January 2008 – killswtch.net

Work-sponsored toys

I finally got to play with an iPod Touch yesterday, courtesy of a project I’m working on at work. The interface is beautiful and slick, and I was amazed at how thin it is compared to my previous generation iPod Video. Sadly we don’t have wifi at work yet, so I wasn’t able to try out Safari, YouTube or iTunes on the device.

One of my colleagues was considering whether to get a Touch or Classic to replace his early-generation one that had broken, but since he has quite a large collection of music the limited 16GB capacity of the largest Touch was just not enough. Will there be a 32GB version I wonder? If I got one (which I’m very tempted to now!) I could manage with the 16GB version, but I wonder how many people are being put off by the relatively small capacity?

I’m also going to be trying out an Archos (with wifi), a Creative Zen and a Walkman. I doubt any of them will live up to the standard of the iPod. I may report back with some brief reviews.

MacWorld excitement

I’m normally only mildly interested in what comes out of MacWorld, but this time around I’m pretty gripped. I’m now running out of reasons NOT to buy an iPod Touch, thanks to the missing apps from the iPhone now being available through a software update for the iPod Touch. The only reason I have left is that I only bought my first and only iPod about 5 months ago.

The other thing I’m waiting for is an announcement of the release of the SDK for the iPod Touch. This will allow me to develop the iPod Touch remote control as a native application. I’m not sure of the release date of this yet, and I’ve not seen it mentioned in any articles about MacWorld so far. Here’s hoping for it to come soon!

Resurrecting a dead amplifier – the continuation

At the end of last year I tested the prototype of the matrix audio switcher, in the process blowing up part of the amplifier that powers the speakers in the living room. After investigating the damage, I found a great site to buy the replacement parts from. They arrived before Christmas, but I didn’t get around to installing them until recently.

The new transistors are exactly the same as the dead ones, so it was just a matter of unsoldering the old ones and replacing them. The nice chunky pads (compared to all the SMD boards I’m used to handling as computer parts) were lovely to work with, and the work was done in a matter of minutes. Minutes + £6 of parts = one big saving over a new amplifier and a lot of waste electronics. If only all devices were this easy to fault-find and fix.

With a fire extinguisher at the ready and my adrenaline gland just waiting to explode, I switched on the repaired circuit and ….. near silence, just the sound of the fan – it worked! Now that both channels are actually wired to something rather than one of them shorting out, the sound coming out is pretty good. In a few months the whole system should be up and running.

Attempting Crossfire

A couple of months ago I bought Crysis for my PC. My PC has a reasonable spec, with a dual core processor, as much RAM as 32bit Windows can support without crashing and a mid-range graphics card (X1950 Pro). However, Crysis could barely run with this spec even on the lowest settings. Setting up Crossfire should approximately double performance.

When I last upgraded my computer, I spent quite a bit of time researching motherboards, looking for ones with Crossfire support in particular. Crossfire motherboards have 2 of the larger PCI-X slots, though they don’t necessarily both run at x16 speeds. The X1950 Pro card that I already had supports Crossfire mode without having to purchase a special master card – all that is needed are two identical cards.

The card I already owned had just 256MB RAM, but when I purchased it’s companion card there were only 512MB versions available. It was a bit of a gamble, since the configurations weren’t identical, but fortunately Crossfire mode worked beautifully. When in Crossfire mode, the cards appear as one single card to Windows with 256MB RAM, but with a significant performance gain.

I’m not going to bother with taking benchmarks, but I can confirm that Crossfire did help run Crysis on low settings. I think to run it on highest settings I’d probably have to spend quite a chunk of cash, which I can’t really justify at the moment.

This test of Crossfire was only a temporary setup because the new card is really noisy and I had to borrow a more powerful power supply from another computer – Crossfire mode requires a PSU that can supply at least 550W. So until I can afford to buy another power supply, the second card is sitting on the floor underneath my desk.

What’s next?

The Homebrew Challenge gave me a reason to progress my projects, but over Christmas things have slowed down. Winning the competition has given me some money from the sale of my old car, so it seems fitting that the money is put towards finishing the current projects. This is my plan for the projects over the next 2 years.

		Purchases	Actions
January	2008	Zone 2 amplifier, Zone 4 amplifier	Improve rack ventilation
February	2008	Zone 3 amplifier, DVI/USB KVM
March	2008	Matrix switcher
April	2008	4u blanking plate, 1u blanking plate	Write control software
May	2008		Write control software
June	2008	Netiom xAP	Write control software
July	2008		Write control software
August	2008	Outdoor IP camera
September	2008	X10 modules
October	2008	Outdoor IP camera
November	2008
December	2008

January	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
February	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
March	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
April	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
May	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
June	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
July	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
August	2009
September	2009
October	2009
November	2009
December	2009

I have purchased the 2 amplifiers for this month from eBay, but haven’t got around to the ventilation improvements as yet.