Last night, Aunty Liz and Uncle Steve helped the girls carve some pumpkins! Here’s the result of everyone’s creative work:
So, we’re all ready for the visit of the Great Pumpkin this year, if it comes!
Tags: pumpkins
Archives for October 2008
TiVo Hacking: Getting a Linksys WUSB54G working
October 27, 2008 by 4 Comments
So, I have a TiVo Series 2 stand-alone DVR with a Product Lifetime subscription. For years, I’ve had it connected to the home network using a Linksys WUSB11 wireless network adapter, but it finally died. I went and grabbed a Linksys WUSB54G as a replacement, but found out that the TiVo doesn’t support it. No problem, I know the TiVo runs Linux and there’s plenty of documentation on how to “hack” the TiVo so I can load my own kernel modules on it, etc.
It turns out that the Linksys WUSB54G v4 uses the Ralink 2570 chipset. Fortunately, there’s been effort on native Linux drivers for the Ralink family of wireless chipsets. The hurdle, of course, is that the TiVo’s MIPS R5432 is big-endian, so it presents a bit of a challenge porting the driver to the TiVo.
Working off the latest code for the legacy rt2570 driver from CVS, I’ve gotten it to compile using TiVo’s Linux 2.4.20 kernel. Loading the module, however, results in this:
rt2570: init usb.c: registered new driver rt2570 rt2570: idVendor = 0x13b1, idProduct = 0xd rt2570: idVendor = 0x13b1, idProduct = 0xd rt2570: using permanent MAC addr rt2570: Active MAC addr: 00:12:17:89:f5:02. rt2570: driver version 1.0.0 Unaligned Access to 0x80230b2b in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4 Unaligned Access to 0x80230b2d in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04 Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021b3dc Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021b408 Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021dc2c Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021dc08 Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021cd8c Unaligned Access to 0x80230f47 in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4 Unaligned Access to 0x80230f49 in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04 Unaligned Access to 0x80231155 in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4 Unaligned Access to 0x80231157 in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04
So, now I get to go fishing through /proc/ksyms and try to fix up all these unaligned access errors. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get through all of this and get the driver working.
Anyone out there have experience porting Linux device drivers like this? Got any tips or techniques that might help me? I’d really love any help I can get …
Update: I’m posting my debugging progress in a rt2x00 forum thread. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow, right?
Update: I’ve gotten it working! I’ve addressed the majority of the unaligned access traps and I can now use my WUSB54G as a wireless NIC on my TiVo! Here’s a patch against rt2570-cvs-2008102616 of the driver and the corresponding kernel module binary:
- rt2570-tivo-mips.patch
- rt2570.o.gz (1.42 MB)
MD5: 64605e019929db714d583d160a6b513c
If you have a SA2 TiVo and want to use a Linksys WUSB54G as your wireless NIC, this driver is what you want. It works for me, anyway!
Tags: Linux, TiVo, open source, hacking, Linksys WUSB54G, Ralink 2570
Is DRM finally going away for real?
October 24, 2008 by 2 Comments
Back in 2003, when I started working for AOL, there was a race to launch a digital music store for the Windows platform. The company to beat was Apple, who launched their Windows port of iTunes in October 2003. At that time, AOL was still claiming to have over 24 million subscribers. Clearly, if AOL could push out a digital music store offering as part of their service to that many customers before Apple, it might have made a difference.
But, wait … AOL launched its MusicNet offering as early as February 2003, you say? Beating Apple didn’t make much of a difference, after all, right?
I wasn’t directly involved in any of that work at AOL so I’m just speculating here, but I know a lot of effort went into rights management systems and DRM. I’m willing to bet a lot more effort went into getting all that stuff working than actual work on making the product–the music store–kick ass. I kept complaining that AOL should take advantage of its then-800-pound gorilla nature and spend its budget and manpower to invent and pioneer a business model that was DRM-less, rather than spend all that time trying to satisfy everyone’s wacky demands trying to implement DRM.
At the time, I kept hearing responses that all boiled down to: it’s not going to happen. I’ve learned that nothing happens unless someone makes it happen and AOL certainly could have been one to make it happen. This reminds me of a quote I love: “People aren’t resistant to change. Matter of fact, people will change just about anything in order to maintain the status quo.”
Fast-forward five years to 2008: Amazon, Walmart and even Apple (through iTunes Plus) are offering completely DRM-free music downloads. Somehow, things are changing from “not going to happen” to “it’s happening” to “it’s happened.” What makes me sad is that instead of rendering itself irrelevant, AOL could have pioneered this.
Regardless, I’m happy that we can finally start saying goodbye to DRM for real. Now, companies can start focusing on really innovating where it counts–identifying, funding, producing and distributing quality digital content–instead of on meaningless technology like DRM.
Tags: digital content, DRM, AOL, Apple, music
It’s family picture time!
October 21, 2008 by Leave a Comment
What is your favorite Bible verse?
October 19, 2008 by 13 Comments
Next week, our third grade Sunday School children each will receive their own Bible, which this year, my older daughter will be included. Part of the process involves parents selecting their favorite Bible verses and highlighting them, so that when the children read through their Bible, they will be able to share this with them.
Now, I imagine for most parents who have gone through Sunday School and otherwise grew up in a church already have a bunch of favorite Bible verses. For me, this isn’t the case; I was only baptized at the end of 2005. I suppose I could skim through and try to find meaningful passages, but for some reason it just seems wrong to do that.
So, I put out a call to my Twitter friends asking for their favorite Bible verses and several people responded! Here’s the first few responses that came in:
- Micah 7:8 – “8Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; Though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me.” [from @jaymartinez]
- Proverbs 31:8-9 – “8Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. 9Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” [from @jerseymomma]
- Leviticus 24:15 – “15And speak to the people of Israel, saying: Anyone who curses God shall bear the sin.” [from @jgrossberg]
- Exodus 21:17 – “17Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death.” [from @jgrossberg]
- Matthew 6:28-34 – “28And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you
Let Regina show you the gems of Wikipedia
October 7, 2008 by Leave a Comment
My friend Regina has started a new project, Things I’ve Learned from Wikipedia. She’s only just started, but she’s already uncovered some real gems.
If you’re interested in learning more useless trivia and obscure facts but don’t have the time to surf around yourself, go and read her blog. As she says herself, “One day you’ll be on Jeopardy and remember something you read on this blog. And then you’ll thank me.”
This is “high speed” EDGE?
October 5, 2008 by Leave a Comment
This is my BlackBerry Curve 8310 tethered to my MacBook Pro over Bluetooth:
Not the “high speed 3G EDGE” I was expecting. Is this really the height of technological achievement for 2008? Where’s my flying car? Jeez.
Tags: mobile, BlackBerry, Mac, Bluetooth, tethering
Thanks for all the comments!
October 3, 2008 by Leave a Comment
Last week, I upgraded from Movable Type to WordPress. Since then, I’ve received a bunch of comments on various entries, some old, some new. What’s surprising is the fact that in a week I probably received more comments (not even counting the spammy ones) than I have in the past three months! Wow!
I don’t get why, though. I did clean up the design a bit, but it’s fundamentally the same. I replaced my home-grown CAPTCHA implementation with reCAPTCHA. The comment form is pretty much the same. I can’t think of anything that I would attribute to this increase in activity.
Regardless of why, I’m thrilled that more folks are sharing their feedback with me. It’s one of the reasons I love blogging: being able to interact with people. Thanks, everyone.
Tags: blogging
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
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