Category Archives: Computers

Install Viavdo 2016.2 on ArchLinux (x86_64)

As of the date of this post, Xilinx Vivado 2016.2 works fine on Arch with minimal coaxing. Said coaxing is documented here in case it will be useful for others.

1. Install ncurses5-compat-libs from AUR, or the installer will hang during a later step. It appears to be required at runtime as well.

2. Mark the installer executable, eg. chmod +x Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1_Lin64.bin, and run it with the confirm flag, ./Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1_Lin64.bin --confirm

3. Hit Y at the “unpack” prompt, then go into the directory it creates at /tmp/selfgz[RANDOMSTRING], and edit xsetup to replace `uname -i` with `uname -m`, which is what they should have used in the first place.

4. Pre-create and permission the install path, a reasonable choice is the default /opt/Xilinx, which needs to be writable by the user doing the install (eg. chgrp users /opt/Xilinx, chmod g+w /opt/Xilinx)

5. Return to the terminal and hit Y to continue until the GUI installer runs.

6. Follow the GUI installer instructions, Feed the prompt your Xilinx credentials, Select Vivado HL WebPACK, etc.

7. The activation prompt at the end of the installation procedure is misleading, in the 2016.x versions if you simply quit without activating, the install automatically goes into WebPACK mode. If you don’t have/need any of the non-WebPACK features, activating the 30-day free trial of the nonfree version is asking for a headache when it expires.

8. It works. (and as a bonus convenience over the old toolchain, at least the Digilent Basys 3 boards use a normal FTDI usb-serial as their onboard programmer, so you don’t have to fight with drivers to program boards, that just works too.)

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Macintosh LC Recap

I’ve done some invasive repairs on the Macintosh LC from my small fleet of vintage computers. I figure it’s worth writing up because there is a lack of detailed information about this kind of work on the ‘net.
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Apparently a WordPress update caused some subtle breakage here a while back. The site has been spewing, among other things, a bunch of “&raquo” escapes in places that end up encoded as XML (thus breaking, among other things, RSS feeds). … Continue reading

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TP-Link Archer C7 with OpenWRT

I bought myself a TP-Link Archer C7 because the 2.4Ghz congestion in my apartment has become so terrible that my good old TP-Link WR1043ND (no 5Ghz radios) is no longer adequate, and the C7 was very well spoken of among reasonably-priced 802.11ac routers. It also has some nice perks like two on-board USB ports, so I can use it as a print server (with p910nd) and have USB storage for logs (vnstat & co.) and such attached without a separate hub. I wasn’t feeling quite motivated enough to buy and set up one of the NUC-like cheap SFF Intel boxes as a router like Ars Technica and Jeff Atwood have recently noted is an increasingly good plan, based largely on the dearth of ac WiFi cards that work reliably in host mode.

Some notes that may be of use to others, particularly about firmware replacement on recent models and throughput:
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Breaking In to your Own Devices

I gave an informal talk for the IEEE student branch about breaking in to your own devices this evening. I did the low-postable-content notes with live examples and links thing, but at least one person wanted to watch the video links, so here are the notes. There is something delightful about giving talks that require legal disclaimers. I don’t think there is anything in here that will get me in trouble…

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University Email Simulator

A generic version of the email you will receive on a daily basis from the University of BS (Which is probably the school you deal with), as you will read it after the first few repetitions. Graduates can relive their college experience, or, for current students, simply stop checking your email and skim this page every day.


From: Dean of Posterior Coverage <sanjay@ubs.edu>
To: ALL-STUDENTS@UBS.EDU
Subject: Mandatory CYA Training
Body: All students need to take this course that the university paid a fortune to a third-party ed-tech carpetbagger to license, which provides the absolute minimum coverage of an issue required under a new federal regulation. Everyone must take it, because otherwise we might be liable for your behavior.
This is why tuition is so high.
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Clevo P650SE/NP8651

P650SET510Flat_web

My 5-year-old T510 has been showing its age, mostly by falling apart (speakers died, parts held on with gaffers tape, occasional probably-thermal GPU lockups, etc.) and I decided it was time for a replacement. Unfortunately, the laptop market right now has absolutely nothing appealing (clickpads everywhere!) so I gave up and bought a closest-match Clevo P650SE chassis that I could kit out myself. There are a couple annoyances, but overall it’s a nice machine. Really long detail notes including a bunch of Linux tweaking below.

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RFID Exploration

I recently picked up a USB RFID reader/writer pod to play with, partly to learn enough to be dangerous about the tech, and partly hoping to tamper with the RFIDs in the current university ID cards. I’m pretty sure I failed on the latter point, but am succeeding at the former in the process.

RFIDKit

Notes from the first round of fiddling with it follow.

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Galaxy S5

MyTouch 4G Slide vs. SGS5, flat dimensions.

MyTouch 4G Slide vs. SGS5, flat dimensions.

I got a Samsung Galaxy S5 (The T-Mobile flavor, SM-900T) a week ago. I’m pretty pleased with it overall, but many of the impressions worth sharing are not positive, particularly of the small-but-stupid variety. Much of the animus (and credit) is really for Google, not Samsung.
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New Chorder

I’ve been playing with chorded input devices for years, and got the itch again recently.

CNChorder
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