When using an XBox 360 with a computer monitor that does not support audio (over either HDMI or using a DVI-to-HDMI cable), there is no easy way to get the audio out of the XBox.

You can use the original 360 Standard A/V cable, but it’s too large to fit on the back of the system when an HDMI cable is also connected.  This is easily remedied by removing the plastic casing from the Microsoft-Branded XBox 360 Standard A/V Cable.  You can then run the RCA plugs for audio into an adapter to convert them to a 1/8″ (3.5mm) headphone jack like RadioShack item number 274-0269.  Then a female-to-female headphone coupler like RadioShack item number 274-1555 will get you the correct gender of connection for connecting your headphones.  One issue, there is no volume control this way.  Add a headphone volume control like RadioShack item number 42-2559, and you are good to go.  This still leaves you with a big bundle of cable behind the system, and a bunch of excess connections (not to mention the exposed wiring from removing the plastic casing from the cable).  I have tested this method, and it works perfectly.  I actually did this as a proof-of-concept.  I knew from prior experimentation that headphone-level signals are usually “close enough” to line-level to be interchangeable and this proved true in this project.

I wanted something slicker that allowed me to connect my headphones (or computer speakers with 1/8″ stereo headphone jack) nearly directly into the XBox 360.  For some reason, NOBODY makes anything that can do this.  So I decided to build my own.

More details, including full build instructions after the break.
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Because I can never find this section of the registry, and for some reason always take forever to find it in Google…

The location that Citrix and Terminal Server copy default registry settings from for each user is:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software

Enjoy.

I had experienced a bunch of issues in my various attempts at getting Windows XP (and other operating systems as well) to boot from a Compact Flash card installed as a hard drive replacement utilizing a CF-IDE Adapter.  I’ve read that CF-IDE adapters, and Compact Flash cards themselves can be very tempermental when utilized in this fashion.  Apparently there are a high number of Compact Flash cards that do not perform well in a UDMA mode.  While I still suspect that some of the hardware I tried was the culprit of the frustration, I was able to make a large portion of my prior attempts work properly (for use as Windows boot devices) by following some of the procedures outlined below.  I found a number of good tutorials, most of which are linked in the following post.  What I didn’t find was something that tied it all together in a concise fashion.  I will attempt to do just that in the following post.

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I’m a gadget freak.  I also take protecting my gadgets very seriously.  For my reference, and yours, I’m going to list some of my favorite gadget protection product sites in this post.

I’m going to try my best to update this site more regularly.  I’ve got so many gadgets, laptops, electronics, etc… that I want to talk about!  Some of it is old, some of it is new, but all of it is interesting to me, and surely interesting to you!  Why else would you be here?

In the interest of full disclosure, this site is NOT advertiser supported, and you’ll note that there are no referrer links on any of these.  This site is funded by me personally, and these links are provided from one gadget lover to another.

Click on More to see the full list.

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I’ve just discovered something that may seem obvious, but considering I had a bit of a tough time finding the answer, I figured I’d post to potentially help someone else out that might be struggling with the same issue.

When modifying registry entries (potentially from a login script) using AutoIt Script, the RegWrite command needs numbers in the format 0×00000000 if you want it to write the number as hexidecimal.  It will not take just the number string like 00000000.  If you use the format 00000000, it will import the number as decimal, not hex.

For example, the following AutoIt script sets the current user Internet cache to 25 megabytes:

RegWrite ("HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\Cache\Content", "CacheLimit", "REG_DWORD", "0x00006400")
RegWrite ("HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Cache\Content", "CacheLimit", "REG_DWORD", "0x00006400")

I had mistakenly assumed that the REG_DWORD would import as Hex, which it does not.  It defaults to Binary.  Now that I think about it, this makes perfect sense because it is exactly as RegEdit itself would work.

I was experiencing difficulties when using a Compact Flash card for booting a Debian install.

The errors I was getting were:

hda:hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hda: DMA timeout error
hda: dma timeout error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown

… and they would repeat 4 or 5 times with about a 15 second timeout/delay between each iteration.  The device identifier would change each time.

With the help of the blog of Stefan Gustafsson, I was able to correct the issue.  He also walked me through my first Kernel recompile in the same post.  The link to his fix is: http://expisoft.blogspot.com/2007/04/ide2cf-timeout-with-linux.html

Thanks Stefan!

I was having trouble with Puppy Linux booting on a few PCs I have.  It took a while to find the answer, so I’m posting it here in case others need it.

I was running it on an Intel D201GLY motherboard, but this error doesn’t appear to be specific to that board.  That said, the following link was where I found the answer (hint: it’s in the last post):

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=23368

The error is:
Searching for Puppy files in computer disk drives…
pup_400.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console…

The answer is to start Puppy with the switch acpi=noirq, so at the first screen you see when booting (Grub), type the following:

puppy acpi=noirq

Then hit enter.  Things should work better.

As part of my daily IT routine, I had to use a magical, mystery disc from AT&T/SBC to install a DSL line in one of our offices. This disc, as I suspected, installed a bunch of ride-along software (in addition to letting me configure the account on AT&T/SBC servers, which was all I really wanted out of the disc in the first place). All ranting about how much this whole process sucks aside, I was able to use standard methods to uninstall everything it installed with one exception. For whatever reason, the SBC Self Support Tool’s uninstaller did not remove the product. I found an uninstall.exe in the Program Files/SBC Self Support Tool folder, but when running it it would simply prompt that I had to uninstall from the Add/Remove Programs option in the Control Panel. (Which no longer showed the SBC Self Support Tool, presumably because it thought it was already uninstalled.) Ugh, Windows.

Anyway, the fix is to simply run that same Uninstall.exe with a command line of SBC, you could do the following from the Start/Run:
“c:\program files\sbc self support tool\uninstall.exe” SBC

Update – 19-Oct-2008: (As per David in the comments, be sure to include the quotes!)

Don’t know if anyone will need this info, but I found it in one of the install logs from the product, and thought it might help someone else out.

I was pretty disappointed with the MagStick Plus from Ultimarc. It wasn’t due to a lack of engineering, or the overall cool factor of the stick. No, it just didn’t “feel” right to me. It was nice that it has such a small throw, but you have to push entirely too hard to make it do its thing. It seemed that I’d even miss directionals at times, having not pushed the stick hard enough. Either that, or the switches were just sticking. I’m unsure which it was. The final straw was during a particularly heated session of Pac-Man: Championship Edition. I was almost certain that the MagStick had resulted in my demise via ghost touch on a few occasions, but never more-so than during the specific game in question. I hit down, I know I did, and the MagStick Plus didn’t register. As any gamer would do, I forcefully “punched” the stick in the direction it had missed. Lo and behold, the stick no longer registered the downward direction at all. That’s it. I have to do something about these crap microswitches.

This modificiation will make your MagStick Plus perform much better (in my opinion) with a lighter throw and a perceived greater responsiveness. Click on “More…” to see the full detail.

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I have a bunch of removable drives. USB Thumb/Flash drives, external hard drives in 2.5 and 3.5 inch sizes, portable media players, etc… When I’ve got them wired up to the mothership, sometimes the “My Computer” window can be a bit confusing. Hmm… Which one mapped to what drive letter again? You can use Volume Labels to differentiate the devices, but what’s the fun in that?!

I prefer to make custom icons. You’ll notice Drive I below has a Microcenter logo (it’s a private label Microcenter-brand drive).

How’d I do that? Simple… Just click on More for all the details!
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