3Com 3C900 driver causes DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE in Vista

I got a 3Com 3C900-Combo Ethernet card because I occasionally needed to access a 10BASE2 network. It's not officially supported in Vista but the XP drivers seemed to work well.

I was occasionally getting DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE (9f) bluescreens when entering or resuming from S3 standby but they were so rare that I ignored them. Last night I decided to see if I could get any useful information from the minidump. Google searches showed the meanings of bluescreen arguments. The first one was three, which meant that "A device object has been blocking an Irp for too long a time". However, the other ones were addresses in memory and so further searches weren't helpful.

It seemed that I needed to use WinDbg from the Debugging Tools for Windows. I first tried it without the symbols and that wasn't helpful. Then I tried it with Microsoft's symbol server and downloaded symbols and it kept failing. First I had to deal with:

Unable to load image ntoskrnl.exe, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ntoskrnl.exe
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for ntoskrnl.exe

Then I had to deal with:

***** Kernel symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis.

Finally after setting everything up from the WinDbg GUI instead of using command line options, everything worked and I got some very helpful information:

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  0x9F_IMAGE_el90XND5.SYS

BUCKET_ID:  OLD_IMAGE_el90XND5.SYS

It was almost like magic. After failing for no apparent reason, WinDbg now worked and it gave me exactly what I wanted. El90XND5.SYS is the 3C900 driver.

I wonder if there are any 10BASE2 cards which are officially supported in Vista.

When did Bell start charging for incoming text messages?

I read that Bell would start charging for incoming text messages on August 8th. After August 8th I checked my unbilled usage and incoming text messages were free, appearing under included events. In September I checked the bill and I saw I was only charged for outgoing text messages. After this I assumed that incoming text messages are free. Then I checked my unbilled usage for the next month and incoming text messages weren't free anymore. So I guess Bell starts charging for text messages when a new billing period starts after the date when they said they'll start. The lady at *611 was immediately willing to remove charges for incoming text messages up to now this month when I explained this, which was impressive. I'm certainly not happy with how Bell is charging for incoming text messages though.

I'm not too impressed with Photosynth

When I first learnt about Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth I was impressed. The idea of connecting together photos of a scene based on their points of view and placing them appropriately in 3D seemed to have potential and the demo video of St. Mark's Square was impressive. I eagerly anticipated being able to use the technology with my own photos.

Recently I found out that Photosynth is finally available for use by anyone via the photosynth.net web site. It's all done with a Windows application which integrates with the website as a browser plugin. Windows XP or Vista is required, and it seems the application does all the work, so the website integration doesn't seem necessary. However, I'm not really complaining because it's by Microsoft and the overall experience is quite smooth.

I first tried it out with photos of the Nanaimo waterfront downtown. That was an almost total failure. It was too much to ask it to really understand a 3D scene, and I bet the water, sky and and changing lighting also confused it. After this I decided to try other examples where there is more overlap. My second attempt was with the downtown Detroit viewed from across the river in Windsor. There I had plenty of overlap and the angles weren't too different. This didn't work too well either. I was surprised and disappointed by how shots from almost identical angles in different lighting conditions didn't connect.

Finally I had some success with photos from the Georgian Bay shore of the Bruce Peninsula. There, Photosynth seemed to work quite well, dealing with seasonal differences and obscuration. I guess what made it work was consistent lighting and certain obvious features. This showed that photosynth had some potential.

I then made some more synths. It wasn't easy to find candidate images. In most cases I didn't have enough photos of the same thing to attempt to make a synth because I didn't keep many similar viewpoints. Then I remembered that I saved some photos to disc before selecting which ones I wanted to keep and I found candidate images there. I only considered groups involving views from multiple points; I feel photos taken from a single point should be joined into a panorama instead. I only got a 100% synthy result once, but with the other results I re-did the synth with only the images that would link up because I felt it's pointless to keep unlinked images. You can see all of my results at my profile page at photosynth.net.

This was fun, but it wasn't too impressive. My main complaint is that when I view synths they don't feel very 3D. A lot of viewpoint changes feel like transforming 2D images and switching between them rather than navigation through a 3D space, and the point clouds don't seem impressive. This even holds true with many examples by others which involve far more photos. I prefer panoramas for a single viewpoint and Panoramio's Look Around feature for multiple viewpoints. The Look Around feature seems to be more effective at linking up images and it links up images taken by different people.

Simple Belkin Tunecast 3 mod to boost signal

In my Belkin Tunecast 3 FM transmitter disassembly article I noted that "The radio signal is attenuated before being passed to the antenna". Attenuator may be seen on the back of the circuit board between the FM transmitter IC and the antenna. Here is a closeup:
The pin at the top left corner of the IC in the bottom right is the RF output and the wire connection near the L5 marking near the top left is the antenna. Here is a schematic:
It would be simple to remove C38 and connect the internal antenna directly to pin 12. This would result in a more powerful signal. One could also connect an external antenna to pin 12. It might be better to put a capacitor between pin 12 and the external antenna; one circuit diagram uses 10pF. Note that some modifications may increase the signal beyond permitted limits.

Two-faced marketing of MasterCard® SecureCode™

MasterCard® SecureCode™ apparently authenticates online transactions with the card issuing financial institution using a PIN. But check out what the FAQs say! The FAQ for cardholders says SecureCode™ "is" something that protects them against unauthorized use and the FAQ for merchants says it "is" something that protects them against chargebacks. It can seem quite deceptive as in "I thought this was for my protection but it's for the other party's protection!" Though I guess one could also argue that the only problem is that the question should be what does it offer you rather than what it is. I'm also reminded of E-Prime.

Belkin Tunecast 3 FM transmitter disassembly

I just disassembled my Belkin Tunecast 3 FM transmitter. It's pretty easy to open. I first removed the battery cover from the back by sliding it down. (That cover comes off far too easily!) Then I pried the black front outward from the white inner part to disengage the plastic teeth holding the two together. You can see what I mean in this photo:

Here are the closeups of both sides of the circuit board. You can click on any of the images to see a higher resolution version.


The ICs are marked, but it was hard to take a good photo of all the markings. The largest (rectangular) IC on the bottom is a BH1418F FM stereo transmitter. The small square chip is a Cypress CY8C21434 mixed signal array, which contains a microcontroller and configurable analog and digital circuitry. (I have no idea why they couldn't just use a microcontroller.) The small rectangular IC is labelled L640 6V17W. I haven't been able to identify it.

The top of the board has three rows of interesting holes with labels:
SDA SCLK X GND +
GND_D GND ? MISO MOSI
VCC_3.3V HLD(inverted) CS(inverted)
The labels remind me of I2C and SPI.

The antenna is the red wire seen along the top of the last photo. The attachment near the bottom is the actual connection to the antenna. Near the top it seems like it might connect to ground but it does not.

In the case of some devices, a lot of information may be obtained through FCC ID search. However, the information available for this device (ID: K7SF8M010) is quite limited because the interesting parts are confidential and not available from the FCC (see the summary list). The only part I found interesting is the operational description. Some interesting points there:

• The device is powered via 3.75VDC from an onboard SMPS
  
• The audio signal is filtered and attenuated before being passed to the FM modulator IC
• The radio signal is attenuated before being passed to the antenna

The story of the antihat

I normally don't wear a hat when I go outdoors. My mom on various occasions told me to wear a hat for protection from the sun, and today I finally wore a fishing hat (which I had around for some unknown reason). Today my scalp got sunburned. This has never happened before, and I cannot think of any other possible reason besides the hat. It's like the hat is an antihat!

(I guess what happened is my hear stuck together from sweat under the hat and this let far more sun get to my scalp during the times when I wasn't wearing the hat.)

Best argument ever for raves being free

Alienz said:
the thing is, i don't MIND just taking.....

i paid for it

why should i bring anything.

i brought my $250.

that's what i brought to it

I think that's the best argument for why raves should be free. It seems to me the idea is people contribute to the experience. For him it is about appreciating the art as a consumer. Though on second thought maybe there's nothing wrong with that either.