Category Archives

19 Articles
Posted by Dave on

ISO 27001

ISO 27001

On ISO 27001, much of my work now requires an understanding of this standard, the gold plated standard for IT security, well I say gold plated, more accurately reasonable endeavours. I believe that it will become an essential part of the defence to charges that one’s failed to adequately protect data. Nothing new here yet!

Posted by Dave on

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi

I bought a Raspberry Pi to act as a Media Server in the home. I bought a PI, case, SD card and power source. As ever here are my notes. Currently, getting started (or 1st boot), 1st customisations, and early days with the media browsers and XBMC/Kodi. I have BBC, ITV and YouTube working, Channel 4 is going to be very hard and so is Sky, since among other things since Silverlight is deprecated.

I have given up, and bought a Roku stick. In addition to the challenges of getting all the channels I want, even v3 of the Pi struggles with iplayer HD; it might be the CPU, it might be the BT broadband plus speed but it’s too hard. I shall reconstruct the page and use comments, as one of the purposes of making a notes page was collecting the various web pages that helped me get to wherever I got.

Posted by Dave on

New Home IT

New Home IT

Originally written on the death of my first XP system. My problems were compounded when I moved and with the expiry of Windows XP, I need to move my desktop systems on, to Laptops it seems! 😎

Posted by Dave on

Dell Laptops, Summer 2013

Checking out another Dell for a friend.

I want a laptop and docking bay.

If a Dell, it needs to be a Latitude, they’re the only machines they ship with the old fashioned docking bay interface. We don’t want to connect a screen using USB and we want the machine to be closed while using the desktop periherals.

Here is the Dell E6530 configure page. Here is the docking station link. The laptop needs the E-Series Legacy Expansion Port added in the “Accessorize my Dell” section.

It also needs the O/S version upgraded to 64 bit. It comes without MS Office, soi this’ll need to be added. Wonder if the still do educational discounts, looks like not, since Office 365 seems about the same price.

Maybe the docking station isn’t worth it. Get a cheaper laptop, with a screen port, and buy a new screen with a newer interface standard.

How big is it, how much does it weigh?

Do Laptop Power sell docking stations?

Posted by Dave on

Building a W7 laptop

Building a new laptop is always a fraught exercise and in this case I am upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 Professional. I am also upgrading from a Dell Latitude to HP Probook 5320m.

Posted by Dave on

Hitachi Travelstar disk,

Hitachi Travelstar disk,

I have some problems with my family Dells. Dan’s Dell Inspiron has a Hitachi Travelstar disk. Given that the computer won’t boot, it’s a bit tricky to recover the data. So here are my notes. 

Posted by Dave on

BT Home Hub

BT Home Hub

On 13th July 2013, I upgraded to BT Infinity, and my HH was replaced with a V4 Hub. This page is completely outdated.

BT are the largest provider of broadband lines in the UK. They provide a hub/router as part of the package. This is was my bliki page detailing my use and knowledge about the hub, we’re talking V2. here. I cleaned the page up in March 2010, when I simplified the content on this page, mainly be shifting the Vista & Wifi stuff to “filesaveas.com”.

Posted by Dave on

Replacing the Qube

It needs to be done, badly, has done for years, but is the DE bill an incentive to replace it with an appliance to act as a router/firewall etc. I am planning to move the internet facing services to a web hosting company’s server, but do I need something small and UNIXy.

Links

  • Shuttle X27D, thier own page on the X27D
  • Their European product page
  • http://www.icubes.co.uk/, a UK dealer that’ll sell one, they’re based in Slough and have a customer that puts Ubuntu on it, however it only has one disk. Do I care?
  • El Reg’s Review it seems its desktop capable
  • http://www.nexenta.org/, one OS if I can be bothered to get on top of it, although what’s its future now Oracle own Solaris.

How would one perform the initial boot?

More or Less

I also wrote about the qube on my blog, originally at Sun and then latterly on my blog. The style is pretty pompous, but i suppose I’ve got to get used to it, that’s a bit of me.

I eventually had to get rid of it when both disks went in a couple of months. I eventually transferred the bliki to an AWS machine.

Posted by Dave on

Dell Dimension 5150c

Dell Dimension 5150c

This was originally entitled “Our New XP Box”. I changed the title when I copied the snip across to WordPress in July 2013. I marked the snip as deprecated in June 2019, added a picture to remind me. Here are my notes; the tags give a pretty good idea of what I needed to write about. This was an XP system and I wrote about external devices, anti-virus, fax and video capture.

Posted by Dave on

Audio on the Dell

Microphone

I tried to use the microphone to make video’s on the Dell and the sound track is inaudible. Sound Recorder also creats inaudible tracks. I have tried to discover how to audit the sound drivers. There is a Dell Community thread. 17th January 2009

I have just attempted to use both a Creative & Trust microphone on both the rear and front microphone ports of my Dimension 5150C & the Alienware. I am having zero success on the Dell. I bought a new labtec microphone and this works fine on the Dell.

CTMBHA.DLL

I get an intermittent error with CTMBHA.DLL on system boot. I have investigated this in the Dell forums and via google. This seems to be a ‘feature’.