Buffalo Linkstation LS-500LG

So I basically spent the last few days playing with a Buffalo Linkstation LS-500LG version 1 hardware. This should not be confused with the LS-L500LG which is a cheaper product. A good look at the FAQ scrolling down will show you the advantages in memory and cpu of the LS-GL vs the LS-LGL. Anyway I always go about this at night which is never a good idea. I found myself flashing the firmware more than once and crashing it several times so here's a short synopsis for those interested. I had 2 version 1 (old hardware) so it may not apply to you.

First thing is that it seems the Buffalo NAS hacking community at http://buffalo.nas-central.org has very old information and less detailed information concerning the ARM9 processor which mines is versus the other 2 processors (MIPSel and PowerPC). The information at times is structured poorly but to be fair this is very similar to the situation with the nslu2 but it's worst because you have several different versions of different products with people developing different products.

Anyway one of my worst mistakes is installing freelink firmware 1.0r2 and probably not reading everything first before working on my linkstation. The major problem is that it should insist on repartitioning the disks first. This is almost a necessity because the firmware pretty much removes your web administration which is fine if you are very fluent in Debian. However if you want to install the webadmin web interface you find you will run out of space... Even installing a few packages would do that and you will be stuck thereby forcing you to do something about your partitions. That was a headache to say the least. However if you installed the webadmin the system is very nice however and ideally you would have enough space to install the other packages that you will like. That's where the second problem which caused me a great deal of distress. The precompiled C Cross-Toolchain. Either that or the directions was completely wrong for the LS-LG ARM9 processor because all it did was sent me to the EM mode (engineering mode or emergency mode). Which I am somewhat glad that I have a version 1 because it seems like newer hardware is a pain to get out of. After sending my Linkstation into Emergency Mode at least 3 times and Flashing my firmware at least 9 times (because of old firmware of 1.10 to 1.11 stock buffalo firmware than flashing custom init.d firmware before installing freelink firmware for my old hardware version. Counter the numerous repairs, etc.). Long winded yes but during that time I could not manage to setup a media server like twonky, swisscenter, oxyl, etc. (twonky no longer supports nas installs as of this writing). If u manage to do this message me with detailed instructions because I didn't have this much problem with the nslu2 but then it couldn't handle apache/mysql/php that well (frequent crashes).

Basically here is what I recommend as of this writing 10/31/2008.
***) Partition your drive for space but may not be necessary. I did it anyway in case I want to go to freelink again.
1)Install Firmware version 1.15 (not available in the us website, use europe/asia)
- This turned mine webinterface in japanese language but login admin/password to change the language/region. Should be pretty straight forward if you study your english version webinterface before flashing.
2)Enable telnet with these directions.
- Make sure you use the 1.11 directions and not the pre 1.11 directions or you will notice telnet/sshd not working correctly after reboot.
3)Follow directions at http://buffalo.nas-central.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4075&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a to get optware feed. This is the most important part as it will allow you to expand your current linkstation to something like the nslu2.
**4) This is optional but follow directions at http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.php/LS-Pro_-_chroot_Arm_Build_Environment to be able to compile. This works perfectly in my linkstation. It did not mention to create the folders before "Mount special files in chroot environment" section but that was a minor problem. Just chroot command whenever you want to compile something.
--The daylight savings time seem to be affecting the time being off an hour if you live in the us/canada area. This occurs in a number of firmware though.

Fun things to do that works on the arm9. If you installed the optware feeds than you are all set to install a media center. The wizd media server is what I recommend and all I needed to do was issue "ipkg install wizd" and I was up and ready at :8004. You do have to edit your wizd.conf file to point where you are storing your video/music/dvd/photo files but its pretty self explanatory. Other than the interface display it works beautifully on my showcenter pinnacle 1000g which is obsolete for a few months now.

I have one with freelink installed just in case with webadmin 1.441 installed because debian is always useful nearby.

Best Opensource Hardware

I'm very excited because I purchased a buffalo linkstation pro (LS-500GL) which I've been waiting for a very long time(actually any linkstation but this one was on sale). I purchased the linkstation mini 1terabyte for $237 from frys a few weeks ago but frys.com argued it was a price mistake; broke my heart. I am a huge fan of products that are hackable aka have their source code opened up so you can use their products beyond their lifecycle. This is important because for example I have over 5 netgear routers that are absolutely useless that I still have but havn't used(5 years now) because they suck and cannot be improved. Whereas my Linksys wrt54gs v2 is simply incredible. However since linksys has started to eliminate their routers(lower ram/proprietary) except for the wrt54gl; I too have pretty much avoided their products. Here's a list of my favorites

1)Linksys NSLU2 - My favorite usb nas device with 8MB Flash/32MB Ram. This will probably be the only Linksys device I will buy from until they discontinue it. I particular like using flash drives and setup small servers like music/ftp/files because I leave them on 24/7 at 5Watts is great(I have 3 on 24/7). I tried to setup a video media server like twonkyvision, openshowcenter, slimserver, swisscenter, oxybox, etc but unfortunately the use of apache was too much on the nslu2 (out of memory, crashing) and lighttpd didn't seem to be able to serve the video files well for me.

2)Asus WL-500g Premium v1 - 8mb flash/32mb ram but with usb output. This became my favorite router after linksys started making newer wrt54gs with less ram/functions. Unfortunately Asus went the route of Linksys and made version 2 which does not work so well with openwrt. DD-wrt is available but it didn't feel the same anymore. I used this as a wireless usb printer and hosted some other services. Version 2 of the wl-500g premium is still good and worth investing as primary router.

3)Buffalo Linkstations - These are my favorite media devices. I was operating a video media server from my mac mini because of electric costs but with linkstation it would costs less than half what I was paying. The linkstation operates only around 20 watts but only models LS-GL or HS-DHGL because they have a high cpu speed of 400mhz and 128MB Ram. Kurobox Pro(also made from buffalo) is an alternative but they are never on sale.

*- Asus EEE PCs - not exactly open source but because they are extremely low powered if you do not attach the battery and have sufficient memory/cpu/hard disk they make exceptional apache/mysql web servers. You simply cannot do this on the other open source nas appliances with limited memory and processor power to handle a large number of users with dynamic data. They also are very versatile. Go with the low cost options but opt for SSD hard drive, Linux OS but most important; best CPU processor and Ram can be upgraded to 2gb.

Can't think of anything else except for a mac mini which is incredibly decent as a powerful server with very low power requirements that you must buy but if you see them on sale; Do not hesitate to BUY!

u810 tweaks

For Windows XP Tablet 2005
1) Removes tablet icon on taskbar (the one to the right of start menu button)

regsvr32 /u "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\ink\tipband.dll"
2) Removes Virtual Keyboard on login/logon (pointless if you use omnipass or you rather input it another way) It also have the sideaffect of removing keyboardsurrogate.exe which saves you about 8M memory.

regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Ink\loginkey.dll"
3) Disable automatic updates under services (do not set to manual) will save you around 40M from 2 20M running services. If you want to run microsoft update (also known as the older windows update) than you have to set the service to automatic. Disable again when you install your updates.
4) Removal of omnipass 5 can free 40M of memory. If you don't need it that is. An excellent alternative is to use the asus fingerprint software... It actually works on the u810 and supports smartcards.
5) Disable last accessed timestamp. I generally never bothered since sata drives came out, unless you have a great deal of file monitoring tools like virus scanner, spyware detection. Even still it may be quite unnoticable because you are running virus scanner(S), spyware detectors... however u810 comes with a 1.8 inch drive running at around 4200rpm (most common laptops run 5400rpm) it will make a large difference. Don't run this if you plan to run defrag often (like more than once every 3 months...) or do some file monitoring for debugging purposes... Enable it by typing the following command either in run command or command prompt

FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1
6) Do not set power management to max battery. The reason is the power management setttings are set to degrade cpu processes (slow down your computer) for very little gain in battery life. More info here. I set mines to Portable/Laptop.
7) tabbtnu.exe is the icon on the notification area (Next to the clock). You can hide it by customizing the hide inactive icons in the taskbar and start menu properties. There also appears to be a program to remove this from your taskbar but since the source code is not released I will not mention it here.
8) Windows power management override the BIOS speedstep settings for the u810 (I believe that to be true). As stated above, setting power management at Portable/Laptop is adaptive and reduce usage to 598 MHz (You can check this in System Properties - General). I like this setting but setting powercfg.exe for dc to constant the cpu goes down to 448 MHz.

Happily running my u810 xp tablet 2005 sp3 at only ~310MB.

Upgrading some old Hardware

Last week I spent sometime updating some old hardware.

1) Dell Dimension 4400 - Updated bios to A06. Had to press Delete key to enter Bios from the large Dell logo. The memory can be updated to 2gb ddr with 2 1gb ddr sticks even though the dell specs say maximum 1gb. I actually used a spare patriot memory kit which was rated pc 4000 (ddr 500).

Updated the LG cdrom firmware model CED-8080B from v1.04 to v1.07 on the dell site. You have to search for the model number but you can get v1.06 from the LG website. There is a v1.08 on google but a search showed it only for certain OEM drives. Might not want to risk it.

2) Dell Dimension 4550 - Updated bios to A08. The maximum memory can be updated to 2gb as well. The specs says maximum memory is 1gb.

Updated HLDS GCC4482B frimware From Default ROM E107 to E114 A01 to E114 A05 from dell website. Dunno what difference from A01 to A05...

3) Sony PCV E204 desktop. An old PII 333 processor with 96 memory. Tried to put the memory from the dimension 4400/4550 in them but turns out they are PC100 memory! Lol... some people probably wouldn't have found that funny but it was just funny to see cause I have some old PII 400 that take ddr I think... Anyway this desktop is actually pretty cool when the hard drive doesn't make so much noise(so loud) cause when I opened the case the Power Supply was rated only 100 Watts! That's pretty energy efficient considering my mac mini is 85 watts. I only took out the power supply cause it wouldn't boot up... Turns out this power supply takes a minute or two to actually store? enough power to start the computer...

1000h installation

I spent a short time installing xp professional on the 1000h. The first thing I did however was setup Eee Storage (which didn't require any code/serial as I couldn't even find any in the box) which gives 10gb online storage.

There are a few advantages to switch from xp home to professional. The first is probably that it will register 2 cpu because the atom processor is capable of two threads?. Installing a 2gb ddr2 sodimm stick is a good idea which I did but I was somehow disappointed that the screen didn't seem that much bigger than the u810.

There's nothing much to say... It's quite wonderful. I did install the EeeSplendid, EeeSplendid and ASUSUpdate which I used to update my bios. ECap didn't seem very useful but it runs well. I can't say I will buy this again though as the battery is only slightly better than my dell 600m (I only recently took advantage of the dell battery recall for my computer) at 5 hours. I love my u810 but the 1000h seems to be a huge maybe it wasn't that good of an idea to get... It's incredibly sturdy... It feels like an ibm.

u810 xp tablet installation

I spent a whole day on the fujitsu u810. This post is going to be tedious as I made several mistakes approaching a reinstallation which will probably be disorganized and confusing so I'll list a simple summary in the end. It's my policy to have a clean install on any new computer as I've yet to see any computer with software that is not necessary and slows the computer down. Secondly vista will not work on a 1gb computer. Since the u810 cannot be upgraded beyond 1gb. There is readyboost for vista but the performance in some tests are only a few percent. A google search also reveal a less than perfect approach because of media compatibility with the existing sd/cf/usb readyboost drives along with the u810 chipset.

I moved ahead to an easy recovery disk install of windows xp tablet that is included with fujitsu u810 with vista business. The process was easy as I had a portable dvd drive. Ironically I was not able to startup u810 with an external usb hard drive, usb stick, usb floppy, and even sd/cf media... Maybe I did something wrong (I did add all options and put removed the harddrive startup option in bios). It was a success with the dvd but I noticed a second recovery? partition(shows as second drive) and adobe reader. This was when I started to get ready for a clean tablet installation from downloading software from fujitsu website.

This is when everything went to hell... I had a previous msdn subscription so I had tablet. The installation was successful and I was able to remove the recovery partition permanently but there is a keyboard that should bootup along with the logon screen. There was a border of the keyboard but it was entirely blank. Google search reviews nothing of what the problem is and I installed service pack 3 so I gave a call to a trusted engineer. I was than able to acquire a xp tablet disk and installed it fine with the full keyboard showing up. One headache gone till i hit another snag. It seems the software downloaded from the website is incomplete as I could not find the omnipass (fingerprint software) after installing everything. I also noticed an extremely annoying "SetSlate returned error. FjSetSlt is exiting" error after a reboot. A google search showed no solution but I realized what the problem was which will be explained later. Fed up with the error and omnipass I started a reinstallation with the fujitsu recovery disk for xp tablet 2005.

Success again with a fully functioning xp 2005 tablet installation. Now another self inflicted headache by wanting to update the 5 software updates listed on the fujitsu website. I installed the first 3 noticable files which is the audio, video, and o2micro mediaslot drivers. Huge mistake. I realized that the audio and video driver requires a complete removal, reboot and than install to get the new version. The mediaslot update however is worst of all because it completely inactivated my sd card slot. I did not realize this at first but it seems the driver simply made any sd card inserted detected for the first 1-2 seconds and than completely disappearing from the device manager. I even called fujitsu about this before identifing the problem with the software. All I can say is fujitsu is useless for any real technical support. Windows xp tablet have default drivers to access the sd card fine enough. I installed the updated u810_button utility which called the dreaded "SetSlate returned error. FjSetSlt is exiting error" on login. The fix is again to you have to uninstall BOTH the utility/driver and install the driver first. rebooting, installing utility second. Apparently it has something to do with some left over files that cause a conflict with the loading of the new utility. (Make sure you delete the program files/fujitsu/utility folder if an uninstallation did not solve the problem)

Everything runs perfect at this point with no paging file with updated microsoft update on 10/21/2008. Unfortunately no ominpass version 5 availble (it is available for vista on the website). You can edit the startup with msconfig or installing spybot to remove all fuji specific startup programs and it will save you 100mb of ram. Try not to install windows defender as that will take around 50mb from 2 processes. You can also save another 20 megabyte by removing tabtip.exe startup. All it does is enable a small box where you click your cursor expands to a keyboard(similar but not as obnoxiously large as the middle button which launches the keyboard) but I find it very useful so I left it on. I am running well at 400mb memory usage at startup by also removing relteck audio startup processes. It runs relatively well even running photoshop cs3 (no large files). I even ran inkseine somewhat well but because it is research technology it is not memory efficient as it is the only program that gave me a out of memory error.

So in summary:
1) Try to install xp tablet 2005 from recovery cd if you have vista business.
2) If you install from genuine tablet 2005, omnipass may be missing.
3) Installing updated software from fujitsu website wil require you to remove the software before installing the new software. You may also want to run driver installations first and reboot before installing it's subsequent utilities.
3) You may skip the Mediaslot_02micro installation if you have no problems with the sd slot.
4) Some vista files from fujitsu website will work in xp (example sys-extension-drv) however the omnipass will not install.
---5) An internet search actually turned up that omnipass 5 can be installed from software in the drivers cd shipped with fujitsu. Sure enough in the vista folder of omnipass folder it upgraded my version 3 to 5 (Unlike the wrong os warning downloaded from the website).

Thoughts:
1) Wondering if Omnipass should be uninstalled... The three services OPXPApp.exe (20M), scureapp.exe(10M), omniserv.exe(10M) seems a little high considering all I use the fingerprint for is to login which is in itself not that secure really.

Notes:
1. I'm not the smartest tool in the shed cause I did not notice that the tablet pen from the u810 actually extends an inch more if you pull the tip a bit.

Unboxing u810 and 1000h

It's been a while since I received both fujitsu u810 and the asus 1000h. They both came on Friday but on separate fedex trucks which I didn't think was very efficient but I was lucky on the fujitsu u810(it was scheduled to come on monday but came early in the warehouse which was really sweet).

Both of them have a skin type box cardboard box over the retail box... thought that was unncessary but than it's not uncommon for packages to get "lost".



Like my wood floors?

I would have more pictures but my xd card got corrupted by my zio dazzle mediacard reader. Unfortunately I couldn't find the usb cable for my fuji finepix v10 camera with it's "proprietary" cable... it doesn't have a mini usb port like say canon cameras. That's what you get for using a mediacard reader sometimes.

The fujitsu u810 weights 1 pound and 8.9 ounces (or 1.56lbs as stated) with 4 cell battery; sd and cf card inserted. My asus eeepc 1000h weight was 3 pounds and 2.1 ounces with inserted sd card. Power consumption is around 30 watts for u810 and 40 watts for 1000h. What upsets me is that the asus power adapter is actually SMALLER than the fujitsu u810. Removing the battery and the power consumption drops down to 10 Watts for both using my trusty Kill A Watt P4400. These will actually make great home servers if you change the harddrive to a compact flash drive or a ssd. Actually they would be great now but the eeepc is in the lead for it's better linux installations.

Next on the installation and pitfalls of both.

Warren Buffett... You can suck it.

It's been a while but I just wanted to state how horribly disappointed by what Warren Buffett made the case for the Government Bailout on Charlie Rose Show (PBS). It reminded me when Colin Powell made the case for war before the United Nations. I fell for that one too which enraged me when Warren Buffett tried to do the same. It's dispicable considering his very lucrative deal with GM at the expensive of every non-Berkshire shareholder cause you know they aren't getting no dividends after paying Mr. Buffett off.

In the same week, Mr. Bloomberg tries to run for a 3rd term against term limits in place. It just completely baffles me why people put up with big pile of dog poo. Can you imagine George Bush running for a 3rd term?

Anyway, I just removed my last 20 percent in the stock market ironically at a positive since I was daytrading the few week cause volatility makes a great case for gambling in stocks. Now my entire portfolio is in either cash or money market accounts FDIC insured of course. Only plus side I see is that it was raised to 250k which makes putting money away much easier now.

Since I was in a good mood for my gains I purchased a fujitsu u810 tablet pc. It's incredibly small and weights around 2 pounds so can't wait for it to arrive. At the same time I also purchased an asus 1000h laptop weighing at around 3.2 pounds. Can't wait to play with both of them when it arrives.