Defeating the final boss in Final Fantasy X

I know FFX is kinda old, coming to 4 years now. Oh well, I just started couple weeks back.

And finally, after some levelling up & customisation on the sphere grid, defeated Braska's Final Aeon without much problem, that is the last boss of the game.

Basically, teleported Tidus to end of Auron's sphere grid & given him many strength +4 so that he can do 9999 damages per hit also. Characters were armed with stone proof or stone wards to protect against Jetch's beam. Tidus casting hastega to speed up everyone's attacks. Auron & Tidus on overdrives. No chance to even unleash more funky stuffs like Yuna's Holy magic or Lulu's double casting flare or summoning Overdrive Aeons like Anima & Magus Sisters. May have a chance to use it on Omega weapons later though.

Enjoy the video.
[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

Linux Friendly Webcam Prolink PCC 5020

As a long time linux user, I know from personal experience that, it is difficult to find a webcam that works with linux. Nevermind about the french guy who created many linux drivers for many cheap webcams, but finding one that matches his drivers is like finding a needle in a haystack, no less.

http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html


The fact that I chance upon this Prolink PCC 5020 webcam during the PC show 2008 & surprised to find it working relatively easily in linux. Here you go..

Although I got it for S$25 from the PC show, cheapest I found in Singapore's Sim Lim Square is S$42 from Laser. I got another piece of this cam from a PC shop in Ipoh, Malaysia for RM$60, which is around S$25. KL LauYatt should have this for around the same price, if not cheaper.

From Skype in linux, I see this as "Vega USB 2.0" webcam. It is enabled by the linux kernel with ubuntu 8.04 or Fedora 9. Even the onboard mic will be enabled as Vega USB 2.0 mic & can be used in Skype.

So, if you need a linux friendly webcam, this is it. I feels the resolution is slightly worse than when it's under windows... not sure if there is anything I can tweak though... to make it better. Overall, it's a sure fire in linux with acceptable image quality.

Just doing my part for community service.

Cracking Singnet issued Thomson ST536V6 modem to work in M'sia

Gotten a second hand Singtel issued Thomson ST536V6 modem from the local forum for S$20. Purpose is act as backup for my mum's ADSL connection in M'sia. M'sian generally stays in terrace houses which has poorer lightning protection on the phone line. So, burning of telephone wires or modem by lightning stike happen to my mum's home once every couple of years. Telephone line surge-protector helps. Getting a cheap second hand modem sounds like a good idea also.

However, I was immediately met with problem that the modem came with a customed firmware from Singapore Singnet & the settings cannot be changed the 'usual way'.

Here is how I flashed it with the "international 7.4.3.2" version of firmware such that one can change the VPI & VCI settings to 0 & 35 for use in Malaysia.

My sources of information are from the threads/sites below:

http://simontay.blogspot.com/2007/11/thomson-speedtouch-585v6-modem-woes.html

http://mirror.opensourcehub.com/pub/speedtouch/utilities/UpgradeWiz/v4.4.2.1/

http://www.speedtouchforum.de/viewtopic.php?t=1089#8355

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=1619875

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=2025432&highlight=st536v6+firmware

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=1511654&highlight=st536v6+firmware


After the successful firmware upgrade,

The default gateway address changed from 192.168.1.254 to 10.0.0.138.

I can set the VPI/VCI to Malaysia's 0.35. Or on some other modem, it's 0 & 35 respectively. Of course, I can't test it here right now when I'm in Singapore, but I assumed things will be easy from now, when I can change all the settings on the modem.

Singnet's firmware served to
1. Make things simpler for people using Singnet with 1~2 computers.
2. Make things difficult for people to use it as 'bridge mode'. The need to burn a 'residential
cd is ridiculous & make things unnecessarily complicated.
3, Make things complicated for people trying to configure it for use in other countries.
The need to burn a 'residential cd' to change VPI/VCI is again ridiculous.
4, Setting the administrator password with the 'residential cd' is also too complicated.
The default 'user' without password does not confirm with what the modem's manual says & took me so long to figure out.

Let's hope the international firmware will make all things simple for this modem.

Last but no least, the administrator's account name & password is case sensitive.
The user name is actually 'Administrator' & NOT 'administrator'. Again, took me a while to figure that out.

Side note:

1. The sole purpose of the 'residential cd' is to change the modem settings with the ISP specific firmware, where many settings are intentionally omitted to avoid tempering. The cd works only in windows where some of the autostart.inf files are automatically loaded. Linux did not detect those files at all & so the cd does not work in linux.

2. Since the 'residential cd' is 'windows only', I ran the firmware upgrade software in windows also. I did not test whether it will work in linux via vmware or wine. Do so at your own risk.

First purchase from US online store

First of all, all those advertisements from ISP saying a broadband internet connection will let you purchase from any online stores all over the world, forget about all those. It's just not true.

To purchase from an online US store, one needs

1, a US shipping address, because most us stores simply won't ship overseas &
2, a US issued credit card, because most us stores does not accept overseas credit card.

After searching high & low for the low power AMD 4050e around the region without success. The only last resort I have is to shop online from US.

Solution is to subscribe to VPost from Singapore Post Office, where it will issue you a shipping address in US. Next is to search for a US online vendor which will accept overseas credit card. In this case, PC Universe @ Amazon is the selected vendor. So, the purchase is via PC Unverse @ Amazon & paid with a Singapore issued credit but shipment is to a a US addressed issued to me, by VPost USA.

Order processed by Amazon on Jun 6, 08 & the merchandise arrived in Singapore on Jun 20, exactly 2 weeks later, after much hassles.

And the two 45 watts ultra low power AMD X2 4050e cpu are set to replaced two of their older siblings, the 65 watts low power AMD X2 3600+ cpu.

In case, the merchandise is only available from a US store that only accepts US issued credit card, the purchase can only be made via VPost Concierge service. User need to provide the exact url address of the US store pointing to the merchandise. The concierge service staff in US will place the order for you & arrange for shipment to delivery to their US addresses. The concierge service will accept the goods in US on client behalf & subsequently ship it to the client Singapore address. The price to pay for the concierge service is S$20 plus 5% of the price of the mechandise .

Cracking ubuntu 8.04 to work with nVidia 8200 chipset motherboard

Upgraded my 2 years old nVidia 6150 motherboard to the new nVidia 8200 motherboard recently.

Using the latest ubuntu 8.04 installation, Hardy Heron's 2.6.24 kernel simply don't work with the new chipset. The basic SATA2 controller, onboard LAN & the onboard 8200 3D chip are all not supported under the 2.6.24 kernel. Although ubuntu 8.04 can be installed with a all_generic_ide option, performance should be degraded substantially & also, no amount of tweaking with the settings can get the onboard LAN & onboard 8200 3D chips to works

The nice surprise is that, Fedora 9's 2.6.25.5 kernel works flawlessly with the new 8200 chispet. SATA2 controller & onboard LAN. The onboard 8200 3D chip requires the latest nVidia 173.14.5 to work though.

It was understood that nvidia 173.14.5 driver will support the 8200 3D chip but will not work with the 2.6.24 kernel in ubuntu 8.04.

So, here is my attempt to install customer kernel in uBuntu to work with my latest motherboard acquisition.

Following the guide from

http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_ubuntu

I've compiled & installed the 2.6.25 kernel in ubuntu.

And with the new kernel , one can finally remove the 'all_generic_ide' option from the kernel option to take advantage of the new SATA2 controller. Edit the grub boot options as follow:

sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

And to install the latest nVidia 173.14.5 driver, one need to boot to native console to install.

In Fedora, one will edit /etc/inittab to change run level from 5 to 3 to boot to native console.

In ubuntu however, one needs to issue

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

then do

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.05-pkg1.run

to install the latest nVidia driver.

Upon reboot. Viola, finally have the nVidia driver working with the 2.6.25 kernel.

Update Jun 10, 2008,

It seemed my custom-compiled kernel has missed out some sound modules & ends up the onboard sound is disabled in ubuntu.

According to the Master Kernel Thread at [url]http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=311158[/url]

Troubleshooting:

--------------------------------------------------------------
Q. My High Definition sound (Azalia) does not work with the new kernel!:

A. This took me a long time to figure out because I didn't have sound either. You have to enable the Intel HD (Azalia) module in Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, even if it isn't Intel.

--------------------------------------------------------------

So, after recompiling the kernel enabling Device Driver, Sound, PCI Device, Intel HD Audio option, the sound is ok & the OS is perfect now for my nVidia 8200 chipset motherboard.

Fixing Fedora 8 wireless network problems

Fixing Fedora 8 wireless network problems

Fedora 8's wireless is really disappointing.

So far, bugs findings include

1. wpa_supplicant is buggy & cannot connect.
2. default ath_5k driver conflicts with madwifi driver from livna
3. network manager is also buggy.

I have a DLink G520 using the atheros chipset. Here is how I managed to get it working.
Note: This method will give you a fixed ip 192.168.0.17(or dhcp ip if you like) & the startup
files will connect you to your preferred wireless network without any manual intervention by users
like using network manager, which does not work anyway.

1. Blacklist ath_5k in /etc/modprobe.conf & /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.
2. Installed kmod-madwifi from livna
3. disabled network manager as it will interfere with the configuration below.
4. updated wpa_supplicant

Tricky steps:

5. Previous version of Fedora before 8, atheros chipset is recognized as ath0. In
Fedora 8, this does not work. Atheros chispet is recognized as wlan0. So, I have
changed all previous reference to ath0 to wlan0.
6. I removed the ath_5k driver from kernel as some suggested. Not sure if this is
absolutely necessary though.
7. At /etc/rc5.d, there is this file SXXwpa_supplicant. My case, XX=12. Change it to a bigger
no. I changed it to 98. Reason being, wpa_supplicant was started before other services &
so it does not work. S98wpa_supplicant makes wpa_supplicant starts after most other services.
8. 4 files to be modified/created

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
/etc/dhclient-wlan0.conf
/etc/sysconfig/wpa_supplicant
/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf


My configuration files are as follow:

# /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
# Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC
DEVICE=wlan0
ESSID=fedoragroup
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
PEERDNS=yes
PERSISTENT_DHCLIENT=Y
DHCLIENTARGS=-nw
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
HWADDR=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=192.168.0.17
DOMAIN=
TYPE=Wireless
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
CHANNEL=6
MODE=Master
RATE=Auto
GATEWAY=192.168.0.1
------------------------------------------------------------

# /etc/dhclient-wlan0.conf
interface "wlan0" {
# Don't bother with NTP over a radio link
request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, routers, domain-name, domain-name-servers, host-name;
}
-------------------------------------------------------------

# /etc/sysconfig/wpa_supplicant
INTERFACES="-iwlan0"
DRIVERS="-Dmadwifi"
# old config is INTERFACES="-iath0"
# old config is DRIVERS="-Dmadwifi"

-------------------------------------------------------------
# /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
# ctrl_interface_group=wheel
network={
ssid="fedoragroup"
scan_ssid=1
#psk="mypasskey"
psk=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
pairwise=TKIP
}

USB memory can't mount on kernel 2.6.22.1-27.fc7 & above

It is sad that yet another critical bug is found in Fedora 7. The symptom is simply, some USBthumbdrive or USB harddisks are not automatically detected & mounted since kernel 2.6.22.1-27.fc7.

The bug is documented here

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=249282

And the solution as suggested on comment#25 works.

In /etc/udev/rules.d/05-udev-early.rules

Commenting out the line below does not work & it also disabled the sound card.

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="?*", ENV{MODALIAS}=="?*", RUN+="modprobe
$env{MODALIAS}", GOTO="skip_wait" 

Moving the line

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="scsi", WAIT_FOR_SYSFS="ioerr_cnt" 

to before

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="?*", ENV{MODALIAS}=="?*", RUN+="modprobe
$env{MODALIAS}", GOTO="skip_wait" 

solved the problem.