bamed.org » Hardware

My BoostBerry: Boost Mobile on a BlackBerry, with Browser and MMS working

admin — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:23:33 +0000

Being budget-minded (read tightwad) I was excited to hear about Boost Mobile’s $50 unlimited plan. That’s unlimited voice, data, and text for $50/month. The only drawback is that it is slow, using Nextel’s IDEN network, and not the more modern 3G, but it’s definetly usable.

Most of the phones available through Boost aren’t that great, but Boost is basically Nextel, and any Nextel phone can be used with Boost by only switching the SIM card. So I got my hands on the Blackberry Curve 8350i.

Out of the box, you can make phone calls, but no data and no texting without a little work. The iDEN network does not out of the box support texting, but Motorola has it’s own proprietary MMS protocol that works with their phones. As far as data goes, Boost does not offer a Blackberry plan, so BIS and BES are out of the question; however, TCP works, so if you can get Opera mini installed and other apps that use a TCP connection and does not rely on BIS/BES than you’re fine. But this means the Blackberry Browser does not work, and OTA downloads, even from Opera mini or the Bolt browser still need the Blackberry Browser to download and install.

The other feature that Blackberries are known for is their push email service. Since BIS/BES don’t work, this also doesn’t work out of the box.

The answer to these problems is by using certain service books that have been hacked to allow the used of the Blackberry Browser either over Wifi or over the TCP network. There’s also some service books available that fix the MMS problem. Finally, ShangMail provides a free push email service that works with the Blackberry.

I’ve collected several service books that had all the hacks I needed to work and combined them into a single file located here. In order to isntall it, download and unzip it first. Then from your Blackberry go to Options->Advanced Options->Service Book. Know hold down the Alt key and type S-B-E-B. If you did this right you will get the message, “Legacy SB Restore Enabled.” Now go the Blackberry Desktop Manager and go to Backup/Restore, then Advanced. I would suggest doing a full backup before continuing. I would also suggest you backup your service books seperately in case something goes wrong you can at least get back to where you were quickly. Now open the file you extracted and install it to the Blackberry. You may need to do a battery pull, but after that you should be able to use the Blackberry Browser and MMS should be working. You may have to switch between the HotSpot Broswer and Browser inside the Browser settings as needed.

For Shangmail go to http://en.shangmail.com/ and sign up for a free account, then install their free software. Now login to your new account and add up to 5 existing email accounts to have them pushed to your Boostberry.

That should be it. Download whatever other apps you might want, either OTA or from your desktop. I suggest the BOLT browser, WeatherEye, Google Maps, the MobiPocket E-Book Reader, and the Bible software from http://www.youversion.com.

Have fun!

RAID fail!

admin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:29:02 +0000

So right after we installed Windows on our Servers, a hard drive on one of the RAID sets died. So I replaced it, and a week later the replacement died as well.

This made me think something other than the hard drive was the problem so I ordered a new RAID controller. However…

We recently moved, and apparently the last time I ordered something from this company was a personal item that I had sent to my home. I must not have been paying attention when I ordered the card and I had it shipped to the last address I had used, which was my old house that someone else lives in now. Oops!

Anyway, I managed to contact the new occupants of my old home, and they had received my RAID controller. FedEx left it on the front doorstep. I met them yesterday and came in early this morning to install it.

If I weren’t such a genius, sometimes I’d think I was dumb!

Asterisk and Samsung

admin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:00:08 +0000

We’ve been having trouble with our integration of an Asterisk server and our old Sasmung Prostart DCS. The two are connected via FXO ports on the Asterisk-side, connected to SLI cards on the Samsung-side. The problem involves background noise on the lines, lines not hanging up when they’re supposed to, and lines randomly diconnecting during a call. I’ve traced some of the issues to bad cables, and more to bad ports on the Samsung-side. Then yesterday I was doing some more reading about the specifications of our Samsung hardware and found something interesting. When providing analog circuits throug the Samsung Proaster DCS there are two interface cards available, the SLI and the SLI-8. The SLI provides four analog port while the SLI-8 provides eight. Up until yesterday I thought that was the only difference between the two. While reading through some technical manuals I had, I discovered that the SLI is equipped with a DTMF receiver and provides overvoltage protection, while the SLI-8 doesn’t. So guess what. All of our analog ports are provided via SLI-8 cards. We always assumed we wanted the most bang for our buck, so eight ports instead of four seemed to be the wiser investment. Now it seems we may be losing some key features for the integration we are attempting to work because we’re using the SLI-8 cards instead of SLI cards.

So yesterday i ordered a couple of SLI cards and will install them next week sometime. Lord willing, this will fix the issues we’ve been having.

In other news, I paid $1.59/gal. on gas yesterday!!!

First Asterisk Problem resolved

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:27:51 +0000

Well I’ve already run into my first problem getting Asterisk working seemlessly with our old Samsung DCS, and I’ve managed to get the problem resolved as well. The problem was when making or receiving calls between the two phone systems if the caller on the Samsung side hungup first, Asterisk did not detect a disconnect signal and left that line off the hook. After playing with different configuration options in Asterisk, trying to get it to “hear” the disconnect signal I decided I’d do a bit of digging into the Samsung’s programming to see if that might be the problem. So I found a programming guide for the Samsung DCS and found my answer. Apparently the Samsung DCS doesn’t send a proper disconnect signal, unless that extension’s Ring-Type is set to DATA RING. So if anyone out there is going through a similar configuration problem, here’s a quick HOWTO. On your Samsung phone dial TRSF800, then your admin password, press the down arrow, then SPK. Dial 208, then dial the extension connected to Asterisk. Press the Up/Down arrows until the display says DATA RING. Press one of the buttons under the display, then go on to the next extension. When done press TRSF to exit programming mode. This will allow the Samsung DCS to send a proper disconnect signal that Asterisk can pick up on. Problem solved! Well, mostly solved anyway. For some reason, now the extension rings 20 seconds, then disconnects and starts ringing again. I’m sure it’s a timer somewhere, and when I find it I’ll let you know.

~UPDATE~
Nevermind about the timer problem. It had to do with some of the settings I was playing around with in Asterisk while trying to fix the first problem. I commented all those out and everything works fine.

Gillware

admin — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:01:41 +0000

Last week I sent a hard drive in to Gillware (http://www.gillware.com) for a friend of mine to get his data recovered and I’m happy to say that they were able to recover the hard drive 100%. I was able to load the restored data on to a new hard drive and the system booted back up working exactly like it was the day before it crashed. They kept me informed through the whole process letting me know when the drive arrived and when they were able to take a look at it they quickly forwarded me a list of files. They also gave me a call and we were able to go over some of the core data to make sure it was intact all BEFORE we had to pay a dime. Once I gave them the go ahead they wrapped things up and overnighted me the data. Overall they were quick and professional and one of the best prices I found while researching data recovery companies.

I hope EVERYONE out there makes regular backups, but in case you ever forget and end up losing important data I would recommend Gillware to help you get your data back.

Data Recovery Part 2

admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:52:09 +0000

After running dd for about 24 hours I only managed to copy about 900KB. Then the drive started making a clicking sound, so I’ve concluded that recovering data from this hard drive is beyond my skills. I may be able to do it if I had the necessary hardware and a clean room, but I don’t. I’m sending the drive to Gillware to see what they can get off it. I hate that my friend’s shop has to do all their transaction by hand, but they’re the ones who didn’t bother with the backups, a mistake I doubt will happen again. It will be more than a week from when he first called me before they’ll be back up and running, but he said rebuilding the database from scratch would take much longer, so it’s worth it.

I’ve never used Gillware before, but I’ve read some good reviews about them and they seem to have some of the best prices I’ve found plus they’ll examine the drive to see if the data can be recovered before they charge anything. I’m sending the drive overnight today so they should have it tomorrow. I should know by the first of next week what can be done.

Data Recovery

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:05:50 +0000

A friend of mine, and former boss, who owns a local retail shop called me yesterday and told me he thought the hard drive in his server was dead, and they havne’t been doing backups. I paused for a moment and considered referring him to someone else, but decided to go ahead and see what I can do. So I grabbed my copy of SpinRite and headed over to his shop. I started Spin-Rite up and left, then returned about 8 hours later, it was at 0.0010%. Apparently there are problems with the hard drive. I opted to take the system with me and brought it back to my workshop. I tried starting Spin-Rite at different areas of the hard drive and it worked well, without finding any errors, and managed to get through those sections much quicker, so I’m assuming its just the first few sectors of the hard drive, the most impartant part, that are damaged. I stayed up til about 1AM trying different things, looking for a quick way to get the data he needed (data=entire point of sale database: vendors, inventory, customers), but unfortunately there won’t be a quick way.

So right now I’m making an image of the drive with dd, having it skip errors, hoping I can glean the data we need. Once the image is done, I’ll start Spin-Rite back up and let it run for a few days. I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

The moral of this all too familiar story: BACKUP!! BACKUP!! BACKUP!!

The poor man’s KVM

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:43:12 +0000

So I’ve been seeing people post pics on their uber workspaces with 15 monitors spread out across their wall, etc. And I’m thinking, hey that’s cool, but I can’t afford that. Heck, I’m still trying to get rid of all the 15″ Packaged Hell monitors spread out around the building. Even if I could buy some more monitors, there’s be a huge outcry if they started spreading out across my desk instead of replacing those monstrosities. Meanwhile, I’m getting tired of being in Windows all the time at work, and while the Eee is a great mobile device, it’s not something you want to sit at your desk and work on all the time. So here’s what I’ve done.

First of all I brought another computer in from home. I already had Ubuntu on it, so it’s all ready to be useful. I did manage to get myself a decent 19″ LCD, and it has a DVI plus a VGA connector and I can select between the two using the front panel. So I plugged my work-provided Windows desktop into the DVI port, and my Ubuntu machine into the VGA port. So now I can use the same monitor for both machines by pressing a button on the front of the monitor. Great! Except I still need two keyboards and two mice.

Synergy to the rescue. Synergy is a neat little app that will let you share the same keyboard and mouse over multiple computers. So all I need to do is drag my mouse over the the left side of the screen on my Windows machine, and the cursor shows up on the right side of the screen of the Ubuntu machine. I went ahead and set it up so that if I drag the mouse the other way it shows up on my Eee.

So I don’t have a KVM, and I don’t have multiple monitors, but I do have three computers, my Windows desktop, my Ubuntu desktop and my Eee also running Ubuntu. And now I only need one keyboard and one mouse to control all three just by dragging my mouse from one side of the screen to the other. And I have one monitor for both desktops that I can switch between the two with a push of a button.

One last bit of the puzzle… I’m in IRC most of the time I’m at work, but if I’m switching between desktops I can’t always keep up on what’s going on unless I’m logged in at both desktops. I could just login on the Eee, but I prefer a larger screen for this. So I load up irssi in screen on the Ubuntu desktop, then ssh into it from the Windows desktop and then I can share it on both desktops. (Thanks to Vollmond for this suggestion.)

So, nothing really novel about all this. If we had the budget I’d definitely go about this VERY differently, but there you go, a poor man’s KVM. Use this knowledge well.

My Eee PC

admin — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:27:37 +0000

Right after Christmas I purchased myself an Asus Eee PC. It’s what we call an Ultra Mobile PC(UMPC). It has a 7″ screen and weighs in at about 2 lbs. Let me just say, I love this thing. It comes installed with a customized version of Xandros that’s perfect for new users. Very SIMPLE. But simple doesn’t cut it for me, so I quickly started hacking away at the default OS. There’s a great community built around the Eee at http://www.eeeuser.com, where I found lot’s of useful advice. But when it came down to it the default Xandros OS was just too hacked to really be usable for me. The final breaking point for me was the fact that you couldn’t require a password to login to the OS if you were in “Advanced Mode”, that is if you were using a regular KDE interface instead of the “Basic Mode” dumbed down interface. So I loaded Ubuntu on to a flash drive and installed it on the default OS. There’s a few things you need to watch for and tweak when using an Eee. It uses a solid state hard disk, which is basically an SDHC card soldered unto the motherboard, and SDHC’s have a limited number of writes. So you need to disable any swap partitions, or swap files, and DO NOT use a journaling file system. Again, you can find all the useful you need to properly setup your OS of choice at the Eeeuser site.

So I got Ubuntu working on it, I got Compiz working pretty well on it, I even got Diablo II, and Wow working, though Wow is kinda laggy. I take this thing with me everywhere, it is SO handy. So I ordered a USB DVD-burner, and a USB enclosure for 2.5″ HDD’s. I had a 120GB 2.5″ HDD lying around, so I plugged it in and managed to get Windows installed on it. That wasn’t an easy task I might add. It turns out Windows doesn’t support booting from an USB device. So I had to install Windows into a VM, then I ran a script I found at USBoot.org which setup the necessary drivers in the VM, then copied the Windows install to the USB HDD, and all is well.

I think my next project is to try install OSX on my Eee.

Computers Ordered!!

admin — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:50:12 +0000

I got to order some new computers today!!! I’m so excited!!! Because of budget cuts I haven’t replaced ANY computers this year. I hope I remember how to set a new computer up…