Hmm…

DIY, hacking and many more.

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iBook G4 Dual display and clamshell mode

Posted on August 23, 2007 10:04 am

Categories: Computers,DIY

Lately I wanted to connect an external monitor to it and use it for dual display. I have already found a nice utility called “Screen Spanning Doctor” which seems to be reconfiguring something in the OSX and the Firmware(?) of the computer and allows you to use external monitors for dual display.

When you apply this configurations with the above utility, you are also able to set the resolution of the external monitor to something higher than 1024×768. Which is great also. My problem was that when I connected a monitor that supported 1280×1024 for example, I was not able to set the resolution to this setting. In spite that the iBook was giving me this option. I tried that with a Philips and also a Samsung TFT display, as also with a cheap CRT display. After some search in the net, I found that some guys where able to do that with some Dell displays. While there where too few sites referring to problems like the one I had.

Another thing I noticed was that many people where trying to work with their iBook in what is called “clamshell mode”. Working with the laptops lid closed. Any iBook user knows that when you close the lid the computer goes to sleep. And there is no option to disable that in OSX. Though there are some tricks that may work and some of them are applied from this “Screen Spanning Doctor” utility.

So here is my approach to clamshell mode:
Before a couple of months my iBook’s hard drive failed. I bought a new one and I disassembled the iBook to replace the failed HDD. Everything went OK. But as always I forgot something. What I forgot to put was a tiny magnet! Which was located under the position where the “left arrow” key is. Under the upper metal cover of the inside of the laptop. This metal cover is what you see if you lift up the iBook’s keyboard. Apple has this magnet there as a replacement for one of the screws that keep in place this metal sheet and also to activate the “sleep switch”, which is located behind the TFT screen. Indeed in this generation of the iBook, if you take a magnet and wave it in front of the TFT screen (warning don’t scratch the screen 🙂 ), you will see the iBook going to sleep :).

So my iBook is now an insomniac :D.

Anyway, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME! YOU MAY DESTROY YOUR IBOOK. Not that I care…but…

multigraph.pl

Posted on August 6, 2006 8:20 pm

Categories: Computers,Security

There is a perl script I wrote to keep some traffic stats for my home router. It is something like mrtg, but more minimalistic.

The strong point of this script is that it doesn’t need configuration like mrtg. It discovers automaticly your network interfaces every time it runs. Well at the other hand it is not as powerful as mrtg is.

Ofcourse it uses rrdtool of Tobi Oetiker (the creator of mrtg).

So I am posting it here in case someone else wants something like that. It should run in any unix like system with snmpd running. If someone has an idea for any additional features or has a patch or even needs some help with setup, feel free to mail me. Find my email in my contact section of my homepage.

So feel free to download it.

Server update

Posted on May 10, 2006 10:32 pm

Categories: Computers,General

Ο server αναβαθμίστηκε. Η αλήθεια είναι ότι προσπαθούσα να κάνω αυτή την αναβάθμιση από την εποχή που ήμουν στην Λάρισα, αλλά μόλις προχθές κατάφερα να βρω driver για το DSL modem, ο οποίος να παίζει σε FreeBSD 6.0.

There is the post in the ueagle driver forum, with a link to the patch for FreeBSD 6.0.

Σκέφτηκα να το γράψω αυτό στα αγγλικά, μήπως και βοηθήσει κανέναν που ψάχνει να βρεί το ίδιο patch. :p

Μετά την αναβάθμιση του driver υπάρχουν και διορθώσεις σε προβλήματα του blog. Το blog πλέων δεν κολλάει μετά την αποστολή κάποιου comment. Επίσης κάποια comments δεν χρειάζονται πλέων έγκριση.
Επίσης…για όσους δεν το έχουν παρατηρήσει, το site έχει αλλάξει domain. Το url του blog από εδώ και πέρα είναι http://www.georgiadis.eu/~jpg.

Επισκευών συνέχεια

Posted on March 13, 2006 11:09 pm

Categories: Computers,General

Μεταφέρθηκε λοιπόν στην port 80 ο server. Μην ξεχάσετε να αλλάξετε τα bookmarks σας (όσοι έχετε το blog μου στα bookmarks σας).

Ταυτόχρονα διόρθωσα και κάποια bugs του site, που τριγυρνούσαν τον τελευταίο καιρό εδώ γύρο.

Εξακολουθεί το πρόβλημα με τα comments στο wordpress βέβαια. Αν βλέπετε ότι δεν ανταποκρίνεται ο server όταν πατάτε submit σε κάποιο comment, μην ανησυχείτε, το post σας θα καταχωρηθεί κανονικά. Απλώς μην ξεχνάτε ότι τα comments δημοσιεύονται μετά από έγκριση μου προς αποφυγήν του spam (και όχι για λογοκρισία). Έχω την αίσθηση ότι φταίει το ότι ο server δεν είναι και πολύ δυνατός ;-/. Κάποια στιγμή θα τον αναβαθμίσω και αυτό.

IO is down :-(

Posted on March 12, 2006 11:58 pm

Categories: Computers,General

Με άγχωσε λιγάκι η Vivodi σήμερα το πρωί. Ξαφνικά έπεσε η σύνδεση μου με το internet και δεν επανερχόταν ;-/

Τηλεφώνησα στην Vivodi και τους ενημέρωσα. Διαπιστώσαμε ότι έχουν γενικότερο πρόβλημα στην Θεσσαλονίκη (Δεν είχαν προλάβει να το μάθουν). Εκτίμηση για τον χρόνο αποκατάστασης της βλάβης; Αύριο! Συμπέρασμα; Η Vivodi δεν έχει κάποιο τεχνικό stand-by στην περιοχή. Κακό βέβαια.

Βέβαια είναι η πρώτη φορά που παρατηρώ τόσο μεγάλο downtime στην Vivodi και ίσως η δεύτερη φορά που παρατηρώ γενικότερα κάποιο downtime που να οφείλεται στην Vivodi και όχι στον router μου.

Off-line λοιπόν η IO για μια ολόκληρη μέρα. Έχουμε όμως και ένα καλό από αυτή την ιστορία. Καλώς εχόντων των πραγμάτων, σε λίγο καιρό αυτός ο web server θα “ακούει” στην port 80, όπως όλοι οι φυσιολογικοί web servers.

btw: Αυτή την στιγμή εξακολουθώ να είμαι offline 😐

One byte transfered

Posted on March 5, 2006 1:29 pm

Categories: Computers,Java,JNode

After about 6 months of (not exactly constant) work, my ObjectOriented TCP/IP stack is close to be finished. The Ethernet, ARP, IP, UDP and TCP protocols was already working since 2 months ago. The last thing to be implemented was the TCP Socket.

The first byte has already transfered over the Socket implementation. What’s next? Some more testing to be sure that we can send bigger amount of data over these sockets, the implementation of the TCPImplementation hook and finaly some polishing and performance improvements…

Why am I writing a TCP/IP stack? Let’s take it from the start, for those of you who don’t know about this TCP/IP stack. First of all, I am in the development team of JNode (http://www.jnode.org). Also I have one last obligation in my school, which is my student thesis. The above two, plus some good ideas about the design of a OO TCP/IP stack, gave me the idea to write a OO TCP/IP stack writen completely in Java.

p.s: I should apologise to my fellow developers in JNode about the delays :/ and to everyone else, about my bad english :p

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