[X] My Assistant

The kernel build died because of some unimplemented function in QEMU's userland emulation. So I decided to do a "proper" cross-compile instead (I'd set one up while the kernel was building in the chroot before, in order to build Gnash) and it went pretty painlessly. I'm using 5.9.0-rc4 right now to write this.

I kind of want to try benchmarking it, though, to see if it's performing notably better, since it's kind of hard to tell. Usually I scoff at benchmarks but now I'm curious just because this machine actually _feels_ like it's running a little cooler. It could be placebo but I'm usually pretty good at calling bullshit on those. Being highly cynical of any and all claims helps with that.

Not sure how significant it is, still.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 15 2020, 07:58

When they see me coming, all the kernels panic.

Working out all the logistics of using a mobile radio on a bicycle. Stuff so far:

Already had a 13.8V dc-dc buck module that tolerates 16-32v or so input.
Also had a milwaukee M18 battery cradle, and a supply of batteries. 9aH at 18V is a hefty enough pack for about anything I'd do with it.

Made an adapter box to hook a headset and PTT to the radio: Radio expects a preamp in the mic instead of a bare capsule, so I gutted an old mic to get a preamp board. Stuck an audio step-down transformer in there, as audio from the radio is a touch hot, and both sides float at some 8vdc when it's unsquelched. Radio proper takes a PTT line switched to ground, but the mic puts the PTT in thhe high side, to turn off the preamp amd isolate the capsule, and uses trickery to get a ptt signal. I'll wire my ptt button across the original mic board one. Maybe I'll add a toggle switch to short that one out, and disconnect the preamp board PTT circuit, to enable use of the headset jack's ptt in.

Box has mic jack and speaker pigtails so far. I ordered headset and 3.5mm audio (high side ptt button and sheild) extension cables to get long female pigtails for those. I'd still like to add an aux in for music on the headset, maybe via a 3 to 1 resistive mixer, with the radio audio being given a higher weighting. I looked into a proper ducking/audio priority circuit, and couldn't find a premade module doing that, and the circuit I foumd is a bit more complex than I was wanting to build.

Decided on using a kenwood/chinese style HT headset, pretty much the most common thing and I have other kit it'll plug into. Found a headset about perfect for this:



All the stuff with a helmet mounted mic either used ear pads like for a motorcycle helmet, or had earbuds and was marked up to several times what that cost cause racing stuff. As a bonus, I can use it with w/e headwear I want.

Stuff to do still:

I think I'm gonna go with an aviation style ptt mounted on the bars, but I need to test out the ergonomics of that. Ideally, I'd be able to comfortably hit the button if I'm on the hoods or in the drops, but testing is needed.

I need to select a demi rain resistant case to stick the radio, adapter box, and power stuff in. I have a topeak rack, and I ordered a catch that slides into it like their bags do.

I need to select some manner of antenna, and figure out a bracket for it, I'm thinking mount it to the radio box, else make sure it's quick release. A simple j-pole might be my best bet. The bike doesn't have much metal and I'm made of meat instead, so not much of a ground plane to work with.

It may be prudent at add a few discrete bonding jumpers on the bike frame for RF reasons, as well as a ground pigtail to plug into the radio box.

This post has been edited by Wayward_Vagabond: Sep 15 2020, 16:02

*paperboy bomber intensifies*

The kernel's still working great on my Powerbook, but Nvidia's (proprietary) drivers won't build for Debian's 5.8.0 or my 5.9.0-rc4 kernels on my desktop. If I didn't need CUDA right now, I'd probably take this opportunity to switch to Nouveau's drivers, since my card's one of the last ones they made that can be re-clocked with it.

I need to select some manner of antenna, and figure out a bracket for it, I'm thinking mount it to the radio box, else make sure it's quick release. A simple j-pole might be my best bet. The bike doesn't have much metal and I'm made of meat instead, so not much of a ground plane to work with.

It may be prudent at add a few discrete bonding jumpers on the bike frame for RF reasons, as well as a ground pigtail to plug into the radio box.

Might be a terrible idea, but try to line a hat with tinfoil for an antenna. Maybe just a metal band "halo" around the base of the cap would work, even.

Or mount one of those rear-rack things on the back of the bike and use that.


This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 15 2020, 17:49

I wear a helmet while cycling, my initial headset idea was something with a stick on boom mic.

A decent 2M antenna would be a bit bulky to put on my head, and RF exposure would also be a bit much- planning on running 25-35 watt. Mounting it towards the back of the rack gets the RF away from me a bit, especially my head. Touring bike with drop bars I lean way forward on.

End goal is to work a repeater some distance away instead of simplex.

Alpine edit: Doing more research into how others have gone about this, the most common thing seems to be using a groundplane-less amtenna, cantilever mounted from the rear of a rack. 2 write-ups I saw entailed use a commercial no-ground-plane NMO mounted antenna, another couple were homebrew J-poles on a bike flag. As long as I use a hard case for the radio, an NMO bracket would be trivial to install. 7x7x18" or so would give plenty of space for radio bits and personal effects.

This post has been edited by Wayward_Vagabond: Sep 15 2020, 18:24

Apparently, the kernel forces GCC to build it with '-mno-altivec'. Makes me wonder if it'd actually fail to run if I removed that from the makefiles (or if it'd just kill performance or something).

(Altivec is like SSE/AVX but for POWER; the difference is that not all recent POWER/PPC CPU's support it like modern Intel CPU's all support SSE/AVX. Mine does support it though).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 16 2020, 06:30

I was looking at the PowerPC 7447A datasheet and noticed that the rated maximum die-junction temperature of it is 105°C; my system was having the fans kick on at 50°C. So I decided to bump up the threshold (in /sys/devices/platform/temperatures/limit_adjust) by 6°C (so fans kick in at 56°C) and haven't heard them since. It's just a wee bit warmer on my lap, but apparently Apple didn't even kick the fans on until 60°C.

I don't have OS X on here so I can't verify that number, though. Datasheet's probably telling the truth, however, and there is a (relatively inaccurate, as in ±6°C) temperature sensor on the CPU die itself, so I can say with confidence I'm not running any higher than about 64°C.

Between that and the optimized kernel, this powerbook's been feeling massively more usable than it did even a week ago.

Found a suitable toolbox to mount the stuff in, but it needs modified. I have to drill a few holes, install bonding jumpers from the lid to the sides, silicone the seams, and paint the metal black. My selected antenna doesn't need a ground, but a ground still increases gain and has a positive effect on takeoff angle.

I found an interesting writeup on no-ground-plane whips. They basically feed the antenna via an autotransformer, with a small capacitor to cancel it's reactance out. The transformer changes it from an end fed whip, into a dipole fed very close to one end. As long as an impedance match is applied, the result is very similar to a center fed.

Ordered such a commercial antenna and mirror mount NMO bracket (Liard brand), and having the vender trim the coax down to 1 foot and install an N connetor, and I can use a bulkhead to bring it in. I may try to find tiny cable glands for the headset and PTT cables.


While I'm at it, I might as well stick an LED taillight on the box. No sense in using the tiny fender one if I already have a big box up high with 13.8V in it.

While I'm at it, I might as well stick an LED taillight on the box. No sense in using the tiny fender one if I already have a big box up high with 13.8V in it.

Just make sure it isn't blinding and has a wide angle.

It looks like AGP in general is pretty broken in the kernel, but I'm kind of curious if I can do anything to the sources to make it a bit more stable at AGP speeds (mine's currently clocked at PCI speeds to avoid hanging randomly shortly after boot; apparently this has been happening ever since the switch to KMS).

Still, it's just an RV350 ("Mobility Radeon 9600"), so it's probably not worth too much effort.

While most of the keyboard on this powerbook feels pretty nice, one thing I absolutely hate about it is the lack of separations between the function keys (partitioning between F4/F5, F8/F9). Makes it a lot harder to guess which key is which, and my laptop's original owner didn't go for the optional backlighting which further exacerbates the problem (it was optional on the 1.33GHz 15" model, but standard on the ones with higher clock speeds).

It's not a problem for touch-typing everything else, but it is quite annoying there. I still prefer the layout of my old thinkpads.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 17 2020, 06:17

Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by people that would dismantle their car after using it, then rebuild it, potentially changing pieces and tuning it, the day they need it again.
I logically understand people like that, that like to do that, can and do exist, yet I can't relate to them, there's no path that would lead me in that direction.

Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by people that would dismantle their car after using it, then rebuild it, potentially changing pieces and tuning it, the day they need it again.
I logically understand people like that, that like to do that, can and do exist, yet I can't relate to them, there's no path that would lead me in that direction.

if you take something apart you know more of the internals for when it breaks, like what might be broken and how you can fix it. though its getting harder to keep up these days with things that dont come apart non destructively.

Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by people that would dismantle their car after using it, then rebuild it, potentially changing pieces and tuning it, the day they need it again.
I logically understand people like that, that like to do that, can and do exist, yet I can't relate to them, there's no path that would lead me in that direction.

You are firmly entrenched in the consumer mindset.

Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by people that would dismantle their car after using it, then rebuild it, potentially changing pieces and tuning it, the day they need it again.
I logically understand people like that, that like to do that, can and do exist, yet I can't relate to them, there's no path that would lead me in that direction.

There's lots of people who have enough tools in their home garage to let them do that whenever the desire strikes. Many people that would or could tinker with their cars don't simply because they don't even have a reliable jack and jack stands. Or they never had their parents pass on what they knew about cars to help get them started upon servicing their own cars.

Auto shops used to have 75 dollars per hour as the lowest fee for easy tasks, but now, I see my dealer has the lowest fee at 125 dollars per hour. They charge a rip off rate of either their book fee or the actual hours used (whichever is larger) since they have those terms carefully embedded into the service contract. If you want to save money, do the easy things yourself. The dealer charges $480 (before tax) to change the spark plugs on my car. Or I can change the plugs myself. I can buy a new identical battery for $220 after tax or have the dealer install that same identical OEM battery for $338 plus shop fees and that is then taxed over 10% more plus environmental fees. The dealer keeps his price quotes low since he removes all those other fees from the total price (technically legal) but adds them back on when calculating the final bill you must pay to get your car back.

4chan has that /o/ forum, and various people in their localities have used that to find other users in their local area. To avoid the trolls on 4chan /o/, they then branch off into their own private members-only forums such as using Telegram. That way, all the users can still be anon (or not) but have reliable posts since the trolls deliberately giving bad advice are weeded out. In those groups, some of those /o/ enthusiasts even own their own automotive servicing shop and give a hefty personal discount to other members of that Telegram chat to come by. One local telegram /o/ enthusiast has his own lift in a standalone garage, and he helps local /o/ telegram members (who don't have a lot of money) with their cars for a pretty small fee. So, there is a lot to be said for getting along with other car enthusiasts and being able to have others provide help or specialty tools assistance.

There's lots of people who have enough tools in their home garage to let them do that whenever the desire strikes. Many people that would or could tinker with their cars don't simply because they don't even have a reliable jack and jack stands. Or they never had their parents pass on what they knew about cars to help get them started upon servicing their own cars.

This is very true.

4chan has that /o/ forum, and various people in their localities have used that to find other users in their local area. To avoid the trolls on 4chan /o/, they then branch off into their own private members-only forums such as using Telegram. That way, all the users can still be anon (or not) but have reliable posts since the trolls deliberately giving bad advice are weeded out. In those groups, some of those /o/ enthusiasts even own their own automotive servicing shop and give a hefty personal discount to other members of that Telegram chat to come by. One local telegram /o/ enthusiast has his own lift in a standalone garage, and he helps local /o/ telegram members (who don't have a lot of money) with their cars for a pretty small fee. So, there is a lot to be said for getting along with other car enthusiasts and being able to have others provide help or specialty tools assistance.

I just use fora like turbobricks or swedespeed (under different handles). I have a friend who likes old Saabs whose grandpa has a lift.

Just pulled a bunch of keys (mostly the larger ones) off my X201's keyboard and cleaned out all the hair and stuff under them. I didn't break a single scissor switch or keycap this time around, and the keys are feeling a lot better/responding better.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 19 2020, 06:47

Recently, I had an experience where water and coca-cola would freeze in their bottles in my fridge.
Since 2 days ago, I've been trying to get water to freeze on purpose like that, but it's not working.
I thought it really was because the bottle cap wasn't set properly, but either it wasn't that, or I'm failing to reproduce the "wrong way" that make it work. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

Recently, I had an experience where water and coca-cola would freeze in their bottles in my fridge.
Since 2 days ago, I've been trying to get water to freeze on purpose like that, but it's not working.
I thought it really was because the bottle cap wasn't set properly, but either it wasn't that, or I'm failing to reproduce the "wrong way" that make it work. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

Put the bottle in the back, it's colder there.

Put the bottle in the back, it's colder there.

This and also remember that contents under pressure freeze slightly faster/at higher temperatures, though this is marginal at best.

Recently, I had an experience where water and coca-cola would freeze in their bottles in my fridge.

Depends where the cold air from the fan comes out before that cool air disperses and becomes warm (closer to the overall ambient in the fridge section). If you have a bunch of food products blocking and channeling the air to a certain spot before allowing that air to disperse into the rest of the compartment, that air might be cold enough to freeze. If you remove the food products and containers channeling that air, then of course, your bottles will not freeze as the cold air is immediately dispersed all through the compartment.

Hooly dooly computer parts are expensive atm.