Britax Isofix Duo Plus Installation Problem

I've got a Britax Isofix Duo Plus, which I have occasionally had a problem with. To install it you:

• pull the big green handle at the base on the back (OK so far)
• guide the two catch arms into the insertion guides until the system latches and the locks engage (still OK)
• Now you're supposed to turn the little green handle on the front and push the child seat back whilst the catch arms click to lock it into place (problem here)

The problem is that the the little green handle will not turn, and the child seat will not push back to fix the child seat firmly and safely into the car seat.

To fix this problem I put the seat into it's fully tilted position to give maximum visibility of the internal workings. Then I used a torch to look at the problem. I saw that there are two bolt heads on both sides to stop the big green handle from pulling too far either way. What was happening was that the tray attached to the big green handle had somehow pulled past the bolt head that should have stopped it from going any further. The fix was simple I just pushed a the plastic tray attached to the big green handle down so that it was released, free to go back between the two bolt heads. I used a broom handle for this.

Disclaimer: Note that I am not suggesting that you do this on your Britax car seat. You should get someone qualified to look at your seat if there's a problem with it. Certainly don't come to me if you decide to fix a problem on your Britax car seat and end up damaging it. Just want to be clear on that.

Installing XP on Asus an K8S-MX

I've got an Asus K8S-MX motherboard and I needed to reinstall windows xp onto my Maxtor 6L160M0 HDD. So I tried to use the nlite slipstream again (see T105 post). This disc didn't work: I guess the driver for the T105 sATA is different to the K8S-MX. So I made another nlite slipstream XP installation disc, using the old one (with SP3) as the basis, but adding the driver from here. This time I needed to select the PNP option. During installation I had to remember to not press F6.

Stopping the hourly chime on a Motile WR30M

My son has a cheap watch with WR30M on the front of it. The only branding on it is on the back which is EL-COSS RESIST, however searching online I think it may be a 'Motile' brand.

Anyway the problem I had was that it kept on chiming every hour on the hour.

To solve it I had to go through many possibilities eventually finding a successful one:

From the normal (time) mode, press the 'RESET' button and keep it depressed (this will display the alarm time), then also press in the 'MODE' button. All of the day LCD segments (in the big circle at the top) will toggle between all on to all off. All on means hourly chime is on. All off means the hourly chime is off.

Phew!

Setting up a TalkTalk Huawei SmartAX 882 in a home LAN

I've been having problems with my old broadband modem.  It is a TalkTalk branded Thomson SpeedTouch 330, and when I plug it into my USB2.0 it requests 75% of it's bandwidth (that's 360Mbps) even though the most data it could hope to send down it is 10Mbps!  This was causing problems for my USB sound card (see Dell T105 below) since it could not allocate enough bandwidth for the sound card to operate correctly.

Anyways, after speaking to Thomson who claim their not going to change the drivers on such an old modem, I spoke to TalkTalk who agreed to send me a new ADSL modem that could connect directly to the network (the SmartAX 882).  This is great for me because beforehand, if any computer in the house needed Internet access, my central server which had direct connection to the Internet needed to be on.  If I was able to connect to the Internet without turning the server on it would save loads of energy.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the new ADSL modem / router to work using the setup software that TalkTalk provide (Connect and Go V5.1).  So this is how I eventually solved the problem.

1. turn off my server which is trying to 'control' of the LAN
   
2. turn on my new ADSL modem/router and connect it the filter, and to my Ethernet switch using a normal (straight through) Ethernet cable.  Note that the modem came with a red cable which I suspect may be a cross over cable.
   
3. Using another one of my PCs which usually connect to the Internet through the server, bring up a brower.
4. Following the instructions given for an Apple in the guide.  Put the IP address for the router into the browser (192.168.1.1) and up pops some security asking for a username and password.  You're now communicating with the SmartAX882!
5. Enter the default username & password for the SmartAX 882 (if you haven't changed these yet).  Note this is not your details for connecting to your ISP.
6. Using the navigation on the left go to Basic/WAN settings.
7. Click on the pencil icon to edit the settings.
8. Now enter your username and password that you use to connect to your ISP without changing any other settings.
9. Submit
10. Save all
11. Now you should be able to browse the Internet from all computers except for the old server.
12. Turn the server on, assuming it's running XP or similar (otherwise I don't know what to do!)
13. Run the Network Setup Wizard (in the control panel) selecting that this computer now connects to the Internet via the network (the same as the other computers in the network).
14. Now the old server should now be able to connect to the Internet.

Nice.

OOo Calc Removing a Background Image

I was very pleased with myself when I managed to put a background image onto an OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet. However I was not so pleased when I realised I'd put it in slightly the wrong place. So how do you remove or modify an OOo background image?

1. Open the navigator: Edit / Navigator (or simply press F5)
2. Select the graphics you want to delete / move / resize within the Navigator: it select your image so that you can do this

I knew it would be simple, but it took me ages to work out exactly what to do.

--------------

To put a background image onto OOo:

1. Insert / Picture / from file
   
2. Select image & resize
3. right click / Arrange / to background

Dell T105 XP

Amazingly you can buy a fast PC for only £99 from Dell. The problem is that it is a server intended for business use: the T105. I thought I'd reuse one of my old XP licenses and install it one one of these babies. In the end I paid about £240 for an increased spec.

Now the problems: you have to buy it without any OS and then try to install XP and all the drivers yourself this page gave me all the info I needed.

1. Create an XP installation disc with SP3 on it and the SATA drivers using nLite . The drivers were from here for the R165652. Select 'Textmode' and not 'PNP' when it comes to a choice.
2. Install XP from this disc
3. Get the network driver (for a server) (Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet driver), Graphics driver (ATI RN50 (ES1000) graphics driver) and mainboard drivers (nVidia nForce Professional (2200 MCP) mainboard drivers)
4. Install them.

The mainboard and graphics drivers have executables to install the drivers, but to install the Broadcom network drivers I needed to

1. Control Panel/Add new hardware
2. Yes I have connected hardware
3. Select network driver that has not been installed
4. Follow nose to install the driver files

I need to get a USB keyboard and mouse, and I'll buy myself a cheap audio card. I might even invest in a better graphics card. Anyway I think I'm going to be really happy with my purchase.

Update: No Standby Mode.

The motherboard can't enter standby mode. This is a bit annoying because I wanted to use it to connect to the Internet when any other PC in the house wanted to access it. The network device can perform a 'wake on lan' operation to a motherboard in standby mode, to wake it up. Obviously I can't do this now.

I've decided not to get a graphics card yet. Not having one will reduce my power consumption. I'll get one if I need it though.

Update 2008-09-23: USB sound

I've bought a tiny little USB sound 'card' which just has a stereo line in & out sockets from eBay for a couple of quid. I expected the sound quality to be awful, but actually it's alright. I've only got entry level speakers and there's no detectable quality issue with it.

I did try to get a PCI sound card, but the board is 3.3V and all of the cheap sound cards seem to be 5V. Equally all PCI-Express sound cards are expensive.

Network problems

I've had various problems intermittently with my home network. I have a PC running XP which connects to the Internet via broadband and is always turned on. All the other PCs in the house connect to the Internet though that. Every so often the connectivity within the network is lost. I've spent ages trying to work out how to fix it. I've just fixed it and all I did was to run the network setup wizard on the central computer to configure it so that it appears to be the same as any other PC in the network (i.e. it connects to the Internet via the network). Then restart. Then rerun the network setup wizard to configure the central PC back as the one which connects to the Internet. Somehow it seems to work.