Category: Hardware

Categories
Android Hardware Solutions

Galaxy Ace – Gingerbread Update – Notes

Image representing Android as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

There are many good tutorials on the web about installing Gingerbread on the Ace (like this one).

Once you have Gingerbread installed what can you expect from your new system?
Other than the already present updates to Android, here are a few notes I made:

  • The Default language at the start is not English. To change, go to Settings -> Locale and Text (recognizable by the keyboard key A as the logo) -> Select Language (Option no. 1 in the list) -> English (or any other language)
  • The battery lasts longer and is estimated more accurately. – The battery info is more detailed too.
  • The Wifi bug that caused the “black screen of death” problem is fixed. Expect more stability while using Wifi
  • The UI is faster and more responsive
  • Fonts are crispier and look great
  • The notification bar is smaller and that really helps screen real estate.
  • Internal memory usage has improved leaps and bounds, expect lesser problems in that area

All in all the upgrade to Gingerbread has been perfect so far.

Note: The version I have installed is XXKPH

Categories
Android Hardware Solutions

Galaxy Ace – Gingerbread Update – Stuck at “Setting Up Connection”

While flashing the Gingerbread update for Galaxy Ace (taken from samfirmware.com ) I encountered an interesting problem with my ODIN being stuck at “Setting Up Connection” message.

The problem I figured out later was a simple case of my phone being in the wrong mode. For updating you must be in the “Downloading” mode, In this mode the phone flashes a single line message on the screen – “Downloading…”


To get to this mode reset your phone(take the battery out, also take out your sim card and micro sd card). Hold Home, Volume Down and power buttons and then connect to the system.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you hold the Volume Up or both Volume buttons you will end up in other modes (like the ram dump mode).

Once in the more updating is just a few minutes affair 🙂



Categories
Device Hardware Laptop Linux Solutions Ubuntu

Getting the Latest Ubuntu Graphics Drivers on Samsung NC20

Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace ...
Image via Wikipedia

To get the best graphics performance out of your Samsung NC20, you will need to install the latest graphics drivers.  These drivers unfortunatey are not easy to find on the web, so here is a step-by-step installation instructions for driver installation on Ubuntu 10.10.  Special thanks to the wonderful folks at Ubuntu Forums(Wonderful source, thumbs up to the contributors).
{adinserter 2}
The steps explained below were taken from post #542 from this Ubuntu Forums page.

  1. Download this zip file via_chrome9_drv_u1010_v2.zip and unzip it
  2. Open a terminal window and change into that directory (“cd ~” for home dir)
  3. Install the “dkms” package from Ubuntu package repository
    $ sudo apt-get install dkms
  4. Install the kernel driver:
    $ sudo dpkg -i chrome9-drm_87a.55689-maverick1_all.deb
  5. Install the X.org driver:
    $ sudo dpkg -i --force-confmiss --force-confnew xserver-xorg-video-chrome9_87a.55729-maverick1_i386.deb
  6. Update /etc/X11/xorg.conf file
  7. Copy the provided xorg.conf.nc20 file to xorg.conf
    $ sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
    $ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nc20 /etc/X11/xorg.conf
  8. Reboot Ubuntu
  9. Check if it’s working: Open /var/log/Xorg.0.log in a text editor. If you see several lines containing “VIA(0)”, then the new driver is being used.

Also note:

  • The sample xorg.conf.nc20 is only installed if you add the “–force-confmiss –force-confnew” options to dpkg.
  • Although VIA marks the source code this hacked driver is based on as stable, I cannot guarantee it to be bug-free. Use with caution.
Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Hardware Open Source Solutions Ubuntu

Playing DVDs in Ubuntu

Dvd-video-logo
Image via Wikipedia

Ubuntu by default does not play encrypted DVDs. This is because most commercial DVDs are encrypted with CSS (Content Scrambling System), which restricts the software that can play a DVD.

To enable you must install the libdvdcss2 package to allow Ubuntu to play DVDs. For that you need to run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Followed by:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

That will install the required libraries and now your encrypted DVDs will be readable.

Please Note: Check with your local laws to make sure that usage of libdvdcss2 would be legal in your area.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Hardware Laptop

Fixing the HP Tx1000 series Laptop boot problem…

Image representing Hewlett-Packard as depicted...
Image via CrunchBase

The HP Tx1000 series laptop has a unique problem with its Nvidia chip. Due to a really poor design wrt to the heat sink to the GPU, the chip reaches very high temperatures during operation causing the system to not boot properly. This problem is apparently very common and occurs within about two years of moderate use.

HP will replace the motherboard if the laptop is in warranty, if not their recommendation is a 400$ replacement of the motherboard. The laptop is awesome bar this problem and that solution is simply ridiculous…

Here is an alternative solution that worked for two of my friends and me. We all had different versions of the tx1000 series laptop and the system is working perfectly now… As an added bonus the system has better heat emission and easily reduces the temperature of the GPU by over 25%

Continue reading “Fixing the HP Tx1000 series Laptop boot problem…”