Sysadmin Field Notes - January 2010 Archives

January 20, 2010

I was trying to burn an ISO disk image through Disk Utility last night on my MacBook Pro (where burning previously worked flawlessly). At first I thought it might have been related to the recent drive firmware that came in an update and that I was going to be in for a real fight to get it to work.

The error message was very simple, and didn't have any real useful details, but Disk Utility keeps a burning log at ~/Library/Logs/DiscRecordling.log and it said this:

Disk Utility: Burn started, Wed Jan 20 01:00:58 2010
Disk Utility: Burning to DVD+R (RITEK F16) media with DAO strategy in MATSHITA DVD-R   UJ-868 KB19 via ATAPI.
Disk Utility: Requested burn speed was 47x, actual burn speed is 8x.
Disk Utility: Burn failed, Wed Jan 20 01:01:17 2010
Disk Utility: Burn sense: 3/73/03 Medium Error, Power calibration area error
Disk Utility: Burn error: 0x8002006D The disc can't be burned; it might be incompatible with this disc drive. Please try a different brand of disc, or try burning at a slower speed. 

Some googling got me to the Apple support forums, with a whole bunch of suggestions, many of which sounded like superstition (SMC reset, fix permissions, etc.). I went with the simple one.

Blow some compressed air into the drive.

The thing worked flawlessly after that. Try that first. :-)

January 17, 2010

So I've been using some form of FM Transmitter/radio adapter in the car to play my iPhone through the stereo. I finally found some stations that work around here in my area (Sacramento, 97.5 and 95.7 work just about everywhere, fairly well), but the cable picked up a short in it, so channels would keep cutting out and it would turn off spontaneously. Rather than buy another and continue to suffer through, I figured I'd wire things up more permanently.

I bought a DICE r4-5v integration unit. Seemed like that was supposed to somehow be able to work, even if meant losing XM (which I could live with). It also seemed like it would work with my iPhone, since that's what I usually use it with.

First off, usual disclaimers apply. I have no idea what I'm doing around cars, so your mileage may vary. Whatever happens is not my fault. Break your trim pieces off? Not my fault. Break some wires? Not my fault. Battery explodes? Not my fault. See the pattern?

One major warning, I would definitely disconnect the negative battery terminal. According to the official Honda service manual, there are airbag components in this area of the dash, which are usually not to be messed with when power is applied. You'll need your radio codes. Yes, codes. One for the nav, one for the radio. I'll get to that later...

There are already several great tutorials on the internet about how to get the console apart and install an iPod adapter. I used them extensively and many thanks to their authors. The only problem is, I have Navigation in my Accord. Which, as it turns out, once you've got the whole console apart, you can't reach any of the connectors. Piecing things together from the internet, I realized you have to go through the top to get at them.

Halfway through of course.

You can actually buy 3 day access to the service manuals from Honda for only $10, so I did that to help me out.

Removing the radio and navigation unit from a Honda Accord

So this picks up after right after you remove the box from under the radio. Here's what I saw:

Uh Oh. No easily accessible connectors. So the vent panel on top needs to come off, then you can undo some screws to pull the audio/nav unit out, and access the connectors. Don't panic, because it turns out none of these things need to come out too far. But I could not for the life of me find a walkthrough on the internet, so here we go.

First, push in the hazard button; there's a little slot under there. Put a small flathead screwdriver in there to push a clip. You can kind of feel it release. Once it does, give it a gentle pry forward to pop it loose a bit.

Now you need to release two clips on the sides of the vents. There are little holes/slots on the outside bottom of each vent. There's a special honda tool to do both sides at the same time, but I find that it was doable one side at a time. Just wrap a flathead screwdriver in some tape to keep it from scratching the surface; insert it into the slot and push, while prying forward a bit. At the same time, keep a screwdriver in the slot in the hazard button. Not sure if that's strictly necessary, but that's kind of what the manual said. Then do the other side.

After doing both sides, you should be able to pop the whole vent up a bit from the car. You can grab it from there and pull towards you. The clips in the back release fairly easily. There are up to three wired connectors to the various buttons and display units; I didn't disconnect them, there was enough slack to just lift it and set it aside. You just need to be able to get to the screws that should now be exposed, and get it enough out of the way to see once the radio is out.

Then there's the two bolts on the bottom of the radio...

That's all the screws. Now we have the most annoying part by far. The manual just says "remove the audio unit" at this point. This starts to feel easy enough; the top of it rotates kinda easily forward, and you can feel give if you push from the back of the radio.

But, the bottom definitely feels stuck. Those are the three clips (the picture of their location was taken after reassembly):

They are behind the plastic facade. Basically there's a plastic bar that goes all the way across the opening, towards the bottom of the audio unit. That part is supposed to stay, and the audio unit clips into it. This was a pain, because the plastic bar flexes as you apply enough to remove the clips, which feels really weird and wrong. You can work your fingers in between the facade and the bar to help pry the clip open more directly, rather than just yanking on the whole unit. This is what finally worked for me. The sides were easier to get than the middle one. Here's a blurry-cam close up of the bugger that made it such a pain:

Now you can just pull the whole audio/navigation unit forward pretty easily, just far enough to expose the connectors:

Now it proceeds basically like other tutorials. The only differences is room. Not a lot of cable to work with. You may want to unwrap some of the black plastic on the existing XM connector so you can better place the Y-cable. I didn't bother, I just kind of let it hang, but that cuts into some of the room needed for the door on the compartment to open. So my door doesn't open quite all the way. I don't think I care, YMMV.

At this point I restored battery power to make sure we were all good to go. Here I discovered a slight problem. I had checked before I started to see that I had the radio code, it was on a card in the meticulously kept records that my parents kept. But that was the radio code. There are two codes. One for nav, one for the radio. The nav code was nowhere to be found. To recover it from the website you need the following:

• VIN
• Phone number and zip code of original purchaser
• Serial number of nav and serial number of radio

What fun. The radio serial number is on the bottom, or can be retrieved through the radio while it's on, and the nav serial number is on the DVD-ROM unit in the trunk. Once I had the codes, everything worked. Except the XM preview channel was playing through the audio over the iPod. No surprise really, since the iPod interface manual said that you had to disconnect XM. It recommended doing it in the trunk, and that seemed easier to get to if I ever changed my mind, so I went ahead and did it there.

Disconnecting XM in the trunk

First pop off the plastic trunk protector on the back. I got it started with a small, wide pry bar, and then used my fingers. Then unscrew the grocery hook if you have one on the RIGHT side of the trunk. You then have some annoying little black plastic connectors to deal with. If you try to pry them directly without the magic honda tool, they break (which is not the end of the world, I'm sure you can get more). So I found it best to work my hands under the liner close to the connector and push up on the liner.

Now you can see the XM Receiver hopefully. Just unplug the two connectors and put it all back together.

That was basically it. I'll post a follow-up with how the whole thing works. I left a lot of cable out in the car, since I use an iPhone, and so often need to be able to use the phone, so a short little stubby cable wouldn't work very well. Again, your mileage may vary, but I assume this works with 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006 Accords at least. Good luck!

January 5, 2010

Wow. Hard to describe my feelings on this video showing flash player on the new Google Nexus One phone.

So this is supposed to be the fastest burliest phone around. Yet our flash mobile player, in a controller demo:

1. has a terrible frame rate on the demo game (especially notice when there are two animated things on the screen at the same time)
2. Kills the scrolling performance of each web page they show it on.
3. Makes the the scrolling sort of flash in and out parts of the page
4. And, if the guys' battery life is any indicator, kills the battery (okay, cheap shot, maybe he just hadn't plugged it in in a while).

But best of all, aside from the bevy of technical flaws, the guy doesn't seem to notice. Shouldn't he be falling all over himself apologizing for the poor performance?

Finally, almost 1/2 the video is actually pimping flash ads. How out of touch do you have to be to think that users want to see flash ads that kill performance on their mobile device? I block flash on the desktop because it's too annoying for words, and they want it on my phone?

Please, Apple, never implement flash on the iPhone. Ever. I beg of you.

Please websites (looking at you car manufacturers and restaurants), stop making your sites in 100% flash and make them accessible to mobile users.