Category: Kev’s Blog

Posted on

Working split in FLDIGI

Most things are easy to work out in FLDIGI, but I just tried working a station that was working RTTY split, listening 1 up. You can certainly do this via settings on your radio but FLDIGI allows you to set different rx and tx freqs too – which is easier as it’s just point and click:

  • select the tx freq and press the ‘Lck’ button – this fixes the tx
  • clicking anywhere on the waterfall after you’ve pressed Lck now sets the receive

Don’t forget to unclick Lck when you’re done.

I got this from the manual here (funnily enough).

Posted on

Computer history documentaries and dramas

I love watching and reading about the evolution and history of computers and the IT industry. It’s not just the developments in technology I find fascinating, it’s the characters involved and the business deals that turned out to be so pivotal in the how the future evolved, such as the IBM deal with Microsoft to produce PC-DOS for the first IBM PC and how things could have been so different if Gary Kildall agreed to license CP/M to IBM when he was approached before IBM later went to Microsoft.

I also find it interesting how product A vs product B battles in the industry were geographically based. While Apple created the home computer market in the US, in Europe the players were different, involving Sinclair (the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum), Commodore (VIC 20 and C64) and especially for education in the UK, the BBC Micro.

I spotted this story on The Register last week about a drama documenting the competition between Sinclair and Acorn (who made the BBC Micro), called Micro Men, made a few years back. I’m pretty sure this never made it across to TV in the States, but I just found a copy on YouTube so have this queued up in my ‘must watch list’.

It’s surprising how many other great documentary and old TV shows you can find on YouTube. Some of my favorites include:

  • Triumph of the Nerds – an amazing documentary including interviews with all the major players during the development of the personal computer, including Gates, Balmer, Allen, Jobs, Wozniak, plus many others. There was only 10 minutes of the interview with Jobs included in the final version, but apparently there was 70mins of film recorded from the interview originally, and  after Jobs death, this was released as a separate film, The Lost Interview
  • BBS – a documentary about the rise and fall of dial-up BBS systems
  • Once upon Atari
  • The Computer Programme – this show first aired in the UK in 1982 and heavily featured the BBC Micro. There was also an accompanying magazine sold at the same time… I remember diligently studying every copy…
  • In the US there was Computer Chronicles on PBS, hosted by none other than Gary Kildall. I’m pretty sure I never saw this in the UK, but it’s also available on YouTube, where there’s a dedicated channel collecting most of the episodes

Anyone know any others worth watching?

Posted on

First thoughts and some tips for using Windows 8 (and 8.1)

My primary computer and OS for home is a MacBook Pro, with OS X Mavericks (I updated to Mavericks as soon as it was released). For almost everything I do my Mac works great. Occasionally I do need to run a Windows app, especially for some ham radio type apps. For some of these I can get them to work just fine using Wine/Winebottler on the Mac (like JT65-HF which works great under Wine).

Since new PCs are coming with Windows 8 now, I feel somewhat obligated under the ‘friends and family IT support plan’ (which everyone who does any work in IT is automatically enrolled in) that I should at least take a look at Windows 8 so I can pretend I know what I’m talking about 🙂

First thoughts: it’s really not that bad. The general press coverage is that it’s completely awful – it’s not bad, but it’s definitely very different in some areas. The Metro home page vs the regular desktop dual behavior seems a curious design decision to say the least. I can only wonder if there were internal strategic arguments within Microsoft whether the world was ready to go all Metro and whether that was a safe bet, or whether it would have alienated too many existing users. So instead you get both. It’s like your computer can’t make up it’s mind whether it’s living in a ‘post-PC’ tablet influenced world or whether it’s desperately holding on to the past. The two are so separate that it seems odd to have both running at the same time.

On the whole though, on my i7 MacBook Pro with 4GB, it’s really very snappy and responsive. Something I’ve honest missed with the OS X Mavericks update which can be sluggish (The best OS X version I’ve used so far was definitely Snow Leopard which was so fast it was unbelievable. For whatever reason later OS X versions seem to have been progressively slower after this release).

Here’s some random tips based on spending some time using Windows 8:

  • The Windows 8 Upgrade download from the Microsoft online store can be installed on a blank drive/partition – you don’t need a previous version of Windows installed just to use the upgrade version. In hindsight though, in the online store there was only the ‘Upgrade’ version, so maybe this really is the full install version, and not a discounted upgrade version like there was the option with previous Windows versions
  • Update: it turned out that my install wouldn’t activate when I was promoted to do so, it kept giving me an error that this was an upgrade install and not a full install. Luckily with a quick registry value change it activates successfully. Details here. This seems like a loophole in Microsoft’s full version vs upgrade approach. With this registry change you can successfully activate and therefore don’t need a full install version.
  • When you download the installer, you initially get a small executable. When you run it it determines what you are running on (Windows XP, Vista or 7 32 or 64bit) and downloads installable files to match the same version, 32 bit or 64 bit. There doesn’t seem to be any option to pick what you want to download. Also, if you run the downloader on a 32 bit older version of Windows, you don’t get the option to create installable media (either a USB flashdrive installable version, or an ISO file to create a DVD). If you run it on a 64 bit version of Windows then you do get this option. This tripped me up because a) I wanted a 64 bit version, and b) I wanted the ISO so I could create my own installable DVD
  • When using IE in Metro mode, you can access tabs and the URL field by right-clicking anyway on the page. The tabs appear and the top of the screen, and the URL entry field appears at the bottom of the screen. They disappear again once you’d used them
  • To get to your Metro home screen, move your mouse to the bottom left and click. Don’t move away from the bottom left to try and click on the popup image otherwise it disappears. This doesn’t seem very logical.
  • Top left seems to switch between running apps
  • Bottom left and then moving mouse up shows an additional bar with a list of icons for your running apps
  • If your 8.1 update doesn’t appear as an update in the Windows Store, apparently there are some Windows Update prereqs that you need to install first. You can install these from Windows Update in the Control Panel
  • I wasn’t able to change my desktop background image until after I updated to 8.1. In 8 selecting any background image didn’t have any effect. After installing 8.1 it worked as you’d expect.
  • After upgrading to 8.1, my screen brightness went extremely dim, and even changing the brightness setting to the max it was still too dim. Turning off the Adaptive Brightness setting on the Power options fixed this (details here)

I’ll add other updates here when I have more tips to share 🙂

Proudly powered by WordPress