Ubuntu: Getting 1920×1200 working on an nVidia GeForce FX5500

March 15th, 2009

I’m currently building a new computer as a server that will eventually live out in my garage hooked up to a small 1024×768 LCD monitor, but most of the time it will be accessed by VNC, so I just bought the cheapest PCIe video card that I could find for it, an nVidia GeForce FX5500. However, while I am building it, I have it hooked up to a 24″ Acer LCD monitor which is running at 1920×1200.

The computer is running Ubunto 9.04 (Jaunty) Alpha 6, and the restricted nVidia drivers (v173), but the when I run nvidia-settings, the highest resolution that it offered me was 1920×1080, and that was interlaced, which looked terrible! What’s worse, all of the 16:9 ratio’s looked really bad, and I was forced to use one of the lower 4:3 ratios to get it to display properly

Although I am running Jaunty, the fix that I found is fairly generic, and so should work on just about any Linux distro

I checked out the logfile (/var/log/xorg.0.log) to see what it was saying, and it was reporting that the maximum pixel clock for my monitor was 135MHz, which I found really strange because when I hook up my other computer to the same monitor, it reports the maximum pixel clock as 330MHz. Since the nvidia settings thought the pixel clock was limited to 135MHz, it was limiting my resolution options to those that had a lower pixel clock than that. A quick look at google provided some options to at to the xorg.conf file in /etc/X11:

First, I added the line in red to the Monitor section:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0″
VendorName “Unknown”
ModelName “Acer AL2416W”
HorizSync 24.0 – 80.0
VertRefresh 49.0 – 75.0
Option “ModeValidation” “NoMaxPClkCheck;NoEdidMaxPClkCheck”
EndSection

This just tells the video card to ignore the reported Pixel Clock settings.

Secondly, I added the lines in Red to my Screen section

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0″
Device “Device0″
Monitor “Monitor0″
DefaultDepth 24
Option “TwinView” “0″
Option “metamodes” “CRT-0: 1920×1200 +0+0″
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1920×1200″ “1600×1200″ “1280×1024″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
EndSection

These lines tell the video card to use 1920×1200 as the default resolution

Then I just logged out, and logged in again and viola! perfect stable 1920×1200! I’ll probably have to fix this again when I hook up the small monitor, but that’s easy!

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Using the MF322 Telsta NextG card in Ubuntu

December 21st, 2008

This is something that i’ve battled with for a little while now, there are several scripts available on the net but I could never get any of them to work. Unfortunately, the MF332 is one of the oldest NextG cards that Telstra use, and it was never officially supported under linux, so information is sparse.

Anyway, i now have 2 methods of getting this card to connect to the internet under Ubuntu:

Method 1: Using pppd

I downloaded the following scripts from the net but I could never get them to connect. After watching what was happening using miniterm in KPPP, I realised that the card needed to be reset most of the time before it would accept any commands. So all I did was added an “ATZ” command to the following script and it works! I’m using this under Ubunto 8.10, but this method will also work under older variants of Ubuntu, and probably other distros as well.

First, create a file “/etc/ppp/peers/ppp0″ and add the following:

connect “/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/ppp0″
/dev/ttyUSB0
# might also try 115200 for the speed
460800
user “User@telstra.pcpack”
defaultroute

persist

usepeerdns

Next, create a file “/etc/chatscripts/ppp0″, and add the following:

ABORT BUSY
ABORT ‘NO CARRIER’
ABORT ERROR
REPORT CONNECT
TIMEOUT 10
“” “ATZ”
“” “AT+CPIN?”
READY-AT+CPIN=XXXX-OK “AT&F”
OK “ATE1″
OK “AT+CGDCONT=1,\042IP\042,\042telstra.pcpack\042″
SAY “Calling Telstra NextG\n”
TIMEOUT 60
OK “ATD*99#”
CONNECT \c

where XXXX is the PIN number for your SIM card. If you don’t have a PIN number, any old 4-digit number will do

To connect, just type

sudo pppd call ppp0

and to disconnect, just type

sudo killall pppd

Method 2: Using NetworkManager

Ubuntu 8.10 included NetworkManager 0.7, which features automatic detection and usage of 3G modems. Unfortunately, the good old MF332 seems to have been forgotten in all of this, but after a bit of tinkering, I managed to find a few things out and get it going. My solution if far from ideal however, so if you have any hints to make this better, please let me know.

When you first plug the card in, Network Manager will recognise it and create a nerw connection under the “Mobile Broadband” tab called “Auto Mobile Broadband (CDMA) connection” You need to edit this connection (or create a new one if you wish), and change the number to “*99#” (ignore the quotes), then press OK.

I identified 3 separate problems with trying to get my MF332 going using NetworkManager

1) I found that I had to disable the PIN on the SIM card. The only way I know how to do that is by using the Telstra Turbo Card Manager in Windows XP, under options-> security settings. This only needs to be done once

2) The second problem is that sometimes (but not always), after plugging the modem in, it needs to be reset, otherwise it just sits there sending back a short string every second or 2. I’ve just been using the miniterm in KPPP to reset it, but I suspect that simply typing “echo ATZ >> /dev/ttyUSB0″ will do it too, although I am yet to confirm this

3) The third problem is that sometimes (but again not always) it would connect successfully, but I could not get anywhere on the web. It turns out that the dns server addresses were not being updated in /etc/resolv.conf. Unfortunately, NetworkManager overwrites this file, so you can’t just set and forget. If you manage to connect, but can’t reach any websites, you either need to try disconnecting/reconnecting to see if the dns servers got added (cat /etc/resolv.conf) or manually enter “nameserver 203.50.2.71″ and “nameserver 139.130.4.4″ to /etc/resolv.conf each time.

I will do some more investigation into this to see if I can automate, but at least it’s working for now. I’m typing this message now while using my MF332 modem.

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Getting Suspend/Hibernate working in Ubuntu 8.04

October 12th, 2008

For some reason, I could not get Suspend or Hibernate to work out of the box on my Ubunto 8.04 installation on my old Sony Vaio laptop. A quick search of google reveals that this is a common problem, and the most common solution is to use a 3rd party application called uswsusp to do it. It’s pretty easy to get this going, here is what you need to do,

First, install uswsusp:

sudo apt-get install uswsusp

And by typing the below command you check if the suspend function works now….

sudo s2ram

Same goes for hibernation

sudo s2disk

If that all works, you can now replace the ubuntu default commands with the new uswsusp commands

First step is to back up the standard ubuntu commands

sudo cp /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend.bak

sudo cp /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-hibernate /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-hibernate.bak

Now, edit the suspend command file “hal-system-power-suspend” using vi or gedit, and replace the contents with

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/s2ram –force

Now, edit the hibernate command file “hal-system-power-hibernate” and replace the contents with

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/s2disk

And that’s it, hibernate and suspend should be working as they should!

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Installing Ubuntu 8.04

June 1st, 2008

I have a little Sony Vaio VGN-T17GP laptop that I use for travelling, I bought it off ebay about a year ago for $1000 specifically to use when we go on holidays, as it only weighs 1.2kg, and it is very small, measuring just 272mm by 205mm. It has a 1.1GHz Pentium M processor, 1GB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, a DVD burner, Wi-Fi, 2 USB ports, a PCMCIA port, a fire wire port, and the standard modem and Ethernet connections. To top it all off, the battery will last nearly 8 hours in low power mode. But it’s a few years old now, and it’s not the fastest laptop in the world, and so I decided that I would try to install Ubuntu 8.04 on it to speed it up a bit. Although I used to be an expert Unix user in a past life, it’s been years since I’d even looked at a Unix machine, and I’d only ever had limited exposure to Linux, so I’m approaching this installation almost as a newbie.

I did a Google search to see if anyone had done a Linux install onto a Sony Viao laptop like mine, but couldn’t find any references, so I decided to give it a go on my own

Installation

I downloaded the live CD from the Ubuntu website, burnt the .iso image to CD, then put the CD into my laptop and rebooted. Installation was very straight forward. I followed the guided setup to repartition my hard drive to include a Linux boot partition and a swap partition, answered a few other questions such as what country I live in, what sort of keyboard layout I use, what timezone I am in etc, and then the installation began, and in about 30 minutes, I had a fresh installation of Linux on my computer, ready to go! Microsoft take note! Installation does not have to be difficult!

Wireless (Wi-Fi) Networking

First job was to get the Wi-Fi configured to hook into my home network. I run WPA personal security on my home network instead of WPA2 personal because I have 3 access points at home, and one of them doesn’t support WPA2. So, I tried to get it to connect to my network using WPA2 Personal, but it just would not connect. I turned off security on one of my access points and was able to connect right away. I then set that access point to WPA2 Personal security, and was also able to connect straight away, but when I set the access point back to WPA personal, It just refused to connect. I played around with it for a while, and then found that if I manually set the encryption to “TKIP” instead of “Automatic”, it worked just fine!

Muted Audio

Next problem was that I had next to no sound. I couldn’t hear anything over the speakers, and only very very faint sound through the headphones. I did a quick Google search and found this blog post, which described how the default installation leaves a lot of inputs turned on, even if they are not physically present. So I just followed the instructions to turn off the extra unused inputs, and presto, sound worked just fine!

Installing Applications

One thing that deserves a mention is the Synaptic Package Manager, it makes package installation and updates just so simple and straight forward, just brilliant

Installing Google Applications

There are 2 applications from Google that I use every day, and not being able to use them on Linux would be a showstopper for me, but I was not disappointed.

The first app, Picasa2, offered me several methods, and I probably chose the most complex, but also probably the best. All I had to do was follow the instructions to use the Google linux repositories and then install the application through the synaptic package manager

I thought I would be able to install my second Google App, Google Earth, the same way, it I couldn’t find it. Instead, I went to the Google Earth page, pressed the download link, and it must have detected that I was running Linux, because it automatically offered me a file called GoogleEarthLinux.bin. I just saved this to my desktop, opened a terminal session, changed to my desktop directory, and run “sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin”, and it installed Google Earth for me. Brilliant!

Suspend and Hibernate

I found that I could get Suspend to work, but most of the time, I prefer to use Hibernate, but try as I might, I couldn’t not get it to work, seems to be a very common problem. I did some looking around on Google again, and found this blog post about using another application called “uswsusp” to take care of it. I followed the instructions on that page, and I now have hiberbation working as it should!

Things left to do

I just have a couple of things left that I need to get working. The first is to get the AT&T Network Client configured so that I can connect into my work network and read my email. I have got it installed, but I can’t get it to connect. The windows version of the client has a lot more configurable items, some of which must be configured before it will connect, but I haven;t yet found how to configure those items on the Linux version, still working on it

The next thing that I have to do is get my Telstra NextG wireless network card (MF332) working so that I can connect whereever I am. I found a few guides on the net and have tried a few different methods, but have not had any success yet, I will post again when I do

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Queensland Road Trip 2008

May 18th, 2008

Hi all,

We just got back from a 6 day road trip through Queensland, and so I thought I would share some thoughts and photos with you. The weather was just perfect all week, around 26C to 28C every day, with bright blue skies, it was just magic. We (and by we, I mean ‘I’, my wife doesn’t drive) had a lot of driving to do, nearly 2000kms all up, which I really wasn’t looking forward to, but ended up enjoying very much

Day 1, Saturday 3rd May: Fly to Hervey Bay

We caught a flight from Tullamarine (Melbourne) airport at 9:15am, and after a 1 hour swap to a connecting flight in Sydney, arrived in Hervey Bay at 1:20pm. I picked up the hire car, a Holden Commodore VZ SV6, and went straight to our apartment. We bought an apartment in the Whitecrest apartment complex on the beach a few years ago, as an investment property, and always stay there when we visit Hervey Bay, it’s in a great spot, directly opposite the best beach in Hervey Bay.

We spent the afternoon looking at properties, and managed to get a nice walk along the beach before sunset. We just grabbed a takeaway and sat out on the balcony and relaxed before going to bed early ready for an early start and a big drive the next day

Day 2, Sunday 4th May: Drive to Rockhampton

We managed to leave Hervey Bay at a little after 7am, and headed towards Bargara, a small beach town about 2 hours north of Hervey Bay. The drive there was quiet enough, especially since it was early on Sunday morning. Bargara is a nice little town, very quiet, very small, beaches are OK but are mostly rocks with only small sections of sand which is disappointing. We had a quick look at property prices, then jumped into the car and headed toward Rockhampton. Instead of heading back to the highway, we headed along the back road for a few hundred kms, and then joined up with the highway again at Miriam Vale.

We had a really good run, I just had the cruise control set to 105kmh most of the way, only exceeding that when overtaking slower traffic. The commodore SV6 was disappointingly gutless compared to the M5, even though on paper it would appear to have a lot of power, it was a lot slower than I had expected.

We got into Rockhampton about 2pm, after driving just under 500kms for the day, and booked into the Travelodge, overlooking the river. We went for a walk around the town for a few hours, but apart from the tumbleweeds rolling down there street, there was no movement in the town at all, it was quite eerie! It was like a ghost town. So we had another early night in preparation for another long drive in the morning

Day 3, Monday 5th May: Drive to Moranbah.

Today, we headed inland toward the coal mining towns of the Queensland outback. We left Rockhampton at around 8am, and made our way to our first stop at Blackwater, about 200kms west. After a quick break, we headed west a further 80kms to the larger mining town of Emerald, where we stopped for lunch at the botanical gardens.

After lunch, we hit the road again, this time heading roughly north towards Dysart. The roads got very narrow not long after leaving Emerald, and then shortly afterwards, the roads turned to gravel for about 50kms I guess. This didn’t suit the SV6 one bit, with its low front spoiler, and very stiff suspension, it hated the many cattle grids in this part of the country. We finally made it to Dysart, but only stopped to stretch our legs, before jumping back into the car and heading towards our final destination for the day, Moranbah.

Not much happens in Moranbah, it’s a fairly quiet little place. There are 5 pubs/clubs, 3 schools, a hospital, and even Coles and Target stores, so it’s an establish town, it’s just very quiet.

Day 4, Tuesday 6th May: Drive to Airlie Beach

We have a few properties in Moranbah, and we needed to inspect them before the end of financial year, which was one of the main reasons for the trip, so we spent the morning doing that, and talking to the agents, and got underway towards Airlie Beach. We had a much shorter drive today, only just over 300kms, so it was a nice easy drive. We headed back towards Mackay, until we stopped off at Eton for a bite to eat for lunch, and then from there heading north through Marian until we met up once again with the Bruce Highway (A1) and followed that all the way to Proserpine, and then turning right and heading towards the coast at Airlie Beach.

We stayed in a resort on the hill overlooking the beach called Martinique, it was a really nice place, the pool was outstanding. Our apartment was over on the left hand side, and had a nice balcony with great views.

Day 5, Wednesday 7th May: Visit daydream Island

Today was the only day that we didn’t do any driving, instead we went on a cruise over to Daydream Island (one of the resort islands in the Whitsundays) after a quick stopover at South Molle Island. It took about 45mins to get to the Island, we sat up on the top deck of the ferry, the sun was bright, the skies were bright blue, the weather was just perfect. We spent most of the day taking our time and walking around the island, we had a fantastic day, it was just beautiful.

We caught a ferry back to Airlie Beach around mid afternoon and then went back to the apartment to relax, and then later went for a walk along the beach at dusk.

Day 6, Thursday 8th May: Drive to Dolphin Heads

We set off about 8am for the drive back to Dolphin Heads, just a few kms north of Mackay. It’s only a short drive, about 150kms or so, so we took a detour on the way, by turning off the Bruce Highway and heading inland again towards the hills and the tiny mountain township of Eungella. Just outside of the town is a short bushwalk with some outstanding views, truly breathtaking. You could see for miles! We ended up standing there in silence for about half an hour just soaking it all up. Afterwards, we headed for Dolphin heads, and stayed at the Dolphin heads resort, the beach was right outside our unit, just magnificent. We headed up to Eimeo pub for some lunch, and to soak up the views, and then just bummed around walking on the beach for the rest of the day, it was a nice way to finish up our trip

Day 7, Friday 9th May: Fly back to Melbourne

Today just consisted of a 25km drive back to Mackay Airport so that we could catch our plane back to Melbourne. It was 14C, dark, cold and raining when we got back L

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Lots of little things fixed

April 6th, 2008

Had a productive afternoon on the E28 today:

- Fixed the high beams, fuse was missing
- Fixed the LHF fog light, turned out to be a dodgy connector behind the headlights, managed to fix it
- Fixed the LF stop light, connection was corroded, sanded them clean and all works again
- Replaced the indicator / high beam stalk and switch, old one was intermittantly faulty
- Replaced drivers seat belt, old one was frayed.
- Fixed the horn: faulty connection behind steering wheel.

Still got a few things to get done next week:
- fix the drivers door lock, when you put it into deadlock it jams
- refit door trims from both RHS doors
- clean the roof liner
- fit new custom made seat covers
- fix sticking electric window switch on LHR door

After that, I reckon I will be very close to having it roadworthy!

I’m having a ball doing this, I used to work on cars all weekend, every weekend when I was a younger, single man, but I haven’t been hands-on for years now, really enjoying getting back into it.

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Got the parts for my new engine

March 26th, 2008

I got the parts for the E28’s new engine today, so i’ll start building it up soon. It’ll basically be a warmed up BMW M30 motor. The block has been crack tested, is bored to 94mm, and is freshly honed. The crank has a 86mm stroke, which will give a capacity of 3.58 litres. I’ve also got a ported E34 M30 head and intake manifold, 2 cams, one which is about 264 degree, and the other which is much wilder, at 304 degrees. It also came with rods, bearings, pistons, about the only things missing are the exhaust manifold, and the oil pump.

I’ve got a few things to figure out before I start building it. If I build it as a naturally aspirated motor, then i’ll use the 304 degree cam, a bigger throttle body, beefier valve springs, and new pistons to give a compression ratio of around 10 or 10.5 to 1. I’ll use a megasquirt CPU to control it, and I would hope to get around 260 – 280 hp at the crank in this configuration.

What I would really like to do though is to supercharge it. It all depends on what it takes legally to register it like that, i’m still trying to suss that out. But if I can do it, then I would revert back to the standard cam and throttle body, and use a centrifugal supercharger and an intercooler. I would get pistons to give a compression ration of 8.5 or 9 to 1, and I would hope to get around 400hp at the crank in this configuration.

Pics can be found Here

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Put the new door on today

March 20th, 2008

I put the new door on the car today. It took me most of the day, but I spent most of the time figuring out what to do rather than actually doing it.

Here’s a pic of the door as it was:

I pulled off the interior trim, removed the wiring loom from the door, and then set about trying to remove the electric window mechanism from the door, which took lots of twisting every which way until it finally came out. After I had that out, I propped up the door, undid the hinges, and voila, off came the door:

BTW, did you see that carpet? It used to be black, from all of the grease and dirt in it:

So, after given the new door a good clean to remove all of the grease and stuff in the seams, I propped it up, and bolted in the hinges:

It took a little while mucking around to get the alignment right, but here’s the finished product:

The rear of the door still sticks out a little too far, but one of the screws in the striker plate is stripped, and I can’t get it loosened enough to adjust it, i’ll have to drill it out on the weekend.

After that, I put the wiring loom into the new door, hooked up the door lock actuator for the central locking. Then I removed the old manual window winder, and put in the electric unit from the old door.

The only problem I have now is that the old window was held into the support by some sort of double sided sticky tape, but I don’t know what it was. Now, because the glass is just sitting on the support, when I try to wind the window down, the support comes away from the glass. I’ll go and get some double side tape tomorrow and try that.

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Did lots of stuff today

March 19th, 2008

Today, I took it to Bob Jane TMarts in Moorabbin, and got some new tyres for it (Yokohama C.Drive), and had a wheel alignment done. Saw StreekG there for 30 secs before he had to run to work (he works at Bob Jane), I heard his new merc, sounds fabulous.

Also picked up a S/H RHS door mirror, the glass on my is cracked. I replaced the wiper blades, cleaned the glass inside and out, and the hardest part of all, I finished cleaning the carpets. You should have seen how much foul smelling sludge I got out of them, unbelievable! I’ll probably have to go over them again at some point, no doubt they can still be cleaned more. I’ve cleaned the dash, door panels, trim etc, about the only thing left to clean on the inside is the roof lining. The car still smells, but it smells a whole let better than it did.

I took it down to carlovers this arvo and give it a HP wash and rinse, just to get the grime and grease off it.

I bought a MTec wheel for it off ebay, it was made for the E28, but it wouldn’t fit my car. It was then that I discovered that late E28’s have the same steering mounting as the early E34’s, and my E28 is one of the last ones delivered to Australia. Thankfully, I had the other wheel off my M5 here, so I put that on, problem solved (Sorry Leon!). I may get the other MTec wheel retrimmed though and put that back on, just not sure yet.

I have bought a set of front indicator lenses for it, and a new high beam switch, they will get here next week. I have also ordered some custom seat covers for the front seats, they will get here in about 2 weeks. It’s all starting to come together, I was driving it for a little while today and was really enjoying it.

So, tomorrow, i’m just going to focus on the door, and on the mirror, and if I get time, i’ll clean the roof lining too. I’ll take some more pics tomorrow

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Andrew from SouthernBM has had the car

March 13th, 2008

Andrew from SouthernBM has had the car for the past few days, weaving his magic with it. He replaced a heap of stuff under the car that was worn, such as engine mounts, various bushes, one half shaft, sway bar links, fuel hoses etc etc, a ton of stuff.

As usual, Andrew went over and beyond what I had asked him to do. Once he gets started, there’s just no stopping the guy, I don’t think i’ve ever met anyone so passionate about BMWs.

Thanks heaps Andrew for all of your hard work, the car feels transformed. We still have a lot to do on it of course, but we made a big leap forward today.

I’ve got next week off work, so i’m gonna gets stuck into all of the minor stuff that’s left, the aim is to get it roadworthy and registered just after Easter

More soon

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