Capi's Corner

Today I finally received my brand-new Ocz Vertex2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G 120GB and eagerly wanted to install it in my 4-year-old HP workstation which currently is running Ubuntu 10.10 exclusively.

After setting up the alignment according to some tutorials I found online, I started the setup process. Shortly after starting the copy step of the installation, the whole process came to a grinding halt with filesystem errors. Looking into the kernel debug messages it seemed like SATA commands were causing errors. After checking hardware, cables and switching SATA ports, I began researching the issue and soon found that the issue might be fixed in the next firmware version of the drive. So I wanted to upgrade from 1.23 to 1.24, which could only be done in Windows…

After installing a trial of Windows 7, I finally wanted to upgrade the firmware, but the drive was not detected, but was accessible. The release notes indicated that I would need to switch to AHCI mode. After several attempts, includig a BIOS update, I realized that there was no way to do this with my old hardware, as my nForce 430 chipset simply doesn’t support it.

So my only remaining option was to simply try the kernel arguments I read to be the fix for 1.24 with the 1.23 hardware.

So, if you add the following kernel option during installation and afterwards for every boot, the disk seems to work quite well (source):

libata.force=norst

Actually, this forces the ATA driver in Linux to not issue any reset commands on the bus. I really don’t understand why this improves/fixes the problem, but it seems the device has issues when being reset on my chipset. I can also notice this that in 2 out of 3 attempts if I reboot the PC the disk is not recognized any more before I reboot again.

Despite these issues, the SSD now runs with astonishing performance with the suggested 32 head / 32 sector alignment, and a 512kB partition alignment scheme. After an initial TRIM with hdparm‘s wiper.sh I enabled -o discard for my ext4 partition and could also verify using hdparm that this results in the sectors being trimmed. Please note, that you need to manually compile and install the latest hdparm version on Ubuntu 10.10, as the included version fails with the very long free block list and doesn’t handle splitting the sectors in multiple requests. The latest version doesn’t have this issue any more.

I have lost the install CD of my Novatel Merlin U740, an older PCMCIA UMTS card. As a consequence I got no “Mobilink Connection Manager” after installing Windows 7 on my notebook. Fortunately I found this guide by Novatel Wireless which explains how to connect using only on-board tools in Windows Vista, by setting up a dial-up connection. It still works in Windows 7. The important part is to set the APN as part of the driver’s initialization string.

The telephone number you have to set is *99#, which should be provider-independent.

The following settings are for yesss.at only:
Username: web
Passwort: web

Remember to set the APN as part of the driver’s connection string in Window’s “Device Manager” as described in the PDF.

Again, for yesss.at this is: AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","web.yesss.at"

For this to work properly, the SIM must not have a PIN set, as otherwise the SIM will be locked and the dialer cannot dial out. For me this is ok, as it is a pre-paid card which can hardly be abused if it gets stolen, but your situation might be different, so please consider the security implications. (I suspect that it should be possible to unlock the SIM card somehow using the AT+CPIN=1234 command, but I did not research how to separate several initialization strings, as it did not work immediately.)

The solution works quite well for me, even under Windows 7. Disadvantage is that there is no way to tell the signal strength and exact mode of operation (despite the color-coded status led on the Merlin U740).

If you ever get to forget the default password of your router, you might have high chances of getting it back from the Default Router Passwords Database.

I am currently thinking a lot about the OpenMoko project. Unfortunately OpenMoko at the moment provides hardware which is limited to GPRS, Bluetooth, and/or USB 1.0 for connectivity. In autumn there should be the next generation which should include a WLAN (and maybe even UMTS?) support. It will be called Neo 1973 – GTA02.

Together with Austrian-based one “H.U.I. Starter” rate (250MB @ UMTS, reduction to 56kBit/s above, 10€/month) this would be a nice package. However, if I could have UMTS, well, that would be better. Personally, WLAN is even more important for me, I could use it in the office or in my home, where I have WLAN access available and fall back to GPRS while being “on the road”.

For me this means: standby for autumn, because I can’t afford to invest US-$300 now and another US-$450 in a couple of month. Still, I am really, really interested in OpenMoko (and normally I wouldn’t invest that amount of money into a hobby of mine). Which means, I am standing by and waiting for news from the OpenMoko community…

In the meantime, if you understand German, you could listen to this very interesting Chaosradio Express Podcast.

On YouTube there are some very interesting videos about the Neo 1973.

This is cool! If you want to have a mobile phone based on Linux and pure OpenSource software, OpenMoko might be the right thing for you! I’m not so much in mobile development, but I find this almost more appealing than the iPhone, which at the moment is a very closed platform. If I find some time for a hobby like this, this US-$ 300 would be a nice investment. I hope this becomes a success to reward the company and the idea to explictly invite hackers/developers (both software & hardware) to improve a phone. A nice contrast to the usual anti-reverse-engineering and “hacking” philosophy most companies go along with.

Edit 2007-07-18: I accidentially misspelled OpenMoko as OpenMonko in the inital release, both in the title and in the text. I corrected this and the URL of the article to reflect the real name of the project: OpenMoko.