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Monitoring mains via serial port
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 31 Oct '06

31 Oct '06

Hi Folks, Your expertise and wisdom may help me clarify thoughts on the following. I'm contemplating buying a couple of UPS units, at the very cheap end, so no comms to the computer which could be used to initiate a programmed shutdown if the mains goes off. So in turn I'm contemplating rigging a little circuit which would supply a signal to a serial port while the mains was on. The germ of the idea is to use one of those very cheap power converters which can deliver a DC voltage chosen from (say) 3V, 4.5V, 6V, 9V, 12V, and set it up so as to put say 12V between 2 pins on a serial port, when plugged directly into the mains. Then it would be easy to have a little script running in the background which would monitor the lines on the serial port, and initiate a shutdown if the voltage dropped to zero for (say) more than a minute. That's the bare bones of the idea, and indeed enough to define a basic soldering-iron job! But I'm not sure I'm being circumspect enough here, so would welcome comment! With thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 31-Oct-06 Time: 20:26:50 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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matrox G450 dual head and two identical monitors problem
by Jenny Hopkins 31 Oct '06

31 Oct '06

Hullo there, I've got a Matrox G450 dual head graphics card. I've then got two identical monitors: Flatron L1715S. In my xorg.conf I've put the vertical and horizontal refresh rates as the same, however the second monitor stays dark. If I tweak the horiz rate for second monitor, the screen appears, but fuzzy. (I've posted what I think ought to work but is out of range below. If I change the HorizSync for Monitor[1] to 30-63 it does the fuzzy thing.) Can anybody see any earthly reason why the same setting is not valid? Thanks, Jenny Section "Monitor" HorizSync 30-83 Identifier "Monitor[0]" ModelName "LG" Option "DPMS" VendorName "Flatron" VertRefresh 56-75 UseModes "Modes[0]" EndSection Section "Monitor" HorizSync 30-83 Identifier "Monitor[1]" ModelName "LG" Option "DPMS" VendorName "Flatron" VertRefresh 56-75 UseModes "Modes[1]" EndSection

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computer fairs
by Nick Atkins 31 Oct '06

31 Oct '06

Does anybody know if there are any computer fairs in East Anglia? I have a workshop that is bulging with hardware. All pointers gratefully received, otherwise it's eBay (groan) or London :0( Thanks, -- Nick Atkins South Norfolk

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Simple apache/hosting question
by cl＠isbd.net 30 Oct '06

30 Oct '06

Well I assume it's simple but I can't quite see how to sort it out. I'm running Slackware 11 on my home machine and, on the home network, its IP address is 192.168.1.1, it's running apache 1.3.37 (the Slackware 11 default). I have set up my router/firewall so that HTTP requests are sent to 192.168.1.1. At just-the-name I have the domain isbd.ltd.uk set up so that HTTP requests are routed to my static IP address at my ISP. So far, so good, if you go to http://www.isbd.ltd.uk/ up pops the default apache index.html page to indicate that it's all working. However, if I go to http://www.isbd.ltd.uk/~chris then instead of bringing up the index.html that I have in the public_html directory in my home directory on the Slackware system I get an error:- Firefox can't find the server at server.isbd.ltd.uk. ... and Firefox is looking for http://server.isbd.ltd.uk/~chris/ which of course doesn't work because server.isbd.ltd.uk doesn't exist in the outside world. How do I get my Slackware machine to look like isbd.ltd.uk when seen from the outside world but give it the name server and/or server.isbd.ltd.uk internally to my home network? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Overlaying things on a video window
by Dan Hatton 27 Oct '06

27 Oct '06

Dear All, Does anyone know of a way to overlay a regular grid and/or some text on a video playing in an X window, please? The players I have available are mplayer, gmplayer, and xine. -- Thanks, Dan Hatton <http://www.bib.hatton.btinternet.co.uk/dan/>

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kernel build options (make menuconfig) for Core 2 Duo processor
by cl＠isbd.net 27 Oct '06

27 Oct '06

Can anyone tell me where I can find (or just tell me) the best 'make menuconfig' options for a Core 2 Duo 6600 processor. I can work out most of what I want but there are some grey areas. These are the settings I have at the moment:- [*] Symmetric multi-processing support Subarchitecture Type (PC-compatible) ---> Processor family (Pentium-4/Celeron(P4-based)/Pentium-4 M/Xeon) [*] Generic 86 support [*] HPET Timer Support (2) Maximum number of CPUs (2-255) [*] SMT (Hyperthreading) scheduler support [*] Multi-core scheduler support Preemption Model (No Forced Preemption (Server)) ---> [*] Preempt The Big Kernel Lock ... (the rest seem pretty straightforward) My main question is whether I have the processor type set correctly? Should it be Opteron/Athlon64/Hammer/K8 rather than what I have selected as the Core 2 Duo, although it's an Intel processor, has some of the AMD-64 optimisations I believe. Or maybe I should select soemthing else completely. A supplementary question is whether to set the "Maximum number of CPUs" to 4 rather than 2 since Hyperthreading is enabled. I will eventually come to the end of all these questions relating to my new system! :-) It's very nearly there now, I have Slackware 11 up and running well on it and vmware installed with a Windows XP guest. Once I get these final bits of tuning done I'll disappear back into the woodwork. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Mouse help still needed - Xorg setup
by cl＠isbd.net 25 Oct '06

25 Oct '06

I can find very little help regarding the "InputDevice" section of xorg.conf. I have tried various "recommended for Logitech" setups but I can't make any sense of how the mouse works after trying them. There seems no logical connection between the options I set and the resulting way the mouse works. I have now got a rally minimal InputDevice section:- Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse1" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "Auto" # Auto detect Option "Device" "/dev/mouse" # Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7" # Option "Emulate3Buttons" EndSection This results with the left button being button 1, the right button being button 3 and pressing both being button 2 (so in spite of commenting out Emulate3Buttons it still does! Then I have the two mini-buttons which are button 8 and button 9, how can I use those? What I actually want is buttons 1 and 3 as above, one of the little buttons as button 2 (middle/paste) and the other little button ideally as a double click of button 1. Where can I find out what all the options like "CorePointer", "Buttons", "Protocol", "ZAxisMapping" and so on actually do? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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East of England FOSS in the VCS
by MJ Ray 25 Oct '06

25 Oct '06

Not sure whether this has featured here before, but a friend from ScunDOG just sent me http://foss.ciac.org.uk/en - Using free and open source software in the UK voluntary and community sector. Anyone here involved? If so, well done. Best wishes, -- MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Somerset, England. Work/Laborejo: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ IRC/Jabber/SIP: on request/peteble

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Where are xorg.conf devices documented?
by cl＠isbd.net 25 Oct '06

25 Oct '06

Where can I find xorg.conf documentation that tells me what device names etc. one can use? The man page tells me about the format of xorg.conf and what all the sections are etc. but doesn't help in the slightest as regards how to configure actual hardware. I'm specifically after mouse configuration information, like which Driver I should use for a Logitech Marble Mouse and what Option settings are available. I'd really like fairly general information though as I may want to set up another (Kensington) multi-button mouse as well. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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RE: [ALUG] Audio problems
by Keith Watson 25 Oct '06

25 Oct '06

> From: Wayne Stallwood Sent: 24 October 2006 22:24 > > Never had this problem with Totem/Xine For DVD playback, Xine has always worked best for me also. Regards, Keith ____________ CLAIRVOYANT, n. Persons who have the power of seeing that which is invisible to their patrons, namely, that they are fools. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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