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Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 2:09 PM

fmTuner has been updated to 1.1, adding a much-requested album artwork placeholder field, and testing for the latest and greatest version of WordPress.

The upgrade will work seamlessly with your current fmTuner design, but if you visit the fmTuner Settings page, you’ll see that you can now specify a link to a placeholder image, which will be used if Last.fm comes up short on album art. Leaving this field blank (the default) will simply skip tracks without artwork. If you want to get really fancy, there’s even a fmTuner tag that will print out the path to your current WordPress theme, if you’d like different album art placeholders for different themes.

(Comments are closed on this entry — any bugs or other issues should be reported on the original fmTuner page. Thanks!)

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Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 7:28 PM

I’ve just updated Widerbug to 1.5.0, once again up to date with the enhancements from Firebug 1.5.0. If you’re running Widerbug 1.3.3 or later, you should receive 1.5.0 via an automatic update. Or, head over to the Widerbug download page to install it.

I know at some point I should attempt to merge my changes into the Firebug codebase and submit a patch (and stop this Firebug cat-and-mouse game), but my XUL knowledge is still fairly limited. If anyone would like to take on the challenge, though, I imagine your patch would be a welcome addition to Firebug’s core!

Posted in Misc | No Comments »

Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 7:32 PM

When setting up a new Windows machine, whether it’s Windows 2000 all the way up through Windows 7, you’ll occasionally run into an issue where you need drivers for a system or PCI device that you just can’t seem to find. To make matters worse, you don’t know which company made the device, so you don’t even know where to start looking for drivers. Should you go to Dell’s site? The motherboard manufacturer? Persistent “Unknown device” entries in the Windows Device Manager are a plague upon even the most seasoned techs. Here’s a tip to get your driver hunt moving in the right direction.

Find out who made the device
Figuring out which company made the device(s) in question is the first step towards getting it working. Start by opening the Windows Device Manager. My preferred quick way of doing this is clicking Start -> Run -> type “devmgmt.msc” -> press Enter. Once there, choose the device in question and right click it, and select Properties. Select the Details tab to see something like the view below:

Note the PCI “VEN” and “DEV” 4-character identifiers. PCI, USB, and many other system devices have Vendor and Device IDs. The Vendor ID is specific to the manufacturer, like Broadcom or nVIDIA. The Device ID is specific to the particular make or model of device you have. These are expressed in hexadecimal (0 through 9 plus A through F), so don’t be surprised to see letters there, as well. Some common Vendor IDs are 8080 and 8086 for Intel, 0A5C for Broadcom, 10DE for nVIDIA, 1002 for ATI, and many more.

Google it
A common way to express both the Vendor and Device IDs in a single string is 1022:2000, Vendor ID first. Combine your Vendor and Device IDs in this manner, and wrap it with quotes: “1022:2000″. Google that, and you should quickly figure out who made your “Unknown device” and what model it is. With this knowledge, you can either find the appropriate driver on your computer manufacturer’s website (Dell makes a good note of which manufacturer’s devices they use for a particular system), or you can visit the device manufacturer’s website directly.

I hope this information can help those looking to simply get their hardware working under Windows.

Posted in Misc | 1 Comment »

Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 7:23 PM

I’ve just updated Widerbug to 1.4.0, keeping in step with the most recent Firebug update. Most notably, this release is compatible with Firefox 3.5 and newer. Head over to the Widerbug download page to install it. Or, if you already have Widerbug 1.3.3, you should receive it via automatic update.

Posted in NerdLab | 1 Comment »

Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 10:35 AM

MacAlly has been producing the same IceKey keyboard since 2003, and while it’s a solid performer featuring laptop-style scissor keys and extra USB ports, it still ships with a terrifyingly slow internal USB 1.1 hub. While this early USB specification is plenty fast for a keyboard alone, it throttles back speeds of attached devices like flash drives, iPods, and digital cameras. Copying an MP3 album or two can take several agonizing, finger-tapping minutes over USB 1.1, whereas today’s USB 2.0 takes mere seconds. With USB 2.0 as today’s ubiquitous standard and USB 3.0 just around the corner, it’s surprising that MacAlly has yet to update the IceKey to include a faster hub. Why not take matters into your own hands? Here’s how to install a high speed hub inside the keyboard while maintaining that elegant “just left the factory” appearance.

What You’ll Need

• a MacAlly IceKey
• a small, narrow USB hub (a cheapo Targus hub worked fine for me)
• a screwdriver set
• a soldering iron, solder, and spare wire
• a pocket knife (I’m not sure any project I’ve done didn’t require this…)

Open the Hub
USB hubs generally aren’t too complicated to open, and this Targus on is no exception. A single screw on the underside holds together the hub’s two plastic halves, which snap apart with little effort. Write a note or take a picture to document the wire colors and order relevant to the orientation of the board inside — it will come in handy later.

Open the Keyboard
The MacAlly IceKey is slightly trickier to get apart, but not much. Remove all the obvious screws on the bottom of the keyboard, including the one under the “Do Not Remove”/Quality Control/Warranty sticker. Then, flip open the pivoting feet to expose two more screws covered by a protective piece of rubber. The final two screws are under the front rubber feet.

Starting with the keyboard upright and facing you, begin unsnapping the plastic hooks around the perimeter starting at the front middle. A plastic pry tool might come in handy, but isn’t required. Once the top is removed, you can clearly see all the important electronics, including a very common Cypress USB controller chip.

Test Fit Everything
Just to make sure the rest of this modification is physically possible, fit the USB hub board in the open space at the top of the keyboard and set the keyboard bezel on top. Luckily, the IceKey has plenty of room to spare. I was planning to have to remove the USB ports from the hub board to make everything fit, but there was so much extra space that I didn’t even have to go to that length.

Unhook the Keyboard
Carefully pull the keyboard ribbon cables straight away from their matching plugs on the controller board. Gently flip the keyboard pad over, and unscrew the two short ground wires to completely free the keyboard keys from the plastic housing. Set it aside for later; it does not need to be modified — all the action happens on the two remaining circuit boards. Unscrew both boards to get at the backs of each.

Cut Wires

Cut the gray ribbon that leads from the controller board to the left port. Since that wire only provides USB 1.1 speed, we won’t be using it. You’ll note that it has two extra wires that run to an unpopulated LED on the left board, so we can skip those when doing the re-wiring. (I wonder what MacAlly had in store for that, or if this keyboard is a “port” from another language or something?)

Unplug the USB cord from the controller board and cut off the connector. This cord needs to run to the input on the new USB hub, and not to the input on the keyboard controller board where it currently connects.

Cut Traces
Since the right port also needs USB 2.0 speeds, it too will need to be disconnected from its USB 1.1 source. However, it is soldered directly onto the controller board and is effectively hard-wired into the slowness. This is perhaps the trickiest part of the whole project: desolder the USB connector and use a knife to scrape away the traces that run to the port. Some are on top of the board, and some are on the bottom. (You might be able to get away with cutting the traces without removing the port, as a little bit of the traces are exposed on the top before routing into electronic components, but you’ll want to test with a multimeter and make sure you’ve done this successfully.) Once all four traces to the port are cut, re-solder the USB port in place (if you removed it).

Re-wire the Keyboard Controller and Ports
Here’s a simple before and after block diagram to help your wiring layout:

Solder Keyboard Cord to Hub Input
Strip about an inch of plastic from the cut end of the keyboard cord to expose its individual wires, and strip just a millimeter or two from each of those. Using your note from earlier, solder the keyboard wires to the matching USB hub input connections. On this Targus hub, the wires were in the same order as the standard USB pinout.

Solder Keyboard Controller to a Hub Port
Solder four wires from the keyboard input port (where the cord originally connected to) to one of the USB hub ports, effectively making the keyboard controller into one of four devices on the hub. Previously, the keyboard supplied its own hub, but we’re bypassing it altogether. Luckily, most everything is either color coded or silkscreen labeled (V/5V is red, D- is green, D+ is white, and G/GND is black).

Solder Keyboard USB Ports to Hub Ports
Solder wire from the left USB port board to another free USB hub port, making sure to get the order correct. With the traces cut on the right port, run wire from the connections under the board to yet another free hub port. You should end up with a hub layout like this:

Test and Close It Up
With each new component wired up, double-check your connections and plug it in. Initially, my first test failed and Windows complained about a malfunctioning USB device (I tested it on an old PC, just in case I shorted out the computer’s USB controller. I’d rather fry an old computer than my new iMac!) The key to making everything work properly was to reconnect those two shared ground wires from early on — the keyboard must have a common ground with the controller and hub!

Once it works, secure all the wires and boards (I used a few pieces of electrical tape to stop everything from bouncing around). Snap the plastic top back on, replace all the screws, and enjoy your USB 2.0 MacAlly IceKey!

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