Project Dreamcast

After the success of Project Genesis and Project TG-16, I have my next project to work on - a Sega Dreamcast.  I've never played a Dreamcast before - in fact I know very little about the system.  What I do know is the console was probably one of the most underrated and overlooked video game consoles of all time.  It was ahead of its time in many ways.  The Dreamcast was the first console to offer built-in network and Internet connectivity, it was the first to offer progressive video output, the first 128-bit system, I believe it was the first to offer a keyboard and mouse, and it had a lot of unique titles not found on any other console.  Add to that it was about half the price of competing systems.  Unfortunately the console was short-lived.

I recently picked up a Dreamcast off eBay.  I got the console, two controllers, a VMU, Unreal Tournament, and power and video cables all for $20 delivered.  The reason the console was so cheap is because it's "broken."  It may sound odd, but I'd actually rather get a broken Dreamcast than a working one.  Why you might ask?  Well fixing a console is as much fun as playing it in my opinion.  And after fixing it up I'm going to mod the console to improve it and make it special and unique.  I'll document the entire process here.  Unlike Project Genesis and TG-16, I'm going to document this as I go.  Both of those projects I completed them before making a single post.  But this one I'll post as I go, which hopefully will help others to see how I go about trying to diagnose, repair, and mod the console.

Before I talk about the repair efforts, I wanted to give my impressions of the console.  First, I am surprised by the size of the console.  It's a very small console.  Secondly, the controllers feel nicer than I was expecting.  I especially like the analog thumbstick.  It's been my opinion that most analog thumbsticks are stiff and/or move in a clunky manor.  But the Dreamcasts thumbsticks are (pardon the expression) a dream!

Next time I'll get into the repair efforts on the console.

Is my hard drive dying?

I remember back like 10+ years ago, one way to tell if a hard drive was dying is the number of bad sectors on the drive.  Occasionally you scan your drive, and if that scan comes back with bad sectors you know your drive is slowly dying and you might want to consider a new drive.

Recently at work a drive in a server machine had been causing problems, and sometimes even crashing the machine.  When you reboot the machine, the BIOS reported a hard drive failure.  So I ran a sector scan which came back with 0 bad sectors.  I wasn't expecting that, I was for sure there would be a lot of bad sectors.  Well it turns out, most newer hard drives employ a little technique to make you think the drive is still doing great when in fact it is dying.  They have extra sectors on the hard drive which are held in reserve, there is no way for the operating system to access these sectors.  When the hard drive detects a bad sector, it stops using that sector and replaces it with one of these reserved sectors.  So to the outside world the drive is still running great, but internally the failures have begun.

It turns out there is a way to detect and track this.  Newer hard drives have what is called S.M.A.R.T. (or Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology).  Basically the drive tracks statistics about it's own operation; number of hours in use, number of reads and writes, etc.  One of the stats it tracks is number of reallocated sectors.  Checking the S.M.A.R.T. stats on the failing drive I found over 5,000 reallocated sectors.  Indeed, the drive was failing.

So how do you read these stats?  There are tons of free and commercial tools that read and display this info.  I like Defraggler by Piriform.  In addition to reading and displaying S.M.A.R.T. data it is a great disk defragger, and it's free!

XBMC

For a while now I've been considering creating a Home Theater PC (HTPC).  I've definitely been dragging my feet on this, there's no big rush here.  I've even considered a Roku as a cheap box that will do 80% of what a HTPC does.  A friend of mine said I should look into a free open-source piece of software called XBMC.  Without even trying XBMC I brushed it off as something I wouldn't be interested in.  Several weeks later, for some reason I decided to install it and give it a try.  And I'm glad I did because I sorely misunderstood what XBMC is.

In short, XBMC is a media playing software for your TV (or computer).  You provide it "media" and it "plays" that media on your TV.  So what media can it play?  Well here's where I was in the dark.  I assumed there were two main types of media it would play.

1. Pictures, music, videos, and DVDs on your network.  It's very common for people to store these types of media on their computer or something like a NAS box.  Whereas I do have some of this media, I don't want to watch it on my TV.  I already have a computer and I can view it there.
2. A TV tuner card for broadcast TV.  Hook up an antenna and watch, pause, and record live TV.  This is something that very much interests me, but I don't have a TV card yet.

That's what I *thought* XBMC did.  And like I said, I don't need it for media on my network, and I don't have a TV tuner card.  So I assumed XBMC was useless for me.  Boy was I wrong!  What I didn't know is XBMC has a third source of media - the Internet!  There are dozens of official plugins and hundreds of unofficial plugins that grant you access to pretty much any video source on the Internet.  You can view TV programs from major networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Spike, History Channel, MTV, SyFy, HGTV, etc.  The list of channels, both broadcast and cable, surprised me.  You can also view content from Internet sites like YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, VEVO, Revision3, etc.  There is so much Internet content available through these plugins you could never watch it all.  If you want to get rid of cable/satellite TV then you should seriously consider XBMC.  Even without a TV tuner the amount of content you can watch is overwhelming.

Is the PC industry dying?

If you read a lot of technical news articles and commentary like I do, then you've probably seen predictions that the PC industry is dying.  They all point to the rise of smart phones and tablets as the leading killer of the personal computer.  I'm not going to argue, these devices have taken away market share from the PC, and these newer devices have their place.  But I think people are overreacting.

To me, I think the underlying issue here is how people "use" data.  I think that working with a computer you are either "consuming" data or you are "creating" data.  Consuming data would be tasks like reading a webpage, checking your email, watching a video, playing a video game, etc.  All of these tasks, the main flow of data and information is toward you the user.  Creating data is obviously the opposite.  If you're writing a paper for school, editing video/audio, putting together a business presentation, etc.  With these tasks the flow of information is opposite, from you the user.

So what does this have to do with smart phones, tablets, and PCs.  Simple, I strongly believe (and I think most people would agree) that smart phones and tablets are great "consumers" of information but awkward at best at producing data.  If you have to write a 20 page paper for a class in school, are you really going to compose it on a phone or tablet!?!  No, you'd sit down with a real computer and a real keyboard.  So as long as people need to create data, the need for PCs will there.

Again, it is true that smart phones and tablets are eating away at the PC segment.  But I predict this will be a temporary trend.  A lot of people only use their home computer for "consuming" tasks like checking email and surfing the web.  For these people, a smart phone or a tablet makes sense.  So when the time comes for them to buy a new PC because their current PC is outdated, they will buy a smart phone or tablet instead.  But once everyone who should have been using these devices over a PC has made the switch, the market share will stabilize.

There is one more really big thing that most people are oblivious to.  Most people don't realize that the single biggest market segment for computers is businesses.  Corporations spend a lot more money on PCs than the home user.  And most businesses need computers to do their job.  Most employees sitting behind a computer are "creating" content and not consuming it.  Therefore that computer is hard to replace with a smart phone or tablet.

This is why I firmly believe the PC segment will be around for a long time.  It may take a small hit in the short term, but the industry will go on and thrive.  What's more, Windows continues to be far and away the world's most used platform with >90% of the total computing market share.  So everyone is hot to trot over new things like Android and iOS, but these have a long way to go to catch up to PCs and Windows.

Freezing Skim Milk

One of my favorite things in life is milk.  There's nothing like a tall glass of cold milk.  And one of the worst things is wasted milk.  We recently left town for the holidays, but the day we left I still had several cartons of milk in the fridge.  They were going to be bad by the time we got back, we couldn't take it with us, and I can't drink that much milk before we left.  So I Googled to see if you could freeze milk.  A lot of people said it worked, but that it changed the texture of the milk, giving it a grainy texture.  But these people also said that it was the fat in the milk that caused this.  Well I drink fat free (a.k.a. skim) milk.  With no fat it should be fine, right?  I figured it was worth a try.

I put the milk in the freezer for the week we were gone.  When I got home I put it back into the fridge.  It ended up taking 2 days to completely thaw.  But the important question, what did it taste like?  It tasted like it always does.  I couldn't taste a difference, the texture was the same.  So as far as I'm concerned, if you need to freeze skim milk it comes out fine in the end.  Maybe if you freeze it for more than a week problems develop (such as funky flavors from the freezer).  Also, make sure the container you freeze in has enough head room as most liquids expand when you freeze them.

Repairing Scratched Discs

Recently I bought a used Wii game, but when I tried the game out it wouldn't load.  Looking at the disc is had quite a few scratches on the disc.  Am I out of luck, or is there anything I can do to fix this?  I've seen tons of fixes on the Internet using polish, toothpaste, wax, etc.  I've tried some on the past with no success, so I wasn't wanting to try that again.  But I have seen sellers on eBay that use professional machines to resurface damaged discs.  I decided to give this a try and blog the results.

The process is simple.  You buy the auction on eBay, they give you an address to mail your scratched disc to, they resurface the disc and mail it back to you.  Pretty simple, and the turn around was quick too.  I got my disc back in a few short days.  But would it work?  I put the disc back into my Wii and it works perfectly!  Looking at the disc I'm not surprised it works, the process took away every single scratch.  I wish I took a before picture, but now the disc looks brand new.

The best part is, this process is pretty cheap.  It only costs $2.50 which includes resurfacing the disc and mailing it back to you.  There are several sellers on eBay that offer this service, but I went with "euro-am."  If you have scratched discs, keep this in mind as a relatively cheap way to fix the disc.

SSID - to hide or not to hide?

If you have a home wireless network then you're probably familiar with the SSID field, and most wireless routers offer the option to hide the SSID for increased security.  But is this really worth it?

When it comes to computers in general, and wireless networks specifically, I prefer to have as strong a security as possible.  So I always use the most secure encryption and long complex passwords.  By the same token I would choose to hide my SSID (or network name).  I would never rely on a hidden SSID alone, as security through obscurity is not sufficient.  But is a hidden SSID really any more secure?  I've recently found programs like Inssider that will show you all networks in range, whether or not they are broadcasting their SSID.  So a hidden SSID does not mean no one else can see your network nor does it mean they can't try and hack in.

So a hidden SSID is not any more secure.  And as it turns out, a hidden SSID has negative side-effects.

1.  Connection time
When your laptop, phone, tablet, etc. connects to the network it can actually take longer.  This is because the device has to try additional tests to make sure the hidden network is indeed the network it's trying to connect to.

2.  Battery life
It sounds odd at first, but hidden networks can actually use up more battery in your device.  Your device is constantly searching for hidden networks that match the list of known hidden networks and trying to cnnect to them.  This consumes processing power and wastes precious battery life.


Given this I've recently switched from hidden SSIDs to publicly visible SSIDs.  Since the SSID is visible, I would make a recommendation.  Don't put your name and/or street address in the SSID.  If someone else sees a network "JamesSmith" or "17ElmStreet" then they know exactly whose network it is.  Choose something obscure like "DeathStar" or "CherrySoda."