Category: computers

Let it snow!

It is snowing now – NWS says we’ll get 2 inches. I am hoping for more. I’ll have to do a bit of shoveling to clear the driveway in the morning, then I’ll head out with the 4 year old for some sledding. Should be a good time, although with the low temps (the high today was 10F) we will have to bundle up a bit. It has been so cold since New Year’s Eve that the wind direction sensor on my Davis Vantage Pro2 has frozen, pointing north.

I’ve been doing a little configuration work in the shack. I decided to dedicate one of my computers to running my weather station/APRS combo. Before I had the software (Weather Display and UI-View32) running on the same computer I used for my HF work. Things got busy with the log and Ham Radio Deluxe going plus the APRS and weather applications. Moving the weather and APRS applications onto its own computer should give me a bit more stability. I installed a dual boot configuration of Win XP and Ubuntu 9.10. I am initially sticking with Win XP as I know it works well with both Weather Display and UI-View32. My plan is then to migrate to Ubuntu 9.10 and run Xastir and the Linux version of Weather Display. I need to do some googeling and see who else is doing that and see what issues they ran into. I did find and interesting linux application called wview – will definitely explore that. Looks like it is also a replacement for Weather Display Live.

I have a new computer than I am going to dedicate to just HF operations – one of Dell’s new Zino computers. I like the small form factor and I will also install a dual boot configuration to have some fun with both Win XP and Ubuntu.

The old (circa 2005) desktop computer that used to run both the HF ham applications, Weather Display, and UI-View32 has now been moved to another table in the basement and has become the arcade machine. My cool xmas gift was the X-Arcade Tankstick – an amazing arcade controller that is built like an old school arcade console. Along with MAME software I have been able to play some wonderful, classic arcade games: Pac-Man, Galaga, Berzerk!, Robotron, Battlezone, and my favorite – Scramble. The Tankstick also has a trackball, so I have been able to relive the glory of both Missile Command and Centepede as well. I’ve had the four year old behind the joystick playing Frogger – and she did pretty darn good. It is hard to beat the classic arcade games.

The plan for my HF station, based around my Icom IC-7000 is to mount it in two iPortable boxes. The set up will include the IC-7000, a tuner, power supply, and the Dell Zino. If (…when…) I am deployed again, I will be able to have these two iPortable boxes sent out to me. I’ll take some pics as I put the iPortable station together and post it here.

My generation’s pinball machine


Space Invaders came out in 1978 when I was 9 years old. My first encounter was probably at the local 7-11 (next to Homestead High School in Cupertino, CA) that had Space Wars in addition to Space Invaders. However, a good portion of my initial Space Invaders game play was at Cal Skate – a skating rink in Milpitas, CA. This was the late 70s, Disco was still big, and Cal Skate featured a large disco ball over the rink that spun as everyone skated counterclockwise to the Bee Gees and Abba. I am not sure what captured my imagination most about Space Invaders – the green tint of the aliens descending from above or the cool sound that emanated from the game when I fired a missile at the bad guys. The line to play was long, as folks stacked up quarters and ogled each others high scores. Then there was Sea Wolf which I first encountered on the peanut shell littered floor of The Oasis in Palo Alto, CA (near Stanford University). Despite their excellent hamburgers, I much preferred manning the periscope and destroying the ships crossing the ocean above. Our most frequented pizza parlor was on the corner of Mary and Fremont Avenue in Sunnyvale, CA – that is were I first played Pong as well as another all time favorite: Tank (a two player game were each player had two levers to control the treads of the tank and a fire button. The tanks were then maneuvered through a kind of maze like obstacle in an attempt to shoot the other player). Over at Merlin’s Castle in Saratoga, CA my game of choice was Lunar Lander, a game of finesse and skill. I can’t forget one of the first Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater place over near the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose (and absolute favorite spot to host a birthday party when you are in the 4th or 5th grade). Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, insured that we were able to spend a zillion tokens in the vast array of video games that covered the place. Since that time it has been a never ending quest to replicate the look and feel of Space Invaders (as well as all the other arcade games I fell in love with) on a home device. I had the Atari 2600 which had its version of Space Invaders… pretty weak. Then my Apple ][ came along with pretty nice versions of some games – but it wasn’t the same. Years passed and with the development of the internet and java apps I saw the proliferation of classic games replicated in a web browser – but they always lacked something. If it was Asteroids, the actual asteroids weren’t shaped right or the play area was too small. In Centipede, the worm moved too fast or the colors weren’t right.

Then I ran across this device at ThinkGeek.com:


Like manna from heaven, The GP2X Wiz seems to be the perfect solution to my retro gaming fever. This is an amazing piece of hardware that allows the user to load emulators that enable you to play just about any video game that ever was. And you are not playing someone’s attempt at re-coding the game -it is possible to get the original code that was contained in those console machines back at the video arcade. So Space Invaders looks and plays just like it did back at Cal Skate some 30 years ago (only the screen is smaller, I didn’t have to pay a quarter, and there is no distracting reflection from a disco ball). I am not really a “video gamer” and had generally been unaware that it was possible to find these old games and play them on modern hardware but when I ran across the description of the GP2X Wiz on ThinkGeek I was intrigued. Not only can it play the games found in the old video arcades but also those crappy games I used to play on my Atari 2600 (of which I had a million). Also the original Nintendo (i.e. Super Mario Bros), GameBoy, and any other gaming system you can think of. Part of the fun is that the GP2X Wiz comes as just the hardware. In order to get it to play other games, you have to set it up and configure it. Its not difficult, but makes the whole experience a bit more entertaining. Most all of this can be accomplished on the average PC, but the GP2X Wiz brings it all together in an easy to use package.

This devise has brought back some wonderful childhood memories and is a 100% blast to play around with.

Interested in seeing more? I ran across this video on YouTube that gives a good representation of what the GP2X Wiz can do.

Digital Books

I have one of the first edition Kindles that I’ve had since last year. Previously I was using the Sony Reader and enjoyed using it immensely. The Kindle offers the exact same reading experience but with a larger selection of titles to choose from. Jeff Davis, KE9V of Signal and Noise, has previously mentioned The Radio Boys – the title of a series of juvenile fiction books published in the 1920s. Believe it or not, many of their titles are available for the Kindle. I read one and it was pretty entertaining. Another recent find in the Kindle Store was the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien. That’s pretty amazing as the Tolkien books have long resisted being available in digital format. As I’ve said above, I enjoy reading books on the Kindle and it is a huge space saver – but it does not work for me when I am using textbooks. I have found that when I am using a textbook, I need to physically make marks (highlights, underlining, stars, etc.) as well as notes in the margin – it helps me learn the material. Many of the eReaders allow you to make digital annotations… but that is not same (at least for me).

Your own Moon landing


I was 3 months old when we first landed men on the Moon (the same age as my youngest daughter). So while I was “there” when Neil took his first step, I can’t say that I remember much.
What I do remeber is the Lunar Lander video game in the coin arcades of my youth (specifically Merlin’s Castle located at El Paseo de Saratoga in San Jose, California… now long gone). I also had a version of the game I used to play on my Apple ][+. Its a finesse game – you try to gently set the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) using your thruster with a limited amount of fuel. I could (and can) play this game for hours. Now you can to! Here is a great flash version of the original arcade version.

Rainy Sunday

It has been a cold, rainy Sunday. We are on short final for the delivery of child number two… about 12 more days. Spent part of the day finishing the fixes to the nursery. Despite the rain, I BBQ’d two excellent steaks for dinner. I spent a good amount of time at Fort Lewis, WA so BBQing in the rain is no big deal.

Yesterday I mounted a bike seat for my daughter (age 3) on the back of my underused Trek bicycle. The weather was pretty nice, sun and a little cool. I decided to take along my TH-D7A and mounted my Garmin eTrex on the handlebars… I was APRS bicycle mobile again (with a small passenger). I kept the power setting at EL (50mW) and had good luck getting digipeated by N7FTM, which is nearby. To get a little better coverage and maintain the low draw on the battery, I configured the home TM-D710A to digipeat only the packets from my TH-D7A. I hope the weather improves soon so I can do some more bicycle mobile testing. A speaker-mic would also be a great addition to the setup.

I have been doing a little more reading on APRS (when I should be working on homework). One item that I found very intriguing was CQSRVR. There is a good run down of that feature here and Bob “Mr. APRS” Bruninga’s, WB4APR, recent article in QST. What amazes me is that the CQSRVR feature is not used more often. I have also had a great time playing with aprs.fi. I am a long time user of findu.com, but aprs.fi is just a wonderful tool to use in looking at APRS data.

It is time to get ready for Field Day. The plan is to road trip out California and link up with my dad, KD6EUG, at his cabin in Mi-Wuk (near Sonora, up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We will be a 2A operation. My rig will consist of my resurrected ARSIB (Amateur Radio Station In a Box). The ARSIB is based around the FT-817ND. To give the FT-817ND a boost, I’ve paired it with a 100W Tokyo HyPower amplifier. The tuner remains the LDG Z-11 PRO. I would like to have both a rig control interface and control cable from the radio to the amp but the the FT-817 has only one ACC input. Enter the CAT MATE – I am hoping this will solve the ACC input limitation. For a logging program I think we will go with the N3FJP logging software. It offers the ability to have two (or more) seperate stations have a combined log. It also features a software-based voice and CW keyer, which may come in handy. The downside is it is a Windows only program and it does not have integrated PSK-31. This will require a manual work around to add PSK-31 QSOs. I need to get all the pieces and parts together and start testing everything out to make sure there are no surprises. We will be busy enough stringing antennas and I want to minimize any adjustments I need to make to my own equipment during actual operation.

Kind of looks like a toaster

I think I have come up with a good home networking storage solution: the D-Link DNS-323. This network storage device can do quite a bit. It arrives out of the box without drives – you have to supply them. I like this because I can determine the types, speed, and size of the drives. My solution was two 1.5 TB drives running at 7200rpm. I configured the drives for RAID 1. This gives me only about 1.5 TB worth of storage, but if a drive fails all I need to do is swap in a new drive and I will be back in business. The device connects directly to by networks hub and can be configured using a web interface. The firmware on the device is linux based and allows for ftp and telnet. Other interesting features include UPnP, iTunes server, and print server. I already have a print server, but later on that feature might come in handy. The UPnP works great with my Phillips Streamium device. I have not played with the iTunes server yet, but I think that will be fun to see how it works.

Linux in the Ham Shack

I found an excellent podcast focusing on using linux in support of amateur radio. The show is hosted by Richard, KB5JVB, and Russ, K5TUX. The first episode debuted in October 2008 and as of this month there are a total of 8 episodes with another episode due any day. Richard is a good ol’ boy from Dallas, TX and it is worth listening to the show just to hear his banter. Russ is the brains behind the operation. There is also a forum for discussion.
I am trying to find a good logging program that I can use. Under Windows I use Ham Radio Deluxe, which is hard to beat with all its features. Is there any piece of linux software that is a feature rich?
There is CQRLOG. This looks like a fairly new piece of software that is described as: an advanced ham radio logger based on Firebird database. Provides radio control based on hamlib libraries (currently support of 140+ radio types and models), DX cluster connection, QRZ callbook (web version), a grayliner, ON6DP QSL manager database support and a most accurate country resolution algorithm based on country tables developed by OK1RR. CQRLOG is intended for daily general logging of HF, CW & SSB contacts and strongly focused on easy operation and maintenance.

How-to: Mount a Network drive in Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a great distribution of linux – setup is quick and painless. However, mounting network drives can sometimes get tricky. Here is a great reference to get through it.

From the blog Automaticable:

#1 First you will need to install the “smbfs” package. This is what we will use to mount the drive.

sudo aptitude install smbfs

#2 We will also need a folder to mount the drive in. I used /media/public.

sudo mkdir /media/public

#3 Then, we need to edit /etc/fstab. This is where we add all the information needed to find and mount the drive. Open /etc/fstab using the command:

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

At the end of the file add the following lines:

Mount our network drive
//SERVER/SHARE /MOUNT-POINT smbfs guest 0 0

Where “SERVER” is the name of your drive on the network. This can be either a name or IP address. For example, mine was “MAXTOR”. Replace “SHARE” with the folder in the drive you’d like to mount– mine was “Public”. “MOUNT-POINT” is the directory we created earlier, such as “/media/public”. The rest of the parameters have to do with permissions, and also where you can add advanced options. For more information on the advanced preferences, see

man mount.smbfs

#4 The final step is to tell the system to reload /etc/fstab and mount our drive. Do this with the command:

sudo mount -a

Then, you’re done! At this point you should be able to see the files in your drive with the command

ls /MOUNT-POINT

More info here.

Weather Display problems

I have been using my Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station along with the Weather Display software since the start of January without serious issue. I also have not been on my HF rig much. I’ve noticed over the past few weekends when I did key up the mike for a short QSO that the Weather Display software had locked up. The computer is still functioning, to include UI-View32 but Weather Display freezes. After a little testing, it looks like this only occurs when I transmit on 20M at some point above 50-75 watts out. I played around with a few ferrite chokes on cables between the computer and my IC-7000, but it did not fix the problem.

I need to fix this problem. I can’t have my weather data locking up every time I want to get on HF.

This week I am going to tear apart the station and try to isolate the problem. I am also using the opportunity to put sliders on the legs of the table which will allow me better allow me to pull the table away from the wall when I need to get behind the gear.