One reason I got the Pre was the Classic app which runs PalmOS apps in an emulator. I can use my old apps until webOS equivalents are released. I can even browse the old PIM state from my Treo. Unfortunately, the app catalog is quite limited since the webOS SDK has not been released. It sounds like there is enough interest that once it is released that plenty of developers will release apps.

There are a few hardware annoyances. The microUSB port on the side is covered by an annoying, useless, fragile door. The top already rotates slightly side-to-side. The button on the front really should be a trackball.

Then yesterday, Apple released a firmware update that added SATA 3 Gbps support from the crippled SATA 1.5 Gbps it shipped with. After updating, my new Mac has been randomly freezing when reading from the hard drive. My guess is the problem is an incompatibility with the SATA 3 Gbps between the drive and controller. Some stories mentioned that the SATA 3 Gbps support was originally disabled because of intermittent data errors.

I posted in the Apple forums and it sounds like quite a few people who have upgraded the hard drive are having this problem. Unfortunately, there is no way to revert the firmware update. It might be possible to use the WD Data Lifeguard tools to disable SATA 3 Gbps support on the drive. Unfortunately, the tools only work on Windows or DOS CD or floppy. The other option is to switch back to the original drive.

After two weeks of using it, I really like it. It does require picking up clutter and staging the room. It will eat cables or small items if they aren’t removed. There are a couple of spots like under the futon where it gets stuck. It gets confused by my complicated living room so I divide it half and do each part separately. I have been doing a schedule of one room per day. It doesn’t get everywhere and everything each time but it does a good job of keeping things clean.

I bought a new motherboard, the Intel D945GCLF2 board. It has the dual-core Atom 330 processor and Gigabit Ethernet but is still as cheap as original Little Falls Atom board. I got it installed in the case and it booted. The Realtek RTL8111/8168B Ethernet chip wouldn’t work with Linux. I had to get the new r8168 driver. It is still flaky and will only do 100Mb/s.

When I put in the SATA card, it wouldn’t start. Then I noticed that the PCI card was backwards. The card was keyed for both 5V and 3.3V slots and would fit backwards in the 5V slot. Which is easy to do when the bracket is removed from the card. I am pretty sure that this destroyed the old motherboard and probably the card since it did not work when put in the right way. I am going to have to get a new SATA card.

1. Partition the new drive

   fdisk /dev/sdb

2. Create the RAID 1 volume

   mdadm –create /dev/md0 –level=1 –raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sdb1

3. Create the Physical Volume

   pvcreate /dev/md0

4. Add PV to Volume Group

   vgextend vg0 /dev/md0

5. Move all the extents to new volume (takes a long time)

   pvmove /dev/sda1 /dev/md0

6. Remove old disk from volume group

   vgreduce vg0 /dev/sda1

7. Add the old disk to RAID volume (takes a long time)

   mdadm /dev/md0 –add /dev/sda1

I also got two lenses in addition to the included 18-55mm IS kit lens. I got the Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS telephoto zoom that matches the kit lens. I also got the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 which was supposed to be cheap, fast prime.

I got some pictures with it on my recent trip that I wouldn’t have been able to get with my old camera. The quick response allowed taking some series of photos of moving subjects. I got some great photos with the telephoto. The image stabilization was very handy when zoomed all the way out. I got a couple of pictures with the prime lens in low light that probably wouldn’t have turned out otherwise. I took a few workable pictures inside the aquarium without a flash. The flash fill improved a couple of pictures of people taken in sunlight.

The only case mini-ITX case with space for four hard drives I found was the Chenbro ES34069. It was a little expensive but turned out to be nicely designed and well made. The hard drives go in caddies which plug into a SATA backplane. It also has space for a 2.5″ hard drive, thin CD drive, and memory card reader. I decided to get a CompactFlash card in an IDE adapter for the system drive. I skipped the CD drive and reader.

For the motherboard, I wanted to balance having 4 SATA ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and fanless processor. The VIA EPIA SN10000EG would have worked well with 4 SATA ports and fanless processor but was too expensive. I chose to get the Jetway J7F4K1G2E which has a fanless VIA C7 processor, Gigabit Ethernet, and only 2 SATA ports. When I made the decision, the Intel Atom motherboard, the D945GCLF, had just been released. Unfortunately, it did not have Gigabit and the chipset uses more power than the processor. There are now more Atom motherboards with Gigabit and even 4 SATA ports that would work better.

The first problem with the install was forgetting the adapter cable from 40-pin IDE on motherboard to 44-pin notebook IDE connector on the drive. The second problem was the lack of mounting holes in the right place for the non-standard position of the 2.5″ drive. I was able to wedge it in place. The CompactFlash card was nice because I could put in the memory card reader on my desktop to write the root filesystem. When I do decide to go to 4 drives, I will need get a special riser card to use a PCI SATA adapter. That will be a tight fit in an already tight case. The case has a place for everything put it requires putting together in the correct order to get it all to fit.

They also gave me a loaner in the middle of last week. I was getting tired of walking to the grocery store. And taking the bus and train to work. It was an Audi A4 Avant S-line, a much nicer car than my A3. I like my A3 more. It handles better and accelerates faster and is nice enough for me.

I had noticed that the clutch was feeling different. In fact, I forgot to ask them about it when I took it in for regular maintenance the week before it failed. I am little worried that it failed after only 34,000 miles. Hopefully, it won’t be in the shop any time soon. This was the third, and longest, time in a month. A month ago, I had the lower front bumper cover replaced after I scraped it on a crub and the side ripped out.

First, Scratchbox needs the compat VDSO mode enabled. This is done by echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/vdso_enabled. Also, Qemu requires mmap_min_addr set to 4096. These can be set permanently by adding the following lines to /etc/sysctl.conf.

# scratchbox support
vm.vdso_enabled = 0
vm.mmap_min_addr = 4096

On my desktop, which is x86_64, compat VDSO can only be set with the vdso32=0 kernel command-line option. Also, the scratchbox installer script checks for i386 architecture. It needs to faked out like this: setarch i386 ./maemo-scratchbox-install_4.1.sh.