Computing

Floppy Disk Data recovery Software Tools

I needed to get some data and code off of a 5.25 inch floppy disk.

Out of a list of datarecovery software tools  I tried

  1. FlopShow
  2. PCInspector File Recovery – PCInspector File Recovery recovered the data I needed
  3. Disk Investigator  – good tool and I will see if I need to use it
  4. OmniFlop – OmniFlop Manual – A very interesting tool that allows you to import data in non PC formats via your PC floppy drive.  Only runs on 2000 or beyond.  I want to use it to recover some Commodore 64 files. Woot!
By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Visual Basic Connection to MySQL

I want to use MySQL with Visual Basic in an effort to bypass the difficulties encountered when trying to use the Microsoft database tools.  Those problems include chronic difficulties getting my distribution packages to work on customer computers.

Download zip archive of vb project that connects to MySQL database

Making a Visual Basic Installation package including MySQL

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

How to get paid to write open source software

— Video Went AWOL —

Val Henson describes her career in open source

  1.  Linux system programmers are in short supply
  2.  If you are vaguely competent and get some experience you become employed for life
  3.  Not all Linux programmers are idealists.  Now days it is a for profit motivation.
  4.  her pay profile progressed very well. Started at 150,000 per year in 1999 and doubled after 10ish years.
  5.  Telecommuting seems to be the end of the evolutionary progression
  6.  She travels all over the world to visit other programmers. 
  7. She thinks San Diego has the best weather in the world.  ( she obviously has not considered South America in that calculation )
  8. What would Val do?  If you will not get fired then why not do it ? 
  9. She knows developers who never leave the house
  10. Hours are flexible
  11. its not a 9-5 job.  She does not know anyone who does not care.  Hard to make it on 40 hours per week.
  12. Side effect is you only end up dealing with positive motivated people
  13. Open source is an enabling technology – good way to think about how and why a company would hire a person to help with open source from their point of view
  14. You have to be able to admit you do not know something.  ( duh!)   Linuxchix
  15. There are some famously rude people in the Linux community
  16. Careful with email!
  17. Some people get into open source by working on patches but much better to get a framework such as a job that gets you in contact with other people doing open source.
  18. Should be able to fairly quickly get into a position where you can telecommute 

Val Henson on LinkedIn

Vals blog

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Mibbit Chat

Mibbit.com   No Java, no flash. With Mibbit, chatting online is easy, just choose your nickname and press go! No sign-up is required and you can use it from wherever you are with just a web browser.  Connect to IRC networks, IM, twitter, and more coming soon.  Mibbit has many customizable features which can help you make the most of your chat. You can change skins and use real-time language translation, image thumbnails, or even embed Youtube clips and exchange files with other Mibbit users. 

  • Google has made a translation API that they have rolled up into the chat function so you can have an inline translation while you chat with someone who speaks another language.
  • Google map API has been harnessed to provide a general location readout of where the person you are talking with is.
By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Ubuntu Screen resolution problems with ATI Rage XL graphics chip

I bought 3 Rackable Systems servers.  Turns out they have the ATI Rage XL graphics chip on the motherboard.  This is a problem because with Ubuntu there seems to be no easy way to get anything better than 800 by 600 display resolution.  As I am trying to use one of the boxes to learn about Ubuntu / Apache / MySQL / PHP this is a problem.   I did alot of diddling with the xorg.conf file to no avail.

While booting up and during shut-down the screen resolution was too high

The motherboard is a Tyan S2735-8M.

The long pci slots are:   64-bit 133/100/66MHz (3.3V) PCI-X slots

I found this riser card on ebay.  I am going to buy it and try putting a different video card in the server to facillitate development!

Looks like this guy had the same problem with a server with the same Rage XL graphics chip.

Slot keying diagram from wikipedia – My server card has 64 bit PCIx Universal slot.  The left portion of this slot is identical to a 3.3V 32 bit PCI slot.  Will a standard 32 bit PCI video card work in the 64 bit universal??

  • Will PCI work in a PCI-X slot?
  • PCIx exposed – PCI-X is downward compatible to PCI. If a PCI card is inserted into a PCI-X system the system will drop down to PCI level operations. It will not execute PCI-X based operations. Thus, to take advantage of PCI, engineers will have to rely only on PCI-X cards and boards.

Nvidia Driver model support list – Ubuntu Nvidia driver howto

 

UpDate January 30,2009

Having been driven half bonkers by 800×600 resolution I stopped by Fry's electronics and found they still sell a particular model of old fashioned PCI video cards.  The brand is BFG and the model is 6200 OC. It is based on a nVidia chip.  It took a while but now I have 1900×1200 resolution and about creamed myself when I saw it come up.  I used the Envy tool.  I tried the lastest version but that did not work.  I tried again with the next to latest and that worked.  It appears to not have used the proprietary driver. 

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago