FTDI USB

Windows says it can't find the drivers - this, despite my explicitly downloading them and telling it where they are, and then, using FTDI's executable to install them. Problem could be that it's seeing the CMAXQUSB command module and looking for something else.

If I try writing to the serial port, it asks for FTD2XX.DLL. If I place that file in the same directory as the program I'm running, it stops asking for the file, but it says Open Failed, FTDI write Failed. Well, WinXP still doesn't see it as a serial port. Hmm...

USB Minimum Pulse Width

Simple question, you use USB and nothing else. (With a one-shot timer chip, this would be easy). What is the minimum pulse width you can generate writing to a serial port?

Enhancing KDE Window Behaviour Actions

It was trivial in TWM and CDE - you would edit your .twmrc or some config file in ~/.dt/C or something like that. For some reason, KDE needs a jailbreak

Here's what I'm looking to do :

If you go into Control Center and then Desktop and then Window Behavior and Actions, you can set, for example the Window behavior for Titlebar Doubleclick to be Maximize instead of the default Shade.

But, under the modifier section, not only do you have a limited selection (left mouse, middle mouse, right mouse and just one modifier), but you don't even have all the window actions available. For example, I don't care for raise/lower though mouse (and how the hell do I set ALT-ESC to do that?) and I can't set Alt-Middle to do a Maximize. Congrats KDE, you're really blown it this time. Looks like I'm going with TWM.

iPhone NSUserDefaults and UISegmentedControl

Alright, iPhone forums mostly suck - very technically unfriendly - it actually reflects poorly on Apply - no cool factor here.

Anyhow, here's the prob:

NSUserDefaults is what you use to save some app state data to non-vol memory when you exit. I have a switch that toggles the display of an advanced options form. I save the state of this switch successfully. When the app is relaunched, the state is right, I'm able to display this form okay. But, the segmentedcontrol thing is not enabled. I have to cycle the switch twice before it gets enabled.

One line here is not working - the "YES" line :


if( [myDefaults boolForKey:@"advOpts"] ){

   advOpts.on = YES;
   lineStyleCtrl.enabled = YES;
   [self advOptsToggle:nil];

}

Kundert Explains

spectre gurus speak - kudos to ACWWong of the UK as well.

How do you use spectre (and Cadence) to do a .stb analysis on your fully differential loop?

In unix, spectre -h stb
is a start - gives you something to read - which is not super helpful if you want to get stuff done, but, something's better than nothing.

The magic stuff is - use the cmdmprobe cell from analogLib and set the CMDM parameter to -1 if you want to measure the differential loop gain. Leave it at 1 for the common-mode loop gain.

Couldn't be simpler. Job well done folks.

And here's one time-saving tip when working on M$ Windows and needing to make screen captures - do a Windows-S key combo - now you get the option of doing a selective snapshot of a portion of your screen - eliminates on step - you don't have to do PrintScreen->Paint->Select. Now you can go straight from X-Windows to Windows app.

Go Figure - TWM and .twmrc

When you have a .twmrc, even if it's blank, you're exterm title bar looks like this:



And, when you don't, it looks like this :



What gives? Tom LaStrange said it best in his reply to me:

Sorry, I can't help you. I haven't used twm for 20 years.

--
Tom L.

What Desktop Environment Are You Running?

Simple one, but I don't know how to fine out. The top right of the windows look like this. If I know which desktop environment this was, I could google for some keyboard+mouse shortcuts. This particular one doesn't seem to have any - really sucks.



Answer :

You are using twm http://xwinman.org/vtwm.php It is configurable but it is an ancient unmaintained version!

You really need to be using KDE especially KDE 4.1. Download and install Kubuntu 8.10 - it comes with KDE pre-configured. It's very very nice (like Apple's OS X). :-)

Resources :

The author's desk : LaStrange himself.
UWO.CA