tech topics

Corrupt File Trimmer

willdashwood — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:18:18 +0000

Way back in the day™, before BitTorrent and eMule/eDonkey, the file sharing platform of choice was WinMX. It seems like a lifetime ago and in technology terms, it was. It required a lot more manual intervention in order to exchange files compared to modern software. It was very inefficient, slow and quite frankly a little ugly. However, one thing I did love about WinMX was the built in chat room facility which nurtured many a community, usually centred around whatever files were being shared. I got quite friendly with the bloke who ran one of the chat rooms and completely out of the blue he emailed me recently. It was great to hear from him and it took me right back to my days at University, he says as if I'm sat here in my easy chair with slippers and a pipe, offering Werther's Originals around to small children!

My friend did have good reason for making contact, aside from to say "Hi". You see, WinMX had an annoying bug where large files would occasionally become corrupt if the transfer was terminated before competition. Attempting to resume the file would sometimes give you a warning message and many people simply restarted the file from the very beginning. My connection at the time was 128kbps down and 64kbps up and the files I shared were mostly around the 700mb mark, so you can see that when corruption occurred, it was not pleasant. However, some smart people discovered that if you stripped back the corrupt "dead wood" from the end of the file then resumed transfer of the file, more often than not it worked. The easiest way to do this at the time was to use file splitting software, which was designed to split large files so they could fit on multiple floppy discs or CDs. It was an awkward process and often you would trim a file only to find it needed more trimming off. At the time I had just completed a course in MFC programming for my degree so I decided to write a program to tackle this task better.

Corrupt File Trimmer was born, a tiny Windows app which allowed the user to select a file up to 2GB in size and trim a certain number of bytes from the end of it. I distributed it around on the chat room and asked people to pass it on to other WinMX users. Well apparently it became quite popular and continued to be requested long after I left the WinMX world. Indeed a quick google search reveals that someone took the initiative to write a replacement program which would handle files bigger than 2GB. Finding all of this out now brings a smile to my face. So the request my friend had was that I put the program on my website for everyone to download. Well, here it is!

Please note this is most definitely beta software, I did absolutely no testing, but it would appear to have been in widespread use for years and work quite well. Remember, this is only for use on files that are partially downloaded and corrupt. If you trim a normal file, don't be surprised to see it become corrupt, with data permanently lost. If you've been using this program over the past 5 years I'd love to hear from you! Enjoy ;)

Download Corrupt File Trimmer

Imgjax, quick and dirty image hosting

willdashwood — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:04:43 +0000

Of course I'm far from short of hosting accounts to store images on but there's something to be said for quickly uploading a pic for temporary storage via a website, especially when it's as easy as imgjax makes it. I've used allyoucanupload.com a fair bit but I hate the fact it changes the file format to jpeg no matter what the original format was. Very strange and unnecessary.

Via Ajaxian.

Update: imagax seems to have bit the dust. I'm now using BoostUpload and Image Bin for dumping images quickly and jagbox for any file type.

BBC Delivery On-Demand Open Consultation

willdashwood — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:30:44 +0000

Well worth spending a few minutes filling in this open consultation if you care about how the BBC should develop it's on-demand content services. I made a point of emphasising my opinion that open standards should be embraced for content delivery and that third-party suppliers of the service (e.g. ISPs) should not be subsidised to allow/encourage the use of such on-demand features. I think the first point is one which everyone would instantly agree on, after all there is no technical reason to lock ourselves in to a proprietary system when there are so many alternatives. However, some people might query my second point so here's my logic.

It's fair to say Nildram, my ISP, has fallen from grace since it was taken over by Pipex. Not surprising I know; Pipex have a habit of taking a perfectly good ISP and spoiling everything which was good about them. It wasn't long before they suddenly introduced traffic shaping without any announcement, much to the disgust of many users including myself. They quickly backtracked and according to one "technical" member of staff they "turned the volume knob down to 1" on the throttling hardware so that traffic was practically unaffected. I love the image of an incredibly expensive and sophisticated piece of network equipment being operated with the same mechanism as a Marshall stack! Anyway, the aforementioned member of staff tried to explain the company's reasoning behind restriction of p2p traffic, which boiled down to the premise that because more users are utilising services such as Sky Anytime which deliver content over p2p, ISPs are incurring increased costs without compensation from the content providers. Roughly translated: "Yes we're selling you a broadband package with a 50GB per month bandwidth quota but we don't want you to actually use all of it... unless Sky are going to pay us". Net neutrality is just as much of a key issue over here as across the pond!

Of course I'm well aware overselling is not just common place but pretty much guaranteed in the ISP business. However, as many others were quick to point out, if you can't sustain a certain level of service within your existing pricing structure, re-evaluate your tariffs! Don't annoy your customers with throttling or march off demanding money from the companies who actually add value to the service you're providing! Those who don't want to use Sky Anytime, BBC's proposed on-demand service or any other high bandwidth service can opt for a low usage tariff while the rest of us pay a little extra to finance the investment in infrastructure to deliver the content we want.

/rant over ;)

Via happenchance

A long overdue site and blog update

willdashwood — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:05:01 +0000

After so much playing around with this site last year I think I killed and wasn't able to log in for a while. Does that sound like a feasible excuse for not posting anything since the end of the summer? Well it sounds believable to me! Not to far removed from "dog ate my homework".

So I finally got a few hours spare to upgrade the site to Drupal 5 which is truly deserving of the major increment in version numbering. There was some debate for a while if it should be labelled 4.8, such is the concern of the Drupal community to do things by the book! I've recently finished off a few sites on the 4.7 platform and it feels so antiquated now I've had chance to develop in 5. Absolutely every aspect of the CMS has been updated for the better though there are still a few little features I'd like to see in 5.1; time to get contributing!

As you may notice I've also changed the theme on here with help from Marek and I'll be making a few more changes as time allows. Bye for now :)

RoundCube Webmail

willdashwood — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:00:05 +0100

Hayley asked me to install a web mail client on her domain a while back which might get past her work's web filter (they don't like you checking email at work). I came across RoundCube Webmail and got it installed in 5 minutes.

Haven't had time to really put it through it's paces but the interface uses AJAX to good effect, much like GMail, but less cluttered. It certainly beats NeoMail, Squirrel Mail and Horder which were the pre-installed options bundled with cPanel and I would highly recommend anyone interested try it out, despite only reaching a 0.1 beta release it seems to handle basic functions faultlessly.

FireFox 2.0a2 Bon Echo

willdashwood — Sat, 20 May 2006 12:52:25 +0100

I've just installed FireFox 2.0a2 Bon Echo and I'm mightily impressed. Truth be told I've never got on well with 1.5. It was always extremely sluggish for me and a bit of a resource hog, both in terms of memory usage and CPU cycles. I'd even gone as far as to semi-migrate to Opera 9, which while incredibly fast and efficient, I missed my favourite extensions (Web Developer, CSE HTML Validator, greasemonkey, Gmail Manager, AdBlock).

I could live without some and there were workaround replacements for others but now I can see what is up and coming with FireFox 2 I'm willing to stay put. Writing this post I notice it now has a built in spell checker, which behaves very similar to MS Word's and is worth the upgrade alone! The UI has taken more than a few pointers from Opera (close buttons on tabs, search box) which is certainly no bad thing, although I'm glad they haven't changed the order in which tabs are focused on once one is closed. That drove me mad in Opera!

I've installed the Nightly Tester Tools to get all the 'incompatible' extensions working and only RoboForm has complained which I was considering ditching anyway. I'd recommend giving it a try, especially if like me you found 1.5 really disappointing. Here's a summary of the big changes.

Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behaviour is slightly different
Inline spell checking in text boxes
Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
Search suggestions now appear in the search box autocomplete for Google and Yahoo!
New search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
New Add-Ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes
Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
New search service that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch engines
Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

Intel Mobile Pentium 4 M Exploration

willdashwood — Thu, 18 May 2006 11:36:08 +0100

This is pretty much the only thing I feel bad about just getting rid of from my old site so thought the least I could do is just copy it across. It's a bit outdated but I hope it's of use to some people. Cheers.

I came across the possibility of using Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processors - M (to give them the official title) in desktops while sourcing components for the company I worked for. My boss wanted these tiny cube systems to sit looking pretty on the desks of our office. However, he also wanted top of the range performance and didn't even think about the noise. As a quiet PC enthusiast I said he would need some impressive cooling system if he didn't want the CPU fan to sound like a jet engine right next to his ear!

So I set about researching and stumbled across a few threads in various forums (huge thanks to the people at Silent PC Review and AnandTech) which explained how I could use these CPU's in desktops. Although the CPU's didn't turn up on eBay often, I got hold of 2, tested them out, got very excited and tried to source more! When the chance came around to buy a large quantity of them I decided to grab them all, put some effort in and resell them. This page is here for the people who want to know more about these great CPU's, although I no longer have any left for sale I'm afraid.

The Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M is based on the same Northwood core as it's desktop equivalent. Indeed they most likely came the same wafer and are essentially identical in design. However, processors destined for mobile use are 'hand picked', almost certainly from the middle of the wafer where the silicon is best. They are the cream of the crop, able to match or exceed the performance of their desktop siblings while running at a lower voltage. If you look at it from this point of you, standard desktop Pentium 4's are the rejects that don't quite make the grade!

Where the two processors differ is that the mobile P4-M makes use of Enhanced Intel SpeedStep technology, which is designed to reduce the clock speed of the processor when not under heavy use, thus preserving a laptop's battery. This basically involves reducing the default bus speed multiplier (17 in the case of a 1.7 GHz Mobile P4-M) to 12, resulting in a clock speed of 1.2 GHz. When placed in a desktop motherboard which doesn't understand SpeedStep technology, the processors run at the default 12 multiplier with a bus speed of 100 MHz (1.2 GHz). I'm unaware of any consumer orientated motherboards with support for SpeedStep.

Now you may think this SpeedStep technology is a bad thing for anyone wanting to use these processors in a desktop. However, by simply increasing the FSB (Front Side Bus) from 100 MHz to 200 MHz the cpu will easily run at 2.4 GHz and benefit from a substantially faster bus speed.

A point worth making is that Mobile Celeron processors don't feature SpeedStep technology and therefore retain their original clock multiplier. However, with modern motherboards officially supporting an 800MHz FSB (200MHz quad-pumped) and many enthusiast targeted motherboards allowing even greater bus speeds it seems silly to hamper the speed of you system by sticking to the slow, old 100MHz bus speed.

An important physical difference anyone can spot is that the Pentium 4-M doesn't have a heat spreader. This has a significant impact on reducing core temperatures as the heat has one less layer to dissipate through. This is not only of interest to quiet pc enthusiasts but anyone who likes to keep their CPU's core cool and healthy.

The rig I've set up for testing all the processors I've bought is based around a Gigabyte GA-8I875 (Gigabyte are one of the few manufactures to allow VCore undervolting). I picked it up as B-Stock from dabs.com for a very reasonable price. I've got a couple of 256mb sticks of Samsung DDR400 (nothing to write home about) running in dual channel configuration. When I eventually make a proper PC out of this motherboard I will invest in some Kingmax DDR500 ;)

Based on the Intel 875P north bridge and ICH5R south bridge, in terms of features the only thing slightly disappointing is that the Gigabit ethernet is connected over the PCI bus instead of via CSA but like I'm ever gonna tell the difference!

Something which I would really have liked to see is the ability to select a 1:1 FSB/RAM ratio even when the CPU doesn't have a 800 (200 quad-pumped) MHz FSB. This would have allowed a us more flexibility when overclocking, or in this case, bringing the processor back up to stock speed.

The Mobile Pentium 4-M has a 400 (100 quad-pumped) MHz FSB. Therefore it is necessary to do a bit of a modification to the processor in order to fool the motherboard into thinking we've inserted a 800 FSB CPU.

The modification is basically breaking the BSEL1 pin from the bottom of the CPU. This is not an easy task; it requires a steady hand, good eyesight even when using a 'third-hand' magnifying glass and lots of patience, taking care not to damage any of the surrounding pins.

Once performed successfully the processor will show up as a 2.4 GHz (200 x 12) CPU by default in 800 FSB motherboards, allowing much more flexibility with memory speeds as well as flawless operation in motherboards which don't offer a manual bus speed selection. Click here for a pin layout of the Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M which shows which pin you need to break off.

Anyway, here are some preliminary testing results of the 1.8GHz Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M Processor (SL6FH). The testing was performed on the bench with an ambient temp of around 20C. The testing is by no means deadly accurate or scientific, just a rough guide. The power supply I used was just a cheap and nasty thing and I'm sure a higher quality PSU would help stability. I used a Thermalright SKU-800 heatsink with a Zalman 92mm fan running at full pelt. This is certainly an overkill at lower speeds but it made testing consistent across the board.

Speed (GHz)	BIOS VCore (Volts)	Idle Temp (Degrees Centigrade)	Prime95 Temp (Degrees Centigrade)	Comments
1.20	0.8375	28	30	Will run fanless at 35 when idle!
1.60	0.8375	30	32	Performance increase makes this speed worthwhile over 1.2 GHz
2.26	0.8375	31	34	Fastest speed achievable without increasing the voltage from 0.8375
2.40	1.3375	32	38	An excellent compromise between heat and speed
3.20	1.6800	34	49	I reckon there's more speed in there too!

As you can see it seems feasible to run this CPU fanless at 1.2 or 1.6 GHz. 15 minutes of Prime95 gradually built the temperature up to 65 but for everyday average use with a very slow fan or good case airflow you could have a very quiet system. I personally would rather run a little faster and reduce the bus speed using ClockGen when not in use (I leave mine on 24/7 usually). Amazingly this CPU will go all the way up to 3 GHz and beyond! I'm not sure but I think those temps are less than the equivalently clocked desktop processor which just shows that even when stretched to the extreme these CPU's are truely "The Daddy"!

Perhaps someone can help me with this but I suspect the 8I875 does not allow VCore to go all the way down to 0.8375. The diagnostic utilities I used, SpeedFan and CPU-Z, reported it as 1.25v, which I could put down to the voltage being out of the sensors range. However, I seriously doubt I would be able to hit 2.26GHz on such a low voltage. Given that the default VCore when used in a laptop is 1.2/1.3v it seems that Gigabyte have only implemented voltage adjustment to 1.25. Maybe it's a bug in the BIOS, I'm using the latest version (F8). Someone else's opinion on this would be most welcome. I'm not sure how I could test for sure.

Additional:Finally got a new motherboard, or rather two. One to keep on the bench for testing and one to replace my Gigabyte GA-8I875 as my main computer. I was less than impressed with the Gigabyte's stubbornness to change the actual VCore despite allowing a vast range of low voltages to be set in the BIOS. So despite its many appealing features it will soon be heading to an eBay near you :)

So the motherboard in question is the Soltek SL-865PE-L (the L on the end means it has onboard LAN). If you want to check out the detailed specification of this motherboard check out here. Yes it does have the most hideous colours on a motherboard you've ever seen but then I'm not one to show off my motherboard through a case side panel. More to the point, the can be picked up for £35 from eBuyer UK hence the reason I've got my mittens on two of them!

Just to summarise briefly, the board is based on the Intel 865PE north bridge and ICH5 south bridge (no RAID unfortunately). The heat sink on the north bridge is reasonably sized and importantly doesn't use a fan. It does get quite hot but I haven't yet encountered a problem with this. There a several aspects of this motherboard which make it ideal for use with Mobile Pentium 4 M processors. The first is that the VCore can be reduced right down to 1.1v. While on paper this isn't as good as Gigabyte boards I am quite confident that the board is actually supplying what it says it is!

Secondly, you can set the default bus speed using jumpers. Normally motherboards automatically detect the correct FSB and you have to over/underclock in the BIOS. Of course with the jumpers left in their default position this is also the case with the Soltek but you can change this to force a 100, 133 or 200 MHz bus speed. This effectively does the same as the cutting the BSEL0/1 pin without making an irreversible change to your processor. Top Dorris!

It's fair to say this isn't a hardcore overclockers board. The fastest I got out of it was a FSB of 235.5 (2.82 GHz). Not bad but I know there's would still be room in the processor and this is with a massive Zalman 92mm fan pumping air around the north bridge to see if that was the weakest link. I also attempted to do the trick of setting the FSB with jumpers to 133 MHz but increasing it to 200MHz (or whatever) in the BIOS. This enables PAT (the main difference between the 875 and 865PE chipsets) and vastly improves memory performance. The sweet spot I've found is running around 190MHz host clock which allows me to use a 1:1 FSB:RAM ratio and yet have my Geil value RAM, which was very cheap and is rated 2.5-4-4-8, running at 2-3-3-6. Not bad and certainly is better than overclocking the FSB to improve memory performance but at the cost of relaxed CAS timings.

So I guess what you're all wanting to know is the temps Im getting now that the VCore is actually being altered, huh? Well...

Click here for the complete screenshot which will show that these temps are after running once through Prime95 to max out the core temp. Yes that really is an 1844.2 MHz Mobile Pentium 4M at a peak temperature of 33C! To put the data in to context, this is with my new Zalman 7000A-Cu with the fan at its slowest setting using the fan mate. At 1383 rpm it is very quite, although not silent. I figured that this would be a common setup and so a good indication of what you can expect.

This is the fastest I could get the processor to run without raising the VCore in the BIOS. You may notice that the reported VCore is actually 1.072v and it did jump around a bit. I'm still using that cheap PSU on the bench until a replacement arrives so I'm sure you could get better results with something that cost more than £5!

Note: I've since tested with my Q-Technology PSU which is far superior and I could push it faster at1.1v with this supply however I have not had chance to do any formal testing.

I should really round this with more recent testing and results but I'm not actually sure how much of this information is of any value to anyone anyway. Leave some comments if there are people out there who want more info.

I'm now using a Foxconn 865A01-PE-6EKRS which doesn't actually allow for any VCore alterations in the BIOS. So I did another little pin mod trick on a 1.7GHz MP4M to hard undervolt it to approximately 1.15v. See this topic for more info.

It involves breaking or bending the AE1 pin so that it doesn't make contact. With the VCore fixed I just pushed the FSB as far as I could before I encountered stability issues. I was surprised to see it went as far as 2.0GHz which is where it rests now, with an Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-4 Freezer 4 running completely fanless! It's an amazing heat sink for the price that's for sure and the whole set up is doing me just fine for now.

Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile processors

willdashwood — Thu, 18 May 2006 08:52:25 +0100

As many of you know, I have a reputation for doing things with laptop processors which really shouldn't be done; modding them to run in desktops I mean! I'm still running my Mobile P4M 2.0GHz on 1.15v with a fanless Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-4 Freezer 4 (yes, only the PSU fan quietly shuffling air around) and haven't felt the need to jump to the next generation of processor, not that I could justify the outlay anyway.

Having said that, I do like to keep an eye on what's happening in the world of CPU's just to see if there's anything exciting on the horizon. Nowadays performance per watt is all the rage and AMD's standard desktop line of processors does a pretty good job of running cool enough to run fanless while still kicking out great performance but what if you want to step up to dual core processing? You've got your work cut out for you trying to run the X2 fanless!

Intel's Core Duo finally brings Pentium M power characteristics to the desktop with the advantage of two cores and there are a few standard retail motherboards out there you can run one with. The exciting news is that AMD has just released details of their new Turion 64 X2 processor and it wouldn't surprise me if this manages to keep AMD ahead of the game on both pricing and performance per watt. The only down side is that while existing Turions work in the majority of standard s754 desktop motherboards, which can be picked up very cheaply since they're used for Semprons, the new Turions use a 638 pin socket S1 and I'm not sure if there are any plans to release desktop motherboards with this socket. Let's hope they do because that may be enough to make me take the plunge on another upgrade!

Drupal Site Recipe

willdashwood — Mon, 15 May 2006 17:08:41 +0100

As promised here's a very rough guide to how this site was made. Check out the Drupal handbook for much better guides to installation and configuration. Think of this as a reference for those wondering how to create this type of site. It's also for my use as I have a terrible memory and will forget exactly what I did in no time at all.

I'm using Drupal 4.7 final with the additional pathauto and sections modules, keeping it nice and simple.

OK let's start from the beginning. One way or another you need to create a database for Drupal to use. As I don't have shell access on this hosting account I logged in to my hosting control panel (cPanel), created a new database, user and assigned all privileges for that user on the new database. Keep that user name and password safe. You then need to load the database schema. I have remote MySQL access set up for my IP address so I used Navicat MySQL to initialise the database from my own PC. You could use phpMyAdmin just as easily.

The next stage is to upload all the Drupal files via FTP either individually or as the complete archive, decompress it on the server if you have that facility. You will need to edit the site config file located at sites/default/settings.php, inserting your database/user name and password.

You should now have Drupal up and running. Yay, grab a Guinness. What do you mean it's not lunch time yet?

So once you've created yourself an account (the first account automatically becomes the admin account) you can navigate to admin/settings and start with the basics. Site name, email address, footer and clean URLs were the fields I changed from default. One of the greatest features of Drupal is its clean URL system which is excellent for search engine friendliness and logical site structure. If you're running Apache with mod_rewrite be sure to enable it. I think it may also work with lighttpd but haven't tried it personally.

I also set Display of XML feed items to 'Full Text' under RSS feed settings since I don't mind people reading posts entirely in their favourite feed reader rather than having to visit the site.

Now let's choose the modules we want for the site. I've disabled all but the required modules and

comment
menu
page
path
pathauto
search
sections
story
taxonomy

The pathauto module automatically generates paths for each node (page, story, image, etc) based on, in my case, the node title and taxonomy config (see later) but this can be customised.

My use of the sections modules is to specify a different theme for the admin area. When I made my theme I didn't want to fuss around catering for a side menu since that would never be visible to the public. However, when using the admin area it's handy to be able to navigate!

There are lots of other modules I want to use shortly but just to get the site up and running quickly I went for a basic feature set.

From now on I'm going to be a bit lazy and just refer to the options which require attention.

admin/settings/content-types/page

Default options: Published

Default comment setting: Disabled

admin/settings/menu

Menu containing primary links: Primary links

Menu containing secondary links: No Secondary Links

Restrict parent items to: Primary links

admin/settings/pathauto

General settings, Separator: '-'

admin/settings/sections/edit/1

Activate section on the specific pages: Show on only the listed pages (admin/*)

admin/settings/user

Public registrations: Only site administrators can create new user accounts.

This is something I may well change soon once I get the profile module set up.

admin/access

I think the only options I changed here were to allow anonymous users to post comments without approval

admin/block

Because site users don't need to log in or use the admin navigation bar I simply unchecked these 2 blocks from my theme, leaving all blocks disabled, but left them enabled for the admin theme. It would be a bit tricky to navigate otherwise!

admin/taxonomy

It can be a bit tricky to get the hang of taxonomy at first. For a start it uses a posh name for what is essentially 'categories' and the options might not be self explanatory to some (me included). To begin with I simply wanted to categorise blog entries so I created a category called, logically enough, "blog" which only applies to story nodes, has single hierarchy and uses free tagging. I then added the term 'personal posts'. You could keep adding further terms for 'work related' etc etc. By checking the free tagging option you can just add a new category when creating a new post if deemed necessary.

Finally it's time to add some content. If you're like me, this is the hardest part. I managed to scramble together an "About Me" page. As this is a static page linked to from the main menu I created it as a page node with a menu title, set the parent item to primary links and set the weight to determine the position on the menu relative to other items (currently there are no other menu items anyway).

To test out the blog I wrote my first story node, giving it a title, a category (personal posts). Everything else should be OK as default. The blog is affectively the home page but I added a menu item called 'Blog' rather than home and set the path to which basically means home.

Now that's all done. Check out the home page, links and everything to see if it works! Fingers crossed it does but if not it's probably my bad. This recipe is a bit rough and ready so I will try and improve it later as the site does and if anyone spots something incorrect let me know.

Cheers