RoE | Blog

Author: Espionage724

  • Wired a ATX Power Supply to a Xbox 360

    Wired a ATX Power Supply to a Xbox 360

    So I recently picked up a Xbox 360 off of eBay (got a really good deal on it for $25). Has a tiny bit of cosmetic damage, but it seems to run fine. The console didn’t come with any cables however, but I had a spare HDMI cable and controller lying around. What I didn’t have was a spare power brick though, nor a regular ATX power supply with appropriate output power.

    The Xbox 360 I received is a late-model Jasper unit (last unit before the Slim models). Mine also seems to be one of the rarer ones with internal memory (512MB of it), which is pretty nice. There was save data from the previous owner on both storage devices though, so once I got the console up and running, I did a factory-reset on it (more on that in a little bit).

    So, the Xbox 360 was in good looking condition, but having nothing to power it wasn’t really helpful. I started asking some people about whether they had a spare power brick, and even ran downtown to see if a few thrift stores happened to have any (unfortunately all the stores I checked were closed). Eventually a friend of mine finds a relatively decent ATX power supply that I could borrow, so I ran down his place to pick it up, along with a game. The power supply ended up being a Antec EarthWatts EA-500, and has more than enough power to run the Xbox 360 (the Jasper unit needs at least 150W, 12A on the 12V rail and 1A on 5V).

    I then did a little bit more research into how to actually hook the PSU up, and found that it was actually relatively simple to just use the power from the Molex adapters (preferably more than one so load can be distributed). You could also use power from the CPU power connectors, or the 20+4 cable itself if you know what you’re doing.

    I used two molex connectors from the PSU, and made sure that both connectors were on separate cables. Since this wasn’t my PSU, I couldn’t just splice the wire, so I cut some female molex adapters I had lying around and used those.

    On a standard molex connector, you have a yellow wire, two black wires, and a red wire. You could probably find more definite answers elsewhere as to what they do (and you probably should), but my limited understanding is that the yellow wire is positive, and the black wires are negative. Red is said to be the 5V standby.

    Inside the Xbox 360 power port, you have a bottom row of three holes. Above that is another row of three holes. And on the top, you have two pins (at least on Jasper; I think early models have a single bar). The general idea is to hook the black wires on the molex connector to the bottom three holes, the yellow wires to the three holes above, and a red wire to the left pin. The right-top pin is unused (I’m unsure what it does, but similar guides seem to ignore it as well). For the six holes, jamming a thick wire into the hole should be all that’s needed for a snug connection. For the pin at top, I had to fold the wire over once to make it a little bit thicker, then I just pushed it in the space.

    Since there isn’t an actual motherboard controlling the PSU on the 20+4 connector, you have to power it on via the pin short trick (aka the paper clip test method). It involves connecting the green wire to a nearby black wire.

    So once everything was securely hooked up, I turned on the PSU (switch on the back), and then pushed the power button on the Xbox itself. No explosions, pops, or smoke were seen, and the Xbox powered on. Played a little bit of some Need for Speed game just to make sure the PSU could handle load, and it did without issue.

    Overall, this mod turned out great, and was a nice learning process. I’m unsure how it will hold up overtime, and the general consensus from others who’ve done the mod is that such a setup shouldn’t be ran long-term for some reason. I plan on ordering a power brick at some point in the near future though, so I likely won’t keep such a setup long-term either, but it is nice to know that this is easily possible.

    Now back to the factory-reset. After I verified the console works and I got it in an ideal location, I decided to try factory-resetting the Xbox, erase all content on the storage devices, and restore my profile onto it. Erasing the storage devices was simple enough. Factory-resetting however was a bit more difficult.

    With a bit of searching, it seems you can factory-reset a Xbox 360 by pressing a ten-length button combination on the System Info screen. The catch is, it seems this button combination isn’t consistent between users and devices, so searching online for this combination is a gamble. May get lucky with the first combination you try, maybe the fifth, or maybe none at all.

    The standard button combination begins with LT, RT, X, Y, LB, RB. The next four buttons after is what varies. I called up Xbox support and after verifying my account ownership and giving the representative my console’s serial number, I was provided with a button combination that worked (LT, RT, X, Y, LB, RB, Left, Left, Down, X; use the D-pad to enter arrow directions). I’m unsure what determines this button combination, or whether or not it changes over-time.

    Once that was handled, I restored my gamer profile, and all was well after that. At some point, I plan on grabbing a copy of Warriors Orochi 3 and possibly Diablo III and playing them.

    As for how I got the Xbox for $25, I decided to check eBay one day when I saw a friend selling his console, and wanted to get a general price on it. Was total luck that I saw the $25 listing, and was lucky I even got the order in for it (there was a quantity of 20 listed, I bought one, and then someone came by and bought the last seven). The seller claims he was trying to get rid of old stock to make-room for a new batch. This was the listing here.

  • Wanted to download StarCraft, and did it!

    Wanted to download StarCraft, and did it!

    I wanted to play a few classic games as of lately, and StarCraft was one of those games. I lost my CD key a while back though, but a friend was kind enough to allow me to use his.

    In the past, Blizzard games had a normal CD key. With the new feature of being able to add classic games to your Battle.net account however, this introduced another key. And to make matters even more interesting, the keys are not interchangeable (so only the classic CD key could be used with the classic installers, while the new Battle.net keys can only be used with the digital download installers). The key my friend gave me was the digital download version.

    I knew Blizzard allowed you to download some of their game client downloaders, so I went over to their site to look for StarCraft. As it would seem however, Blizzard doesn’t allow you to download their classic games unless you have them attached to your Battle.net account.

    So the next idea I had was to just find someone who had StarCraft attached to their account, have them get the downloader, and upload it somewhere for me to use. This proved a bit difficult at first, but I eventually found another friend who owned it, and he was able to provide me with the downloader. Blizzard’s ownership verification seems to stretch far however, and I was unable to use the downloader. I’m unsure how they actually verify ownership at this point.

    I was curious as to what the View tab had on the downloader, but once the Error message appears, you can no longer interact with the downloader window, and pressing OK or closing the Error window results in the downloader closing. So in order to see what the View tab had, I just opened up a downloader for a game I actually had on my account (WarCraft III). There was a Connection Info option and a Log option, and both ended up providing some useful information.

    So lets start with the Connection Info option. There’s a couple of interesting addresses shown here. Most notable was the rouge.blizzard.com address, but following up on that didn’t really lead to anything useful. The important bit was the Download Hash. Searching that hash on Google pulled up some torrents for the WarCraft III download.

    Next is the Log option. It was less interesting, but the important bit here was the tracker address.

    So the next task was to just get the Download Hash for StarCraft. I noticed there was a little bit of delay between when the downloader opened and the Error message appeared. I figured the downloader did something internet-related during that period, so I had the idea of just slowing down my connection a bit in order to delay the Error message from appearing (was as simple as just re-opening WarCraft III’s downloader). This worked surprisingly, and I was able to get to the Connection Info section.

    I searched StarCraft’s download hash in Google, and managed to find a torrent for it. I also added Blizzard’s tracker announcer URL to the torrent as well, and gained some peers from it, and so far, it seems to be downloading nicely.

    Once the download completed, I verified it, and installed it without any issue.

    Information:
    StarCraft Download Hash (enUS): 59688D4CC5EA7E2186F2651C8E87987B273972C9
    WarCraft III Download Hash (enUS): BB58D8C639601EAC07AA6D6273B0F443B2836FF9
    Blizzard Tracker Announcer URL: http://us.tracker.worldofwarcraft.com:3724/announce
    StarCraft Magnet URL: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=5Z6jEV9g

  • My Process For Making “People Chow 3.0.1”

    My Process For Making “People Chow 3.0.1”

    I’ve been making People Chow for about a week now, so I figure I’d just present how I prepare it.

    These are the ingredients I use in order to prepare People Chow. Everything aside from the oil, salt, and corn flour was ordered online. The oil is Crisco Vegetable Oil. This recipe also uses water. To the right is a small scale and cup.

    First I’ll start off with some salt, about 4 grams of it.

    Next is the Whey Protein Isolate. It barely fit the small cup I was using. I’m using a Vanilla-flavored variant since it was the only kind I could find on Wal-Mart’s online store.
    Next is 23 grams of Vanilla Bean GNC Mega Men Sport. It’s basically a multivitamin-powder. The vanilla taste is pretty nice.

    In goes the Choline Bitartrate, 2 grams of it.

    And next is 6 grams of Potassium Citrate. It’s a bit coarser than everything else.

    Next is 6 grams of Calcium/Magnesium Citrate.

    And here is 50 grams of Soybean Oil.

    And finally, 345 grams of corn flour. Was no way that was fitting in the small cup, so I just found a larger cup.
    I measure out the ingredients one at a time, and add them to a large container. The container I use is an emptied Green Tea container.
    The corn flour was a bit of a hassle initially to get into the container. I’ve tried a few methods for getting it in, like taking a small spoonful and just pouring it into the container (boring and time-consuming), and then by pouring liquid into the cup and trying to get most of the flour out (a bit messy).
    The method I use now is just scoop some out of the cup and place it into the funnel, and use a chopstick to stir the flour through the hole. Much faster than the other methods I tried.

    Once all the ingredients are in the container, I add some water, and then shake the container to mix the ingredients. I find that filling it about 1/3rd the way full gives an ideal smoothie-like texture. I use lukewarm water.

    After shaking, I put it into the fridge and let it sit overnight. I find this helps improve the texture and taste quite a bit. It’s also nice to have it ready for consumption right in the morning.

    I use a small, but wide glass cup (not sure on a specific name for it) for drinking People Chow, and just grab a cup of it whenever I feel like it.

    If I got the calculations right, all of the ingredients shown above (minus the oil and corn flour) should last at least a month. The Whey Protein Isolate should last way longer than that. Would need about 5-6 bags of the corn flour per-month, but the price of it should be really good if you can pick it up in-store (emphasis on in-store; online prices are usually much higher, especially on Amazon strictly because of this recipe).

    I recently bought a new container with a large lid opening, so that should make future batches much easier to make. It was about $4 in a local store, and it has a nice secure lid.

    Here is a list of the ingredients I used and where I bought them:

    MASECA Instant Corn Flour Masa Mix (Giant Eagle)
    NOW Foods Whey Protein Isolate Natural Vanilla Powder (Wal-Mart)
    GNC Men’s Mega Men Sport Vanilla Bean (Amazon)
    NOW Foods Cal-Mag Citrate (Amazon)
    BulkSupplements Pure Potassium Citrate Powder (Amazon)
    Morton Iodized Salt (Giant Eagle)
    Pure Choline Bitartrate Bulk Powder (Amazon)
    Crisco Pure Vegetable Oil (Giant Eagle)

  • Mixed Up My First Batch of People Chow

    …and it was pretty messy.

    I mixed up some of the ingredients last night to prepare for when I got the final ingredient I needed today (the Whey Protein Isolate) in a blender. I didn’t add any oil or water to the mix. This was the first mistake.

    My blender only fits about 5 1/2 cups of liquid. Adding all the ingredients minus the water used about 4 cups of that space, and trying to blend through all that powder doesn’t work.

    I added some water to the top of the mix, stirred as much of it as I could, then transferred a bit over to another container. I continued to do this until the container was about half-full. By that time, I was also able to use the blender to mix the remaining ingredients with some water.

    I added a bit of water to the container, and shook it to try to mix the clumps that were in it, and then transferred what was left in the blender into it. The mix took up the entire container. So I transferred some of it back to the blender, blended it, and put it back into the container, and repeated this process a few times. A tiny bit of People Chow was lost during this process (a bit spilled over the side).

    Eventually I ended up with what I believe is an evenly-mixed batch of People Chow. I sat it in the fridge to allow it to settle for a bit, so I’ll see how it turned out later; should be pretty interesting. It has a bit of a smoothie-like texture to it.

    For the next batch, I plan on using a 2-gallon container; that should give plenty of room for shake-mixing the ingredients together, and allow me to experiment with different levels of water.

    For anyone who doesn’t know what People Chow is, it’s a popular DIY soylent recipe designed to be nutrient-complete. It’s basically everything you need nutrient-wise (for the most part; body builders may want to add more protein, but you’re free to modify it however you want really), put into a convenient drink mixture. It’s designed to be inexpensive as well.

    And for anyone who wants more information on official Soylent, you can check it out here. Once they get the handling time handled, I would love to order some to try it out.

  • Got NTKTV Running in Linux!

    I’m currently studying Japanese. I’m nowhere near good enough yet to understand Japanese media without subtitles, but I still like trying to watch in hopes that I’ll pick up on a few words or something.

    I came across an archive containing what seems to be an unrestricted version of NTKTV, containing access to several channels. It’s coded in Java also, but it expects Windows, Command Prompt, and Windows Media Player to be present.

    When I initially tried running the .jar file for the TBS channel on Linux, it refused to download the video. I couldn’t quite figure out why this was happening, so I figured I would try a different approach. I used some program to decompile the .jar, and after a little bit of searching, I eventually found a URL.

    The URL in the TBS channel lead to http://61.172.249.113:8080/jptv24vod/TBS01.xml which contains a mms address, followed by a list of available video files. So with that in-mind, I just took the mms address + a video file, and put that address into VLC media player.

    This method worked, but it was not reliable. Sometimes it would work, but most of the times VLC would complain about not being able to find the file. When it did work though, it would work without issue for a few hours. This also led me to create a playlist, and in this playlist, I queued up an entire day’s worth of video. Was relatively easy to do since the video files all follow a certain format (TBS01_20141022_1800.asf = TBS01 (channel) + YYYY-MM-DD + Hour). If I recall correctly, this allowed for seamless playback of media from NTKTV’s server. This method of streaming got more unreliable as time went on, and I eventually just gave up on it, and continued to use the .jar file on Windows for some time.

    I decided to check a forum thread about methods for streaming Japanese TV again a little bit ago, and saw that someone mentioned they had gotten NTKTV working on OS X (but they didn’t bother to post how). I replied to another post about why it didn’t work on Linux, and an idea hit me.

    The way NTKTV works is, it downloads a small chunk of the video from the server to the OS’s temp folder, opens up Windows Media Player, and then continues to download the rest of the video in the background, while WMP plays it back. The issue on Linux however was that the video refused to start downloading at all.

    When starting the .jar file in Terminal, I noticed a os_temp: line (which I somehow missed months ago). This line by-default led to /tmp/. My user account however does not have RW access to this folder, and I imagine this is the reason why the .jar couldn’t initiate the download. So the idea here was to change where Java should throw temporary files.

    With a little bit of searching, I came across this page, which mentioned the command java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/path/to/tmpdir. I simply added that to the command I was using, and lo and behold, NTKTV’s app downloaded files just fine.

    Playback is fine with mpv 🙂

    My next objective is to figure out how to get my Chromecast involved. Was easy in Windows; just relied on VLC’s browser plugin, casted the tab, and threw the .asf into Chrome. Now that NPAPI plugin support is gone from Chrome in Linux however, the plugin no longer works.

    Edit: Videostream seems to do a great job. It can also handle video files that are still downloading in the background too.

    And for anyone curious, the full command I use to set the tmp directory and launch the .jar file is: java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/home/espionage724/tmp -jar ‘/home/espionage724/Videos/ntktv/Kantofixed/TBS.jar’

  • My Terrible RMA Experience With ASRock

    This is my first attempt at doing an RMA with ASRock, and it may very well be the last time I do business with them.

    A couple of months back, I was looking to purchase a new motherboard, as the BIOSTAR A880G+ I had was starting to show it’s age, along with not having too much room for future upgrades. The main features I was looking into when deciding on what motherboard to purchase were:

    – UEFI
    – AM3+
    – Support for AMD’s highest-end FX processors (at the time).

    There was a decent motherboard from MSI I had my eye on, but due to reviews, it seemed to of had mixed reviews on higher-end FX processor compatibility. So that’s when I settled for the ASRock 970 Extreme3 motherboard. At the time of purchase, this motherboard on ASRock’s product page had listed support for the FX-8350.

    So I get the motherboard, and all is well for a couple of months. I finally got enough money gathered up, and decided I wanted to get that FX-8350 I planned on buying. I wanted to see how good this motherboard was with overclocking higher-end FX processors, so I went to check out some reviews from other people. That’s when the problems began.

    To my surprise, there were plenty of mixed-results about how the FX-8350 performed on the 970 Extreme3. There were reviews ranging from the processor working fine at stock clocks, throttling under load, not having much overclocking room, down to the motherboard just not posting at all (to be fair, I’m pretty sure a BIOS update could resolve posting issues). I also noticed a review that said that ASRock removed the processor support note for the FX-8350.

    I had to see it for myself, so I went over to ASRock’s product page, and sure enough, the FX-8350 was no longer on the support list for the 970 Extreme3. I didn’t think ASRock would originally list support for that processor without first checking it for themselves,so I decided to contact their tech support and inquire more into the matter.

    The tech I spoke to was pretty helpful. He explained that the FX-8350 draws a large amount of power, and thus generates a good bit of heat. Depending on the environment, this could cause the VRM chips to overheat, and cause the processor to throttle. He also recommended that if I were to buy such a processor, to put a chassis fan over the VRM area to help prevent such overheating. So, turns out the processor would “work”, but not as ideally as I was originally led to believe.

    I asked if I could exchange the motherboard for one that had true FX-8350 compatibility, and was told that customer support would contact me within 24-hours. Sadly, that’s the extent of how great ASRock’s customer support seems to be.

    Five days have passed, and I haven’t heard from customer support yet. I send an email to the tech I was speaking to stating I would call up customer support later that day, and asked if he had a reference number or something. He said to just let them know I already spoke to tech support so they don’t redirect back to them. Seemed slightly sketchy that they don’t just communicate better, but alright.

    Called up ASRock’s customer service, and eventually was able to speak to a person. I explained my situation fully along with mentioning I spoke to tech support already, and was told that I would receive an email with instructions to begin the RMA process. No problem; got the email a short time later, filled it out (once again detailing my situation fully), and also asked that the replacement motherboard be a Fatal1ty 990FX Killer (may of been a bit greedy with that request), but also said that it was ultimately up to them to decide what I get. At the least, I expected the 970 Extreme3 R2.0 board, which does advertise FX-8350 compatibility.

    Two days go by and I haven’t heard anything. I call up customer support again, and can’t get a hold of the original person I spoke to. Was able to talk to another representative though, and I re-explained my situation. He then told me to email him a copy of the RMA request form along with the invoice. I sent it over, and waited a bit, but since I didn’t hear anything with the first request, I decided to call-in again just to confirm they can receive the emails. Was able to confirm they got the email that time.

    Later on that day I get approved for the RMA, and get sent instructions as to how to send the motherboard. I send off the motherboard, and it gets to ASRock about six days later.

    Three days pass, and I haven’t heard anything more from customer support, so I send them an email. Didn’t hear anything back that same day, but the next day I call them up and ask about it. Was told that it would take some time to test a new motherboard to verify it works, and was also told that I would be emailed when they shipped it out with a tracking number. I thought everything would be fine after that, so I just decided to wait until I got my new motherboard.

    Eleven days pass now, without any updates from ASRock as to when they would ship my new motherboard. Getting concerned, I decide to try to call up ASRock today and ask what was going on, but was only able to get their general mailbox (during office hours). I went off to do some other things, and to my surprise, a package from FedEx arrives. Checked it out, and it was from ASRock. Was strange they didn’t even bother giving me an email that they shipped the thing, but that was fine, because I finally got the motherboard.

    I open the box up, and noticed the motherboard looked awfully familiar. Looked at it up and down in full detail, and confirmed it was the same model (but not the same exact) motherboard that I sent in originally. I was baffled by this discovery, but then I thought that maybe ASRock just modified the board in some way to meet my original request (which was to get a new motherboard that could truly handle the FX-8350 processor). I called up ASRock once again just to see if this was the case.

    The customer support representative I spoke to wasn’t entirely helpful, just said that I should have received a replacement motherboard. I asked if it was modified in any way, and she offered to transfer me to the tech that handled the RMA request. I accepted the offer, and was put on hold for about 5-10 minutes before the customer support rep came back and said that the tech was busy, and asked if I wanted to wait (with no ETA), or just get a call back from the tech. I took the latter, and went off to do other things.

    Got a call back later in the day from the tech, and explained my situation yet again. The tech however didn’t seem to care, and along with stating “the FX-8350 won’t work on that motherboard” also threw the assumption that I “just wanted a free motherboard”. Seriously? Why was my RMA request even accepted if it wasn’t even going to be honored? He also said I could just pay the difference for a new motherboard, but wasn’t aware of any pricing or anything. I re-explained the situation again, and he put me on hold to talk to customer support. Was on hold for about 5 minutes before a customer support rep came on the line and without apologizing, told me that they could do an exchange for the 970 Extreme3 R2.0 board, but I had to send the original customer support rep I spoke to my new motherboard’s serial number (you would think they would just know). Was also told that I had to ship the motherboard I received back to them first too.

    I’m not made of money. I paid to ship the motherboard to ASRock originally, and expected them to honor my RMA request, and they didn’t. So along with wasting my time, I now have to pay for shipping once again to give them the motherboard back? I sent the email with the serial number, and also requested a prepaid shipping label, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they denied such a request.

    There is some serious lack-of communication down in ASRock America’s office, and it’s not something I would want anyone to have to deal with. I’ll still be keeping in-contact with ASRock to get this ordeal settled (and will update here accordingly), but I won’t be purchasing from them in the future, or recommending them to others. This was probably my most frustrating RMA process yet.

    Update: I have detailed the rest of the experience over on reddit and pastebin. It’s been a bit of time since the ordeal, so I’m not certain I can really detail how the rest of the experience played out like I did here up until now without essentially copy and pasting. To quickly sum-up as to what happened though, ASRock sent me a prepaid label (with some difficulty), dropped contact for a while once again, then told me I had to pay $50 to upgrade my board out of nowhere. Ended up calling back later to decline, and they told me they couldn’t do the paid upgrade anyway, so there was wasted effort all around. Got the BBB involved (led nowhere except another negative mark on ASRock America’s BBB profile), and Newegg involved (with a bit of pushing, they agreed in the end to refund my motherboard, but I had already gotten rid of it).

    My advice is to not buy products from ASRock. They don’t check their hardware to be fully compatible with components they state, and they clearly don’t have the customer’s best interest in-mind. I can also say the two motherboards I’ve owned from ASRock were pretty questionable quality-wise too. I had a Fatal1ty H97 Killer (relatively newer board), and the board was incredibly flexible in the middle.

  • Story of my Gateway VX1120 and Custom Refresh Rates on Windows and Linux

    A few months ago I picked up a Gateway VX1120 from a computer store in town for $5, not knowing if it would work or not. I was always a fan of CRT monitors, and seeing something of this size, I had to jump on it.

    Got it home, plugged it in, and found out that it worked fine. Instantly replaced the Acer S201HL I was using without regrets. Colors were more vibrant, and animations are much smoother (one of my favorite things to do when switching from LCD to CRT is to move a window across my desktop to observe the smoothness). Plus the resolutions available were extensive, so I was sure I could find the right resolution to use daily. The other CRT monitors I have in the house were limited to around 1024×768, or something slightly higher at a lower refresh rate, so they weren’t too ideal.

    After some time, I found that the resolution of 1280×960 suited perfectly as a default resolution. It’s not high enough to make text hard to see, and at the same time, it’s large enough for the desktop not to feel cramped. The highest stock refresh rate for this resolution was 85Hz, which was great and all, but I soon looked into a way to improve that.

    On Windows, I used a tool called Custom Resolution Utility (CRU). It allowed me to generate custom resolutions and refresh rates. I wanted to run at 120Hz just to be able to claim I had such a monitor, so that was the first refresh rate I tried. It didn’t work; and the monitor complained about the frequency being out-of-range.

    After a little bit of research, I found that my horizontal scan frequency could go as high as 121kHz. So going by that, I then had the idea to keep trying resolutions with CRU until my horizontal scan frequency was just under that limit. Lucky me, 119Hz seemed to have worked fine.

    So in Windows, the refresh rate wasn’t too hard to handle. Things got a bit more interesting when I went over to Linux however. I use an AMD Radeon HD 7850 graphics card (this specifically), so I have the choice of either using AMD’s proprietary driver (fglrx), or the open-source drivers. The refresh rate on my screen however seems to act differently depending on which driver I use though.

    If I recall correctly, I was able to use the CVT-generated 119Hz with fglrx without issue (it’s been a while since I used fglrx with this monitor), but this wasn’t the case with the open-source driver.

    Looking back at cvt, I noticed that my hsync value was 122.59 for 119Hz. Definitely over the 121kHZ limit, so then I tried going to 118Hz. It ended up at 121.45, which was still over the limit. I wasn’t sure if 121kHZ was a hard limit, so I added the refresh rate and tried it anyway. Both 119Hz and 118Hz failed to work; so I tried 117Hz. Got the hsync value of 120.31, which was safely under the limit, and worked fine.

    I’m unsure how CRU and cvt generate the numbers they do, but a comparison at some point would be a great idea, whenever I find the time to do so.

    So far, this monitor is still working great, and I have no plans of replacing it anytime soon, unless I go back to my standing desk setup.

  • Google Glass and Home Try-on Kit Review

    I recently had the privilege of trying out Google’s various Glass frames via their home try-on kit, and even managed to get two different units running! Here’s my review.

    I received the kit on Friday. After observing the different frames, I found that I favor the white color scheme with the Thin frame. The brown with the Curved frame was my least favorite, in both color scheme and the frame itself (a bit too round for me). I would prefer a frame that is more of a rectangular shape however, with a smaller height than what the current frames offer (maybe about ⅔ of the current size I believe would look good personally). But overall, Google does a decent job of providing different frames for most people.




    After looking around the Glass unit a bit, I eventually found the power button, and to my surprise, the unit actually turned on. I was under the impression that the units being sent out were totally non-functional, but was impressed to see the unit turn on, display the Glass start screen, and eventually the low-battery warning. This was the beginning of a rather interesting experiment.

    Ripped open Glass, for science!
    The first objective was to get Glass open. After failing to open the device with brute force, I decided to check out a teardown guide. There was a convenient teardown guide over at catwig that provided enough info for me to get inside the unit, albeit with a bit of a mess. But to be fair, most of the damage wasn’t immediately visible to onlookers anyway.

    The next objective was to figure out how to get power to the unit. Knowing what little I do about USB ports and electricity, there should be at least one thing for power, and another for ground I figured. I checked out a pinout of a micro USB port, and was able to find that the first and last pins did just that. I then proceeded to make a makeshift charger, which consisted of a Nexus 7 charger port, a clipped USB cord, and sewing needles attached to the red and black wires of the USB cord (green and white unused).

    It took a bit of effort (along with trial and error), but I managed to jam the needles into the tiny space between the connectors, and the Glass unit powered on. I then decided it would be best to leave the unit to actually charge for a bit before trying to mess with it.

    Really annoying to plug in
    After waiting about 20-30 minutes, my eagerness kicked-in and I then decided to throw Glass on to check it out. I learned that the touchpad didn’t work, but that was fixed by simply making sure the cord was pressed back in it’s port, and rebooting. After that minor setback, I was then able to set Glass up with my Nexus 7. I looked through the few cards that were present, but I then noticed battery was still a bit low, so I decided to rig the charger back up, did a little bit research as to how to use Glass, and went to bed for the night.

    The first bit of knowledge I found was that it takes about an hour for Glass to be mostly (if not fully) charged. Other knowledge I learned was that Glassware are like apps for Glass, Glass itself has WiFi (only 2.4GHz), and I was able to check out the serial number and software version for that Glass unit. The software version on the Glass proved to be rather interesting a bit later in my testing, but here’s a bit of side info about it.

    At least two of the Glass units that I powered on both had the software version of XE13, and according to various sources online, such an update doesn’t exist. One thing I noticed with this version is that the shutdown screen has a blue and then red outline that flashes on the outer edge. This behavior may be consistent with some developer setting present in Android, but the rest of the interface that I’ve seen didn’t show such outlines. The debug setting is also enabled by-default. I also noticed I was able to somehow force a manual bug report (there was a card showing for it), and I also noticed that I was able to get a glimpse of an Android interface on Screencast during Glass’s initial startup.

    I also seem unable to receive any Glass software updates. Perhaps all the try-on kits have this version, but I wonder why. Maybe Google made such a version to keep track of special-scenario units, like store models. It’s mainly speculation at this point, but it is rather interesting nonetheless.

    I got a few hours with Glass to myself on Saturday, and liked what I saw. Voice commands worked really well, and even had no problems on picking up my kind-of quiet voice. Touchpad commands worked well enough, but one major annoyance I ran into was the down-swipe. Most of the time, Glass wants to register it as a small left or right move. It could just be the angle of Glass on my face, or maybe the implementation needs a bit of work to get right.

    The Glass unit ran rather smoothly most of the time, but there were times where it got noticeably slow, usually for a short time right after taking a picture or video. The worst was probably right after boot, but that’s to be expected. Video recording with Glass was smooth though, unlike on my older phone where the video can hitch if something occurs in the background.

    Another problem in my case was that I happened to use prescription glasses. I’m nearsighted, but I find Glass to be hard to read. You can’t seemingly just attach your own frames to Glass either. I’m sure I could of just took out the demonstration frames and crudely attached Glass to my own glasses, but with the rather sub-par battery life and makeshift charger, this wouldn’t of proved too ideal. In the end, I found that I could wear Glass with the demonstration frames on-top of my actual glasses. Probably would look a bit strange, but hey, it works. If you actually purchase Glass, getting prescription lenses in one of Google’s frames should be possible. Although I have no personal feedback, I imagine contact usage with Glass would work flawlessly also.

    The final problem I have with Glass is the battery life. Although it manages to charge up rather quickly, it also seems to drain pretty quickly too. I don’t have specific time details, but after taking Glass off the charger from 100% and then shifting through a few cards and checking out settings and possibly even a reboot, the battery was down to 84% already. To be fair though, this could be specific to the Glass hardware I have. Maybe these units intentionally have sub-par batteries in them. Maybe XE13 isn’t battery-optimized at all, and even has battery usage regressions. Maybe my charging method even affects overall battery life. Simply put, you should take my battery usage results with a grain of salt, but there are complaints from actual Glass Explorers also mentioning poor battery life.

    Overall, Saturday was a pretty good day with Glass, and I enjoyed my experience with it. The next day however was a seemingly different story. At some point earlier in the day Sunday, I decided to activate a few Glassware apps, which seemed to work fine at first. A bit later though, both my friend and I had difficulty with getting voice commands to function properly (“ok glass” would work fine, but following commands wouldn’t register). Moving to a more quiet environment didn’t help either. I didn’t quite know what the problem was, but figured a Factory Reset would fix the problem.

    The Factory Reset however brought upon new problems, the first being pairing with my Nexus 7. The initial pairing after the reset worked fine, but Glass didn’t want to communicate with the tablet, and rebooting Glass just prompted the pairing request again on both devices strangely. I figured a more in-depth reset was in order, and proceeded to reset Glass from a computer, and also cleared data for the MyGlass app on the tablet, and removed the previous Bluetooth pairing. After that, all was well again, and Glass and my tablet paired and worked fine with each other.

    After re-setting up Glass, I found that voice commands worked fine again. I then proceeded to re-enable some Glassware. Voice commands were fine for a short period afterwards, but then stopped working again. After reading a post online about someone with a similar issue, I narrowed the problem down to two Glassware apps, Facebook and Twitter specifically. I ended up turning both apps off, and voice commands worked again. I haven’t bothered to narrow down which Glassware was causing the problem though.

    The rest of the day was pretty good though. Had some food on the grill, and even took an obligatory picture through Glass. Took a picture of my mom’s cake for Mother’s Day too. Some neighbors also saw me with Glass on, but they didn’t show much interest.

    Early Monday morning, I got the idea to try to take my Glass experience to the next level, and attempted to rig an actual Micro-USB adapter to the unit I was using. Ended up tearing a port out of an old cell phone I had. I also managed to get the destroyed Micro-USB port out of the Glass unit by wiggling it until it came out (really bad idea, but luckily none of the USB pin contacts were snapped off the PCB).

    I have little experience with soldering, and didn’t have the necessary tools to really do small soldering work either, so I had to rely on another concept. Ideally, I was hoping the pins from the port would sit evenly on the PCB, and that the plastic port on Glass would keep the Micro-USB port seated exactly where the pins needed to go. This however, did not go as-planned, and failed miserably. Without the original Micro-USB port in-place, my makeshift charger couldn’t be used. On-top of that, the Glass unit started going into an infinite reboot loop too for some reason. Looks like the adventure with the white Glass unit has come to an end.

    But my adventure with Glass didn’t come to an end there necessarily. I decided to do a similar endeavor with the blue Glass unit later that day. Was a rather smooth process, and getting the unit open was much easier, along with being far cleaner. The second unit worked very similarly to the first, but there seems to be a strange issue that causes the unit to detect a charger being plugged in and unplugged randomly.

    Overall, my time with Google Glass and the home try-on kit has been informative, fun, and a bit annoying too. I got to get a feel for how Google Glass works, and I’m pretty confident now that I’ll be buying a pair once they become available at a lower price.