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Repairing Trimble Thunderbolt GPSDO

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ThBltOpnMy quest for a solid 10Mhz signal finally took it’s penultimate step recently, when I purchased a Trimble Thunderbolt GPSDO off eBay.

The unit arrived packed well, and in good shape. It even came with a power connector, which I had not expected. After rewiring it properly (it seemed “off”), I hooked up my Rigol DP832 for the ±12V supplies, and +5V supply, and powered the unit up. Everything looked okay except the +5V rail was drawing about 3x what it should. Oh, and the 10Mhz output being “out” by +26Hz (I wondered if this was because the unit was still powering up, so it didn’t bother disciplining the oscillator yet).

Hooking up a serial connection got no output, and probing the serial connection with the scope showed very low level signals (less than 1Vpp). Opening the unit, I found that the RS232 transceiver (a 232IBE, which is now called a ICL232, or any other number of MAX232 derivatives) was HOT. Everything else looked good for the unit, so my assumption is the chip was damaged. I clipped the leads and replaced the chip with a MAX202 made by TI. It’s pin compatible, but has much better tolerance for ESD and Latch-up (which seemed to be what was going on with the failed chip).

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Fallout 4

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fallout-two-column-01-ps4I, like the rest of the Fallout fans in the world, pre-ordered Fallout 4 (PS4) so I could get it on release day. I made a point to finish up Farcry 4 before starting Fallout, and then went headlong into the game… and after beating it a couple weeks back, and having time to reflect, I have to say… I’m disappointed. Fallout 3 was a great re-imagining of Fallout in a first person shooter. The story was good, and the gameplay was good, albeit a bit “dark” (as in, there was a lot of wandering around in areas that were too dark to see what was going on). New Vegas fixed a lot of that, and gave the game a lot of depth when it came to options. You could talk your way out of things, sneak around things, etc. Fallout 4 undid, almost all of that. You were, basically, Arnold Schwartzenegger, out to get revenge… and would kill anyone that got in your way. Which means, yes, you basically had to kill everyone. Key points in the game required killing. Whether you did it, or glitched the game into NPCs doing it, or whatever: certain people had to die. And that seems like a step backward. Fallout has always had choices. Big ones, small ones, etc. From picking SPECIAL stats, to perks, etc. So with this, the game felt very open, and yet linear. Go here, kill this guy, go here, join this faction, go here, kill this other faction, etc etc. It just seemed, sloppy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the game was enjoyable. And the story was enjoyable (albeit, oddly close to home since my son shares the name of the protagonist’s). And they did a good job of making the factions “real”. Albeit, they may have made the Brotherhood a bit TOO asshole-ish for my tastes (though, in Fallout, and Fallout 2, they were complete jerks). The game is also really pretty, and even though everyone was complaining shortly after release, I had ZERO issues with crashing (well, almost zero, I think the game crashed on me a total of 2 times in over 80 hours of gameplay). And unlike New Vegas, there were never any game breaking bugs. So really, I’m looking forward to the DLC to see if they address any of these shortcomings. Because right now, I’m very conflicted about the game. It’s enjoyable, and it’s fun, but it’s not replay-able at all, in my mind. And the ending… seriously disappointing (just, uninteresting, phoned in, bleh).

All that said, at this point, I’m going to give the game a reasonable score. It’s fun, pretty, and enjoyable to play. But when you’re done, it just leaves you asking “What did I just play?” I know everyone said Fallout 3 was Elder Scrolls with guns. And that Skyrim was Fallout with magic. But Fallout 4, to me, felt a lot like what people complained about with Skyrim. Go kill this dragon… now do it again 15 f’ing times!

Here’s hoping the DLC improves things, or Doom is a better showing… because it would seem the Bethesda Fallout “team” is straight out of ideas.

[xrr rating=3.5/5]

FTDI, and why I’ll never trust them again

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ft232rlI recently purchased an inexpensive 3D printer from a colleague who had upgraded to a larger model. The printer is a Tinyboy, or Mini Fabrikator 3D. It’s a great little printer, with one unknown flaw… it uses a fake FTDI USB-to-UART chip. FTDI pretty much makes THE USB-to-UART controller, and they know it. The problem (everyone’s problem) is that some Chinese companies have decided to make counterfeit chips, or chips that show up as an FTDI, so they can use the FTDI driver, but aren’t actually FTDI chips.

Now, back in 2014, FTDI released a driver that detected that detected these chips, and reset some identifiers on the chip to basically “brick” the chip. Sure, those that knew how, could go in and fix the chip, then downgrade the driver to one that didn’t do this, but you had to know what you were doing, and it was a huge pain. After enough outrage, FTDI admitted they were a bit overzealous, and pulled the driver. And that was that. Or rather, it was. Then, just late last week, they pushed out another driver, which got into Windows Update (for at least Windows 7), that didn’t brick the chip, but instead injected “bad” data (“NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND!”) into the USB serial stream. This prevented anything expecting valid data (everything) from working. And it did this relatively silently. The driver installed, loaded, and then just sat there throwing bad data. I quite literally spent four hours screwing with everything I could think of trying to get this working, only to figure out the following.

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