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• Interfacing to an Xbox Optical Drive

  1er octobre 2013, par Multimedia Mike — xbox

  The next generation Xbox is going to hit the streets soon. But for some reason, I’m still interested in the previous generation’s unit (i.e., the original Xbox). Specifically, I’ve always wondered if it’s possible to use the original Xbox’s optical drive in order to read Xbox discs from Linux. I was never curious enough to actually buy an Xbox just to find out but I eventually came across a cast-off console on a recycle pile.

  I have long known that the Xbox has what appears to be a more or less standard optical drive with a 40-pin IDE connector. The only difference is the power adapter which I surmise is probably the easiest way to turn a bit of standardized hardware into a bit of proprietary hardware. The IDE and power connectors look like this :

  
  
  

  Thus, I wanted to try opening an Xbox and plugging the optical drive into a regular PC, albeit one that supports IDE cables, and allow the Xbox to supply power to the drive. Do you still have hardware laying around that has 40-pin IDE connectors ? I guess my Mac Mini PPC fits the bill, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to pry that thing open again. I have another IDE-capable machine buried in my closet, last called into service when I needed a computer with a native RS-232 port 3 years ago. The ordeal surrounding making this old computer useful right now can be another post entirely.

  Here’s what the monstrosity looks like thanks to characteristically short IDE cable lengths :

  
  

  

  Click for larger image

  
  

  Process :

  1. Turn on Xbox first
  2. Turn on PC

  Doing these things in the opposite order won’t work since the kernel really wants to see the drive when booting up. Inspecting the 'dmesg' log afterward reveals interesting items :
  

  <br />
hdd: PHILIPS XBOX DVD DRIVE, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive<br />
hdd: host max PIO5 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4<br />
hdd: UDMA/33 mode selected<br />
[...]<br />
hdd: ATAPI DVD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache<br />

  Why is that interesting ? When is the last time to saw disk devices prefixed by ‘hd’ rather than ‘sd’ ? Blast from the past. Oh, and the optical drive’s vendor string clearly indicates that this is an Xbox drive saying ‘hi !’.

  Time To Read
  When I first studied an Xbox disc in a normal optical drive, I noticed that I was able to read 6992 2048-byte sectors — about 14 MB of data — as reported by the disc table of contents (TOC). This is just enough data to play a standard DVD video animation that kindly instructs the viewer to please use a proper Xbox. At this point, I estimated that there must be something special about Xbox optical drive firmware that knows how to read alternate information on these discs and access further sectors.

  I ran my TOC query tool with an Xbox Magazine demo disc in the optical drive and it reported substantially more than 6992 sectors, enough to account for more than 2 GB of data. That’s promising. I then tried running 'dd' against the device and it was able to read… about 14 MB, an exact quantity of bytes that, when divided by 2048 bytes/sector, yields 6992 sectors.

  Future (Past ?) Work
  Assuming Google is your primary window into the broader internet, the world is beginning to lose its memory of things pertaining to the original Xbox (Microsoft’s naming scheme certainly doesn’t help searches). What I’m saying is that it can be difficult to find information about this stuff now. However, I was able to learn that a host needs to perform a sort of cryptographic handshake with the drive at the SCSI level before it is allowed to access the forbidden areas of the disc. I think. I’m still investigating this and will hopefully post more soon.

• Anomalie #4128 : Bug de génération de boucle avec les modèles Spip

  11 avril 2018, par Julien PORIAU

  Salut,
  parfois le jeu de caractère "binaire" est visible uniquement dans le
  code source (ligne 1233). Mais on observe tout de même un soucis dans la
  mise en page.

  view-source:http://spip-dev.nidecker.com/probleme-de-langue.html?lang=ca

  Julien.

  Le 11.04.2018 à 14:28, redmine@spip.org a écrit :

  La demande #4128 a été mise à jour par b b.

  • Statut changé de /Nouveau/ à /En cours/
  • Priorité changé de /Haut/ à /Bas/

  Salut, peux-tu fournir le code du modèle en question ?

  De mon côté, je n’ai aucun problème sur la page que tu cites en exemple...

  ---

  Anomalie #4128 : Bug de génération de boucle avec les modèles Spip
  <https://core.spip.net/issues/4128#change-13824>

  • Auteur : Julien PORIAU
  • Statut : En cours
  • Priorité : Bas
  • Assigné à :
  • Catégorie : code généré
  • Version cible : 3.2
  • Resolution :
  • Navigateur : Firefox

  Dans les modèles personnalisés Spip, les images (boucle documents ou
  logos) sont mal générées et provoque un bug d’encodage visible dans le
  front-end lors du passage dans une autre langue (balises multi).
  Nous n’avons pas trouvé où était le souci dans Spip, mais les
  caractères qui remontent dans le code source, ressemblent aux octets
  qui composent le fichier binaire d’une image.
  Voir en live ici :
  http://spip-dev.nidecker.com/probleme-de-langue.html?lang=ca.

  Pour essayer d’isoler cette anomalie, nous avons procédé de la sorte
  avec l’aide de mon développeur :

  1. Nous sommes reparti d’un SPIP 3.1.7 entièrement neuf (minimal),
  avec deux modèles Spip, rien d’autre.
  Le bug se reproduit, ce qui exclus un problème lié aux squelettes ou
  autres plugins.

  Nous n’avons pas réussi a déterminer précisément ce qui génère ce bug,
  à part que c’est dans un contexte où on appelle une langue pas définie
  dans le multi.
  En fonction du contenu de l’article, du nombre de modèles dans
  l’article, en fonction des boucles dans les inclure, le bug n’arrive
  pas au même endroit...

  Le problème vient de la génération des logos ou documents : si on
  supprime les balises |#LOGO_*| ou si on renomme |IMG| en |IMG_|, plus
  d’erreur.
  Même sans traitements, avec juste |[(#LOGO_*)]|, rien à faire.

  2. Nous avons pensé que c’était peut être une image au mauvais format :
  On a alors tenté de passer |ImageOptim| sur tout le répertoire |/IMG|,
  redimensionné tous les logos en vignettes png de 320x240, rien à faire...

  3. On a fini par passer ce site de test en 3.2, pas mieux.

  4. Nous avons épluché les caches générés dans |/tmp/cache| et
  |/tmp/cache/skel|, tout paraît normal de ce côté là..

  5. On a ensuite un peu avancé en enlevant dans |mes_options.php| la
  variable |$GLOBALS[’forcer_lang’] = true|".
  Sur la version minimal, plus de bug. Mais sur le site de production,
  le problème réside toujours.
  Mais en faisant des tests avec et sans (et en supprimant bien
  |/tmp/cache/| à chaque fois), ça se confirme pour la version minimal.

  6. A partir d’une copie de la version production, nous avons désactivé
  tout les plugins, passer |ImageOptim| sur |/IMG| et rien a faire..
  Impossible de déterminé d’où vient le problème :(

  7. Nous avons essayé d’écrire comme ceci : |[src="(#LOGO_MOT|image_reduire50,*|extraire_attributsrc)" alt="">]|
  Cela fonctionne sur la version minimal mais pas sur la version production.

  8. Dans la version minimal, j’ai encore récemment testé une dernière
  chose. J’ai supprimé les documents non sollicités sur ma page de teste
  (spip.php ?article1441&lang=ca).
  Avec la requête SQL suivante : |DELETE FROM jones_documents WHERE
  id_document NOT IN
  (1948,1949,2534,2535,630,631,1783,1784,1785,1786,1787,1788,1781,1782)|
  Le bug n’apparait plus..

  Je sèche..

  Vous trouverez ici en téléchargement une archive de la version minimal
  (Spip 3.1.7) :
  https://www.dropbox.com/s/dek0zg7jafl8uxe/jones.zip?dl=0] ( 20mo)
  Pour reproduire le bug, il suffit de passer la variable "&lang=ca"
  dans l’article 1441 (localhost/spip.php ?article1441&lang=ca).

  Je donne volontiers un accès à la version production si besoin.

  ---

  Vous recevez ce mail car vous êtes impliqués sur ce projet.
  Pour changer les préférences d’envoi de mail, allez sur
  http://core.spip.org/my/account

  ---
  L’absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel antivirus Avast.
  https://www.avast.com/antivirus

• Generating test data – Introducing the Piwik Platform

  9 octobre 2014, par Thomas Steur — Development

  This is the next post of our blog series where we introduce the capabilities of the Piwik platform (our previous post was How to create a command). This time you’ll learn how to generate test data.

  Developers are developing on their local Piwik instance which usually does not contain useful data compared to a real Piwik installation in production (only a few test visits and a few tests users and websites). The ‘VisitorGenerator’ plugin lets you generate any number of visits, websites, users, goals and more. The generator makes sure there will be data for each report so you can easily test anything.

  Getting started

  In this series of posts, we assume that you have already installed Piwik. If not, visit the Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find the Installation guide for developers.

  Installing the VisitorGenerator plugin

  The easiest way to install the plugin is by using the Marketplace in Piwik itself. It is accessible via Settings => Marketplace => Get new functionality. There you’ll find the plugin “VisitorGenerator” which you can install and activate in one click.

  If your Piwik instance is not connected to the internet you can download the plugin from the VisitorGenerator page on the Marketplace. Afterwards you can install the plugin by going to Settings => Marketplace => Uploading a plugin and uploading the previously downloaded ZIP file.

  If you have already installed the plugin make sure it is activated by going to Settings => Plugins.

  Generating websites

  After you have installed the plugin you can add as many websites as you need. This is useful for instance when you want to test something that affects many websites such as the ‘All Websites’ dashboard or the Websites manager. To generate any number of websites use the following command :

  ./console visitorgenerator:generate-website --limit=10

  This will generate 10 websites. If you need more websites simply specify a higher limit. In case you are wondering the names and URLs of the websites are randomly generated by the Faker PHP library.

  Generating goals

  In case you want to test anything related to Goals you should execute the following command :

  ./console visitorgenerator:generate-goals --idsite=1

  This will generate a few goals for the specified site. The generated goals are defined in a way to make sure there will be conversions when generating the visits in the next step.

  Generating visits

  To generate visits there are two possibilities. Either via the Piwik UI by going to Settings => Visitor Generator or by using the command line. The UI is a bit limited in generating visits so we recommend to use the command line. There you can generate visits as follows :

  ./console visitorgenerator:generate-visits --idsite=1

  This will generate many different visits for the current day. Don’t worry if it takes a while, it will insert quite a few visits by default.

  In case you want to generate visits for multiple days in the past as well you can specify the --days option.

  ./console visitorgenerator:generate-visits --idsite=1 --days=5

  Providing your own logs

  Half of the generated visits are randomly generated and half of the visits are based on real logs to make sure there is data for each report. If you want to generate visits based on your own logs for a more realistic testing just place your log files in the plugins/VisitorGenerator/data folder and make sure the file name ends with .log. You can find a few examples in the VisitorGenerator data folder.

  To generate visits based only on real log files then use the --no-fake option.

  ./console visitorgenerator:generate-visits --idsite=1 --no-fake

  All generated visits will come from the logs and no random visits nor random fake data will be used.

  Advanced features

  We are regularly adding new commands, tools and runtime checks to make your life as a developer easier. For instance you can also generate users and annotations. In the future we want to extend the plugin to create visits in the background to make sure there will be constantly new actions in the real time report.

  Are you missing any kind of generator or any other feature to make your life as a developer easier ? Let us know by email, we are listening !

  Would you like to know more about the Piwik platform ? Go to our Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find guides and references on how to develop plugin and themes.