've changed the last line to "and Mozilla 1.5 crashes for no apparent reason" lol ;) I think I should switch to 1.6... anyways it's the first crash in months.
I haven't gone much into the subject, but I was building a simple PIC microcontroller circuit with my own program (fist programmes in PICBASIC, later remade in assembly, since the PICBAASIC one didn't work) to run the spark at the apropiate time. I am not into the subject much, but it was a little project my second-uncle assigned me ;) anyways thx for the info, i'll have a look. For testing, I use a strobe lamp and a hi-speed DC motor with an electromagnetic pickup and a filter circuit for the incoming pulses.
P.D. my winmodem just hungup again, when CPU use is above a certain threshold it fails to maintain carrier. (kernel module gets too little CPU? how can I make it have a greater priority? It's like hell during locatedb updates) It's a Smart Link modem, with the propietay drivers (they have several versions with a binary core and a open source wrapper that compiles against the current kernel. I use the version labeled stable, the latest "unsupported" one didn't work (crashed). Any suggestions? Aside from buying a new modem, which I would, but i (hope) to get DSL shortly (I *think* they just added coverage of my zone now, but I think it's still not finished)
P.D.2: I just looked at the megaspark and it gave me a great and stupid idea. My program waited 1 revolution-x degees to advance, but I just realized, move the pickup befor N degrees and I only have to retard not advance. Silly me *lol*
Infrared protocol works by modulating a pulse train with the encoded information at some 50khz and sending i t to the diode. Al least Sony SIRCS works by sending a 2.4ms carrier start pulse followed by 0.6ms no-carrier spacer, then x-ms high (carrier) and 0.6ms low (no carrier) where x is 1.2 if it's a 1; x is 0.6 if it's a 0.
So there. I know hoy the IR works; I like to know how things work.
The car ignition system, I have a decent idea of how it works. Besides, I designed a control circuit for a motorcycle ignition system, preciseley, the delay part (the point where it ignites), using tables for the data. It never worked correctly, though.
The same way, I like to know that when i'm typing this post, my keyboard is sending RF pulses to my receiver which in turn sends keyboard scancodes to my PC, and to the keyboard controller circuits inside whatever microchip in my motherboard, which Linux reads and sends to the X server and to Mozilla, which tells the X server to draw then on the screen (which really means tell my graplics card to draw them on the graphics memory; and the RAMDAC will send the pictures to my monitor) and saves them in the textbox input buffer. And when I click send, my mouse will send movement and click event sto my pc, and linux reads them, and tells the X server to move the pointer, and click the button, which tells Mozilla to send this post via a POST HTTP(80) request through my closed-source winmodem which nobody knows how it works (but I guess it's an ADPCM audio codec) and sends them to my telephone line and my ISP blah blah blah blah blah. See, I told you I liked to know how stuff works.