Computer Thing



Using LG BE08LU20 BluRay drive with Abit IS7 motherboard.

Well – another interesting little endeavour with the old PC that I got in 2003. I just obtained an external BluRay Writer that will use either USB 2.0 or e-SATA. As it happens e-SATA is apparently quite quick so I thought I wonder if the SATA will work on the IS7 motherboard – it does!

The LG BE08LU20 comes with an e-SATA plate that installs into the case slot and it plugs onto one of the SATA terminals on the motherboard.

Installing the software went OK and the XP appeared to detect the hardware however when reset the drive operated (open/close) initially during boot but absolutely dead once windows had loaded.

Looking at the BIOS updates on the ABIT site I noticed that some of the later updates indeed had improvements for SATA, etc so I did the big Kahuna and upgraded the BIOS to the latest issue (the existing was IS7-16 and the latest was IS7-24).

Most of the time taken was finding a good floppy to use as a boot disk. Once found it was formatted in XP SP3 as an MS-DOS startup disk and the 5 BIOS files copied on.
I used the runme.bat and the flashing completed OK. Downpowered and then reset the CMOS with the motherboard link then re-programmed the BIOS (digital cameras are so useful for recording the old setup).

The reboot worked fine and the XP found the hardware and this time recognised it as BE08LU20 DVD-RAM drive.

The drive was allocated the next drive letter which happened to be P: (there are a lot of drives in this ol’ PC).

The biggest disappointment was discovering that Abit no longer make motherboards – not surprised really since they were very good and last well.

I am amazed that with an old motherboard (2003) and XP that I can still run most stuff ranging from a Brilliance monitor (1996), Microtek E6 scanner on SCSI (1996) to a BluRay drive (2010).



Mapping a Windows key on IBM R51 ThinkPad

Use the Access IBM facility.

Configure>Manage Keyboard & Pointing Devices>Map Keys to Functions

A good key to use seems to be the Right Alt Key (AltGr on the keyboard)




Networking printers on wireless LAN

Using 54G wireless LAN with PowerBook G4 client running OS 10.2 (Jaguar) and Samsung ML-1210 laser printer (USB) on an XP SP1 client.


My experience was as follows:

There seems to be 2 fundamental approaches that can be used to allow a Mac OSX machine to use a Windows XP hosted printer.

  1. use the inbuilt SAMBA functionality of the OSX

  2. use IP Printing approach in OSX

I initially had some success with the SAMBA method when trying an Epson 740 colour inkjet printer - this was made easier by the fact that the Epson drivers were easily found/already installed in the Mac's Print Centre.


A good run down on the procedure is found at -

homepage.mac.com/william_white/print_to_windows.html


I later found another procedure using the IP Printing mode in the OSX Print Centre and despite the numerous hassles I had getting it to work it is the more straightforward approach.


A good run down on this is given at -

www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021230045509864


Thanks to Anonymous who posted this one - the main detail was -


On the WinXP Box:

Add the TCP/IP print server service

1. Log in with Administrative privileges.

2. Click Start -> Settings -> Control Panel.

3. Double-click Add-remove Programs.

4. Click the Add-Remove Windows Components side button.

5. Open the Other Network File and Printer Services section.

6. Put a checkmark in Print Services for Unix.

7. Click OK; click Next. (The Computer will probably ask for the WinXP install disk, go ahead and put it in and the install will run automatically.)

8. Click Finish.

9. Close the Add-remove programs window.


To have the service start automatically (as a daemon):

1. Click Start -> Settings -> Control Panel.

2. Double-click Administrative Tools.

3. Double-click Services.

4. Double-click TCP/IP print Server.

5. Change the "Startup Type" to Automatic.

6. Click OK and close the windows that are open.


To share the printer for TCP/IP printing:

1. Click Start -> Settings -> Printers.

2. Right-click the print you want to share and select Sharing.

3. Click the radio button for Share as and fill in the share name you want to print to.


On your Mac:

1. Launch the Print Center.

2. Click the "Add Printer" button.

3. Change "Appletalk" to "IP Printing"

4. Enter the WinXP Computer's IP address in the Address box.

5. Uncheck the default queue radio button.

6. Enter the name of the printer share you defined on the XP machine.

7. Select your printer model (Install Gimp-Print if you don't see a ppd for your printer, restart print center and try again).


My take on the procedure was -

Installing/enabling the Print Services for Unix in XP is no problem (you do need the XP CD of course).

Setting the Service to Startup Type=automatic is straight forward.


The Mac Print Centre (for me unknown territory) was the first area of delay.

Selecting the IP Printing was easy and the printer share just had to be SamsungM (as in the XP box) however I came to understand that the actual printer driver needed to be installed in the Print Centre. Samsung drivers are not included in the OSX load so I needed to find some.


This place was excellent -

www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/samsung-gdi/


The ESP GhostScript package had already been installed at some stage earlier in the great adventure so I just needed to install the Samsung package. It worked beautifully and appeared in the Print Centre as I expected.

The printing was being submitted with no errors but nothing happened.

The Event Viewer in XP showed entries relating to the LPDSVC (Line Printer Daemon Service) and was suggesting problems with the path/share.

The sharing was indeed where the problem lay.


Setting the sharing against the printer was a hassle for me ­ normally it is straight forward but for some reason when I hit the APPLY button the applet would go into a "Not Responding" state. The result was the printer was in a half shared state. When I tried to set it the PC would "suggest" a name (eg: SamsungM) even if I typed another so go with the suggestion. If I disabled and then re-enabled the share the suggested name became something like SamsungM.2 (the next time it was SamsungM.3 and so on). Checking the registry confirmed that the share name wasn't registered in as many places as it should be so eventually I decided to go for the usual troubleshooting method for Windows and restart the machine whereupon I found it went into limbo and I couldn't even get Task Manager to fire up (there is still a good case for even XP to qualify for the CrapOS tag) so I waited for 20 mins (sometimes things start happening after XP has had a smoko) and still limbo so did the big power switch thing (Scandisk was invoked on restart).

Well ­ things looked up, the share had been lost but when I reapplied it the suggestion for the sharename was SamsungM and the registry was more complete (It looked better when I hit the OK button rather than the APPLY button because the window closed and no limbo).


Bingo- after the sharing was properly invoked the printer worked.


So all in all the networking of the Samsung ML-1210 in theory should have been a 10 minute job - I took a bit longer getting there but the tortoise made it and the IP Printing method works well.


UPDATE:


I found the LPD method broke on 10.3 however a reasonably easy alternative is available.
The Print Center died with 10.2 but has been replaced by the Printer Setup Utility in 10.3. The XP end basically remains the same ( in my case the printer shares was SamsungM ) the only other embellishment was to create a user account on the XP machine.

In the OSX -

Go to Printer Setup Utility
Select Windows Printing
Select Network Neighbourhood
Select the network eg: HOMELAN
Enter USER/PASSWORD combo (this doesn't show if the Keychain Save has been used previously)
Select the printer share from the list shown eg: SamsungM
Select printer model eg: Samsung ML-1210,Foomatic & GDI

That's it folks!

A really useful visual management tool in OSX 10.3 is the CUPS printers page in the browser which shows the status of the printers along with errors, etc

URL is 127.0.0.1:631

 




2940 SCSI arrangement with XP SP1

A configuration that seems to work OK is -

Canon FS4000US on external SCSI 25 pin port with Microtek E6 plugged into 2nd port on FS4000US.

A 100M ZIP drive is connected to the internal 50 pin port.

Under XP with this config the FS4000US doesn't identify as an FS4000 but using the supplied driver CD will be OK. The E6 actually gives multiple entries in Device Manager but works OK. (This must be an XP quirk since it was OK on Win 2K)




Installing a Promise SATA 150 TX2Plus SCSI card with XP SP1

Card purchased with 1.00.0.20 BIOS


Overall setup:          


System config:

Abit IS7 with 2 x 512M DRAM

PowerColor 9100 Radeon 128M video

2940 PCI SCSI with Canon FS4000US scanner, Microtek E6 scanner & 100M Zip drive

HP9100 R/W CDROM

1x 40M IDE Master disk

1x 120M IDE Slave disk

2x 80M IDE Slave disks on Promise card



Installed card and XP detected card OK. The drivers installed fine however during system reboot got -

Detecting ... then

No Device is Found

BIOS is not installed!

Had an issue with the Radeon 9100 card failing with -

This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use (code 12). If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system.

Also noticed that the 2940 SCSI card (and associated scanner devices) had dropped out of the Device Manager.

Seems that the Promise card being added messed up the other SCSI card and the Radeon.

PCI Slot 2 Promise TX2Plus card

PCI Slot 3 2940 SCSI card


Decided to upgrade TX2Plus BIOS.

Followed readme.txt -

pflashb8 /f 375BIOS.BIN and got -

EMM386: unrecoverable privileged operation error #1 press enter to reboot.


Needed to rem out the EMM references in config.sys of boot disk and then BIOS upgrade worked OK. (1.00.0.24) This allowed the IDE drives on the TX2Plus to be detected and setup OK (they are set for SLAVE working).

I have also moved the 2940 card to PCI Slot 4

At the moment Radeon seems OK and the 2940 is good.




Installing a Belkin Firewire/USB 2.0 PCI card with XP SP1

The card was installed into the P3 OK (to use with iPod/iTunes combo) but when the PC was shut down it would just restart again.


Mobo:  Gigabyte GA-6VXE+    Award BIOS 4.51PG

Card:  Belkin F5U508ea 3x FW/ 3x USB 2.0 PCI


The problem appeared to be with the PME setting in the BIOS.


I set -


      PME Event Wake Up - Disabled


and the issue was resolved.