iPaq PDA

Spend the whole afternoon partner a friend to buy the latest HP iPaq(HP6355, with SIM card). PDA sales is going down, I think is lacking of content for small device browsing.

IBM 486DX2-50, Cirrus Logic

Is halloween. Yesterday I work till late night, try to get XFree86-4.4 (with freetype support) working on the machine, but fail. Luckily the old version(v3.x) is still working. The machine have a on board GD5430 display chipset (by Cirrus Logic), 1M memory, but I just need a 640x480 256 colors to match with my grey scale IBM monitor. XFree86 team doesn't do a good job here, the new driver don't support the old Cirrus Logic GD5430 Chipset. I suppose to use FrameBuffer. The frame buffer driver is with linux kernel, but the new linux kernel don't support the old driver too. Too bad.

IBM 486DX2-50, a start

After talking with my housemate yesterday night, I decided to work on my old antique-- IBM 486 machine. Yes, is a IBM 486DX(with floating point unit support!), 2 should be double of 25Mhz, I have a 50Mhz machine! I move it to the office, so I have more resource to update the linux software in it. I open it up, it came with 8M ram, and I have alerady add another 8M earlier. Oh! Good, I have 16M! I install a very old 3Com card in it, and saw the sound card is Aztech's Sound Galaxy, a second hand sound card which I bought for $10, many many years ago. The 1st thing that I want to do is to upgrade the kernel and enable with network support. To make sure the network card is still working, I download a 3Com diaganostic program to test it. Oh! Yes, the network card is using 3c503 driver. Upgrade the kernel to linux-2.4.26 give me some problem. The earlier kernel(2.4.19) seems to be working(without network), but my new kernel show some error:- "Kernel compiled for Pentium+, requires TSC feature!" After search through the web, only find out that kernel version after 2.4.22, TSC is enable by default, even though you choose i386 or i486 cpu. The work around is: $ make oldconfig Kernel is up and ethernet card is working fine, but seems like the sound card is not working properly. It is a sound galaxy, but should be compatible with sound blaster. The error messae shown, the sound card is too old(more than 8 years ago) and it is 8bits, or may be I will upgrade it with another better sound card. I try to compile a kernel without modules(everything into 1 kernel file), seem it will hang. Anyway I already have a working kernel with network support, that will be good.

Microsoft Java Virtual Machine

One of our customer have some problem using XP SP2 access to our java(applet) online real time quote. I install a new version with SP2 included, no java support in IE(Internet explorer). I check Microsoft website, seem like they didn't include Microsoft Java Virtual Machine(MSJVM) in those porduct after SP1a. They even provide a tools to convert MSJVM dependend program to .Net platform. Sun's java is moving more to the backend like J2EE server. Out application still base on applet. The original code for graphic java on unix platform(including Linux) is buggy. Those legacy code is still in the new version of java, atleast in version 1.4. There is no java graphics in J2EE, may be sun doesn't want to fix the problems.

Record of the year

Rushing to write article for Apple Magazine, finish at 11pm. The is the record of the year, so late.

Langkawi trip

Just came back from Langkawi trip. Not much things to say.

Apple iMac G5 launch in Zouk

I just went to the Apple iMac G5 launch in Zouk. Look like interesting but disappointing. No Steve Jobs, no demo, the only things that you know about the launching is 'iMac G5'. You can easily get it from internet. Apple asia reagion marketting manager fly all the way from Hong Kong, he should be disappointing too. Since Apple have spend some money(and willing to spend), better use the budget for cash rebate, may be can help Apple to boost the sales better. 10.30pm, nothing much happen. Foong and I walk to Jln Sultan Ismail. Seem like that area is a more happening area. Unless Zouk have good financial support, or ...

Red Hat meetup Oct 2004

Went to red hat meetup, this time a bigger group turn up. Linus Lai, Chan, Stephen, Heoh, etc. 9 of us meet in Coffee Bean. Some of them went to the recent Red Hat World tour. 9.30pm, I left the meetup drop by the nearest Apple Center, saw the new iPod mini, a nice device.

Tea time at starbuck

Went to Starbucks with Richard. We like Starbucks for different reason. He love it for the lifestyle, I like it for broadband access. Since I already get my broadband access at my place, the reason has just gone for me.

We went there last night because we have a coupon, buy 1 free 1. The price now keep increase, quite expensive, but buy 1 free 1 is still ok. Richard ask for more, he ask the manager for dessert discount too, he is a regular customer, so he can ask for discount.

When the new manager heard, he got a shock, discount!? No such things. Then the counter lady told the new manager, Richard always get discount for dessert, so he get some discount for the dessert too!

Richard's BBQ party

Is has been long time Richard didn't have such a big party. Many of his colleague from CEDE communication came, some of his friends like Yap, SeeMun, JieQiu(and his pretty sister). Uncle Chong, Adrew & Tifany join in later too. We start from 6pm and end at 12am. Very successful. Anthony talk on phone from 12am to 3am, and still talking before I sleep. :)

Is Friday

Time fly, is friday, and is October. For almost a week not done anything. Just compile XFree86 and firefox. Today do some configuration on XFree86. The problem with Linux never take off in desktop, the problem is start from X, X is too big, and not well organize. Look at the font, not standardize, it support pcf, speedo, type1, ttf font, just the bitmap font is 20 - 40M but still can't solve font problem, when it magnified, quality lost. Microsoft do a smart move using ttf font, Arial, Time (New) Roman, Courier New(fix font) Adobe have Helvetica, Time Roman, Courier. All these fonts are standard, 2M of hd space can solve many problems, but nothing much is standadize in X(or XFree86). Is friday, more relax, stay back a while to finalize my job. Is so boring to stay back on friday. Make a call to a lecturer friend, pick up 9.30pm, go for dinner. My lecturer friend is not felling well these few days. Preparing some noted for next semester class, ask me some problem with n-base arithmetic eg. oct + oct... I stay until 12am. Today TVB 星河頻道 showing 'Return of cockoo' (澳門街) last episod. While driving back feel empty and lonely. Want to talk to someone, but no one to talk to. Tomorrow night(actuall is tonight), Richard is having BBQ party here.

Firefox-1.0pr compile fail

XFree84-4.4.0 compilation is ok, but firefox-1.0pr just can't compile on my Mandrake-10, redhat-7.1, except Gentoo Linux PPC. May be firefox has to be compiled by gcc-3.x, so is not working on redhat-7.1(gcc-2.9x). I have tested firefox on iBook, not sure about the performance, but still need a lot of ram(about 20-30M) to run the application, so may be I don't update it to my IBM 486 yet. I think I need to take some rest. These are the few packages that I have updated in redhat-7.1 to compile firefox:- 1. XFree86-4.4.0 2. freetype-2.1.9 3. fontconfig-2.2.3 4. pkgconfig-0.15 5. glib-2.4.6 (not glibc) 6. atk-1.6.1 7. xft-2.1.2 8. pango-1.4.1 9. gtk+-2.4.10 10. libIDL-0.8.3 All these packages compile without much problem, so c++ program like firefox, really need to be improved.

Jobstreet.com

Jobstreet.com is going to be listed on Mesdaq soon.