Media Portal 1.3.0 beta – failed upgrade -> guide to new install

After upgrading to Media Portal 1.2.3 to 1.3.0 beta, I ran into problems on two different machines. Key issue was the related to the TV server, and the channels but it might be unfair as I run Acamd and MDAPI, which isn’t officially supported, so I’m not blaming anyone. My brother also ran into problems – suddenly Media Portal didn’t recognise any of the movies and nothing would play. We all understand the WAF (See WAF – option 3)of that.

So, if all fails, and you need to uninstall, removing all databases, this is a checklist of the steps needed to get back to a status that you want (please mind – this is from the top of my head so I might miss relevant parts):

* Uninstall option 3, that totally removes ALL the stuff.

* Install 1.3.0 beta

In configuration:

* Enter path to pictures (generate thumbnails)

* Enter path to music (update database)

* Enter path to films and update database (not really needed if you run Moving Pictures)

In TV server configuration:

* Set up the server and scan for the channels where you live

* Enable the plugin WebEPG

* I disable the channels for the hearing impaired and channels variants from neighbouring regions, so SVT1 ABS, and not the other SVT1 I get in my list.

* Configure the WebEPG but mapping a source for all the channels you want. I use 14 days and set the scheduler to a few times every week in the middle of the night.

In the extension manager:

* LAV filters are a MUST

* Local TV icons is nice. I have an option for Sweden.

* Moving Pictures is a MUST. There is no public Moving Pictures – the beta is here. 1.4.2 works well.

* Subcentral is also a must. Also not in the official extensionlist so fetch it here.

* TV series is also a must. I believe this is available in the extension manager. If not, then fetch it here.

* I typically install the Weather plugin as well.

* I typically install Trakt as well.

After this you need to go into configuration again

* Select Titan updater and let it update (can be done from within Media Portal as well).

* Select Moving Pictures, and configure it.

Now run an enjoy. The Titan skin is amazingly nice in 1920*1080. I was mighty pleased with Avalon back in 1.2.x, but this is a serious improvement.

Best of luck!

 

DVD ripping

It’s time to get rid of those DVDs. I consume my media via digital means (HTPC) and hence want all music, picture and films via this interface. Physical media doesn’t fit and I hence want to read them in. I have experimented a lot with this and the below are my conclusions. Please mind – as a native swede I want to have all movies with Swedish subtitles. Targeted at the children, Swedish audio shall be default, but Englihs audio should be optionally selectable. In the suggested settings below, exchange Swedish with the language you speak. If this happens to be English, then you need to apply your own logic.

There are two technical challenges; one is to address the CSS protection of the disks and one is to create an output file in a format that maintains quality but reduces size. Some program handle both these in on pack (DVDFab and MakeMKV). I find DVDFab a bit messy to work with and MakeMKV is quite technical, and requires that you read up before you can take full advantage of it.I would still recommend MakeMKV for the cases of TV series disks, where you want to rip several titles in one go.

But my recommendation is the combination of AnyDVD and Handbrake.

AnyDVD is without doubt the leading program to get rid of CSS protection on DVD. It installs itself as an abstraction layer between the protected disk and the program. The disk exposed to the system is an unprotected one, which means that once it’s in place, you can use any ripping program – even those which cannot handle the protection.

Handbrake is an amazing piece of code that takes away most of the complexities of ripping. It’s powerful without the mess of complexity.

Set-up

Install AnyDVD and Handbrake.

I have created my own profile in Handbrake, forking the “High Profile”. Set MKV as the default filesystem – it’s generally supported, has all the features one could ask for and is a free and open format.

Suggestions for the actual ripping:

Insert the disk, have AnyDVD scan for a while to crack the CSS and once it’s done you can select the disk from the Source menu in Handbrake.

Under “picture”, ensure you have the full resolution.

Don’t mess with “Video filters” (off, default, off, off and dragbar in the extreme left position and greyscale Enbcoding not ticked are my settings), nor “Video” (H.264, Same as source, variable Framerate, Constant quality, RF 20)

Audio; Add the one you want. Details below.  Go for the DTS track if it’s there, 5.1 if it’s there.  I code with FAAC to Dolby Pro Logic II,  auto sample rate, 160 bps and zero on both DRC and gain. This to me is a fair compromise between size and quality. You want all the channels to be there as discrete ones but unless you are a FLAC fanatic, I still suggest compression unless you have a disk sponsor making size totally irrelevant as a factor. In addition to the language’s suggested below, add  Director’s comments if you want that. It’s a limited footprint addition, so why not? It adds potential value to your package.

Subtitles: Add the ones you want.  Details below.

Rename the destination so the file gets a proper name.

Press start and watch is do the work.

If you have more than one optical drive, or if you do the ripping from and ISO/IMG file, you can actually queue up tasks and have it process several disks without any need for human interaction.

Suggested settings

Swedish kids films (Example: Astrid Lindgren)

Audio: Add Swedish audio

Subtitles: Do not add any

English kids films (Example: Disney)

Audio: Add Swedish audio as first and also English. You are likely to be more competent to swap to English than your children are to swap to Swedish, so I suggest Swedish as the default audio, which it will be if it’s listed first.

Subtitles: Add Swedish subtitles but do not tick any of the boxes. This way it’s added but you need to turn it on to see it. Making it default would be annoying for the kids to have the text there with Swedish audio. This is for having Swedish subtitles while watching it with English audio.

Swedish films (Example: Wallander)

Audio: Add Swedish audio

Subtitles: Do not add any

English films (Example:Jaws)

Audio: Add English

Subtitles: Add Swedish and tick the default option.

 

 

 

Microsoft Word numbering

Writing agreements, numbering in word is a must. If you work from a version inherited by the counterpart or is copy and paste from many sources, the styles are typically chaos. And the functionality itself can make you go totally bananas. (Go “Bonkers” as it was said in another guide – I agree!)

First

Ensure you have a working multi numbering list that is associated with the relevant styles. My Word is in Swedish, but I’m sure you can find it using the picture below.

 

 

 

 

 

You right click and select Modify on an existing one, or simply add a new by using that option in the menu indicated by the down arrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Give your list a name, and then use the lower left drop down menu and select the numbering option.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what you see after selecting the numbering options. Key: Connect a relevant format template to the list level.

If this didn’t help you, I can optionally divert you to this nice page:

Next

There is one thing I also need to show, as this is what I explored today.

Sometimes in agreements, there is a requirement to number each paragraph, and they need to inherit the numbering from the Heading level. So there might be a heading 2 that has heading 3 under it, but there is also actual text blocks that has a numbering that shall be in line with the heading 2 and heading 3. The picture below illustrates what I wanted to achieve.

In order to do this, you create styles that inherit from the respective headings. In my case I created two styles called “Stycke 2” and “Stycke 3”. Access the style viewer here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So my text with the styles:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adding a new style is using the lower left icon (the two As mating under the sun). I now create a “Stycke 3” (swedish for Paragraph 3) which is based on Heading 3. This means that text that should be using the same numbering (x.x.x) as Heading 3, should use Stycke 3 and it all worls great.

Paperport and shared Google drive folders

Paperport is a very handy solution for scanning and organising you documents, and get rid of the bunches of paper. You scan the documents and can toss the original paper, and basically the only ones you need to save are the agreementes, where the original ink is relevant.

Paperport provides a cloud based storage, but that is not really up to par with the leading providers. You can easily scan to the folders of the dropbox, google drive or skydrive. There is however an issue; scanning to a shared folder in a Google Drive is a propblem as the filder isn’t visible in the folderlist.

On user had realised that this is due to the system flag of the folder. Presumably only for users who’s explorer settings is to not show system files.

His issue is described here:

http://nuance-community.custhelp.com/posts/abd4bf3876

Testing his command I got errors, so I updated it slightly to work for me:

attrib -S “D:\Users\Doug\Documents\Google Drive\Genealogy” /S

The path will need to be updated of course to what’s applicable to you…

Thanks to  Doug McKay

Paperless home

THINGS easily own you! Having too much of it will inevitably make you loose order and you need mental indexes in order to keep track. One of the things that has the mental footprint is PAPERS!

First;

You can’t get rid of all paper – for legal reasons you must of course still keep agreements with ink on them. Scan but keep these originals. Papers where the texture or physical dimension of the document itself has a special value, then you must keep it. This is a guide ONLY for the information part of documents.

Second;

Prerequisites – I want to be able to fast and efficiently scan documents into a local folder structure. Scanning must be fast and efficient and the documents shall be stored in space efficient PDF and documents shall be OCR:er and the result be in the file. Metadata tagging is also key. I run Windows so that’s also a prerequisite. Also, document management including workflows for document sharing, online access and other enterprise/large group features are well beyond the scope and need.

Hardware

In order to be efficient, get a scanner with a paper feeder. The scanning itself must be FAST and support double sided printing.

I got myself a Canon MX895. Don’t need the fax and ink is criminally expensive for minuscule cartridges, but both the scanner and printer is great stuff. There are of course faster scanners, and the all-in-one units are generally not recommendable (if one part breaks, you lose all the other features as well).

Software

I’m a windows guy so I seek Windows solutions. I envy friends Stefan Görling who in this post (SWE) describes his process using DEVONthink for Mac but that’s not an option for me.

It used to be a special feature to make the documents available on the web, but to be honest Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft Skydrive make that totally redundant. (I tried Bitcasa but that never really worked for me so I am not referencing it). No need to pay extra for this. Scan to the folder of one of these services and you’re good to go.

Evernote – Webservice as key feature. Quite strangely the optional client feature no scanning option, but you can scan to Evernote using scanner programs. Metadata works well. My key complaint is that OCR parsing is done on the server and that you don’t really work with a set of local copies. The free service is restricted to how much you upload but once it’s there you can have unrestricted volumes. Why you still need to pay is that you want the OCR of the documents. (Link)

Adobe Acrobat – State of the art scanning, and state of the art OCR. No document management system, no tagging with metadata and it’s also REALLY expensive. (Link)

Paperport – An industry oldie, now in version 14. Scanning works great, OCR as well and you can manager the folder structure of what you want to  work with. REALLY rudimentary metadata – file name and a window after scanning where you can fill in a few keywords. It’s quite bloated and you need to keep track of the installation as it wants to install a lot of things you might easily live without. (Link)

Sohodox – Shockingly good program. Scanning is easy, and the metadata and tagging system is really second to none. Marking a document as invoice allows you to make key fields including value of the invoice. I was then annoyed that search didn’t really work as expected. This until I realised that scanning is poor and OCR is really disastrously bad. Looking at the text it thinks it has found makes me realise that this part of the program is a joke. (Link)

Scanitto – Very lightweight program that can scan and OCR parse. Not very workflow oriented but only targeted at scanning, OCR and nothing else. Even at this, there is no automated selection of best colour/BW and no automated selection of picture restoration. You have the option of saving as PDF (including OCR but there is not option of “despeckle”), multipage TIFF and Recongize to text (Saves to RTF which was far from what I wanted) Once scanned, the document leaves your view and you need to manage and search using other means. Don’t know why – if also refused to use my feeder unless I selected Duplex. (Link)

FileCenter – In very many ways a really good program! GUI is very windows aligned and the look and feel is hence spot on a very boring windows program with ribbon bar navigation. It does work really well and at a very small foot print, very few useless additional features it is to the point what one would want. Manage (including scanning and file management), Edit and Search are the three categories, and that is EXACTLY what I want to do. Great features on template for naming files, A few things that annoyed me was that even the pro OCR didn’t allow me to select Swedish, which I realise is a KEY restriction when almost all documents are Swedish. Meta data is as poor as in Paperport and despite looking like a slick and fairly cheap program, it’s actually the same price as Paperport which does give you additional features (that you admittingly might not care about). (Link)

eDOC Organizer – The user interface is very “photoshoppish”. Scanning is straight forward (again: not really automatic but that’s available in the TWAIN driver of my printer so I really don’t need the programs logic here). OCR parsing is REALLY slow and cannot do Swedish. The tagging is quite innovative and works well – flexible and still easy to understand, even I think they oversell the value of the coloured square marking category. It does categorization but not metadata to the level of Sohodox with invoices also containing for example the invoiced value. However, it’s WAY ahead of paperport and FileCenter on this. It can import stuff from other folders, including a full folder with all subfolders, so you can easily scan and organize using Paperport and then allow eDOC to chew on it. Key disadvantage is that  it uses it’s own structure, so importing means that it stores the stuff in it’s folder in a flat mode with alien names, so forget a nice sync to the cloud for easy access as you would only see a set of files with excessively long file names. (Link)

Summary

None of these work for my purpose. Sohodox is SO close to being really, really good. If it could use another scanning engine it would be my champ by a mile. eDOC is very nice and sufficiently feature rich. No Swedish OCR and the fact that it stores it’s PDF files in an internal format killing clouding is such a shame. FileCenter is also killed by not having Swedish OCR. So, I simply had to go for Paperport 14 Pro. I still seriously hope Sohodox can get their acts together on the scanning and OCR side – if they do, they have a winner. For now Paperport will have to do, but next I will look for a separate tagging engine. eDOC Organizer could have been it, if had just allowed me to store the documents in the original location with the original names.

Next I guess I have to look at file tagging software. Tabbles looks nice from the video but I don’t understand it while running it. Will be back when I have figures this out. 😉

 

Security using random WiFi …

It’s holiday time and many of us travel. Given the ridiculous cost of data roaming many of us seek to access any random WiFi access point and use it’s capacity.

Please mind that anyone with a minimum set of skills can produce a small access point; PC with WiFi that you access and for example a 3G modem in the other. If this set-up is mobile you can run it on battery for a day. With this set-up you can perform a man-in-the-middle attack to any service you use over the access.

So, you should for sure consider the risks in accessing a WiFi service you don’t know.

So, assuming you still need to access it for cost reasons – exercise “safe access”;

# Best – Use a program to set up a VPN tunnel to a safe point.

This encrypts the transport layer and works for all applications and all aspects of all applications. Please mind – it secures to the transport between you and the point. From the end of the VPN to the receiving server you are still unprotected. Secures you from middle men attacks in the path from you to the end of the VPN, but not from the VPN to the service.

Option 1:

On Android:

http://vpnblog.info/android-openvpn-strongvpn.html

And the computer part:

http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/howto.html

Option 2:

I was advised to use Witopia.

https://www.witopia.net/

Has other advantages – like being able to determine exit points

# Second best – Use HTTPS where possible to your services, to ensure that you have end to end encryption. Only works on a per application:

For GMail;

1) Select the cogwheel
2) Settings
3) General
4) Browser connection: Always use https

For Google Apps you can make iit mandatory for all your users;

1) Go to domain adimistrator interface
2) Domain settings
3) SSL: Enable SSL

Facebook

1) Click the down arrow on the top right corner
2) Account Settings
3) Security
4) Enable “Secure Browsing”

Now you won’t leek these two passwords..

Tech hell

Christmas this year was one big tech breakdown in the Berg home 🙁

Already in December, the antenna signal deteriorated and DVB-T units got all “pixly”. Colleague Niklas (the antenna guy) helped me out by swapping the aerial for a new one I bought, but the measuring  equipment handy was only showing actual signal power and not signal quality so it had to be a best effort. Pros: Reception did improve for a period of time, and I got rid of the old analogue monster antenna and the ugly box that joined the two antennas. However, signal wasn’t significantly better and after a while it again it fell below the acceptable levels. Lowering the aerial on the antenna pole didn’t help.

The USB harddisk to the Wii was unreachable and started making a very frightening click sound. I have given away all physical Wii games but one, so the standard offering of games got *really* limited. LEGO Indiana Jones, which I naturally just have to hack the Wii and install USB disks. The intention was never to actually play it 😉

Good part was I took the HiFi klubben offer for NAD speakers and the AVR-1912 (was very kindly allowed to upgrade the 1612 that was in the package). Installed the speakers (still loose cables but it’s getting there). Mmmm – NICE sound, but was also a first step on the road to hell.

The AVR-1612 channelled the  HDMI in nicely to the HDMI connected TV, but installing the AVR-1912 made the screen blank out at the point the Windows 7 normally welcome you. It worked fine in Safemode and with the ATI drivers removed. Playing with it, made me reboot the machine by pressing and holding the the power button quite a few times, and suddenly in the process, the web access was gone (general IP fine but web browsing was dead) and the MySQL part of MediaPortal was also dead. The sound settings was indicated that no speakers were connected to the HD sound port in the HDMI cable.

So basically no TV in the entire house at this point in time, HTPC (also media repository) was seriously crippled and with drivers installed it couldn’t show any picture. I guess this was rock bottom. (Edit: Little did I know 😉

Took the indoor DVB-T antenna from the bedroom (where we have no central antenna), disconnected the external aerial and replaced it with the indoor one. So, killed the bedroom TV but won the kitchen TV by this move, and have fair signal in the rest of the central antenna system. Kitchen TV is 14″, no timeshift, no web server and no nothing. It’s almost criminally simplified, but working!

Secondly, the upstairs PC connected to the projector had a MediaPortal installation, but for some reason I installed that as a media client only, and not with it’s own TV server, even if the machine has a TV card and access to the central antenna. I am not aware of a way that you can add the TV server without installing the system again, so I uninstalled the MP (small uninstall – keeping settings and data) and reinstalled it with the server enabled. Server was there and configurable in it’s setting application, TV was an option in the media client. Things is, it didn’t work and there was no TV option in the clients configuration. So, I had to really remove the MP *totally* and reinstall it.  Generating new thumbnails for all pictures and updating the databases for music and films takes so long just the machines part, and the manual fixes needed for music and films is massive! As this PC is connected to the central antenna, I now had a second TV operational. This one has timeshift and full media portal. Where this strange real time Tv concept actually works.

Attached the Wii USB disk to the computer. Worked no problems. Attaching it to the Wii again it fired up nicely. I guess it was on sympathy strike with the other hardware. Don’t do that to me again, please!

Installed an antenna splitter from the indoor antenna, pulled a cable to the bedroom and installed a permanent cabled access to that room. The indoor antenna was also placed in a more semi-permanent manner. It can be like that for some time with no problem. TV3 now working

Back to the HTPC. Removing Avast and drivers for the LAN card totally, seems to have cured the lack of web access. Screen still black, and I presented my case in one of the many fora for owners. Explored on and eventually found that there is a total mess in the communication between the DENON unit and the ATI card. Not a very good combination. It’s not really easy as obviously pointing at one being the single source of error, but nVidia cards are said to work which gives you some indication. I was able to “solve it” by pressing windows + p (the projector settings) and blindly making a selection of another screen configuration. Not always but quite often (mind: now “always” and we all understand the WAF of “working sometimes”) this gives the picture back.

I guess I am now landing in a new stable situation. Need to re-install Media Portal on the HTPC (basically from scratch) and the other issues I still have are both related to the HDMI between the DENON unit and the HTPC. I do want screen to start when HTPC is selected  without some Win + P fiddling, and the sound still doesn’t work. It DID work at one occasion (using Realtek drivers and not the ATI ones) and this was when I had the “projector setting” to mirror the screen on the projector (where it identified itself as unit 1 and 2 on the same screen). The error message was gone but I still didn’t get any sound from the HTPC.

So, more work to do and I do need someone to look at the antenna system for me!

Edit: The HTPC refused to boot. The kitchen TV refuse to show some of the channels. Rock bottom my ass! Dante taught me there are different levels of hell and I seemingly wasn’t on the Judas level quite yet. Now I need to buy a new graphics board. FINGERS crossed I don’t also have to buy a new TV card.  Detaching the antenna for the HTPC made a few more Tv channels work on the kitchen TV.

Working:

– Upstairs PC and the projector, including Tv and everything.

– Kitchen TV

– Bedroom TV (a bit pixly but once the roof antenna is back in production, maybe this will go away).

So pending;

– Make HTPC work. Need new GFX board and picking a nVidia one would hopefully also take care of the communication with the AVR-1912.

– Re-cord the distance between antenna and the in-house system (will have to wait until spring, as crawling on the roof these days is likely lethal). The indoor antenna has drawbacks – as soon as a moped runs on the street outside, I get interference. Why mopeds???

Sony Ericsson X10 Mini goes Gingerbread

One common problem in the Android domain is that the system evolves but that the operators and hardware vendors do not follow the path of upgrades, so even using fairly fresh hardware, you are stuck with the version supplied in the purchase. The reason for this guide is that I upgraded the system software in my phone to GingerDX 021 and it refused to boot, why I had to do the stuff all over again and hence could document with previous experience of doing it before.

Please mind that with freedom comes responsibility – if you can’t handle that, buy an iPhone where Apple will ensure that you cannot do anything harmful, or at least stay on standard distributions. The below text is only for those who embrace electronic freedom, and understand that liability shifted to you once you take this step.

Android and upgrades

Two mandatory reads on the subject:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397729,00.asp

http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support

However, we are a lucky bunch as there are MANY people involved in the process of bringing recent edition of the OS to orphaned hardware. Sadly the system itself is fairly locked and you need low level hackers opening it up, why the tools are quite often everything but user friendly. There are guides and forums (XDA Developers being the leading one). They often tell you HOW to do things but rarely why you do each step and often the steps are very general and you need to understand quite a lot in order to succeed in following the guides.

My aim in the below is to give you an X10 Mini guide that is a bit easier. Much of the text is based on the guides from XDA Developers, especially this one.

Key part – lots of what you do can go wrong, and the part which can go really wrong is that updating the phone system software is interrupted. You have then typically “bricked” the phone, rendering it to be a useless piece of weight. Please mind that with the X10 Mini this is not really possible. It’s always possible to get out of the loop which means that you can play along heavily and be fairly risk free.

This video shows in a really good way how you can do the work.

Having said this; I TAKE NO LIABILITY IF THIS GOES WRONG! You mess with your phone on YOUR risk, not mine!

Key presses you must know

Reset the X10 Mini: Press ON/Off and menu (the button on the top, and the “square symbol” button).

Enable flash mode: Turn off the mobile. Press “back” (left arrow) and insert the USB. Please mind that you are NOT requested to turn On the phone again. If this works, the led turns green and shine with a steady green light.

Enable flash mode from hung state: Press and hold the “back” button (arrow pointing left), and then press the reset combination (on/off + menu). Release the reset combination, while still holding the “back” button and insert the USB cable. If this works, the led turns green and shine with a steady green light.

Reboot into recovery: Custom recoveries are evoked by repeatedly pressing “back” during boot.

Software you might want to have

PC Companion or SEUS – Sony Ericsson’s own stuff. You need to have it installed (one of them -either will do) as it contain the proper USB drivers. PC Companion is a bit of bloatware, containing much more than you need. back in the old days you synced the handset to the PC, but today you should do that over the air and the USB connection should only be for fiddling and possibly leeching the pictures and pushing new music to the device. (SEUS is not really published in a visible way, so you need to knowwhere to find it. A suggestion is the site of an XDA user, seus.tk )

SuperOneClick – In order to gain “root” access you need a method. This is the solution for dummies and for the experts who know better than use commands and switches if a “point and click” solution is available.

Distributions and Kernal file – Many people evolved the android system in all sorts of different direction. Some are “original ones” and some are flavours of other editions. Some of them are based on the stock ROM but some require a revised ROM.  There is no way one can say that one is better than the other and it’s a matter of taste.

If you select a distribution that need a different kernel file,you also need these files:

S1Tool – Gives some information on the system.

MSM 7227 – Based on the information from ther S1 Tool, you use this package to adjust the bootloader so that you can flash using the FlasherTool

FlasherTool – This allows you to install ROMs to the phone – either the standard one, or a custom one. The flasher tool include something Gordons Gate drivers, which you also need.

Steps to do

1) Select a distribution.

The distribution I have picked is GingerDX. It’s based on a CyganoMod version of the system, and it’s fast and stable. Pretty much what you want from a system. This part is a total jungle though. Will require a lot of forum reading. This forum is where to go for input and suggestions and it’s well over what one would normally hope to see.

New version of GingerDX (021) requires a modified Kernel, called nAa (NAa stands for Nobody At All, which is a user of the XDA forum). A safe option might be to pick up the

Installing GingerDX itself is not that difficult – the hard part is the Kernel as it requires unlocking the bootloader.

2) Root the phone

The SuperOneClick program above does this. The mobile should have the on, fully booted and you allow remote debugging. A bit of visual guide here.

Run SuperOneClick as administrator on your PC. Press the “Root” button. That’s it. There are similar “one button” applications that work for other phones. Some run on the phone itself and some on the PC. It’s also possible to do it “manually” on the PC using the ADB shell interface, if you insist on doing something the hard way.

3) Mess with the bootloader (only needed if you should update the Kernel)

Admittingly, this is the hairy part.

The S1Tool is run to tell which of the CMD files in the MSM package you shall run.

# Download and install S1, FlashTools, MSM 7227 and Gordons Gate (as you installed the Flash Tools this is in the “drivers” folder of the installation).

3.1.a) Launch the S1 application

3.1.b) Press the “Do job” button (on the right)

3.1.c) Pick up your phone and enter Flash mode (see the “key presses” section above) and insert the USB stick. The program then picks up some relevant data. key part is the SEMC SIMLock certificate. If it’s there you are good to go. Please read the details on SIM lock and stuff here. (please mind – I’m not sure what it all means even if I am well aware what SIM lock is and how it works)

3.1.d) Close the S1 tool

3.2.a) Depack the ;SM 7227 package to a folder of your choice.

3.2.b) If you, as I, had SEMC SimLock certificate, feel free to run the “msm7227_semc.cmd” as administrator (right-click and select, run as administrator). Let it do it’s work and then your done.

3.3.a) Install the Flash tool

3.3.b) Download the kernel you wish to use. In my case the nAa 08 one. Place it in the “firmware” folder of the Flash Tool Installation.

3.3.c) Install and run the Flash tool.

3.3.d) Press the Flash button. The system will ask you to put the phone in flash mode, but you already know how to do that.

In case some part of my text is unclear, please read this and this.

3) Mess with the recovery (only if you didn’t mess with the Bootloader)

As with distributions, there are several to chose from. ClockWorkMod, xRevocery and so on. I picked the CWM for you as this is the easiest installer as there is a phone program to do it.

Use the Android market to download the “ROM Manager”; There are several ones but you should pick the one that looks like a cogwheel with a hat. From it, select to install ClockWorkMod.

Many videos and guides will show it; here.

Optionally pick the xRecovery, which there seem to be even more guides for; here and here for starters.

Third option is this, which is also an application run on the phone.

Please mind that all three options require that you have a rooted phone, as was the result of step 2) above.

4) Place the distribution on the SD card.

You can either copy the distribution to the SD when it’s in the phone or take it out and insert it it an SD reader directly to the PC. Please mind that you are to copy the ZIP and place it on the SD – do NOT unpack it, as the installer will do this. As stated above, I placed the GingerDX distribution on the SD.

5) Reboot the phone into recovery

When you have the recover menu on the screen, select “Install custom ZIP” or something similar.

When done, you are done!

Welcome to the new world of a free PhoneOS that lets you do what you want with it.

New battery for the MIO C520

image

Not that easy, but I now have a new battery in the C520. Opening involved:
* removing five rubber plugs (they sit using tape with glue on both sides on the bottom)
* removing 5 screws (small X ones)
* unsnapping the back (tricky – it’s really so that it sits really hars so that you wonder if the screws are really needed)

It’s now open. Now you need to:

* Remove the silver tape that is on top of the battery.
* Remove the battery – stuck in sticky foam to the board, use a broad knife or some good, flat tool
* Remove the speaker – there is a hook on one of the sides. Focus on the hook to get it off.
* pull out the connector to the battery.

So. Now it’s just to connect the new battery (the connector has visible metal which goes up and not towards the board) and put the stuff back. The speaker is best put back with the hook first and then you pull it so that the pins  pop into the holes on the main board.

DONE!