What I've got today!!

A ham has lost his interest in radio .. so .. he is letting go some of the stuff he has .. for a good price too. So, what do I've in my equipment list now:

1. Nagara Ant (TA33-JR) - 3 band beam .. Gosh .. all the instructions are in Japanese .. I believe this is the same as Mosley TA33-JR.

2. Motorola GM338 (going to be mine next week) - This going to be my permanent radio for APRS digipeater/igate.

Still eyeing some of the things off him .. waiting for him clearing up his store room (yes, he has some parts for power amp etc) .. and yes, that pneumatic mast laying infront of his house seems really really tempting.. I'll wait for him saying .. yes .. he want to let it go .. and it will be mine! *evil grin*

Update: Forgotten what I got last week .. a Vibroplex Blue Racer & BHI DSP module.

Next Project (place holder for diagram)

It seems that I need to share my Nuvi350 with my wife when she needs it most.. I need a gps to feed into my OT2 .. and guess what, I've Holux GPSlim GR236 somewhere in my drawer .. needing attention.. it couldn't run on battery anymore, somehow, the circuitry went kaput quite a while back.. what I need now is a +5V feed into the GPS .. a TTL to RS-232 converter (which I think in one of my drawers too) .. Y cable and time to be spent on soldering stuff.

Found one good instruction on how to fabricate the USB->RS232 cable from the following source:

http://saimhe.avita.lt/hw/Holux-GR236-cable-RS232.png

Uploaded here since sometime it is hard to get into the above website.

Linux Home Server - Part 2

Received my AOpen enclosure this morning and using my lunch break to install the internals (i.e. Intel Atom D945GCLF2 motherboard, 1GB Kingmax DDR2 RAM, 1TB WD Green, 250GB Seagate and the really ancient 54X CDROM salvaged from my old now junk PC). The motherboard is really tiny .. using not even half of the available space .. and the enclosure looks huge .. the footprint seems to be as big as my Dell GX60 SFF but it height is 3X more. The enclosure does not come with any fan .. the only moving fans in there are the power supply's fan which is 12cm one and it is so silent .. and the other one is on the Atom heatsink, a small fan but silent too. Just nice to be on top of my office desk.

The above is the server, sure, it looks more like the Optimus Prime in Megatron.. but heck, it looks nice on my desk.. so no problem there.

On the software side, I've chosen Ubuntu Server 9.04 running LAMP, SAMBA, CUPS and few other servers and will install Transmission too. This server will be a headless server, means that there will be no monitor, keyboard & mouse connected to it. The only way to access it will be through SSH & web interface. I'm yet to decide which web interface I should install .. but probably will go with webmin. I've tried ebox and no, it is too complicated and some of the things do not work. Up to the time I write this blog, the Ubuntu Server is already installed and updated to the latest binaries. Need to get the SAMBA up and running, the family are waiting for it to be up by now. To get busy configuring SAMBA now!!!

Update: SAMBA is now working .. next will be CUPS .. and then torrentflux-b4rt (I've transmission running as of last night). Next hardware mod will be on the 20x4 LCD using LCDProc. Nice how-to could be found here.

Update 2: CUPS is now up and running .. was easy but took me sometime to figure out that my ads blocking stylesheet on my Safari somehow hid the add printer button. Took me ages to figure it out.. REMINDER: If you're configuring cups and no add printer button, turn off your ads blocking!!

Update 3: Added LCD into the LHS .. video as attached:

Building up a Linux Home Server

My trusted Buffalo LS2 has finally call up its day.. all because of me .. as per my previous posting about the NAS. I broke the ribbon cable and I don't really fancy trying to desolder/resolder back the cable. I was eyeing a NAS replacement, mainly a Buffalo Linkstation Live + Torrent (1TB) which has price tag of RM600 but since I've 1TB WD HD already, I was thinking of building my own home server. I don't fancy going to LowYat due to many reasons .. among them 1) it always packed with people 2) it is hard to get a parking 3) I don't want to stuck in KL jam .. so, I headed up to LowYat's Forum instead. Initially, was looking for a better looking HTPC enclosure but ughh.. at RM400 w/o power supply, I ended up getting a chepo AOpen's Transformer look enclosure.

The following parts were ordered today:

Aopen G326/Black w/ 400W 12cm fan PSU : RM 269

Intel Atom D945GCLF2 (ATOM 330) w/ Built-in 1.6Ghz Dual Core ITX Mobo : RM 280

Kingmax 1GB DDR2/800 RM 88

Postage for the above is RM12 as quoted. With RM649, I believe it is worth more than a purpose built NAS.

Since Saturday is a Public Holiday, I guess I'm getting the parts on Monday .. surely couldn't wait to put them together.

Anyway, the OS of choice will be either Debian/Lenny or Ubuntu Server though someone has suggested OpenSolaris because of the ZFS file system. I'm more inclined to Linux since I've been using it since ages ago.

Update Mon 19/10: Received the motherboard/process + RAM. Still waiting for the enclosure.

Update Tue 20/10: Received the casing now and done building up the system. Tried booting the Ubuntu Server installation disc from USB but it won't work.. had to install old CD ROM to the server now.

MARES at HITB 2009

MARES was involved in the HITB 2009 to showcase its stuff especially on the APRS and satellite communication. Unlucky us, we couldn't get a team to come over to showcase their satellite stuff but we managed to have booth setup to promote amateur radio as a hobby and what APRS could do. I couldn't attend the APRS session on the second day of the event so I hope everything went great.. I know with 9M2SQL (the great man!!) and 9W2STT + the rest of the team, everything should be alright.

Anyway, some photos snapped by 9W2SUN and the gang. Sorry, was too busy setting up the UIVIEW and forgotten to snap some myself.

My entire digipeater/igate setup ported at the event:

Me with 9M2SQL & 9W2CTS busy setting up the booth in the first day ..