Battery adapter

Yesterday i did a 5 minute hack.
Because i have lots of old AA batteries with some residual energy (i guessed) lying arround, but my mp3 player needs AAA batteries, i made this adapter, to make use of the old AA cells.


The AA cells were used in an old compact camera. They do not work in the camera any more - thx to the crappy cam! - but with one of those AA cells i was able to power my mp3 player for about 2 5 hours and the battery is still not empty!
Quite nice for a batterie which seemed to be empty. ;)

I think the images are self explaining.

UART - again

Here is a nice driver for Win2k + WinXP to enable the inportb and outporb commands under those systems: porttalk
This can be quite usefull, if you have old software, and you must work with those software - somehow.
The driver is quite nice. It works perfectly with my UART Testboard  example program (number 3).
I converted it from linux to Open Watcom (16 bit Dos).

Here is the output:

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\xxxx>D:\Programme\porttalk\AllowIo.exe D:\Program
me\WATCOM\projects\uart\test3\test3.exe
AllowIO for PortTalk V2.0
Copyright 2002 Craig Peacock
http://www.beyondlogic.org
Executing D:\Programme\WATCOM\projects\uart\test3\test3.exe with a ProcessID of
2089937184
PortTalk Device Driver has set IOPM for ProcessID 2089937184.

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\xxxx>

~RS232 Testboard~
Testing all possible combinations...

Handshake is: off
2400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
Handshake is: on
2400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
End.

Black screen after upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10

After upgrading my Ubuntu from 10.04 to 10.10 i got only black screens or weird distorted graphics on my Acer Tracelmate 220 laptop with Intel 830 graphics card.

The solution for this misery:

1. Boot in recovery mode with root console and log on
2. change the xorg.conf settings to "vesa" ("enable VESA": https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Mavericki8xxStatus)
3. Then follow those instructions and set the "nomodesetup" for grub: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132

This gave me back X11 and Gnome - finally! :D

.oO(It cost me only several hours to fix the da** problem...)

UART toy - version 1.2

I made some modifications for the RS-232 Testboard.
Now the baud rate can be changed and the parity check can be enabled. Tons of other modifications, a new exciting sample program and lots of bug fixes were made too.

You can download the whole package (AVR source code, PC source code + libraries, drawing and the command list) here:
project.zip

"RS-232 Testboard" - more software

Just finished some libraries and tests programs for the "RS-232 Testboard" . You can download the package here: test-software.zip
I wrote a low level UART library, a high level library, and two example programs, showing the usage of the high level library (and as a bonus they have some nice effects).
All code was tested with Linux - but it should work with DOS too. If you want to compile it under Linux, you will need the ncurses developer library for the second example program.
Hm... perhaps i will upload some videos soon.

UART toy - additional comments...

I forgot to mention, that the Linux program must be executed as root. Otherwise it will not work, because it needs low level access to the serial port.
And the program must be compiled with optimization turned on.

The correct preprocessor command for GCC under Linux is "__linux__" - with two underscores and in small letters.

All commands in the instruction set are stated as ASCII characters. The return values and the parameters are in hex.


If someone got the circuit to work with Windows XP, please inform me. ;)

UART toy - part 4

And here is a list with the instruction set plus a short list of error codes for the AVR part:

http://sites.google.com/site/species0x2118/commands.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

Enjoy. ^.^