Author Archives: Bart van den Akker

My (music related) change – week #1

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Hi,

This will be a first post on something I’m working on. It has to do with music and my band(s), but I’d like to keep it a secret for now because I don’t want to let people down getting their hopes up. So yes, this could be considered as the first hint. It’s something other people would enjoy a lot.

Anyway, it’s a total of 8 weeks I’ll be changing a part of my life in a way that hopefully benefit myself and some people around me. A select number of people actually know what I’m doing and the better the results will be, the more I’ll be telling. If it won’t work out the way I think (and told), I’ll be telling you the results as well.

Anyway, I’ve finished the first week and actually started already on week #2. I do notice a tiny positive change which is enough to encourage me to continue the course with week #2. I expect to tell you more about it around week #4 or #5, depending how things will continue.

For now, I’d like to keep things a bit quiet for the sake of getting hopes up for people, but feel free to contact me to ask me more, maybe I’ll tell you what I’m doing ;-). It’s not something extreme or so, don’t worry.

But to not leave you alone now, I’m pretty proud of my band Pyrates! and what we’re doing. Video below will show you some footage of the shows we’ve done in 2015. Also, the audio track under the video is Pyrates! performing the song Irish Rover LIVE in Germany. So, this is actually how we sound :).

Enjoy and hopefully see you next week in the weekly blog.

Diagnosing slow WiFi + solution

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Since  a few days, we’ve been experiencing a very slow WiFi signal in the house, even when we’re within 1 meter distance of the Time Capsule, the different speedtests won’t go above 10Mbit (on both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz, the latter was even worse with max 4Mbit). Obviously, my first suspect was the actual Internet speed, so I put a cable in the Time Capsule and I got a nice 186Mbit average (on a 200Mbit connection, which is not too bad). So, the ISP is ruled out.

So I ran the build-in WiFi diagnostic tools (ALT+click on Apple’s WiFi symbol give you good details here)

Screen Shot 2015-03-01 at 12.22.59There you can also go to the “Wireless Diagnostics” which has some nice features. As soon as the window opens, choose “Window” from the top menu and there you’ll find some interesting things. Especially the “Scan” (CMD-4) is a informative one. This will show all other networks and on which channel they are connected. Also, OS-X gives us (probably) the best channel to be used.

From my scan, I could see 7 networks (including my own) in total, 6 on the 2.4Ghz and 1 on the 5Ghz. The 2.4Ghz was currently on Channel 1 and the 5Ghz on Channel 40. Both having a massive slowdown. OSX advices me to use channel 2 or 6 for 2.4Ghz and 40 for the 5Ghz.

I entered my configuration tool and set the 2.4Ghz channel to 6 and that one was kinda back to acceptable speeds (not groundbreaking, but I only have 1 computer connected to this band anyway). Still, the 5Ghz was still slow as hell while it was connected with a 300Mbit speed.

Then I downloaded the iStumbler tool (Freeware, only asks you regularly to register). This gave me some insight. But first we need to know more about WiFi.

WiFi is ‘just’ a radio signal so it has background-noise. Could be anything, from refrigerators to microwaves. As long as something is ‘leaking’ noise on the same channel as the WiFi, it could affect the quality of the line.

I could see that my 5Ghz network had a signal strength of -49dBm and noise of -95dBm. For most Wi-Fi networks, you will see the signal measurement be between around -10 and -70 dBm, and should see the noise between -80 to -100 dBm. In these, the more negative the number is, the smaller its signal is. So, my line was pretty reasonable I’d say?

But, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to get it better, so I did. I changed my 5Ghz channel from 40 to 48 and my noise dropped to 0 (zero) dBm!

Screen Shot 2015-03-01 at 12.44.58

 

 

 

 

and with this improvement, my internet speed WiFi went back up to 120Mbit download, yay!:

Screen Shot 2015-03-01 at 12.47.29

 

 

 

 

Now that’s doable for WiFi 🙂

Apparantly, the -95dBm noise was just about enough to interfere with the quality of my connection.

 

 

The mailclient for OSX

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Another blog about my latest journey to find a mailclient for Apple’s OS X (Yosemite) which would work the way I want. I’m working for many years according to the “Inbox Zero” principle. Basically, keep your Inbox empty. Everything in the Inbox is something ‘to do’. This works beautiful for me, even with my > 6GB IMAP-mailbox where all my e-mail is stored. Archive what needs to be archived, delete mail which is not required to have (usually spam or server messages).

So, as you can imagine my mailclient should work fast and I love keybindings. Mail clients like Outlook used to be okay-ish for me, until I started to work with the Inbox Zero. Clicking, dragging and stuff wasn’t my thing. Plus Microsoft seems to have issues creating a reasonable search within e-mail. In short, searching sucked. Also the fact I started to use Linux as my desktop OS where I had to use WINE to start Outlook wasn’t working in Microsoft’s advantage to become my mail client. So, I started with several mail clients under Linux. From Evolution, Kmail to eventually Thunderbird. Up till last year, this was my preferred mail client.

Why change a winning concept you may think? Thunderbird works under Mac as good as under Linux (or Microsoft Windows if you please). Well, Thunderbird isn’t a nice looking client and you can fix that with themes, true.. but the worst part, it’s SOOOO slow, especially when using multiple (huge) IMAP-boxes . Even on my late 2013 Macbook Air (8GB RAM) it was just slow. When it was started, it was fine. Cleaning caches and not downloading all messages helped a bit, but still .. Also, since I tried out Apple Mail I got a big fan of the “Conversations” which Apple Mail has implemented very nice. Yes, there’s a plugin for that (Conversation) like there’s probably a plugin for everything. Though this particular plugin was really buggy and I had to switch back to ‘show in normal reader’ too much just to see attachments. So, time for a new mailclient.

Apple Mail is nice but has one major disadvantage. It doesn’t support multiple identities. I want to mail from “Bart” and in some other cases from “ZipZap Entertainment”. Apple Mail doesn’t do this if all mail comes into the same IMAP mailbox. On top of this, Apple Mail is even worse with big IMAP mailboxes.

Then I found this relatively new client “Mailbox“. This feels (and probably is) made for the “Inbox Zero” concept. Native support for Conversations and feels like a real Apple product. Biggest disadvantage, no IMAP support (what?). They only support iCloud (which I couldn’t get working) or Gmail. Pity.. Such a nice client with such big miss.

My quest continued and after some searching I found PostBox. Basically the speed and layout of Apple Mail with all the advantages of Thunderbird (multiple identities, signature support etc). After the 30 day trial I got addicted to this nifty piece of software. This actually makes my life (or my todo-list) easier. I can move messages to the correct archive automatically or manually using keyboard only. Really great piece of software and very fast. It literally has everything I want in a mail-client.

So, here’s the free commercial for them. They deserve it. It’s well worth the money and I bought it today (with 2 days left for trial). Yay Postbox!

Android vs Apple, again

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As open-minded as I try to stay and being a Linux-user for at least 15 years, it’s quite obvious that Android has my attention. Since I changed from Linux to Macintosh (first as a Hackintosh, later I actually got real Macbook) for my personal use, I shifted to Apple’s operating system and I’ve been using that as my primary operating system.

Going back in time, when I still mainly used Linux. I’ve used most operating systems on mobile (incl Windows mobile 6.5 back in the day and my favorite Symbian OS on the pretty SonyEricsson P1i. My contract ended so I got myself an Orange M3000 running Windows 6.5. Worst mistake ever (and possible worst phone ever made). I switched back to Symbian on a Nokia N91 (which was a neat phone) but eventually I went for an iPhone. The very first one (already outdated at the time, the iPhone 3G was there already). I played with it a lot but there was no integration between Linux and iPhones at the time. I had to run Virtualbox in order to jailbreak the iPhone to make it work. Then I read about the new Motorola Milestone coming out, running the latest Android (that was back in 2009). I got mine using import through Germany which gave my Milestone a German keyboard layout. Workable though. I think I was one of the first people in NL who had this phone which was a great phone in those times. It was also my first Android experience and all seemed well. But, I got annoyed. Motorola stopped updating the Milestone and using custom roms I had to get newer versions. All these versions had some issues, either battery drained too quick or crashing for incoming phone calls. All in all, I got really fed up and sold them Milestone to get an iPhone 3GS (which I still have today) which also started my journey to become an Apple user (Hackintosh -> Macbook).

So, here we are. 6 years and 2 generations of iPhone later (currently on iPhone 5). I’m completely converted into an Apple user having the Timecapsule at home, 2 Macbooks (my wife has one and myself), 1 powerbook, 1 powermac (see here) and even an iPad. All my music (well over 10000 songs legal) is distributed around my devices using iTunes Match and everything is okay.

Why this blog? Well, my mother-in-law was fed up with her LG E612 and I gave her an iPhone 4. A good chance for me to start playing again with Android just to see where they are now.

I rooted the device and installed the latest available Android on it, 4.4.4 (KitKat) apparently and, without simcard, started using it (yes Apple, without simcard)

But, it’s probably the phone, I’m not convinced. I do like the fact it has a native SIP-client in Android (which doesn’t work and only crashed the phone, probably related to the phone) and that it’s open (I can relatively easy install another ROM). But iOS on the iPhone feels so much more solid. Applications work decently and as a personal taste, the layout is by default not the most nice one I’ve ever seen. Yes, you can change it and that’s again the problem, there are too much layouts .. Application which don’t work are also something I don’t get. I mean, the OS is the same (despite version differences) but why does Zoiper refuse to play the audio to the normal speaker and are all my calls by default on speakerphone (can’t turn it off either). Tried different Android versions, all the same.. I mean, come on.. I want to use it as SIP-client to make private phone calls, not everybody should hear that..

So, in general, my opinion:

Pro’s Apple (which are con’s for Android)
– Software simply works. No bullshit. Works on all iPhones unless specified.
– iOS works equal on all phones factory default. Not this weird menu’s on different brands.
– iTunes Match works like a charm.
– integration with desktop is flawless. Answering phones on my macbook or iPad, awesome! Contacts synced without thinking, love it. Photos in the (private) cloud, yes! Messages are even synced. I can send text messages from my desktop.

Pro Android (cons for Apple)
– SIP-client
– Multiuser
– SD-cards just a a normal drive recognised.
– Access to the phone (ssh, fileserver)
– It’s a small Linux. Love it!
– Runs on multiple brands.

So, my perfect phone would be an Apple operating system with addition of a default SIP-client, multiuser and easier to access which will be integrated with my computer(s) as the current iOS is and with freedom of phone selection (for example, I would like something like a Samsung or HTC if it runs iOS).

I guess I should keep dreaming ..

MorphOS install

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Since I’m a big fan of Amiga’s, the MorphOS operating system got my attention since it runs on Apple’s PPC macs (so, Powermac, Powerbook, Mini’s etc). I thought to give it a try, so I did. I got me an old 350Mhz Powermac G4 (generously donated by my friend David) and I installed MorphOS 3.4 (back then that was the latest). My first try was using the CD-drive which is kinda hard if you have a Macbook Air and no CD-burner, but I reinstalled an old PC and could actually burn it. My second try was using an USB-boot. Lucky, MorphOS made a guide for this.

I recorded my first try (using a CD) and put it on youtube. Everything looked fine, but there was no audio. My final goal is to have a system which looks the same as the old Amiga, feels the same as an old Amiga, but doesn’t require (often brittle) hardware of 20 years old. Without audio, well.. that’s a big miss on an emulator.

I started to look around and came across a nice Powerbook G4 and according to the HWC-list it was a supported one! Awesome. I went to pick it up (it even included a new battery) and installed MorphOS. Guess what? Same problem! Apparently, this PowerBook 1,0 867Mhz doesn’t support audio (doh) while the 1Ghz model does. And ofcourse I had the 867Mhz version. Another useless Mac around (which is now running Debian btw).

Around Xmas we have this nice giveaway and I decided to donate my PowerMac G4 to one of the users at AmigaScene.nl so he could play with it and I left trying MorphOS for now.

Why are you making this blog then? Well.. Another person decided to give me another PowerMac G4:

kerstpakket2014

Here it is, on the right side. Also I got this nice Apple Cinema Display with the ADC-connector. The guy who donated me the PowerMac 3,5 decided to put in another video card without ADC-connector. So my new quest was to get either a videocard with ADC or a convertor. I decided to go for the latter so I can use the Display on other computers as well.

A few days later I found one (secondhand) for a decent price so installing could begin? No, the PowerMac didn’t have a harddisk and I recently threw away all my P-ATA harddisks >_<. Thanks to the nice people at Tweakers.net I got myself a few (free) P-ATA harddisks. I received them a few days ago and yesterday I found time to get this package together to make a working system. I also created a video for this at youtube.

It seems that the MorphOS 3.2 I’m trying to install is really slow (not sure where the problem is here). Also I can’t hear audio (could be because MorphOS doesn’t support audio out from the Internal speaker). It’s shouldn’t be a problem of the hardware. This PowerMac 3,5 has an 800Mhz CPU, 1.5GB of RAM, 160GB HDD and an ATI 128Mb videocard. In the next few days I’ll try to install the latest MorphOS and I’ll keep this website updated.

A Few Hours Later:

Since I created this post, I’ve been trying to get my old PowerBook G4 booting using USB and found out that the Open Firmware doesn’t actually like booting of a 8GB USB disk. I got it booting something, but it just didn’t continue. So, I cracked open my drawer and found an empty CD-recordable. Using my Windows 8.1 machine I burned the ISO to this disk and I went installing MorphOS 3.7.

Guess what, all problems disappeared AND I have sound. Even more surprising, I added an Airport compatible card (that’s what it said) and everything is working, even sound. Oddly enough, it somehow sees if something is connected on the mini-Jack in the back. Without anything connected, it doesn’t make sound. So, I plugged in an empty miniJack plug and sound is coming from the speaker in front of the Mac.

Obviously, I made a video because I’m proud to finally get MorphOS up & running! Now I’m gonna connect it to my home wlan-network (!) and start to make a ‘modern’ Amiga a-like system.

 

DTMF in the wrong order (English)

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Here’s an interesting item I’ve come across at work which took me several weeks to figure out. Thought I’d like to share this issue and the possible reason why it’s happening and a workaround for it.

To give you an idea about the situation; this customer wants to call services where you have to enter a long code (usually 10 digits) using DTMF. It’s kind of important that the order of DTMF is correct and that’s where he got into trouble.

If he used one particular provider for this outgoing phonecall, the order of DTMF changed into random order digits after usually 4 or 5 correct ones. So, he sent 1234567890 to the service using his phone (DTMF) and the service received 1234598076 (or anything like that).

I tested this using several other trunk-providers and not a single one had this issue. So, my logical answer to the customer was that the trunk provider had the issue. We also tried different DTMF types, but only RFC2833 was working, so this was ruled out and there was nothing more we could change for DTMF within Asterisk.

But, after 2 weeks we received the support-ticket back. The provider did some testing and even though they told us the DTMF was in correct order received and forwarded, they just bounced the ticket back to us claiming ‘it is a timing issue’. Despite the fact we had at least 9 different trunkproviders without any issue, it became our problem again and we had to fix it for the customer.

The first tests were the easy things like checking our NTP-synchronisation (timing issue could imply we were out-of-sync), but no luck here.

Then we removed Asterisk from the system (as in, callrecording and forwarding of calls) and that seemed to fix the issue, but as expected the customer actually wants callrecording and callforwarding so there’s no way we could disable this.

Oddly enough, a (Centos) FreePBX install worked and exactly the same Asterisk version on Debian was also working just fine, even if it was on very slow hardware. For a day or two it looked like it was a Asterisk speed issue, though it wouldn’t explain why it ran on a slow machine with Debian just fine.

After much debugging, reading TCPdumps and reading VERBOSE messages from Asterisk, I saw on my slow Debian machine that the Asterisk Dial-line included the “A” options to stream 42ms of silence to the other party to make sure the RTP-port opens in case of a NAT-ed machine. On the Debian machine, this file was missing. On the FreePBX machine, this file was missing as well. On the system with the DTMF-issue, the file existed.

As soon as I removed the 42ms of audio, the DTMF-problems were gone. So, why not remove the 42ms of silence right? Well, we can if all our PBX-machines are without NAT and since IPv6 is still not common (Common phones don’t support IPv6, so why bother to use it in Asterisk right?). Removing the file and executing a blind-transfer between 2 SIP-peers means the router doesn’t get where the RTP is coming from (or going to) meaning no audio. We did found a workaround for that by setting the “progressinband” to “yes” in the sip.conf, creating other problems like doing a transfer between 2 different trunks (and RTP-servers).

Back to the original problem, we now have this ‘workaround’ by removing the 42ms of silence and setting the progressinband to yes, but it’s not something I would recommend using on systems with multiple trunks.

So, why is this trunk-provider the only one with DTMF problems in the first place. Well, I think I know why. DTMF is RTP-Type 101 while G711alaw is RTP-Type 08. My guess is that this trunk provider doesn’t understand the RTP-Type 08 while it is receiving RTP-type 101. Oddly enough, Asterisk seems to send pieces of audio right after the DTMF codes. I still don’t know why or what this exactly is (perhaps the 42ms audio?). Anyway, if you calculate the both RTP-types and consider it as one, the DTMF could be considered as late while another DTMF is already sent. Meaning, the order will change on the other side of this trunk-provider. My other possible idea is that the provider somehow expects an inband DTMF because of the RTP-type 08 right after the 101. I don’t know since I can’t login to their configuration.

For my rare readers, I’d like to see your opinion on this.

Lisa

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Kopie van dit verhaal staat op Tweakblogs

Zo waren we in 2013 al 3 jaar getrouwd, betekent dat we volgend jaar alweer 5 jaar getrouwd zijn. Wat gaat de tijd toch snel.

In één van de eerste jaren heb ik mijn lieftallige Anya beloofd dat ze voor haar 30e een kindje zou hebben. Ja, je zegt zo wat om iemand blij te maken he ;). Gelukkig voor haar ben ik een man van mijn woord en zo zijn we eind 2013 begonnen om deze wens tot werkelijkheid te maken. Helaas voor ons was dit niet in een letterlijke wip gebeurd, maar met wat lichte medische hulp mochten we begin 2014 dan ook definitief zeggen, we zijn zwanger.

Dan begint een hele nieuwe periode in mijn leven. Ik had wel verwacht dat het impact zou hebben op mijn leven, maar niet op deze (positievere) manier.

Als man heb je wat minder met het hele baby-verhaal. Ook mijn collega’s op het werk vertelde eigenlijk dat je het eerste jaar gewoon niks aan een kind hebt. Ik kan je vertellen, zij hadden het mis.

Even terug naar de maanden van zwangersschap. Ik heb natuurlijk geen vergelijkingsmateriaal als het gaat om Nederlandse of Russische zwangere vrouwen en ik kan ook niet uit eigen ervaring vertellen hoe het gaat. Wat ik wel grappig vond is dat Anya een behoorlijke nesteldrang had. Alles moest schoon en in orde zijn (kamertje) en ruim van te voren (terwijl er letterlijk nog maanden tijd was :+ ). Gelukkig was Anya niet van het moet allemaal super luxe en nieuw zijn, dus met een IKEA kinderkamer en een tweedehands buggy waren we snel klaar met dat spul.

Dan krijg je natuurlijk ook de zogenaamde puf cursus waar ze natuurlijk wilde dat ik mee naartoe ging. Ze had er één uitgezocht en dat was de zogenaamde hypnobirthing. Ik dacht, waarschijnlijk wat jullie nu ook denken, dat het behoorlijk vage shit en zweverig zou zijn.

Ik kan je zeggen, dat is het niet. Hier wordt je geleerd hoe je moet ontspannen dmv massage en een lichte vorm van (zelf)hypnose. Dit werkt verrassend goed en de cursus zelf was ook met name heel erg veel ontspannen (voor zowel man als vrouw, yay!). Uiteindelijk heeft dit met de geboorte daadwerkelijk ook geholpen.

Toen was het zover, op 10 september 2014 kreeg ik een skype bericht van Anya dat de weeën nu echt vervelend begonnen te worden en dat er ook weer wat vocht uit was gekomen. Ik ben rustig naar huis gereden, heb daar nog een broodje gegeten en toen zijn we naar het ziekenhuis gegaan (Anya wilde toch graag een bevalling in het ziekenhuis).

In het ziekenhuis aangekomen (±14:00), werd er eerst gekeken met een ECG wat de hartslag was en hoe de persingen gaan. Oude computer met monitor en daarop een 3-tal grafieken die pieken als er een wee is (blijkbaar). Verder kon ik er niet zo heel veel mee :P,
Dat duurde en duurde maar, gelukkig zijn ze in het ziekenhuis van Helmond goed voorbereid en heb ik daar de koelkast met broodjes en chocolademelk leeggeroofd :+ (ik had honger).

Rond 16:30 pas kregen we uitslag wat het vocht was. Anya bleek toen al 5 cm ontsluiting te hebben, we mochten dus naar de bevallingskamer. Nadat we daar aangekomen waren kregen we een maaltijd voor 1 persoon die al redelijk koud was, het was nogal druk daar blijkbaar :{. Nouja, ik had de koelkast al leeggeroofd dus veel honger had ik niet meer 😮 😛

Uiteindelijk heeft Anya om 20:30 gevraagd voor pijnstilling. Het ontspannen werkte niet meer (8cm ontsluiting ofzo) dus kreeg ze de nieuwe pijnstilling die ze zelf kan bedienen met een knopje. Remifentanil heet dit blijkbaar, komt er op neer dat ze 0,1mg per keer dat ze drukte kreeg en dat maximaal 7x. Hierna 3 minuten niet meer. Gelukkig hebben de makers van dat apparaat geen verschil gemaakt in het piepje of het nou wel of niet de pijnstilling geeft. Anya was tegen middernacht wel heel consequent in het piepjes maken met dat apparaat.

Uiteindelijk mocht Anya om iets over 00:00 beginnen met persen en uiteindelijk om 00:50 is onze prachtige dochter Lisa geboren (met een Apgar score van 10/10 en een gewicht van 3630 gram). Anya heeft wel 1,5 liter bloed verloren tijdens de bevalling (of liever gezegd, via de nageboorte). Hierdoor was Anya de eerste 3 dagen na thuiskomst nog bedledig.

Bij dag 3 hebben we de wieg van onze slaapkamer naar haar eigen kamer gebracht. Dit omdat Anya bij elk geluidje wakker werd van Lisa dus heeft ze heel weinig geslapen de eerste nachten.

Inmiddels is onze dochter 10 weken oud en heeft ze inmiddels een Nederlands paspoort (dit omdat we haar ook in Rusland gaan inschrijven voor met name het gemak dat ze ook naar baboeska kan 🙂 ).

Lisa is een hele vrolijke meid die nu al heel erg van muziek houdt (goede muziek) en al enorm lacht als pappa terug komt van het werk.

Eerlijk gezegd, had ik niet verwacht dat ik het zo leuk zou vinden. Ik denk dat ik opnieuw verliefd ben geworden O+

Lisa:
lisa

Old computer collection

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A long long time ago I used to own up to 38 (!) homecomputers as part of my collection. Including several Amiga’s (A500, A600HD, A1200, CDTV), Philips MSX, Apple Macintosh, Philips P2000’s and last but not least, Tandy. It started when I found a Philips P2000-C in a secondhand shop and I was intrigued by the system itself. The green-screen, the unknown. It took me a few weeks before I finally got it to boot into CP/M thanks to the HCC. I’m talking about 1995-ish..

Moved several times and needed the room for my growing drum kit(s) I basically sold everything or gave it away to museums, which I mostly regret nowadays. But I moved on and up to 4 years ago, I only had newer computers in my home (well, only a 80386 which I forgot).

2 Years ago I came across a friend who collected old game consoles and my love for old homecomputers and especially for the Amiga’s came back to life. After a small message on Twitter I managed to get a huge collection of Amiga’s. I loved it. My love for Amiga was returned completely. I cleaned the systems, played with it a lot but had to sell the latter because of financial reasons, keeping one because I wouldn’t allow myself to be without homecomputers again.

Very short after I regretted I sold again, so I got myself a next-gen Amiga and rebuilt it to a fully working, next-gen Amiga which is pretty rare nowadays. Still, my feeling of actually owning a A1200 (which I used to have) wouldn’t go away. I had to have one and when Petro was getting brand new Amiga’s I just knew I had to get one. Which I did.

Again, financial issues made me sell my beloved new A1200 because I still had my A500 and NextGen Amiga. I didn’t have much use for the A1200 anyway.. I thought..

Then I came across a complete CDTV which I just couldn’t refuse. I picked it up and did my cleaning, fixing thing with it. Got a CDTV FDD thanks to my friends at Amibay and connected it to my 42″ Plasma. What a joy when everything was working.. All in all, happy again with my 3 Amiga’s.

When cleaning my garage, I suddenly found a very very old 80386SX16 and I couldn’t resist. I tried to boot it up which didn’t work in the first place, but after some extensive cleaning and replacing a few parts, it booted! Oh the joy I felt when this machine was resurrected from the death.

Exactly 2 weeks later I found an advert on the Internet stating somebody was selling his collection of homecomputers. Despite I had my doubts if I should do it, I just bid on it and won the collection for a really low price. It almost felt like, too good to be true. Here’s a picture of what I eventually got:

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Yes, that’s:
– 3x Amiga 1200
– 2x Commodore 64
– Commodore 1541-II drive
– Toshiba MSX
– Toshiba T-1100
– Philips CDi 210
– Atari Mega ST-4
– 6 boxed Amiga games
– Hundreds of 5,25″ disks for Commodore 64
– 3 boxes full of 3,5″ disks (including several original titles) for Amiga
– AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 original on CD

 

Can you imagine how I felt? This is christmas/sinterklaas for me! Most of the systems are working, but really really yellow. The Cdi-player has a problem with it’s tray, but fixable. One of the A1200s has a broken FDD and one of the A1200 didn’t have any screws in it to hold it together (though it has a harddisk, accelerator card and the latest kickrom).

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This was just … wow..

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Last weekend I gave away the Toshiba MSX for I has no use for it. I did get myself a boxed Amiga 600 making my Amiga-collection hoarder-size ;-).

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My next project will be to clean and retr0bright everything so all systems look like brand new. I’ll keep this updated on this website for your reading pleasure.

My current collection:
Commodore 64 ‘brown’
Commodore 64 ‘white’
Commodore CD-TV incl FDD, keyboard and mouse
Commodore Amiga 500.
Commodore Amiga 600.
2x Commodore Amiga 1200 (standard)
Commodore Amiga 1200 (with 68030 CPU, Harddisk and Kickrom 3.1)
micro AmigaOne (A1-C) (with 800Mhz G3 CPU, 512MB RAM running AmigaOS 4.1)
Toshiba T-1100 Personal Computer
Philips CDi-210 (incl 10 CDi) (not working at the moment)
Atari Mega ST-4 incl screen
Intel 80386SX16, 3MB memory, 512Kb Trident videocard and Seagate 44Mb HDD

Also, check out my Youtube-channel where I’ll put videos of my projects!

The Van

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Since we’re doing pretty good with the band we decided to buy us a van to get us around the world (well, at least most part of western Europe). After doing some research and checking out vans within our relatively small budget (hey, we’re musicians) we decided that a Volkswagen Transporter T4 (Known in USA as Eurovan) would be the wise decision. Plenty of parts to be found, several online resource how to maintain this machine and a big enough van within our budget.

The search began and after a while we found a pretty good looking (considering it was 17 years old) van with not much KM’s driven. 271xxx km’s to be exact. Since I’m the person who has the most gear (and I could use it for rehearsals as well), it’s decided I’m gonna buy the van. So, after a testdrive and nothing strange at this point, I decided to buy Moby Dick, a 2.4 liter Diesel Volkswagen Transporter extra long with double cabin.

Moby Dick

It needed some small work, for example. The back wasn’t suitable for transporting a whole band. As musicians, we like music (how unpredictable), so a pair of new speakers and a decent car stereo was bought.

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After the back was rebuild, everything actually fit in:

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And this is how we did a few shows. Moby Dick started every time and while being pretty slow, it took us to several places fully loaded with gear. Obviously, we had it checked before the big trip to UK, which was around 2000 kms in total to drive. But it held… it brought us to some very nice locations like this private show in a tiny tiny place in the middle of UK:

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On the 5th and last day of our UK tour, we ended up in Cambridge, UK where, while we waited for where to park, the engine started to smoke. That’s usually a bad sign. So, we parked up and shut the engine down, opened up the hood where we the cooling fluid was on places where it shouldn’t be. Also, the remaining 25% of the entire cooling fluid was getting out very fast. Literally, an ‘damn’-moment.

So, we unloaded the van (since we were THERE) and called up the AA. They found out the cooling fluid was leaking at a small piece of plastic and wasn’t repairable on the spot. We had to go to the garage. So, after cooling down the engine and putting in some water, we went to the local ‘German Tech’ car-dealer where we had to wait until the next day. At my return, I couldn’t resist to make a last picture of the location where the van spilled it’s cooling fluid:

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The next day, German Tech let me know that they could fix it with a 9 pound piece of plastic (and 3 hours of work >_< ). When I went there to pick the van up, they mentioned that the cooling fans didn’t work AND the fuelpump was leaking. That’s why Moby Dick overheated and destroyed the piece of plastic. A strange problem, since it was fixed 2 months before I bought it! Because it was cold enough, we could drive from Cambridge all the way to NL as long as we keep the temperature low. We drove home, no more problems (lucky enough) and the next day I called the garage where the repair was done. They couldn’t tell me why Moby Dick was there, but they did mention that back then, the meter indicated 568xxx km’s instead of 271xxx where I bought it at. So, 300000 km’s dialled back! Enough reason to bring back the van to the guy I got it from. Lucky he got me my money back!

Again, I was without van. So a new search began and with some extra money, I got me another one. Faster, real (registered) km’s and blue (and yet unnamed):

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Much faster than the old one (2.5 TDi instead of a non-turbo 2.4). On the day I bought it, we (Pyrates!) went to Germany with it and all without any issues at all. A few days later, we did a local show in Helmond and on the way back, I heard a strange rattling sound coming from the engine. Still working fine, but with a rattle.

Next day, I tried to find what was wrong with it but couldn’t find a good answer. It had to wait until monday when I had a rehearsal where a car-mechanic was.

Monday, I drove to the rehearsal and the first thing my mechanic-friend said, turn off the engine! The waterpump is broken and in this type of cars, the waterpump is connected to the timing belt, so .. if it breaks, the engine will break close to unrepairable. So, it had to go back to a garage. It will be fixed tomorrow or monday. Of course, I needed to make some picture. The garage told me I was incredible lucky. The timing belt was on the edge of breaking (and by that, destroying the entire engine).

At least it will be repaired and let’s hope it will last for a long long time!

The pictures:
Front opened up

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Engine open with the crankshaft (I think?) in the middle

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The next picture shows the left side of the engine where the waterpump is hidden below the big wheel, but note how much oil is on the belt (which should be clean!) and how it’s almost broken:
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Wish me luck with the van!

UPDATE 1 July 2013: The weird sound the van was making, wasn’t the water pump (well, a part of it probably was), but it was the crankshaft pulley. They had to replace this entirely because it was going to split (yes, literally split) pretty soon. After replacing this pulley, changing the oil seal (that was terribly damaged by the pulley), the timing belt and the water pump, the van is working again! We even drove it with Pyrates! again and soon we’ll be driving it more and more for our shows. So, still having a lot of luck when it comes to this van. The engine still was sooo close to being broken entirely that the Garage didn’t believe it was still running.