Savel brain dump in English!

In one company I was forced to install several copies of Norton Antivirus 2008. This was retail version of software in nice boxes, and I needed to enter all registration-configuration data in every computer. At a first glance, everything is very simple, just place CD, push few buttons… And I forgot that it IS Norton Antivirus. First, there were older versions of NAV in computers. Norton antivurus requested to reboot each computer twice for upgrade. And all this reboots require to enter administrator passwords…

Here is the story: go to computer, open nice box, take the CD and CD-key printed on envelope. Place CD into computer and wait for automagic install. No way! Place CD and wait for few minutes (tens of minutes- depending on the state of the computer) and then you receive message, that there is some problems with older version of NAV in this computer and need to uninstall software. Press fix-it. You jump to old version of NAV control panel- and there is RED warning that I need to dowload and install some update to remove that damn software. I killed that process and tried to uninstall software from add-remove-programs. No way, there are other users loged to this computer. And installer exited. I rebooted computer to eliminated logged users, hanguped software and other unknows reasons “not to install NAV”.
After reboot, install process continues. Then I need to register to some NAV-Symantec oline service. I don’t want, but until I didn’t register, I can’t continue configuring antivirus… But if you press “Next” ignoring red messages about invalid entries, this “registration” is skipped. After this, antivirus is loaded, and it began to worry that antvirus database is out of date. Dowloading of databases and updated took very logn time (it is not internet connection speed problem). And then… we need to restart windows.

Compared to old (7.x) version of AVG, NAV 2008 is ugly slow, time comsuming, CPU eating, silly designed and bad working software.

It took 50 minutes to install NAV2008 to old Celeron (1.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM) computer!

It is not worth such money…

I am using small Hobby drill (cheap dremmel tool) t make holes in PCB. Recently I broke several high speed steel drills. I decided to explore, why the drills are broken. After some investigation, I discovered that drill is moving a bit to side. The problem is in the drill grip. Sometimes, one element of the grip is “delayed” and the drill is not centered. When I use flexible steel drills, the drill is flexible enough to compensate the movements. But when I used high speed carbon steel for PCB, the brittle drill is damaged very fast.

I disassembled the drill. Here the image of the parts…

The drill is very simple: Chinese made electric motor, brass axle, one ball bearing and drill grip.

Just small note about the beauty of laser beam image. Laser beam is coherent light- the waves of the light are synchronized. So all theoretical effects of light can be viewed with naked eye. Here is the image of interference- some light is delayed and when the phase of the wave is opposite, the light disappears. Or it is just cool image.

And here is the detail of the image above. It is a pity, that digital camera can’t catch the “holographic” shine of the object.

It is unfocused red laser beam. I used DVD laser and some lenses. As lenses are not centered, the image is mushroom shaped. The current into laser is only ~75mA. Total distance the beam had traveled is about 6 meters. (18 feet)

This web log entry was written in Lithuanian language before new year. It was just a joke…

My nephew decided to build holographic super computer as his science project. (It a partly true). Here is small glance to the upcoming project- all information about this project is about 15 gigabytes in my hard disk. But later I decided to destroy all information about this project because I want to protect human race. Humans are too young for this technology…

Author of this idea is Henkas. In this photo, the authors is fine-tuning the holographic display.

We even disassembled old computer homograph to get some needed components.

I have already wrote about terminal computer I have. I didn’t managed to start Windows CE on it. Maybe there were some problems in configuration or something. After some time I received more terminal computer and they booted Win CE without any problem. The only problem was in the hardware- blow up capacitors in the power supply. I changed them and everything is fine.

Terminals booted Win CE and I can see standard blue windows desktop. And some requester about connecting to some server. And nothing more. I checked contents of CF card but all information is “crypted” inside few system files. Somewhere there is all settings and passwords stored, but where? The only solution is to “damage” system settings file to force system to “default settings”. I noticed, that if I move (and even place it back) “system.hv” file, windows CE (at least this version I have) will reset to default settings. Or maybe to some semi-default settings. After this file manipulations I see configuration wizard when I boot computer. Then I press “cancel”, go to “Start Menu”, “Settings” or “Control panel”. Find “System” icon, press “reset to factory default”. After this manipulation systems reboot to its “virgin” state. Now I can configure system as I want.

I found WinCE 4.2 and 5.0 (or maybe all CF card are already upgraded to version 5). This version of Windows CE have installed Internet Explorer 6.0 without Baltic encoding. Unicode is installed and new web pages with unicode charset (like this weblog) are displayed with proper symbols. But all older Lithuanian web pages with Baltic codeset displayed with mixed symbols.

This is nice and slow fanless internet computer. There are some other software in install like remote desktop clients, file viewers and mail software.

While playing with CF cards and files inside it is important not to touch BLDR file in root drawer.

Contents of my CD card:

2003.04.15  18:38            16.384 BLDR                  
2007.12.06  20:04    dir          BMP                   
2007.12.06  20:04    dir          Documents and Settings
2020.01.28  04:38            67.739 EBOOT.BIN             
2005.08.20  16:18        15.484.163 NK.BIN                
2005.08.20  16:15           308.316 SPLASH.BIN            

Contents of Documents and Settings:

2007.12.06  20:04    DIR          default
2001.05.31  12:24                52 default.mky
2001.05.31  12:41           131.072 system.hv
2004.09.08  09:45                52 System.mky

Contents of default:

2001.05.31  12:41           131.072 user.hv

BLDR is the “second” boot loader. First one is in the first sectors of the disk. Splash.bin is startup (boot) screen image. It is uncompressed raw image. eboot.bin- unknown. nk.bin- is the image of windows ce operating system.

From time to time I am doing house clear-up. If I didn’t this, the house will be full of various electronic stuff. Some of the items maybe sold in eBay or local garage-sale, but some items must be thrown away.

Some stuff appears in the house in very simple way- I need some small part on the PCB, so I pick up whole PCB. And the rest of the board is left in the shelf- maybe I’ll use other components in the future. But not now IS THE TIME and everything must go away.

In the picture there is green PCB with big BGA chip, near two gamepad joysticks. This PCB was picked up only for FM75 chip- tiny element with eight pins. I also removed some linear regulators from this PCB: 1.8V and 3.3V. They were used for FPGA breadboard. All other chips like big LG cpu, 28LV320AT flash, LV logic chips, LEDs, 100MHz oscillator and lots of SMD components are trash.

Here is bigger picture of the trash to exam.

Here is the list of the trash: Logitech web cam (old one, slow, low res and low sensitivity. Replaced with new no-name), VFD screen with drivers from DVD, TI DSP board, few gamepads (I removed radio modules), CB radio with broken display panel, computer mainboard, old IBM notebook (I removed only few chip from it), some optical mouses (I was searching for specific chips), one wireless mouse, bunch of small motors (gamepad vibrators), some unidentified PCB, some old DIMM and SIMM modules, old HP 5300 scanner (replaced with new-old HP6300 with better lamps). This is my fourth scanner- and only first one (HP5p) was bought in the shop. All others were picked from the trash. These old scanners are much better than new cheap ones .

All this stuff is found in my room. And if we’ll look in to the garage…

As I mentioned, laser diodes are fragile devices. So the power supply must be adjusted before connecting any laser diode.

After all components are placed on PCB and visual inspection is finished, connect one 1.2K resistor in R4, R5 and R6 place. Power up the circuit. Check if linear regulator is working and we have stable 5V in the 7805 output. Measure voltage in the empty laser diode place. It must be less than 5V. Connect ampermeter instead of laser diode. Ampermeter must handle 1A current. In one position of the trimmer, the current in zero, in other some value. Set max current value by adding additional resistors in R4, R5 and R6 place. It is not very important to use exact resistor values in this circuit. Something in similar range is usable. I place 13K in R7 and everything is fine. Graduate trimmer to output current values.
Connect in series to ampermeter any powerful diode (I used optically burned laser) and check the current. It must be same as before and trimmer scale must be same.

This device must be powered to power source capable to output ~1A current at ~7V. If input voltage is higher (I use 12V Pb battery) the 7805 gets hot at max power. Use any heat sink to keep devices in working temperature.

Usage:

Connect (solder) laser diodes only to switched off and disconnected device. I repeat- DISCONNECTED. I damaged few laser diodes due to ground loop effect. The voltage between switched off laser power supply and ground soldering iron was high enough to damage laser diode.

Set current to min, switch power supply. Increase current. At first, laser diode is only glow. It is simple LED emitting effects. Optically burn out laser diodes can emit LED light. Increase the current and in some moment, laser diode start to shine very bright- it means that laser generation started. Now you can increase the current up to mentioned in datasheet. Or just try to find max current by your self. High current kills diode, so be careful. Especially when testing burning and ignition experiments*.

IR laser from CDRW device is powerful too. It can withstand 200…300mA current, but “working” current is about 100mA. IR laser beam is invisible and if you use digital camera to watch IR light, be careful. You can burn out not only your eyes, but digital sensor too. 🙂

Do not forget to use heat sink on lasers. In max power mode even quite big heat sink become hot.

Also, don’t forget laser safety… (image from www.electricstuff.co.uk – BTW nice web page)

*more experiment will be translated in near future. Take a peek to Lithuanian blog.

I’ve made some improvements to my laser PSU. I added voltage regulator, max voltage on open laser suppressor, spike suppressor. Also some useless improvements…

I didn’t made new PCB, I tested modifications on old board. But all modifications I entered into Eagle software and traced PCB.
I think this “theoretical” PCB is good.

Main difference from old version: IC2- 5V voltage regulator, C4 capacitor, R11 resistor. Capacitor C2 must be very small. It is used to prevent high frequency oscillations. If the capacity is too big, it will shunt input of amplifier and the inrush current through the laser will be very big. PIN2 theoretically is connected to photo-diode build in laser. But all new high power lasers don’t have photo diodes. So this pin typically is left unconnected. So, the resistor value is unknown. D1…D3 are fast schottky diodes. They prevent from reverse voltage during various experiments and connections. One of them is useless. 🙂

Laser diode body is connected to regulated supply, so take care that heat sink and laser body is not connected to ground plane. If it is connected, your laser is dead. It is possible to build PSU with grounded body, but I don’t have p-channel power mosfet in my stock. Laser diodes are static sensitive devices- handling precautions required. I damaged few diodes by simple ground loop- my solder iron is grounded and laser was powered from some wall adapter. Ground loop killed diode. Disconnect laser PSU from main while connecting/soldering laser diode.

Use the link and make your own PCB using UV of hot-iron and laser printer method.

PCB image (600dpi).

Here is experimental board (version 1 with modifications):

I improved my laser PSU design: added voltage regulator, additional schottky diodes, some capacitors and it seams that laser supply is quite stable. I tested it with low power led lasers and several high power IR lasers from CDRW devices. Heat sink on the PCB is not mandatory. Only in rare cases, when powered from 12V and using extra power to diode, PCB is hot. As I changed some resistors, the current range is smaller. I decided, that I will not try to pump extra power from these small lasers. Now the range is from 0 to 200mA.

There is two lenses in the photo near PSU. I removed these lenses from photocopier. One lens have build in IR filter, other lens is made from clear optical glass. The bluish color of filtering lens is from copper ions in the glass.

And now, small experiment about wavelength filtering. Take note, that IR laser is much more powerful than RED. Red laser in this experiment is from cheap DVD player.

As we can see, special lenses filter IR light quite efficiently. Similar IR filters are placed inside all digital cameras. Sometimes it is possible to remove this IR filter and get very weird IR camera. The problem in modern USB web cams is, that IR filter is build in camera’s lenses and it is impossible to remove it. The RED beam cross both glass lenses without any visible problem. (Color change of the photo is due to white balance- digital camera set bluish color as white base).
The current through the diodes in both case was about 40mA (IR laser is in low power mode, for “reading”).

Small movie: IR laser. 100mA. From CDRW. Unfocused. (xvid, 1.5Mb)

My red laser stock was empty. Mainly due to my errors and experiments. As I didn’t find spare DVD recorders, I switched to infrared lasers (IR). It is much easier to find powerful IR laser- the source is any CDROM recorder. In newer high speed CDRW devices, lasers are quite powerful.

IR laser beam is invisible. Sometimes you can see so red light emitting from laser diode (do not stare to focused beam). It is not a miracle- you can’t see these wavelengths. It is just secondary LED emission near the cavity of the laser. Even if the laser part of the device is burn out, you can see this reddish light. Laser emission is very interesting phenomena- when we increase the current through the diode, we get LED light. As we increase current, suddenly optical generation starts – laser process is on. All low power and old lasers have photo-diode to detect this process and to measure optical power. New high power laser modules do not have photo-diodes installed, even the laser is in 3 pin package. You can notice, that third pin is not soldered to PCB. And if you disassemble laser itself, you can see, that there is not wire connected to this pin. Neither you can find photo diode. I wanted to get modern driver chip datasheets from elentec-intersil, but I received answer, that these documents are not for wide publication. Why? I don’t know. These chips are in every modern DVDRW device… So I can’t find how laser power is regulated in these devices.

I improved my power supply and started tests with lasers. Did I mentioned not to power high power laser diodes without coolers? So don’t.

To detect IR beam use any digital camera, USB camera or any other consumer device with CCD camera. CCD cameras’ have IR filter, but it is to weak to block laser beam.

This nice photo is made when I placed my digital camera lens to CDR recorder optics. As optics is untouched, we can see nice interference pattern. Just cool photo.