Tasio's Multimedia, HTPC, Emulation, and Media Center, and misc blog

HTC Imagio on Verizon

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:16:00 GMT

The HTC Imagio (XV6975) is designed as an Iphone killer, the Look is polished, and controls are almost entirely touch screen. The Imagio has a nice weight to it and intelligent features abound, for instance if you lay the phone down on a surface while on a call with the screen face down speaker phone will be activated. I Truly do love my Imagio.

More...

New My Movies 3 and XBMC

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:18:00 GMT

I have been playing with the new My Movies 3 the past couple of weeks on my main media center computer. I have also been playing a bit with standalone versions of XBMC as I recently came into a computer capable of working well with it. The reason I have put both of these together is that I didn’t realize that My Movies had the ability until recently to write the XML files that XBMC can read from your media directories. For me this is just one more feature that locks in My Movies 3 as king of the Media Center Apps for me. Not to mention the nice new layouts, and backgrounds in the new version worth paying the money for access to all features if you can.

More...

Original Xbox Softmod with Xbox Media Center (XBMC)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:14:00 GMT

I recently bought an original Xbox and some gear to hack around with. The intent was to build a soft-modded Xbox with Xbox Media Center on it. I had done this before when Xbox modding was still in its infancy but had broken that Xbox years ago in miss having it. I got a late model 1.6 Xbox (The hardest to mod) for this project and the game Splinter Cell. I custom made a USB input from a breakaway cable to get the necessary game saves onto the Xbox. I then made the necessary mods and later upgraded the hard drive.

More...

Acer Aspire One D250 Netbook Bios Update and Linux Problem.

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:34:00 GMT

Ran into a strange problem this week with my Acer One D250 Netbook. This netbook is a triple boot system with Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Home, and Fedora Linux 11. I attempted to flash from my 1.06 bios to the newer 1.14 bios, this did not go well. Upon reboot All three operating systems refused to boot. After changing some settings in the bios (SATA mode changed from AHCI to IDE specifically) I was able to get Windows XP to boot very slowly. I then returned to the 1.06 Bios.

More...

New Vista Media Center Configuration with the best plugins.

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:15:00 GMT

I have once again reconfigured my Vista Media Center with several top notch plugins. I found that EMUCenter seems to finally work the way I wanted. EMUCenter has a coulple of tricky things, but the newer versions do not crash on configuration. I found that the crashes were due to the program building hashes of the games, the crash was due to problems with read only files. So make sure that your rom directories have no read only attributes set.

More...

Loading Fedora Core 10 Linux on my Asus F3SA Laptop

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:47:46 GMT

I have recently been working with linux on my Asus F3SA laptop and thought I would detail the things that worked here. So far I have most things working in linux. I tried several distributions of linux and found that Fedora Core 10 seemed to work the best. Everything except the Intel Turbo Memory HardDrive Cache, and some of the the function keys seem to work. The most notable F3SA features that do not work are the volume buttons.

Sound, Network, Bluetooth, and most of the system devices should work out of the box in Fedora 10. The ATI Radeon HD mobile should work with full acceleration by adding the RPM Fusion Repositories from the RPM Fusion Web Site located at http://rpmfusion.org/ . Once the repository has been added install the FGLRX ATI driver from the ADD/Remove Programs function. The on board web cam requires a bit more work. Make sure to install the Build Tools from the Add Remove Software menu. Once all the Dependencies have been met the driver itself can be built from SVN Trunk by doing the following in a terminal window.

Go to, or create a folder to put the driver into then enter the following (Note: only the lines with $ are commands, and each $ is a single command meaning you will need to hit enter after it to invoke it). This will make directory and download the driver source code into it.

$ mkdir syntek

$ cd syntek

$ svn co https://syntekdriver.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/syntekdriver/trunk/driver

A    driver/stk11xx-dev.c
A    driver/Kconfig
A    driver/stk11xx-dev-a311.c
A    driver/stk11xx-dev.h
A    driver/stk11xx-dev-6a31.c
A    driver/stk11xx-dev-a821.c
A    driver/stk11xx-dev-6a51.c
A    driver/stk11xx-dev-6a33.c
A    driver/stk11xx-usb.c
A    driver/stk11xx-dev-6a54.c
A    driver/README
A    driver/stk11xx.txt
A    driver/stk11xx-bayer.c
A    driver/Makefile.standalone
A    driver/stk11xx-v4l.c
A    driver/stk11xx-sysfs.c
A    driver/stk11xx.h
A    driver/Kbuild
A    driver/doxygen.cfg
A    driver/Makefile
A    driver/stk11xx-buf.c

Next, without switching Directories download the make-file for the source code by entering the following on the command line:

$ wget http://bookeldor-net.info/merdier/Makefile-syntekdriver

Now switch to the directory with the driver:

$ cd driver

Now compile and install the driver by entering the following commands:

$ make -f Makefile-syntekdriver

$ sudo make -f Makefile-syntekdriver install

To test if it worked enter the following command and see if you get a similar output to the one below.

$ sudo modprobe stk11xx

$ dmesg |tail
stk11xx: Syntek USB2.0 webcam driver startup
stk11xx: Syntek USB2.0 - STK-1135 based webcam found.
stk11xx: Syntek AVStream USB2.0 1.3M WebCam - Product ID 0xA311.
stk11xx: Release: 0005
stk11xx: Number of interfaces : 1
stk11xx: Initialize USB2.0 Syntek Camera
stk11xx: Syntek USB2.0 Camera is ready
stk11xx: Syntek USB2.0 Camera is now controlling video device /dev/video0
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb_stk11xx_driver
stk11xx: v1.3.0 : Syntek USB Video Camera

$ sudo lsusb -v|grep -A 8 Syntek
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 05e1:0501 Syntek Semiconductor Co., Ltd
Device Descriptor:
bLength                18
bDescriptorType         1
bcdUSB               2.00
bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
bDeviceSubClass         0
bDeviceProtocol         0
bMaxPacketSize0        64
idVendor           0x05e1 Syntek Semiconductor Co., Ltd
idProduct          0x0501
bcdDevice            0.05
iManufacturer           1 Syntek Semiconductor
iProduct                2 USB 2.0 Image Capture Controller
iSerial                 0
bNumConfigurations      1
Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength          147
    bNumInterfaces          1

That should pretty much get your Asus F3SA going under linux. I will update as I get more information. I have my F3SA in a dual boot configuration with Windows Vista. Which Fedora 10 was able to detect, and configure properly and without problems.

Playstation 2 emulation using PCSX2 and Emucenter command line options.

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:08:19 GMT

I have had a few requests about using PCSX2 and a couple of other emulators recently. I decided I would post some of the command line options here so that others can get these emulators working in EMUcenter, or GameEx. In this particular post will cover PCSX2 for playstation 2 and launching from a 3rd party frontend like GameEx in one click.
The first step here is to get PCSX2 working Exactly how you want it to through the GUI. Tune all your setting to your liking and when you have a setup that works to your liking close the program and navigate to the directory where the PCSX2 config file are. Lock the pcsx2.ini file in read only mode. Next simply enter the command in EMUCenter as follows;

[Exefile] -nogui [path]

I thought it was going to be much more complicated but it isn't. For pretty much any frontend all that you need to know is -nogui, this is the key to making PCSX2 autolaunch using your default settings.

Help for additional settings are available using pcsx2.exe -help. Hope this helps.

Dreamcast Emulation with NullDC and Command line options.

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:59:46 GMT

I have had a few requests about using NullDC and a couple of other emulators recently. I decided I would post some of the command line options here so that others can get these emulators working in EMUcenter, or GameEx. In this particular post will cover NullDC and launching from a 3rd party frontend like GameEx in one click.
The first step here is to get NullDC working Exactly how you want it to through the GUI. Tune all your setting to your liking and when you have a setup that works to your liking close the program and navigate to the directory where the NullDC executables are. Open your NullDC.ini file in note pad and make sure that the entries I have marked in red are duplicated on your ini file.

;; nullDC config file;;
[imagereader]
defaultimage=defualt.cdi
PatchRegion=0
LoadDefaultImage=1

[nullDC]
Dynarec.Enabled=1
Dynarec.DoConstantPropagation=1
Dynarec.UnderclockFpu=0
Dreamcast.Cable=3
Dreamcast.RTC=1543276876
Emulator.AutoStart=1

[nullDC_plugins]
GUI=nullDC_GUI_Win32.dll
Current_PVR=nullPvr_Win32.dll
Current_GDR=nullGDR_Win32.dll
Current_AICA=nullAica_Win32.dll
Current_ExtDevice=nullExtDev_Win32.dll
Current_maple0_5=drkMapleDevices_Win32.dll:0
Current_maple1_5=NULL
Current_maple2_5=NULL
Current_maple3_5=NULL
Current_maple0_0=drkMapleDevices_Win32.dll:2
Current_maple0_1=drkMapleDevices_Win32.dll:2
Current_maple0_2=NULL
Current_maple0_3=NULL
Current_maple0_4=NULL
Current_maple1_0=
Current_maple1_1=
Current_maple1_2=
Current_maple1_3=
Current_maple1_4=
Current_maple2_0=
Current_maple2_1=
Current_maple2_2=
Current_maple2_3=
Current_maple2_4=
Current_maple3_0=
Current_maple3_1=
Current_maple3_2=
Current_maple3_3=
Current_maple3_4=

[drkpvr]
Emulation.AlphaSortMode=1
Emulation.PaletteMode=1
Emulation.ModVolMode=1
OSD.ShowFPS=0
OSD.ShowStats=0
Fullscreen.Enabled=1
Fullscreen.Res_X=640
Fullscreen.Res_Y=480
Fullscreen.Refresh_Rate=60
Enhancements.MultiSampleCount=0
Enhancements.MultiSampleQuality=0
Enhancements.AspectRatioMode=1

The next step is to save this ini file, and and to lock it to Read Only access. This will prevent your settings from getting changed.

Next the command format for launching the actual emulator is as follows:

GameEx: nulldc.exe -config ImageReader:DefaultImage="[rompath]/[romfile]"

EmuCenter: [ExeFile] -config ImageReader:DefaultImage=["PATH]

The command can be use in more or less any Frontend using a variation on those settings, only the [PATH] and Executable format will change. Hope this helps some of you out there.

Blackberry GPS Tracking

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:48:39 GMT

I am playing with a BlackBerry 8830 right now and have put Blackberry tracker on it. I works great, but a couple of things have to be done. First go to the site http://blackberrytracker.com/ and sign up, it's free. Then follow the instructions and install the software. Then setup the program, and switch your gps settings from "911 Only" to "Location On". You are now dialed to roll. Go to the site and see where your Blackberry is, or where it has been!

Verizon XV6800

Fri, 30 May 2008 03:38:53 GMT

After sending 3 Treo 700WXs back I decided to switch phones. I moved to a Verizon XV6800 which is produced by HTC. At a glance the XV6800 has more features, however after a couple of days the phone showed all it's weaknesses. I started to feel unhappy with the new phone, and so began scouring the internet for ways to fix the problem. After several tries to fix problems, I stumbled upon the fact that the phone had an onboard GPS that is turned off. Enabling the GPS required a hacked rom upgrade which is available along side an upgrade for the phone to Windows Mobile 6.1. The upgrade is produced by DCD over a XDA Developers, and installs in 3 steps. It is well documented, and easy to do once all the relevent documents have been read. On my Verizon phone a *228 was required to reprogram the phone following the update.
After updating the software all my problems were gone, and all the features I missed back. There were even new features including threaded text messaging. This upgrade was a complete improvement an makes this phone work better in every respect. I love this phone now and recommend this upgrade for anyone with enough skill to make it work.