Gimme that Old-Time Religion! (er. . . Technology!)

And just when you thought it was safe to toss some of those old techniques out, they come to the rescue when the newer technology fails to deliver.

Case in point:
I have an ancient Palm IIIxe that I bought back somewhere around '99 or so, that I use to sync with Outlook so I don't forget Important Meetings - as I tend to get absorbed in what I'm doing - and this beastie makes a racket to wake the dead when I set a reminder.

Computers have come-and-gone since then.  Operating Systems have come and gone since then.  Technologies have come, flourished, and withered away since then.  Back when I bought my Palm III, USB ports were either not available, or very rare, so Palm used the Universally Available Technology known as the Serial Port for it's "HotSync" cable.

Now, ten or so years later, computers with RS232 ports are scarce as hen's teeth, (unless you just happen to be looking in my basement!), and USB ports have not only arrived with a vengeance, they've gone through (at least!) three technology revisions since then.

So, that brings us to today - where I am sitting here with my dual-core, 64 bit laptop running Windows 7, next to both my venerable IIIxe, and a newer Palm M130 I just received.

The Palm IIIxe has a serial hot-sync cradle.
The Palm M130 has a USB hot-sync cradle.
My laptop has never even THOUGHT of RS232 serial.

So, which one do you think I was able to get working?  If you guessed the M130, you'd be dead wrong, as crazy as that sounds.

Why?  The M130 requires a special, and very specific, USB driver in order to function.  Which, by the way, is true for all USB devices.  If your fancy new USB device has a device ID that your system hasn't heard of yet, you're just plain old Out Of Luck.  There's really not a doggone thing you can do, except pray that someone, somewhere, has written the driver you need.

When Palm's M130 USB driver was written, Windows 7 was not even a gleam in it's Daddy's Eye yet - and coding for a 64 bit operating system?  The DEC Alpha was about the only game in town - outside of something costing bazillions of dollars - and absolutely nobody even considered porting something as trivial as a PDA to a heavy hitter like the DEC Alpha.

So. . . Not only are there no drivers for this beast, there isn't even a good, bad, or ugly workaround for it either.

But "On the other hand. . . .!"
Several companies, including Best Buy, sell a USB to Serial adapter.  You plug one end into your computer, the other end into your serial device's cable, install a driver, and away you go!  That old 1200 baud Atari modem you have collecting dust somewhere can ride again.  Or that old EPROM burner, or embedded micro-controller development kit, etc. etc. etc.  All of that stuff that you lovingly laid aside when technology outpaced it can return to a new, useful, existence.

Unlike USB, RS232 serial is RS232 serial is RS232 serial.  Once you get down to that connector, everyone is equal.  Everyone uses the same seven signal wires, everyone plays by the same rules.  And even if a device was particularly fussy, there was usually a "tweak" or an "adjustment" to a serial setting you could perform to make it happy.

Now yes, you are right, these things don't have 64 bit drivers either.  However, unlike the Palm, the folks at Prolific - the folks that make the USB-to-Serial chipset - DID port the serial driver to 64 bits and all it took was a little judicious web-searching to find it.

Once the 64 bit drivers were installed, the port came up like a champ!  I was then able to install the original Palm IIIxe desktop sync software without a hitch.  Even the old '90's vintage sync-to-Outlook conduits they had back then installed and worked.  Worked with Outlook 2010 - the latest and greatest version too.  Looks like maybe the folks at Microsoft actually did something right for a change? :-)

So now, I have my venerable old Palm IIIxe, fully sync'd with Outlook 2010, sitting there all snug and warm in my pocket while the whiz-bang M130 sits and waits.  Waits for the brand-new SERIAL hot-sync cable I ordered for it; waiting so that it too can return to a happy and useful existence.

You just gotta laugh sometimes!

What say ye?

Jim

WindowsUpdate_80070103 - WindowsUpdate_dt000Errors

Last post, I handed out one of my semi-famous "Hot Smokin' Weapon!" awards and I've been asked if I have a similar award for Stupidity Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.

Sorry.  I'm afraid I don't have one of those - at least not yet. . . .

If I DID have a "Smokin' Hole in The Foot" award, (Hey!  That's not a bad name!), today's post would definitely be a contender.

Today's post is about a Windows Update / Microsoft Update error:  WindowsUpdate 80070103 - WindowsUpdate dt000

According to Microsoft's KB article 952032:

This issue occurs if the following scenarios are true:

• Windows Update or Microsoft Update tries to install a driver a second time for an additional piece of identical hardware such as a graphics adapter.
• Windows Update or Microsoft Update tries to update a currently installed driver to an unsuitable version of that driver.

The "workaround" suggested by Microsoft is to "hide" the offending update so it does not get offered again.

. . . . Say WHAT?!

Strange, I thought that this was the entire reason behind Windows Update in the first place - it (supposedly) scans your system for needed updates, grabs them, and then installs them.

I would have thought it would have skipped it the 2nd time.  At least it caught itself and threw an error!

Oh, and by the way, if any of YOU would like to make naming suggestions for my "stupidity" award, please post them here and/or e-mail 'em to me.

What say ye?

Jim

Hot Smokin' Weapon Award for June '10 - mailhop.org!

Today's post is another one of my semi-famous "Hot Smokin' Weapon!" awards.  This award goes to DynDNS for their outbound mailhop service.

What's The Problem?

Some people, like myself, keep their e-mail, contatcs, etc., on a laptop they carry with them everywhere they go.

There are these lunatics, like myself, that use a third-party e-mail client - like Outlook - to manage their e-mails, contacts, appointments, etc., while on the road.

These lunatics want the convenience of a centralized store for all their e-mail, (on their laptops), with the ability to send e-mail no matter where they may be - be it at home, Russia, Singapore, or sitting on the beach sipping Margaritas in sunny Mexico.

The problem is that if you attempt to use your own ISP's mail server to send mail, (receving e-mail works regardless of where you are), you rapidly run into all the blocks and restrictions that ISP's use to avoid becoming spam-cesspools.

In a nutshell:  You can receive e-mail no matter where you are, but if you want to use your ISP's mail servers to send mail, you darn sure better be at home, (or at work, as the case may be), on their own network for this to work.

The Solution:

The solution is to use a subscription mail relay service, like the one offered by DynDNS (my dynamic DNS service provider - the subject of a future article in itself!)

A subscription mail relay service is used to replace the normal ISP provided SMTP service - and it allows you to send e-mails via their secure server from anywhere in the world you can scrounge an Internet connection.

The Good News:
It works.  From literally anwhere.  It's secure and you don't get mistaken for a slimy spammer because you are using them.

The Bad News:
It's not free - you do have to pay for this service.  However, for the casual user - like myself - who sends less than 150 e-mails per day, (!!!), the service costs something like twenty smackers - $20 - once a year for the privilege.  Even *I* can afford that!

Why is this a "Hot Smokin' Weapon!"?

If you are like me - and tend to be all over creation at any one time and still want the convenience of a local e-mail client on your computer rather than the crazy web-mail clients, (and their attendant security risks!), this is a Godsend.  I've been looking for a service like this for - literally - years.

Go check them out!

Jim

"Houston, Tranquility Base here - the Eagle Has Landed. . . ."

". . .one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Astronaut Neil Armstrong - First person on the Moon

A defining moment in history is a moment when something happens - and that something, when it happens, leaves the world changed forever.

"Watson!  Come here!  I need you!"
Alexander Graham Bell - Inventor of the telephone.

There is the moment when Alessandro Volta discovered how to create an electric battery for the first time.  Or the time Hans Christian Oersted discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

Or when Greg Simon Ohm developed the single, most fundamental, mathematical relationship in electricity and electronics; which for the first time allowed people to determine the exact relationship between voltage, current, and resistance - named "Ohm's Law" in his honor.

Or, more recently, when Dr. Lee De Forest discovered the three element electron tube; literally inventing the entire science of electronics at one stroke. Or when the Wright brothers made the first powered airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.; having created or discovered the fundamentals of aeronautical engineering, still in use to this day.

Each of these moments in time was a defining moment; leaving the world forever changed in its wake.

This year, in the April 8th, 2010 issue of the scientific journal Nature, scientists at Hewlett Packard reported the discovery of a fourth fundamental electrical component - the memristor - joining the resistor, capacitor, and coil as fundamental electrical components.

This discovery had been foreshadowed in 1971 by Professor Raymond Chua, at the University of California, Berkeley, who mathematically postulated the existence of this fourth fundamental component. Due to the lack of any techniques to create it, it has remained theory - a mathematical curiosity - until now.

Scientists working at Hewlett Packard accidentally stumbled upon this discovery while investigating some weird anomalies in certain nanometer scale semiconductor experiments they were doing.

Why is this important?

The discovery of a fourth fundamental electrical component - which does something none of the other three fundamental components can do - allows scientists and engineers to do things that, until this discovery, were either impossible or insanely impractical.

• True solid-state RAM for computers that takes micro-watts of power, is extremely fast, and never forgets what was written there, until changed. Computers might never need to be re-booted. You could shut your computer off right in the middle of doing something - restart it weeks, months, or even years later - and pick up exactly where you left off.
• Computer memory that is a tiny fraction of the size of current memory.
• Computer memory that can also do the job of the CPU chip.
• Extremely sophisticated analog computers now become possible.
• Because memristors behave in ways that are very similar to a neural synapse, it is now possible to do fundamental research in neural networking that was impossible before now.

And so on. . . . Literally the sky's the limit! Within five to ten years, I predict we will see new technologies that were not even imaginable before today. As professor Chua said when he heard about this new discovery, "Now all the EE textbooks need to be changed."

I'm excited!

What say ye?

Jim

--------------------
References:
Nature:  Issue 464, pages 873-876 (8 April 2010) - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08940.html

ieee Spectrum: "The Mysterious Memristor" - http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-mysterious-memristor

Tech Republic: "Memristors open new possibilities in storage and computing" - http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=2610