Raspberry Pi used as a Squeezebox server

Raspberry Pi used as a Squeezebox server:
from Hack a Day by Mike Szczys

via SysAdmin

[Jacken] loves his lossless audio and because of that he’s long been a fan of Squeezebox. It makes streaming the high-bitrate files possible. But after Logitech acquired the company he feels they’ve made some choices which has driven the platform into the ground. But there is hope. He figured out how to use a Raspberry Pi as a Squeezebox server so that he can keep on using his client devices and posted details about the RPi’s performance while serving high-quality audio.
First the bad news: the RPi board doesn’t have the horsepower necessary to downsample on the fly. He even tried overclocking but that didn’t really help. The good news is that this issue only affects older Squeezebox clients (he had the issue with V3) and only when playing tracks that are much higher quality than a CD (24-bit at 88.2Khz). He has no problem streaming those files to devices that can play them, and can even stream multiple files at once without any issues.
You can install the Sqeezebox server on your own Raspberry Pi by following this guide.

Filed under: digital audio hacks, Raspberry Pi

Interfacing a GPU with a CPU

Interfacing a GPU with a CPU:
from Hack a Day by Mike Szczys

via SysAdmin

[Quinn Dunki] pulled together many months worth of work by interfacing her GPU with the CPU. This is one of the major points in her Veronica project which aims to build a computer from the ground up.
We’ve seen quite a number of posts from her regarding the AVR-powered GPU. So far the development of that component has been happening separately from the 6502 centered CPU. But putting them together is anything but trivial. The timing issues that were so important to consider when developing the GPU get even hairier when it comes writing to the VRAM from an external component. Her first thought was to share a portion of the external RAM between the CPU and GPU as a way to push rendering commands from one to the other. This proved troublesome both in timing and in the number of pins available on the AVR chip. She ended up using something of a virtual register on the AVR chip that can receive commands from the CPU asynchronously. Timing dictates that these commands be written only during vertical blanking so this virtual register also acts as a status register to let the CPU know when it can send the next command.
Her post is packed with the theory behind the design, timing tests on the oscilloscope, and a rather intimidating schematic. But the most important part is the video showing her success in the end.

Filed under: computer hacks  

Microsoft Kills Expression Suite — And Makes It Free, For Now

Microsoft Kills Expression Suite — And Makes It Free, For Now:
from Slashdot by timothyvia SysAdmin
mikejuk writes "Microsoft has announced that the Expression suite of design tools is no more. It has been removed from sale immediately and it has been placed on a maintenance only status until it reaches its end of life. Expression was Microsoft's offering for designers and competed directly with Adobe products. You can now download the components of Expression — Design 4, Web 4 and Encoder 4 — for free but you can't buy them. Of course, knowing that you are using 'doomed' products, even for free, takes some of the icing off the cake.The central component of the suite the UI designer Blend is to be integrated with Visual Studio 2012 probably along with Update 2. It looks as if Microsoft is giving up on trying to get designers to use its tools."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Switchblade 0.70 troubleshooting toolkit revamps programs, adds Process Hacker

Switchblade 0.70 troubleshooting toolkit revamps programs, adds Process Hacker:
from BetaNews by Mike Williams

via SysAdmin

It’s a week since we covered Switchblade, an interesting portable troubleshooting toolkit which was a little flawed by its selection of programs. While there were some excellent choices, the package was distinctly short on system monitoring tools. And we weren’t entirely sure that most people would want to install a copy of Apache on a PC they were investigating, either.
With further questions soon emerging over licensing issues for some of the programs, it wasn’t long before the author removed the SourceForge download. It’s just reappeared in a new Switchblade 0.70 build, though, which appears to address at least some of the previous issues and concerns.
Some had wondered whether the author had the right to distribute a portable edition of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, for instance, and sure enough it’s now been removed. And IObit Uninstaller and Advanced System Care have similarly been pulled from the lineup.
The current bundle is also the more compact version, which doesn’t include Apache (amongst other things), and that makes for a much smaller download (45MB as opposed to more than 220MB).
And yet the package also greatly ramps up its troubleshooting abilities with some very useful system monitoring and tracking tools. AppCrashView gives you a detailed view of the last system crashes, for instance. LastActivityView provides a vast amount of information about what’s been happening recently on the target PC (startups, shutdowns, user logons and logoffs, programs run, applications installed and more). While Process Hacker shows you exactly what’s running on your system right now.
The interface has been revamped a little, with Switchblade’s various programs and features now all organized into four tabs (Security Tools, System Tools, Networking, Other).
And the "System Information" pane now correctly displayed the free RAM, IP address and host name of our test PC (previously this was blank).
We’re still left with a licensing question or two. Does the author really have the right to distribute Microsoft Security Essentials, for instance?
There’s no doubt that Switchblade 0.70 is much improved, though, especially with the inclusion of Process Hacker, and it’s good to see the package back and available for download again.

Troubleshoot PC problems with Switchblade, a free portable toolkit

After the author removed it do to licensing considerations, it has since been re-released.

Troubleshoot PC problems with Switchblade, a free portable toolkit:
from BetaNews by Mike Williams

via SysAdmin

If you regularly find yourself helping to fix other people’s PC problems then you’ve probably already thought about creating a portable troubleshooting toolkit. And this needn’t take very long. Just copy something like the Sysinternals Suite to a USB stick, for instance, and you’ll be more than equipped to diagnose and resolve all kinds of issues.
And if you find you need to extend your troubleshooting capabilities even further, then you can always add another free toolkit or two. Switchblade is an excellent free example: just download the latest version, unzip it to your USB key and you’ll gain all kinds of useful features and functionality.
This can start very simply. If a PC is suffering from internet or network connectivity issues, for instance, then you may normally open a command line to run a few tests. No need here, though, as Switchblade’s "Network" box has various handy shortcuts. You can try pinging Google to confirm that the system is able to get online, for instance; list its network interfaces; renew or release the computer’s IP addresses, and a whole lot more.
If your problems are more involved, though, Switchblade also bundles a range of free tools which may be able to help. So you can launch Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to check for infections; run Error Lookup to translate odd Windows error codes into meaningful text; or use RegShot to take and compare Registry snapshots, showing you whatever might have changed. And you also get copies of PuTTY, Notepad++, FileZilla, IObit Uninstaller, IObit Unlocker, UltraDefrag, DiskCleaner, TrueCrypt and Media Player Classic.
Still not enough? Switchblade also includes the installers for various programs. CCleaner and IObit’s Advanced System Care will help with maintenance issues, for instance; Microsoft Security Essentials adds more antivirus capabilities; and you’re also able to install Chrome, perhaps useful if you’re having problems with the system’s current browser.
And there’s more. You get buttons to back up and restore your drivers, for instance. Or grab event logs to your USB stuck for analysis later. Installing the K-Lite Codec pack could help to get some video file types playing, and there’s a set of useful links to, say, help you find and download the latest graphics drivers.
We found Switchblade’s selection of tools to sometimes be a little odd. UltraDefrag doesn’t really seem necessary, for instance (defragging is useful, but not usually something which requires this kind of emergency assistance). Apache Web Server probably isn’t something you’ll need to install very often, either: we’d rather have had Process Explorer or some other system monitoring tool.
Still, as we pointed out, you don’t have to live with these deficiencies. It’s easy to equip your USB stick with Sysinternals utilities, and whatever else you might like. And so, while Switchblade may not be enough on its own, the program does provide a host of useful troubleshooting tools and features, and if you regularly need to work on other people’s PCs then it’s worth a closer look.

InjuredPixels reveals monitor defects

InjuredPixels reveals monitor defects:
from BetaNews by Mike Williams

via SysAdmin

Buying a monitor online has plenty of obvious plus points, with the wide choice and low prices coming very high on the list. But if you’re making a purchase in person -- maybe you’re buying a second-hand system, say – then you can at least check the display for stuck pixels or similar defects, which could save you considerable time and hassle.
And that’s where the very useful and entirely free InjuredPixels comes in.
The program comes in the form of an HTA file (an HTML application), which has several immediate advantages. It’s small (a 17KB download), runs on any version of Windows from XP up, and is entirely portable (so you won’t annoy anyone by asking if you can install some bulky testing app on their PC).
InjuredPixels gets down to business immediately, too: just launch the program and it’ll immediately display a solid color all across your monitor (everything else disappears, even the taskbar). Any contrasting pixels will be immediately obvious.
Of course any stuck pixels may not contrast much (or at all) with this opening screen, so to get a better idea you should try different colors. And the InjuredPixels menu offers multiple ways to make this happen. You might jump directly to a particular color or shade by pressing a number, for instance (try 1 for black, 2 for white), or cycle through colors by pressing the left or right cursor keys. Try switching quickly between two contrasting shades, and look for any pixels or areas of the screen which don’t follow suit.
As you’re trying all this you’ll find the InjuredPixels menu disappears on a regular basis, which can be disconcerting when there’s no other program visible on the screen. No need to worry, though – you can always press Esc to toggle the menu back on again, or Q to close the program entirely.
And the program isn’t doing anything special to suppress other applications, so if you get lost then pressing the Windows key will make the taskbar visible again, while Alt+Tab should switch you to something else, just as usual.
As hardware diagnostics applications go, then, InjuredPixels is just about as simple a program as you’ll see. But it’s also capable, effective and easy to use, and if you’re planning to buy a monitor in-person any time soon then it’s probably a very good to take a copy along, just in case.
Photo Credit: corepics/Shutterstock

from Slashdot by samzenpusvia SysAdmin
What Are the Unwritten Rules of Deleting Code?: Press2ToContinue writes "I came across this page that asks the question, 'what are the unwritten rules of deleting code?' It made me realize that I have seen no references to generally-accepted best-practice documents regarding code modification, deletion, or rewrites. I would imagine /.'s have come across them if they exist. The answers may be somewhat language-dependent, but what best practices do /.'s use when they modify production code?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.