It seems like a loose connection (when I fiddle with the cable, I sometimes get right and left audio), and I assumed it was the connection of the jack to the PCB inside the phone.  I was anxious to get my soldering iron hot, and void my (nonexistent) warranty.

I followed this tear-down guide, to the point where I had removed the back plastic.  To my surprise, the headphone jack was a module that was part of the back plastic:

I was able to carefully pry this out with a sharp knife.  The bottom is taped to the bezel, so it will take some patience, and a little force.

After that, I found that many of the connectors in the module were removable, and I was able to bend them a little bit to increase the likelihood that I would get a solid connection with my stereo headphone jack:

The only tricky ones, were the ones at the end of the module.  I was able to use a paper-clip to gently bend the connectors to make a stronger connection.

After these modifications, my headphone jack is working well again – and my soldering iron is disappointingly cold.

I’d love to find a source/part number for the full module though, as I intend to continue to use this jack frequently, and this ‘bending gently’ trick will only work so many times.  If you have a source or part number for the module, please leave a comment.

FreeDOS USB Image: FreeDOS-1.1-USB-Boot.img.bz2

Size: 117652 bytes
SHA1: 7d8a3c73f9cfdc71611e3f7a5b7b134529179821

If you are looking for a FreeDOS 1.0 USB Boot Image, see my earlier post of the same title.

If you run in to trouble, take a look at the comments for 1.0 first, many will apply.  If that doesn’t solve your issue, leave a comment.

Ahhh... Much Better!

I created a quick greasemonkey script to enable viewing the stats on the Bell Canada branded Cellpipe 7130 modem:

Cellpipe 7130 VDSL Stats Display Greasemonkey Script

Also, I didn’t really like Bell’s logo all over the gear:

Replace Bell’s logo with TekSavvy’s on Cellpipe 7130 Greasemonkey Script

I didn’t find out about ZipRefill until the end of July, and I’ve now started using it.  I’m interested to see how this affects my average rentals this year.  I think I would need to average 3.7 DVDs/month or 44 DVDs/year to have this plan make sense.

I found a good number of scripts[1] for doing the conversion, and it seems to be  a bike shed everyone wants to chime in on.  What I found didn’t really handle modern multi-core processors, so I made some quick tweaks and thought I’d post my results.  There are two scripts:

mp3xcode:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir mp3
parallel mp3xcode_sub — *.flac

mp3xcode_sub:

#!/bin/bash

[ -r "$1" ] || { echo can not read file \”$1\” >&1 ; exit 1 ; } ;

FLAC=$1
MP3=”mp3/${FLAC%.flac}.mp3″

eval `metaflac –export-tags-to=- “$FLAC” | sed ‘s/=\(.*\)/=”\1″/’`

flac -dc “$FLAC” | lame –replaygain-accurate -v -V 2 –tt “$TITLE” \
–tn “$TRACKNUMBER” \
–tg “$GENRE” \
–ty “$DATE” \
–ta “$ARTIST” \
–tl “$ALBUM” \
–add-id3v2 \
- “$MP3″

This script seems to be a good way to do it. I’ve only tested this on linux.

On FreeBSD, there may be some tweaks required to not depend on bash.  Also, you’ll need to install the GNU parallel program (sysutils/parallel).

My current kernel config could not be simpler, ZFS-GENERIC:

include    GENERIC
ident    ZFS-GENERIC
options    KVA_PAGES=512

For this configuration I successfully used in /boot/loader.conf:

#Working options for ZFS-GENERIC 2GB RAM, KVA_PAGES=512
vm.kmem_size=”1536M”
vm.kmem_size_max=”1536M”
vfs.zfs.arc_max=”786M”

I thought it would be as simple as:

#Trial options for ZFS-GENERIC 4GB RAM, KVA_PAGES=512
vm.kmem_size=”2G”
vm.kmem_size_max=”2G”
vfs.zfs.arc_max=”1792M”

But, but to my chagrin, my system responded on boot up with a:

panic: kmem_suballoc: bad status return of 3

I was able to get around these failed settings after rebooting by using the loader prompt at boot-up.

Since it was so early in the boot up stage, and that it was kmem_suballoc, I figured there weren’t enough KVA_PAGES assigned to the kernel.  I tried a more conservative:

#Trial options for ZFS-GENERIC 4GB RAM, KVA_PAGES=512
vm.kmem_size=”1792M”
vm.kmem_size_max=”1792M”
vfs.zfs.arc_max=”1536M”

with the same result.

Not  to be discouraged, I updated my kernel config to:

include    GENERIC
ident    ZFS-GENERIC
options    KVA_PAGES=640

and set my loader.conf to:

#Trial options for ZFS-GENERIC 4GB RAM, KVA_PAGES=640
vm.kmem_size=”2G”
vm.kmem_size_max=”2G”
vfs.zfs.arc_max=”1792M”

This time the kernel booted, but after loading the (zfs) root filesystem, the system could not fork, and put me into single user mode.  I couldn’t reboot cleanly, as I couldn’t fork the shutdown command, and I was on a serial terminal, so couldn’t give it the three finger salute.

This time I tried:

#Trial options for ZFS-GENERIC 4GB RAM, KVA_PAGES=640
vm.kmem_size=”1792M”
vm.kmem_size_max=”1792M”
vfs.zfs.arc_max=”1536M”

and the system booted up fine.  I’ll have to see how this affects my stability and performance longer term.

The Patty Shack Oshawa

Good news for the New Year!  I’ve heard from Dave Hannah from the old Wing Shack in Whitby.

He’s launching a new venture, in Oshawa this time, called The Patty Shack.  Dave has combined the Wing Shack Wings with a burger that, in his words, is equally as good.

I’m certainly looking forward to giving it a shot.  If you are too, the Patty Shack is due to open mid February, or early March. The new address is downtown Oshawa at 24 King Street East, across from Avanti. It’s mainly a take-out joint, open late.

Dave says that “all that contact [him] will be invited to the sneak peak events prior to opening”, so I’d advise you to get in touch with him.

His contact info can be found here.

I put a ticket in to voip.ms, and this is what they said:

It seems that the numbers with 310 exchange are special numbers and they are not reachable outside from the area they are linked, the test we have made indicates that the numbers are not reachable from our network.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

So, quick heads up: you can’t dial 310 numbers on voip.ms!

UPDATE (2011-04-12): 310 numbers seem to be working, see comments below.

SPA2102 ATA

I’m always looking at ways to run the house more economically.  I was already using TekSavvy for home phone, but my average bill was still around $40 then, and that was just for visual call waiting, and $0.03/minute long distance.  I was curious about switching to VoIP, and specifically, voip.ms, so I decided to give it a try.

Basic Setup

Initially, I thought I’d like to keep my POTS line around, just in case the quality was poor, or there were problems.  To hook VoIP into your home phone system, you’ll need an ATA, or a PC running PBX software like Asterisk with an FXS-capable card.

I opted for an ATA, as these are usually mass produced and self contained.  This would get me something affordable, and easily replaceable.

ATAs

I originally ordered a Linksys PAP2-NA from eBay.  In hindsight, it would have been better to avoid this step.  A lot of the ATAs listed on eBay that are listed as UNLOCKED, are in fact, LOCKED.  That means they’ve been provisioned to only work with one provider, usually Vonage.  I’m sure there are work-arounds, but you might as well buy a real unlocked ATA at retail and save yourself the hassle.

Reviews for  both the Linksys PAP2T-NA and the Linksys SPA2102 were both favourable.  There is some confusion as to whether the PAP2T-NA can handle 2x g729 calls at once.  There is no confusion regarding the SPA2102, so I opted for that device.  The SPA2102 also includes routing capabilities, but they are not great.  You can set the device to be just an ATA, and not an ATA+router.  Newegg‘s price is okay, and so is Amazon‘s.

Another option worth considering if you are a hacker, or open source aficionado would be the fully open IP0X, which “runs Asterisk and uClinux on a powerful embedded Blackfin processor”.  I’ll probably look into it when time/budget allows.

Getting started with voip.ms

You need to create an account with voip.ms. Go to their website, and follow the directions/form.

You will need to order a DID (incoming phone number), and associate it to your account (or put a Port request in if you are switching you phone number over right away). There are various parameters that you can configure on the DID, depending on your preferences. I set the routing via SIP to my main account, and my point of presence to Toronto. The other settings are optional (like fail-over, caller id, etc).

From there, if you want two outgoing lines (no charge!), you can create a sub account. This will let you have two outgoing calls from your house at once, taking full advantage of the two phone ports on the SPA2102. They can have the same number show up on Caller ID, so people you call won’t know that you are calling from the second line.

Configuring the SPA2102

Some basic changes were required to be made to the default configuration of the SPA2102.  Since it is a router, it is running a DHCP server on the LAN port by default.  You may want to connect your PC directly to this LAN port when doing your initial config.

I’ve noticed the stock firmware has been really old on any units I’ve purchased.  I’d advise downloading, and installing the latest firmware for the SPA2102 before you get too far.  You may need a Microsoft windows machine to use their firmware update utility.  I used my Windows 2000 VM.  I haven’t tried it under wine.

I’d suggest the following changes to the ATA (click on Admin Login and Advanced):

Router/WAN

Primary NTP Server: 0.ca.pool.ntp.org  (or your local timeserver)
Secondary NTP Server: 1.ca.pool.ntp.org
Enable WAN Web Server: yes

Router/LAN

Networking Service: Bridge
LAN IP Address: (same as WAN)
Enable DHCP Server: no

Voice/SIP

RTP Packet Size: 0.020

Voice/Regional

Time Zone: GMT-05:00
Block CID Act Code: *81
Block CID Per Call Act Code: *67
Block CID Deact Code: *82
Block CID Per Call Deact Code: *68
Daylight Saving Time Rule: start=3/8/7/2:0:0;end=11/1/7/2:0:0;save=1

Voice/LINE 1/2

Nat Keep Alive: Yes
Nat Mapping/Traversal: Yes
Network Jitter Level: medium  (using qos, and teksavvy is pretty good)
Proxy: toronto.voip.ms
Register Expires: 120
Display Name: (Caller name as you'd like caller id to display)
User ID: XXXX, Subaccount (for line 2)
Password: YYYY
Preferred Codec: G729a (you can use G711u if quality is more important than bandwidth)
Dial Plan: (<:1905>[2-9]xxxxxx|1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|*xx|*xx.|[34689]11|822|4443|4747|0|00|[2-9]xxxxxx|1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|4XXX|xxxxxxxxxxxx.)

You will probably set a static IP on the WAN side to a real LAN address on your LAN, and also the default gateway to the correct default gateway. Once you saved these changes, you should be able to plug the ATA into your LAN via the Internet port on the back of the ATA. Use your browser to reconnect to the new static IP you’ve assigned to the WAN.

Configuring Your Router

You will want to enable QoS on your router, if it supports it.  The configurations are different for each one, but in principle, you want the traffic to and from the ATA to have the highest priority.  You’ll probably also want to forward UDP ports 5060, and 5061 to the ATA.

Getting Going

At this point, the ATA should be registered with voip.ms, and you can plug a phone into the back of the ATA, and dial out from either line.

Using VOIP while POTS is still active

As I mentioned, I wanted to keep my POTS line around to test to ensure the VoIP was satisfactory. I called TekSavvy, and had them enable call forwarding (can take some days). I ordered a temporary DID from voip.ms.

Once everything was ready, I dialed *72 and then my new DID, on my POTS-connected phone, and hung up. I called my home number, and sure enough, the phone attached to the ATA rang.

I have DSL on my POTS line as well. Fortunately, I switched to a much simplified wiring setup when I prepped my line for DSL.  It was simply a matter of disconnecting my POTS splitter from my home line, and also disconnecting the second line (orange pair) from outside.  I whipped up a cable to go from the two phone jacks on the ATA to the first and second line in my house, and punched it in.

All wires punched down

I was now using VoIP for all incoming and outgoing calls.  One thing to note that is probably important, at this point there was no 911 availability on my home phone, since it was all VoIP and I was playing some games with Caller ID + call forwarding to make it look like I was calling from my POTS line.

Cutting Over Fully

After a few months, I was satisfied that the VoIP was more than sufficient to replace my home phone.  I decided to take the plunge.  It was now much more important that my Internet didn’t go down; that would also affect phone service too.  I didn’t want any confusion to happen with Bell because I’m using TekSavvy for home phone + Internet, and there is such a potential for problems (i.e. Bell’s problems), so I decided to order a second dry-loop DSL.

I switched my main Internet over to the dry-loop, and then put a Porting request in to voip.ms for my home phone number.  After the port was complete (7 days), I called TekSavvy to ensure that my home phone, and old DSL account was cancelled.

I switched my VoIP account so that my POTS DID was pointed to my main account, and deleted my temporary DID.  From there, I was able to activate 911 service.

Final panel setup

Useful Star Codes

The ATA has a number of star codes that you may wish to dial to enable the various features:

• Caller ID Activate Code: *65
• Call Waiting Activate Code: *56
• Call Waiting Caller ID Activate Code: *25

You will need to enable these features on each of the two lines on the ATA separately.  To dial the codes, simply pick up, dial, and wait for a second dial tone.  Hang up when you hear it.

Caller ID Activate will tell the ATA to do Caller ID lookups.   Doing the Call Waiting codes will give you visual call waiting.

Summary

I’m now running on pure VoIP for several months, and I’m very pleased with the service. We had some routing issues calling a Rogers home phone, but I put in a ticket, and things seem to have been resolved. My dry-loop DSL is more expensive than just DSL, but with my average monthly phone bill at $8, I still save around $23 per month.

I’d recommend going to VoIP to anyone, especially if you already have a cell phone. Home phone quickly becomes less important then.

I don’t agree with the way Rogers or Bell run their businesses, and I especially do not want to give them more money to further entrench their duopoly.  Having said that, I had to come up with a solution for TV at home.  Examining my options, I figured that I could install a proper TV antenna for ~$300. If you are on Bell or Rogers, guaranteed this will amortize in less than a year, and even less if you don’t require a digital TV tuner.

I wanted to avoid a rotor for many reasons.  My first concern was having the control box around, taking up space.  In addition, the control boxes are typically wired.  More wires for me to run, and also, it tethers you to were you can control the TV reception from.  Also, I’ll probably want to connect more than one TV to the system, so why should one TV be subject to the reception of the “main TV”?  Later, I would find out that a rotor would be incompatible with my attic due to space constraints – so it worked out!

I planned to install the antenna inside my attic.  With UHF, the higher you are, the better your signal.  You could put up a tower and probably double your signal, but a tower can run you ~$700+ installed, and leaves an unsightly skyline.  There are no other towers up in my neighbourhood.

I ran a conduit up from my basement to the inside of the soffit on the outside of my house, so that I would have a clean solution for running cables up to the attic.  I’m planning on also running CAT6 up to the bedrooms upstairs, so this little bit of extra work now, gives me a lot of flexibility for future runs.  This added ~$150 to the cost, once you include the extra tools I needed to do that job.

After doing some research, I figured that my best bet was to use an 8-Bay antenna, since Toronto is about 54km away, Buffalo is almost 100km away for the closest stations, plus the additional dB loss from installing inside the attic.  I was looking for deep fringe reception.  I decided to install a Channel Master CM-4228HD 8-Bay UHF Antenna.  Word on the street is that it isn’t as powerful as its older brother, the CM-4228, but I figured it would do.   I’ve heard that the wider beam width of a 4-Bay seems to serve people in the area well too, but you’ll reduce the strength of the reception (if you mount it on a tower, it will likely offset that loss). I also used a Channel Master CM-7777 Preamp to help boost the signal.

I used the venerable TVFool.com website to look up the position of the stations that I could receive, so I’d have an idea of what way to point my antenna.  In the end, I’ve pretty well just pointed it south, as it seems to pick up the CN Tower stations well enough, and now I’m getting stations from 144km away.

I used Sensuz Media to order my parts, they seem to have the best prices locally, and offer pickup in Markham.  Since I’m in Markham frequently, it was a snap for me to pick up.  I bought my mast for mounting over at Durham Radio, they were closer (for driving around with a 10′ post hanging out the back), and I wanted to see what they were all about.  They were quite friendly, and very helpful, so if you don’t want to go to Sensuz, Durham Radio is a great supplier, and can provide you with more region-specific information.

I was sure to use quad-sheilded RG6 for the long run from my attic to the inside of my house.  You want to limit the loss on this run as much as possible, since this is an unamplified signal.  I got a good deal over at Monoprice.  At the time, they didn’t have stock on bulk quad sheilded cable, so I bought 2×100′ lengths, plus some other odd sizes, premanufactured, and then trimmed to length after running.

Rogers has been up to some sneaky tricks on home builds.

All of the cable runs inside my house are split on the outside of my house, inside the “cable box”.  God forbid, I do “illegal splits” on my own signal.  Also, when I run future splits, I will have to run them in the basement anyways, it’s the only way that makes sense.  So now I’ve got two places to worry about splits: in my basement, and outside.  Also, the connectors outside are more prone to corrosion.  A very inconvenient setup for someone who has no intention of using cable again, just to protect Rogers’ business interests.  What ever happened to running one cable in from outside? I digress.

I thought I would need a special tool to get into the box, but I didn’t.  Needle-nose pliers were able to grasp onto the round bolt, and I was able to get in just fine, and disconnect Rogers, and connect my equipment.  It seems as though the rest of the house is wired with RG59, but that’s okay – I’m amplified at this point so we’ve got more breathing room.

Long story short, over the air tv is a viable alternative in Oshawa to cable/satellite for me.  I hope to get more people set up on this over time.