The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

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Windows 8.x: Three keyboard/mouse ways to zoom in or out on start screen (via: YouTube)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/22

I love it that in Windows you can do everything both by mouse and keyboard.
Take the start screen: there are 3 ways (mouse only, mouse + keyboard, keyboard only) to zoom in/out in the start screen. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Usability, User Experience (ux), Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »

Some more notes on ASUS RT-N66U, firmwares, temperatures and versions

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/20

In the the irregular series of ASUS RT-N66U and TomatoUSB posts:

Execute this script from the Tomato USB interface, or a ssh/telnet shell:

cat /dev/mtd0ro | grep bl_version
nvram get os_version
nvram get clkfreq
wl -i eth1 phy_tempsense | awk '{print $1/2+20;}'
wl -i eth2 phy_tempsense | awk '{print $1/2+20;}'
  • Line 1 gets the CFE bootloader version
    (1.0.2 and lower boot with 32K of NVRAM, 1.0.3 and up with 64K of RAM; some Firmwares work around the 32k limitation)
  • Line 2 gets the Firmware model and version
  • Line 3 gets the CPU speed
  • Line 4 and 5 get the temperature for eth1 (2.4 Ghz) and eth2 (5 Ghz) in Celsius
    It is based on the RMerlinDev (firmware developer) information on temperatures: These are for each radio. Take the returned value, divide by 2, then add 20. Results are in Celcius.
    Next to that knowledge, it uses a few tricks on awk calculation, and first parameter in awk (the second parameter would be the hex value of the temperature code in parenthesis) which is easier than shell calculations.

Based on those, I found a few very useful scripts:

–jeroen

Posted in ASUS RT-N66U, Awk, bash, Development, Internet, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, TomatoUSB | Leave a Comment »

Making Keystrokes with Macintosh Keyboards – Citrix eDocs

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/03

If an Alt-combination does not work, try the Command-Alt-combination or through the menu.

For instance:

  • Alt-Tab: works
  • Alt-F: fails
  • Command-Alt-F: works (starts the file menu
  • Alt-Space: fails
  • Command-Alt-Space: fails
  • Via the menu: works

–jeroen

via: Making Keystrokes with Macintosh Keyboards – Citrix eDocs.

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Pin layouts of hardware

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/07/28

This is yet another post of some information I wish I had known years ago.

AllPinouts: a site that lists pin layouts of common and not so common hardware.

When writing this, the site had Statistics indicating over 3500 pages and close to 1000 pin layouts.

Layouts include cables and connectors for audio, video, computing and much much more.

These were the pin layouts I needed:

I found the 3 and 4 pin layouts also on this page: Desktop Boards — 3-wire and 4-wire fan connectors.

Another site with lots of Power Connectors is Toms Hardware. A good starting page is Additional Power Connectors: Peripheral, Floppy, And SATA – Power Supply 101: A Reference Of Specifications.

The reason I needed it was to add a front case fan to a couple of HP XW6600 workstations in order to improve cooling.

Both 80mm and 92mm fans will fit.

A couple of links:

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, HP XW6600, Power User, Virtualization | Leave a Comment »

Mac/PC: sending Wake-on-LAN (WOL) packets

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/07/25

I’ve succesfully woken up these machines:

  • HP XW6600 running ESXi 5.1
  • ThinkPad W701U running Windows 7

I still need to try to wake up a Mac Mini Server running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

MacBook Air on 10.7 (Lion) and Retina on 10.8 (Mountain Lion) won’t work as they are WiFi only, and WOL does not work over WiFi.

On 10.7 and up it might not work on a Mac Mini Server either, as Apple Introduced Dark Wake.

I used these tools to send WOL packets: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Apple, ESXi5.1, Ethernet, Hardware, HP XW6600, Linux, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Network-and-equipment, openSuSE, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, SuSE Linux, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Wake-on-LAN (WoL), Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

tools for iPad as second screen, or show iPad screen on your computer

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/06/24

While Watching the CodeRage Mobile conference last week, I noticed Bruno Fierens showing his iPad on a PC.

I also thought about the other way around: show your PC or Mac on your iPad or using your iPad as a second (third?) monitor to your regular machine.

So here are some links to tools I want to look into further:

I’ve not done comparisons yet. These sites have compared some of the products though:

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, Hardware, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Typing Special Characters on Mac OS X and Windows

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/06/13

I always wonder how people can remember the character combinations to type special characters from a regular US international keyboard on a Mac with OS X, or Windows computer.

When having to type a lot of international text, I often use the United States-International keyboard layout in Windows 7, in Windows Vista, and in Windows XP.

When not, I often use Character Map. Too bad there is no shortcut for it.

Choosing the U.S International – PC  on a Mac OS X (as it behaves exactly like the PC counterpart on Windows) however introduces problems when using Remote Desktop Connection or virtualization software like VMware Fusion or Parallels.

So I sometimes revert to “Special Charters” (option-command-T) under the Edit menu (also called Character Viewer), but usually take advantage that ApplePressAndHoldEnabled by default is enabled: that allows the press-and-hold feature for vowel keys, and then either use the digit keys or arrows to select the target accented character.

On both systems, there are other ways to type special characters using keyboard shortcuts that I find very hard to remember. For people with a good memory, you can try these:

–jeroen

via: Macintosh OSX Keyboards (Penn State).

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Move Around in paragraphs – Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/05/26

Boy, wish I had known these two Word keyboard shortcuts a long time ago:

  • Ctrl + Up: Go To the start of the previous paragraph
  • Ctrl + Down: Go To the start of the next paragraph

–jeroen

via: Move Around – Microsoft Word.

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

Fix by Christian S. – Moers for “KB2686509 repeatedly fails with Error code 0x8007F0F4” (via: Microsoft Community)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/05/07

Thanks Christian S. – Moers for the fix for KB2686509 repeatedly failing and the answer below.

I’ve used it as the Microsof FixIt offered at You may receive a “0x8007F0F4” error code when you try to install updates from the Windows Update Web site or from the Microsoft Update Web site did not work on several systems. The fix by Christian did work on all those systems.

Note: it is possible you get the same error for KB2676562: MS12-034: Description of the security update for Windows kernel-mode drivers: May 8, 2012, as it is related to KB2686509: MS12-034: Description of the security update for CVE-2012-0181 in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: May 8, 2012.

One of the symptoms is that your system contains the file %windor%\faultykeyboard.log containing a list of  missing keyboard layout DLL files or KBD files (one of my machines had these missing: kbdjpn.dll and kbdkor.dll).

The cause is that KB2686509 can have problems with registry keys stored here:

  • HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
  • HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts

Christian wrote a batch file to fix it (named BatchFixKB2686509.cmd) which works splendid on the systems I had this error.

The batch file uses regedit /e to export parts of the registry, then writes a small .reg file to clear the keys and imports them with regedit /S, waits for you so you can install the update, then writes back the saved registry data.
So basically, it automatically performs the manual steps described at KB2686509 – Failure Due to Upgrade from Windows ME or 98 to Windows XP – TechNet Articles – United States (English) – TechNet Wiki.

His answer: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Fonera Simpl Wireless Settings : Fon Support

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/21

Somehow my Fonera insisted that WiFi channel 2 was a good choice.

It isn’t so I forced it to be on one of the good 1/6/11 channel choices.

This links describes where those settings are: Fonera Simpl Wireless Settings : Fon Support.

–jeroen

Posted in Fonera FON2100A, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

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