infinity usb smart oscam win 7 32/64

after a lot of time and help from the oscam forum (all credit goes to jobyrne123
) i've managed to get my infinity usb smartreader to read my legitimate $ky white smartcard.

i've documented this on the forum which should save a lot of time for other users!
http://oscam.ump2002.net/board/thread.php?threadid=4199

black gold 3620

first dvb-t2 dual channel pcie card now available to order.

http://shop.blackgold.tv/epages/BT3159.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/BT3159/Products/BGT3620

very tempting if i hadnt seen the better quality and bandwidth available through satellite

centos ipmi

http://wiki.alteeve.com/index.php/IPMIspent ages looking for documentation within linux for managing motherboard.

eventually found this link which saved a lot of time as the official documentation is lacking examples (that i could find)

yum install freeipmi.x86_64 freeipmi-bmc-watchdog freeipmi-ipmidetectd OpenIPMI.x86_64 OpenIPMI-libs.x86_64 OpenIPMI-perl.x86_64 OpenIPMI-tools.x86_64
chkconfig ipmi on
/etc/init.d/ipmi start

You can check that IPMI is working now by running:

ipmitool chassis status

and ipmitool chassis help

ipmitool sdr list

and check the entire history
ipmitool sel list

another dvb-s2 card

after a noticeable absense of dvb-t2 cards they are now starting to appear.
first the pctv one which is expensive, and now a cheaper version:

im not related and have never used (and neither has the supplier) but they are open about this


http://www.tvstick.co.uk/products/productinfo.asp?catid=1&prodid=38

i have freeview in my microsoft mce but have recently been comparing quality to satelite and freeview and satellite wins hands down.

i have a freesat from xxx white card and am going to use the infinity usb smartcard reader, oscam, cygwin, tvsource and a satellite card to finally make everything work together.

currently im not sure on which card to use, black gold 3595 apparently works, but i dont want old school freeview tuners as currently media center is limited to four (although tvsource helps with this)
tbs 6981 is apparently good, but the 6986 is due for release at the end of november. blind scan would be useful and if the hardware splitter is actually a decoder then that would be very cool
id love the technisat 6400 premium, but thats not due out till february 2011!

no posts recently

just had a beautiful baby (Elizabeth Rose Pugh) so have been bit quiet. She was born on 3rd August, and so is just settling in.

how to get 5.1 digital (spdif/hdmi) working properly inc. win7 64

for media center edition, and other codec related players:
remove all codecs/matroska etc
ensure uac is turned on (needed for shark007)
install shark007 codec 32 bit (use settings app to reset defaults and recommended)
install shark007 codec 64 bit (reset again using the 64-bit settings app)
in the 32-bit app and 64-bit settings app set "audio tab -> 'use pass-through'
_DO_NOT_SET_ANY_OTHER_SETTINGS

for vlc:
determine if relevant media is 5.1 encoded:
tools -> codec information

set using:
tools -> preferences -> use s-pdif when available
show all settings
audio ->output modules -> win32 waveout extension output
save

reload vlc and media to test!

been busy... dynamic memory coming to hyper-v

not a lot of post recently - to summarize: bought a new house, moved in, having a baby in July. so yes it has been a busy year already.

Just read (here: dynamic memory coming to hyper-v) - service pack 1 for 2008 therefore promises to make virtualisation easier for Microsoft users!

Been spending a lot of time with our New CRM which is now live as of the beginning of this month. very sad, but finally a CRM system that is a pleasure to use!

hp raid - so much pain

in the last couple of months we have had some serious customer problems with Embedded Raid, these are heightened by the lack of knowledge of hp frontline support. An ML310 G5 server didnt work with small business server 2008 and hp's solution was to install server 2003. Not exactly inspiring. Anyway the fix was simple, but required some serious searching - the driver isnt correctly listed on the HP website! http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1263898255442+28353475&threadId=1393617

other problems we had also involved a firmware bug that mistakenly marks disks as failed in raid.

A very good bit of advice is to use a separate raid card. This allows:

1. if the server dies you can replace the motherboard without having to reconfigure the raid (HP engineers usually don't understand onboard RAID is configured on the motherboard) its also posible to..
2. transplant drives and card to another machine in extreme emergency
3. better driver support - by default there will be raid drivers for different operating systems operating systems - finding embedded drivers is often difficult.
4. better reliability - raid cards are tested more thoroughly as thats what they do!
5. better throughput - raid cards will often have specialist chips e.g. XOR