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eBay Special 2.5″ HDD USB Case

Since I have a fair few 750GB disks sat doing nothing, I figured I’d get some USB3 caddies for them. Back when USB -> IDE caddies appeared, they were hideously expensive. Not so much these days!

USB HDD
USB HDD

For £6 on eBay, you get a basic plastic box with the required bridge circuitry.

USB - SATA Bridge
USB – SATA Bridge

Here’s the PCB – a very basic affair, with only 2 ICs. The large QFN IC on the left is the USB-SATA bridge. It’s a JMicron JMS567. Unfortunately JMicron are rather secretive about their bridge chips & I can’t find much information about it, nor a datasheet.

PCB Reverse
PCB Reverse

Here’s the other side of the bridge PCB – not much on here, the activity indicator LED is a bit of a bodge job, but it’s functional. The IC on the right is a Pm25LD512 512Kbit SPI EEPROM. This is used to store things like the USB device & vendor IDs, device name, type, etc. Here’s what dmesg spits out when the disk is connected on my standard Linux system:

[10397.893298] usb 2-3.1.1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 8 using xhci_hcd
[10397.909019] usb 2-3.1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=152d, idProduct=1562
[10397.909025] usb 2-3.1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[10397.909027] usb 2-3.1.1: Product: ELEMENTS
[10397.909028] usb 2-3.1.1: Manufacturer: ELEMENTS
[10397.909029] usb 2-3.1.1: SerialNumber: 0F00000000157DC
[10397.912679] scsi host13: uas
[10397.913198] scsi 13:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       ELEMENTS         0225 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[10397.914043] sd 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg11 type 0
[10397.914179] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdk] Spinning up disk...
[10398.917575] .....ready
[10402.939800] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdk] 1465149168 512-byte logical blocks: (750 GB/698 GiB)
[10402.939803] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdk] 4096-byte physical blocks
[10402.940358] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdk] Write Protect is off
[10402.940363] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdk] Mode Sense: 53 00 00 08
[10402.940662] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdk] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[10403.038847]  sdk: sdk1
[10403.040572] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdk] Attached SCSI disk
[10404.347605] device-mapper: table: 252:0: adding target device sdk1 caused an alignment inconsistency: physical_block_size=4096, logical_block_size=512, alignment_offset=0, start=4096
[10404.347611] device-mapper: table: 252:0: adding target device sdk1 caused an alignment inconsistency: physical_block_size=4096, logical_block_size=512, alignment_offset=0, start=4096
[10404.626320] device-mapper: table: 252:0: adding target device sdk1 caused an alignment inconsistency: physical_block_size=4096, logical_block_size=512, alignment_offset=0, start=2100224
[10404.626325] device-mapper: table: 252:0: adding target device sdk1 caused an alignment inconsistency: physical_block_size=4096, logical_block_size=512, alignment_offset=0, start=2100224

Here’s some speed benchmarks:


USB2 Benchmark
USB2 Benchmark

First attached to a USB2 port, above

USB3 Benchmark
USB3 Benchmark

And finally attached to a USB3 port, above

Tests were done with a 320GB 5400RPM Samsung HM321HI drive, direct into the root hub, for the shortest possible signal length.

 

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Recording QSO’s From My Shack

Since my new Wouxun has audio output jacks, I figured it would be useful to have the ability to record what my rig hears, if anything interesting comes on the air.

Under Linux, I use an application called, (creatively enough), Audio Recorder.

Recorder Screenshot
Recorder Screenshot

Using a simple connection to the mic input on a USB soundcard, I can capture everything the radio hears. Unfortunately this doesn’t work for outgoing audio, so it’s not much good at capture of my personal QSOs. For this I will have to set up another radio to act as the main receiver.

At some point in the future I will implement this with a Raspberry Pi as the audio capture server.

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NCR Receipt Printer Script

Just a short script to directly print files to the NCR 7197 Series printers under Linux as there is no direct driver. Certainly not finished or pretty, but functional.

#/bin/sh
###Depends on fmt & iconv for file formatting for printer to operate correctly. Also expects UTF-8 encoded text files.

if [ "$1" == "--help" ];
    then
		echo "NCR 7197 file printing Script"
		echo "Usage:"
		echo "./ReceiptPrinter.sh <FILE> <SERIAL PORT NUMBER>"
		echo "To trim paper off, pass --cut parameter with port number instead of file name."
		echo "This script is currently set up for USB Connection of the printer"
		echo "Make sure your user has access to the serial port you intend to use,"
		echo "otherwise an error will occur"
		echo "This script uses fmt & iconv to format the provided text file for the printer."
		echo "This is 44 characters wide, word wrap enabled & format conversion to US English"

	else
		if [ "$1" == "--cut" ];
			then
				echo -e "\x1B\x07\x1D\x56\x41\x06" > /dev/ttyUSB$2
				echo "Scissor Operated"
				exit 0
	else
		if [ ! -z "$1" ];
			then
				cat $1 | fmt -w 44 | iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT > /dev/ttyUSB$2
				echo -e "\x1D\x56\x41\x06" > /dev/ttyUSB$2
				echo "Print Complete"
				exit 0
			else
			echo "No File provided!!! Returning to shell!"
			fi	
		fi
	fi
exit 0
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Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Kernel Support

Here is a compiled version of the Linux kernel for the Raspberry Pi useful for those who have USB/Serial touchscreens of the 3M Microtouch or eloTouch variety.

Works with a freshly installed & fully updated Raspbian image.

I have tested this only with a 3M Microtouch EXII controller currently.

Simply overwrite the /lib folder with the new modules & overwrite the main kernel image in /boot to install.

[download id=”5568″]

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Rare Veroboard Design Tools – Stripboard Magic

Stripboard Magic

Stripboard Magic is a Windows application for designing PCB layouts on stripboard (aka prototyping board, aka Veroboard). It was released by a British company called Ambyr which ceased trading a long time ago.

The interface is a quite primitive and a little strange but the program is functional even on Windows XP. It also works great under wine in Linux, at least with version 0.9.38 and above as this is all I have checked. It should probably work on older versions too. I haven’t tried it on Vista though.

It can be a handy program when called upon and I have successfully used it a few times when throwing together random small circuits. Due to the interface I would imagine it to be a bit clumsy for very large circuits. The biggest gripe I have with it is the inability to change the orientation of components on the board, so some circuits tend to be slightly larger than they need to be.

I downloaded a copy of Stripboard Magic 1.0 back in the 90’s and recently just found it lying about on my computer. As I would consider it to well and truly be abandonware and as it seems to be a little sought after by some hobbyists I have provided a link to download it below.

[download id=”5624″]

Here are some screenshots showing the schematic view (top) and board layout view (bottom):

 

 

Stripboard Designer

Another hard to find app these days is Stripboard Designer, mirrored here for people who wish to use it.

[download id=”5626″]

[download id=”5628″]

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RTL8187B Linux Driver

Not strictly teardown related, but here is the Linux version of the RTL8187B WiFi chipset driver for all those who require it, it’s not available on the Realtek website:

http://www.experimental-engineering.co.uk/downloads/rtl8187B_linux_26.1056.1112.2009.release.tar.lzma

File is compressed with TAR.LZMA