A new life for a Dell Latitude 10 ST2 with Windows 10

I write about things that have caused me problems but I take my hat off to people who toil with challenging computer problems and when they solve them, document the solution for the assistance of others.

One such writer, to whom I shall be eternally grateful is the author of this article on upgrading a dell Latitude 10 ST2 tablet to Windows 10.

http://blog.asiantuntijakaveri.fi/2015/02/windows-10-install-from-usb-to-dell.html?m=1

The Dell position is that this isn't supported.

Actually, if you can overcome a few hurdles that Dell place in the way the tablet will run an early version of Windows 10 extremely well.

Also, and to my relief, the Windows 10 install seems to have an acceptable licence by virtue of the previous Windows 8 or 8.1 install.

Fantastic !

The Barix Exstreamer 100

The Barix Exstreamer is a hardware audio stream player.

https://www.barix.com/audio-products/exstreamer-family/barix/Product/show/exstreamer-100-105-110-120/

I bought a Barix Exstreamer second hand "as sold".

The unit has a neat feature that it speaks the IP address from the audio output (thus avoiding any challenges of finding the IP address out). Having found the IP address and got to a point where I could look at it (a spare broadband router was handy to get a 192.168.192.xx network), I pointed a browser at it hoping for a setup page. My guess is the unit had been set with a static IP address suiting the network it had been used on.

Sadly all I saw was a password screen:



It didn't seem to have any obvious default passwords and was probably protected for its former application.

Fortunately the Exstreamer 100 has a way of regaining control when you are presented with a problem like that, you can reflash the unit with stock firmware using serial.

One of my older computers has a "proper" serial port so I got hold of a crossed 9 pin serial cable (null modem) and the required firmware.

I used streaming_client_kit_vb230_20120921 and a Google should find you a set of similar software.

It is all available (after registration) from the Barix website but I found that the registration email turned up in my spam filter so sourced the firmware elsewhere.

What you need is in the folder called update_rescue so look there.

Assuming you have com port 1 as your serial port click on the serial1.bat file and is should start.

 You then connect the serial cable to the Exstreamer 100 and power the unit up.



Something similar to the above should be seen. Eventually (all being well) the replacement firmware should be on the Exstreamer.

It reboots, and once it picks up an address by DHCP, you should see the status page.



They have a "test"streaming service so my unit started to produce music.

Unit fixed !

There is a very handy Yahoo Group for the Barix Exstreamer which has old posts you might find helpful and a file collection which includes the required software.

2022 Update:

The Barix Yahoo Group (and Yahoo Groups in general) has gone.

Barix have an area on their website to get firmware etc.

Getting the data off a dead Buffalo Linkstation.....

Perhaps unsurprisingly given my "recovering a Buffalo Linkstation" post from September last year, come the start of January I have a dead Buffalo Linkstation HS-DH750GL as it died again.

After the September experience I had instigated fairly regular "Sync Toy" runs to back up the Linkstation HS-DH750GL to a WD MyCloud and a Synology NAS DS216se.

The way I worked, the Linkstation HS-DH750GL was my "working" store so when it broke I was only a few days of data lost but it was unfortunate.

Investigation suggested that the drive was OK and when I put it in a USB caddy and connected it to my Raspberry Pi, to my immense surprise the data partition "mounted" and all my files were there.

The drive isn't easily visible on a Windows machine as it has a Linux format and partition scheme.

I had a spare 1TB drive (the WD Blue that my PC seemed to not like) and so bought another Synology NAS case (a DS115j this time)  and fitted it to that.

After an hour of Synology initiation "stuff" it was all up and running with an empty 1TB drive. Unlike the old WD Blue 650GB there are no S.M.A.R.T. error reports on the 1GB drive so it seems OK to use.

The Synology NAS drive was seen by the Raspberry Pi as a server and by copy and paste I set the Raspberry Pi to clone the ex Linkstation 750GB drive (about 600GB of stuff) to the Synology NAS.

It isn't fast (about 48 hours) but is doing it..

Once I've got the data all on the new Synology, I'll have another go with the Linkstation HS-DH750GL but I think the PSU might be on the way out. There is a bit of a "capacitor" smell to it.

Repairing a Behringer DSP9024

I have a Behringer DSP9024.

For those unfamiliar with the unit, it can be considered a "poor mans Optimod" as it does split band audio dynamic range reduction.

While I wouldn't consider it suitable for use before an A.M. transmitter, for taming audio before a web stream it is ideal, and that's what I use mine for.

Unfortunately it broke with what I now know is a common failure mode (all the lights on the front panel flash and it "hangs" half way through booting).

A google suggested that the PSU capacitor C65 which seems to do a logic rail is the common fault. It is 16V/2200uF and mine looked like it might have been previously replaced.

I replaced it with a recommended 25v/3300uF and to my great relief the Behringer DSP9024 is mended.

Even now, a second hand replacement would cost £80 on eBay and there is nothing obvious for less than 4 figures that would do a similar job. Behringer make a 2 band unit but I suspect the DSP9024 does a better job (if less easy to set up).

The perfect unit would be a combination of the Behringer DSP9024 and a Shoutcast server.

Orban make something like that but it costs about £5k.

Anyway, the Behringer DSP9024 is mended for now.

Good luck if yours breaks.

Installing Shoutcast DNAS on a Raspberry Pi

Well this was surprisingly painful (mostly because of my complete ineptness with Linux) and I made numerous "schoolboy errors" but because I've now had to do this twice and the second time seemed more painful that the first I'll write it down.

That way if I need to do it a third time perhaps it will be easier.

I already have Icecast running on the Raspberry Pi and that complicated matters slightly as that uses port 8000 by default.

That was a simple install as it is "available" in the repository for the Raspberry Pi.

I found most Shoutcast help focused on Windows or other forms of Linux.

Once I had found a source of DNAS 2.4.7 (In my case where I had previously kept a copy, as the more recent versions seem to require registration to download) and un-archived it to a suitable folder it was a question of what to do next.

To cut a long story short I needed to edit sc_serv_simple.conf

I needed to add PortBase=9000 (to shift the default server port from 8000 where it clashed with Icecast) and edit the stream and admin passwords to two different passwords. This was all done using nano and written out to the same file.

nano sc_serv_simple.conf

Finally run the server

./sc_serv sc_serv_simple.conf

and it worked.

Recovering A Buffalo Linkstation HS-DH750GL

I've a couple of these, one I bought new in 2009 and the second from eBay a couple of years later.

The power went off last night while I was out and when I came home a few things were upset (less than there used to be !) but my two Buffalo NAS units were offline.

I turned them back on, one came back no trouble, the other didn't want to come back online correctly.

I could ping it but no sign of the web interface.

A bit of Googling later I had downloaded Buffalo's NAS Navigator.

This showed one NAS as OK but the other as in "Emergency Mode".

I suspected that for some reason, the power failure had upset the firmware on the broken NAS

Further Googling led me to Buffalo's firmware updater tool.

I downloaded the version appropriate to the HS-DH750GL and it found the broken NAS.

I let it run but at reboot it seemed to fail and said that the update had failed.

I then power cycled the NAS from the front panel and to my relief and surprise it came back good.

Whatever the updater had done seemed to have fixed things.

If you come here with a similar problem I hope that this happens for you !

I'm now running my SyncToy backup to copy this NAS onto a Western Digital "MyCloud" which I bought to back up the two Buffalo units.

The second duff WD Blue disc - now bought a Firecuda

I may have been unlucky but I've just had my second duff WD Blue disc in my ageing desktop.

The desktop is an Acer X3300 and is about seven years old.

The first WD Blue gave me a S.M.A.R.T. failure alarm one day so I wanted a quick replacement disk and bought the same make and model just a bit bigger (1GB vs 650MB).

That installed OK and I used Windows 7 backup and restore to migrate.

Fast forward to about two and a half years and the second WD Blue started being very laggy.

It could sometimes take tens of seconds to seek and the general PC performance was dreadful.

I wondered if it was a driver issue or something broken by one of the Windows 10 updates.

I tried a "refresh" which helped with a laptop but that didn't do much on the desktop.

I decided to bite the bullet and buy another disc.

This time I thought, the Firecuda seems to offer performance improvements and would cost perhaps £20 more. A quick Amazon order and here was a new disc.

Then, how to migrate.

Windows 10 backup and restore wouldn't work (an early indication that all was not well) so I tried the Seagate tool. That didn't like the hard disc USB caddy and had some unfathomable sector size problem, so I replaced the DVD drive with the new Firecuda and set the copy to work. There were complaints about unreadable source sectors but they could be set to be ignored (on the basis that the old system worked) and the copy completed.

Perhaps not ideal but massively less work that another re-installation (although I knew how to do that as I had done the refresh a few weeks ago).

I did a chkdsk /r on the new disc to see if anything duff had been copied and when I looked at the machine next morning all seemed well.

This far (a few days in) I'm very impressed with the Firecuda. It was 1GB 7200 RPM 3.5 inch format and has transformed the machine from frustrating to a pleasure to use.

As a simple upgrade on an aging machine that didn't justify a large SSD it seems good.

Sadly the WD warranty on my disc is two years.

I suppose it was OK for the £40 I paid for it and I've not lost data but I won't rush to buy another WD Blue.