Hating taglines since 2013
Last week I got a task to basically resurrect an old MC9S08DZ60 based project. There was no official build environment, only a flaky, undocumented Windows XP virtual machine. So I got my hands dirty and started trying to get Freescale CodeWarrior 6.3 to run on Windows 10.
Continue reading “Getting Freescale CodeWarrior 6.3 to run on Windows 10, the hard way”
My earlier gateway box, the Lanner NCA-1010B decided to stop working, leaving everything as a messy chaos. I gobbled up my retired Zotac Zbox and hastily built a makeshift router.
A long term solution was however needed. I had heard good things from this no-bullshit-geeky Swiss company called PC Engines GmbH. They make a board called APU2E0, among other things. It is a AMD GX-412TC-based SOC product with 2 Intel i211AT NICs. And it does not have regular monitor connections. Instead, there is a DB9 serial port for installation purposes.
The board’s sister version is pictured below for reference.
Continue reading “PC Engines APU2E0 – a tiny fanless server with Intel NICs”
Have you ever wondered if you could print from your Windows 10 machine to a CUPS printer on your local network? It might be actually quite easy. See this documentation about how I did it with my black & white Samsung SCX-3205 printer.
Continue reading “Making Windows 10 to print to a CUPS printer over the network”
UPDATE 2023-07-20: I wrote earlier that WhatsApp might have broken this functionality. But actually my installation has been working just fine after I emptied my 70GB Firefox profile.
We have arrived to the last part of our ESXi WhatsApp saga. This blog post will tell a very cumbersome way of authorizing WhatsApp Web clients so you can enjoy the benefits of the application with you preferred computer and browser. Follow on!
This post is the last part (so far) in the 3-part series:
Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7
Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1
Complicatedly Authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1
The journey continues. In this blog post we learn how to get WhatsApp installed on our freshly installed Android x86 7.1 . This article exists for 2 reasons:
This is the second article in our 3 article series:
Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7
Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1
Complicatedly authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1
Again, as always, lets get started.
Continue reading “Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1”
I am one of those people who are perfectly fine with old style dumb 3G phones. But unfortunately some people are reluctant to communicate nowadays with regular phone calls, SMS or IRC, so I basically need to keep Android at hand for running WhatsApp.
Recently I found a way to run Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7. After a lot of teeth grinding, I was able to get WhatsApp running inside it. And after enormous test and debug efforts, I was even able to authorize WhatsApp Web clients. But with a lot of hoop-running. Extremely lot.
I chose Android x86 7.1 because it seems to be working completely for my desired purposes without (much) graphical glitches. For example 8.1 has horrible glitches which actually make many parts of initial setup widgets invisible 😀 . I chose VMware ESXi 6.7 as host because it is of the most stable main branch of the hypervisor. Host hardware is Intel NUC8i7HVK with 32GB RAM.
This is the list of articles of the whole operation (split due to big amount of screenshots):
Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7
Installing WhatsApp on VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1
Complicatedly authorizing WhatsApp Web clients for VMware ESXi (6.7) Android x86 7.1
Props to this external blog post for guiding me to the right direction. But now lets get started with our own stuff.
Continue reading “Installing Android x86 7.1 on VMware ESXi 6.7”
I recently bought a Bluetooth dongle for my wireless keyboard. After lots of measurements, I ended up fixing it to ceiling for optimal signal quality. There was a problem though; the LED. The pulsating blue LED was just too much for me. Or judge yourself, imagine this:
pulsating wildly every night on the ceiling. Not my thing. I could not find anything with google about disabling programmatically the LED, so I went the hard way and removed the entire LED from the dongle myself with soldering iron. Continue reading “Disabling annoying Bluetooth dongle LED the hard way”
In my previous blog post I described how I fixed my Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC graphics card by changing fans and thermal paste. I noticed 7% increase in measured performance. What I left out from the post that I also discovered and observed other methods for increasing the GPU performance.
Continue reading “Accidental and intentional methods for enhancing GPU performance”
Fallout 4 came out on year 2015. Before this, a realization came out, being that my old rig could not handle the new game in its current state. What a bummer. But there was a silver lining. Or bronze. Or at least iron, I swear.
A Finnish computer shop had a bundle campaign: Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC graphics card + Samsung 850 EVO 250GB for 399 EUR. I considered this a deal and bought the bundle. I think they might have had free game voucher also in the mix, but Google evades me on this.
The GPU arrived and it had many problems, it seemed. First there were instability problems with strange block garbage. These cleared after I ditched my “high-quality” Intel DZ77GA-70K motherboard for Asrock Z77 Extreme4.
One issue was still present, being absolutely horrible fan noise. This had been present from the start. Seriously. You buy the thing, take it out of the box, run some stress on it, and the whole thing rattles like it is going to give out functional smoke any minute.
The thing is, that I was able to fix it. There is video about the results here, check it out first. Then we show you how we did it.
The highly appreciated ISO/IEC joint committee JTC 778.736 has chosen “We value your privacy” as the best meme of year 2019. The award is truly spot-on and I sincerely congratulate JTC 778.736 for their keen eye on following contemporary Internet trends.
Continue reading ““We value your privacy” declared the best meme of 2019″