This post is going to be a rant. So, if you don’t like rants, you’re better off listening to a good song. To sum it up, I was previously using Windows as my primary operating system for work and home. I was doing design and Flash on Leopard but it was not my primary desktop OS. However my recent experiences have forced me to quit windows altogether and shift to Snow Leopard as my primary platform for work and home use.

It was some days ago that I was working on a little script and I had to leave my computer on for about an hour while connected to the Internet. I was using Windows 7 Ultimate with firewall on and ESET’s NOD32 in complete control. When I got back from a friend, to my surprise, Windows was unresponsive. I had no option but to shutdown manually. Upon the next boot, NOD32 started telling me that there were suspicious files in my temp folder and soon after that a virus signature started popping up in every exe file on my computer. It was not limited to the running processes but EVERY executable on my 3 hard disks. NOD32 was working but it was unable to catch up to the virus’ activity. Soon the virus had killed off windows’ services and important executable files. NOD32 was unable to clean the virus and so it deleted every file it scanned the virus with. And so the disaster struck. It was after so many years that I encountered a virus but it totally ruined my workplace.

The question does not lie where I ask that:

- I had a perfectly good Virus System running
- I wasn’t downloading any malware or something that could have executed the virus
- I left my browser open with a perfectly safe site, which probably could have executed an XSS script that led to virus downloading. Although, I had noscript enabled.
- Or that I am a n00b who does not understand how to avoid virus activity.

The question lies where I ask Microsoft that the last time THIS virus attacked me was on Windows 98. The exact same virus that ruined my computer 10 years ago was still able to execute itself on Windows 7 Ultimate. I mean WTF!!! This tells so much about Microsoft. They haven’t done the least bit to change their operating system’s core security. This also tells you that Windows hasn’t changed the slightest bit over 10 years. A recent report suggested that Windows 7 is prone to 80% of the viruses in the wild.

Windows 7 is being admired to have gotten a lot of stuff right but it is experiences like the one above that tell you how a company has only re-branded it’s product through overhauling the UI. The introduction of Microsoft Security Essentials is perhaps the step that Microsoft should have taken years ago. Anyway, this may be good news for the future versions of Windows.

Whatever the case, I have moved my entire workplace and home setup to Snow Leopard and I am liking it. Hey kitty, kitty…woh!! sharp teeth.

So, after months of inactivity, I have an article worth posting. I have been playing video games on my PC lately. I have been a console gamer all my life but since now I have a good enough PC, I decided it was about time I tried playing on the PC. Now, while I was at it. I already stated once that I have all my gaming and computer gear connected together. This time, it was the audio. I have a 5.1 Audio Speaker System. This is where the story starts .

Intel / Realtek Integrated Multichannel Audio How to

Previously, on Windows XP, one could get a multichannel audio from a single Line Out, but that changed when Vista was introduced. If you scroll around the internet and try to find solutions on how to connect multichannel audio speakers with Vista or Windows 7. You’d be amazed that people almost give up on this. I faced the same kind of issues, when I connected my 5.1 audio to my Realtek High Definition Back Panel.

The issue seemed quite strange at first. It seemed that as if the system only output 2.0 channel audio i.e. Stereo. The other speakers remained silent, no matter what I did.

Yes, many people think that it is a problem with either their motherboard, the audio system or the Realtek hardware / software solution. May be some people do have a broken system but I am sure this is not the case here. Here’s where things get interesting. I immediately scrolled through the Intel High Definition Audio manuals and found out that Intel has explained this problem in quite some detail. This entirely depends on your Motherboard’s Audio capabilities.  For starters, take a look at your motherboard’s specs and see how many channels of audio does it support. Mine supports 5.1 audio at it’s best. For this reason, my back panel has three output ports i.e. Line In (Blue), Line out (Green), Mic (Pink).

How to Identify your Desktop Board Audio Codec
The Technical Product Specification (TPS) for each Intel® Desktop Board will indicate whether your board supports AC’97 or HD Audio. To find the TPS for your board:

1. Go to http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/
2. Select your desktop board.
3. Click Product Documentation in the left-hand navigation channel.
4. Select Technical Product Specification.

Now, if you are not using an SPDIF / Optical solution. This is for you. To configure your audio system according to your motherboard’s specifications:

Configuring 2-Channel Audio
The line out connector, located on the back panel, is designed to power either headphones or amplified speakers only. Poor audio quality may occur if passive (non-amplified) speakers are connected to this output.

Configuring 6-Channel Audio
Installing the audio driver from the Intel® Express Installer CD-ROM enables the flexible, analog audio system. The back panel audio connectors support up to six speakers and are retaskable using the audio driver interface.

Jack retasking is a feature that allows an audio jack to support more than one function. For example, the pink audio jack can support microphone input when the system configuration is set to Stereo Mode, and as Center/LFE or Rear Surround (depending on the audio solution used) when set as 6 channel.

Connect speakers as follows:

* If using two speakers, connect the pair to connector (B).
* If using four speakers:
o Connect the front left/right speakers to connector (B).
o Connect the rear left/right speakers to connector (A).
o Using the audio driver interface, retask connector (A) to be Rear Left/Right Out.
* If using six speakers:
o Connect the front left/right speakers to connector (B).
o Connect the rear left/right speakers to connector (A).
o Connect the center/subwoofer speakers to connector (C).
o Using the audio driver interface, retask connector (A) to be Rear Left/Right Out and retask connector (C) to be Center/LFE Out.

Configuring 8-Channel Audio
8-channel audio is available only on certain Intel Desktop Boards.

After installing the audio driver from the Intel Express Installer CD-ROM, multi-channel audio can be enabled:

* Connect speakers to A, B, C, D, or E as shown in the figure below, up to eight speakers.
* Two types of S/PDIF connectors are available: coaxial (G) and optical (F). Select the proper connector according to the style of S/PDIF speakers that will be used.
* The back panel may look like either of the following, depending on board model.

I configured my 5.1 Audio by using the 3 output jacks behind my computer chassis. Although, this also means that your Multichannel Audio System should have 3 (4 or 5) input jacks to accompany that. Most of them do. You’ll have to use 3 separate (4 or 5 depending on your system) 3.5mm jacks  to connect your system with your Realtek Device. Refer to the above diagrams for port configuration.

Fire up the Realtek HD Audio Manager in windows and double click on the jack icons on the right. You’ll notice that each one of them can be used in two different ways. Configure them as you have plugged the jacks (see above). Once you’re done. Check the speakers one by one and you will have sound coming out of all of them. Time to enjoy the Multichannel audio. You don’t need the Speaker Fill option. No more distorted audio. Go to this page and download some audio files. If you still have issues, you can refer to the Intel Audio page.

Further to this problem, I also came across another one. I was using Headphones on my computer before I attached my 5.1 Audio system and never used my Front Panel Audio Jacks before. So, when I moved my headphones to the front panel jacks,  both the Headphones and Mic were not working. This led me to another Internet searching adventure and people were annoyed as hell over this issue.

Front Panel Jacks don’t work / Realtek HD Audio Manager does not detect my Front Panel devices

Firstly, make sure you always have the latest Realtek drivers installed on your system. You can download them for your chipset from the Intel’s download center, or from the Realtek website. I’m going to list this down in steps for troubleshooting:

1. Make sure your Front Panel Audio Jack is connected to the HD Audio Front Panel Header on the motherboard.

2. Determine if your Front Panel Audio is HD or AC97.

How to Identify your Front Panel Audio Solution Codec
To identify your front panel audio solution’s audio codec, refer to the specifications or documentation for your PC chassis or front panel module. Note that AC’97 and HD Audio front panel solutions are different and may not be directly compatible or interchangeable.

You can also physically check the audio cable of the front panel audio solution. If there is a cable connected to Pin 4, you have an HD Audio module; if there is no cable to Pin 4, you have an AC97 module.

3. When you have connected your Front Panel jack to the motherboard and you still don’t get audio or the device detection to work. You certainly do have an AC97 audio jack.

If you have an HD Audio Motherboard Header and your Front Panel is AC97 compatible. You won’t be able to get sound out of your front panel jacks. There are two ways to do this depending on your system.

1. Check your motherboard bios, if you have an option that says Codec Driver is HD or AC 97. Set that to AC97. Usually, you can find that option in the Peripheral Section. When you’ll come back to windows, your Front Panel Jacks should be working.

2. If you don’t have such an option in the bios. Open up Realtek HD Audio Manager in Windows and find a folder shaped icon in the right panel. Click that and you’ll find an option that says “Disable Front Panel Jack Detection”. Enable that option and you’ll have a working Front Panel with both the Headphones and the Mic working. Refer to teh pic below:

Now, some people may get annoyed by the fact that you’ll lose front panel jack detection and HD Audio capabilities for the devices plugged into the Front Panel. So, I searched around and found a solution to that as well. There are two ways to go from here.

1. Replace the Front Panel with an HD Audio Panel. You can search for them on the internet or contact your Chassis manufacturer.

2. Make an HDA Dongle for Front Audio Support. You will need some parts for this and a little bit of electronics knowledge. You can follow this thread for the details.

I hope this should help many people out there trying to figure out how to configure Realtek  to work with their Multichannel Audio Systems and also have working Front Panel Audio Support.

Hi Everyone,

The title says it all. This is for people who use their monitor with the Playstation3 and especially for those, who develop using the PS3. Now, I have a single monitor where I have both my PS3 and my computer attached through a Tuner and a VGA connection respectively. Starting development with the PS3 and not having my LAN and computer around would have created so many problems for me. Furthermore, I already have a jungle of wires behind my PC cabinet and I did not want to add a KVM switch and two more hardware peripherals for the PS3. I needed a software solution to this and Remote Desktop/VNC would not do it for me, since my PS3 is already connected physically to my monitor. This is where this amazing app called “Synergy” comes into play.

What is Synergy?
Synergy is a software KVM switch. If you do not know what a KVM switch is, you can read this article. A typical KVM switch allows you to use a single set of hardware devices to work with two or more machines, which can be on different Operating Systems. You can learn more about Synergy on its homepage here. I don’t want to explain all that here, since they can explain it way better than I can.

Requirements:

You will need to have the following things in order for this setup to work:

- PS3 connected to a network/internet.
- PC connected to the same network or the internet.
- Synergy installer for Windows/OSX/Linux/PS3 YDL 6.

Downloading the installers depends entirely on your selection. I was unable to find a later release for Synergy 1.3.1 for YDL 6. However, I might compile one on my own and upload it here (I am not making any promises ).

From here on, you can follow the official Synergy guide:

Step 1 – Choose a server
The first step is to pick which keyboard and mouse you want to share. The computer with that keyboard and mouse is called the “primary screen” and it runs the synergy server. All of the other computers are “secondary screens” and run the synergy client.

Step 2 – Install the software
Second, you install the software. Choose the appropriate package and install it. For example, on Windows you would run SynergyInstaller. You must install the software on all the computers that will share the mouse and keyboard (clients and server). On OS X you’ll just have a folder with some documentation and two programs. You can put this folder anywhere.

Step 3 – Configure and start the server
Next you configure the server. You’ll tell synergy the name of the primary and secondary screens, which screens are next to which, and choose desired options. On Windows there’s a dialog box for setting the configuration. On other systems you’ll create a simple text file.

Note that when you tell synergy that screen A is to the left of screen B this does not imply that B is to the right of A. You must explicitly indicate both relations. If you don’t do both then when you’re running synergy you’ll find you’re unable to leave one of the screens.

Windows
On Windows run synergy by double clicking on the synergy file. This brings up a dialog. Configure the server:

* Click the Share this computer's keyboard and mouse (server) radio button
* Click the Screens & Links Configure... button
* Click the + button to add the server to the Screens list
o Enter the name of server (the computer's name is the recommended name)
o Optionally enter other names the server is known by
o Click OK
* Use the + button to add your other computers
o Using a computer's name as its screen name is recommended
o Choose desired screen options on the Add Screen dialog
* Use the controls under Links to link screens together
o Click (once) on the server's name in the Screens list
o Choose the screen to the left of the server; use --- if there is no screen
to the left of the server
o Choose the screens to the right, above and below the server
o Repeat the above steps for all the other screens
* Click OK to close the Screens & Links dialog
* Use Options... to set desired options
* If the server's screen name is not the server's computer name:
o Click Advanced...
o Enter the server's screen name next to Screen Name
o Click OK

Now click Test. The server will start and you’ll see a console window with log messages telling you about synergy’s progress. If an error occurs you’ll get one or more dialog boxes telling you what the errors are; read the errors to determine the problem then correct them and try Test again. See Step 5 for typical errors.

Unix or Mac OS X
Create a text file named synergy.conf with the following:

section: screens
screen1:
screen2:
end
section: links
screen1:
right = screen2
screen2:
left = screen1
end

Replace each occurrence of screen1 with the host name of the primary screen computer (as reported by the hostname program) and screen2 with the host name of a secondary screen computer. In the above example, screen2 is to the right of screen1 and screen1 is to the left of screen2. If necessary you should replace right and left with left, right, up, or down. If you have more than two computers you can add those too: add each computer’s host name in the screens section and add the appropriate links. See the configuration guide for more configuration possibilities.

Now start the server. Normally synergy wants to run “in the background.” It detaches from the terminal and doesn’t have a visible window, effectively disappearing from view. Until you’re sure your configuration works, you should start synergy “in the foreground” using the -f command line option.

On unix type the command below in a shell. If synergys is not in your PATH then use the full pathname.

synergys -f --config synergy.conf

On OS X open Terminal in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. Drag the synergys program from the synergy folder onto the Terminal window. The path to the synergys program will appear. Add the following to the same line, type a space at the end of the line but don’t press enter:

-f --config

Now drag the synergy.conf file onto the Terminal window and press enter. Check the reported messages for errors. Use ctrl+c to stop synergy if it didn’t stop automatically, correct any problems, and start it again.

The Client

Ok, I am not going to go over configuring different clients in this post, since we are only concerned with Yellow Dog Linux. However, if you still want to do that, you can read about it on their homepage. This is where the tricky part starts. Configuring the PS3 for Synergy turned out to be way more difficult than I imagined. This was not because of Synergy itself but because the PS3′s network configuration kept breaking all the time. I am going to make a seperate post about that, so let’s move on to configuring it.

First install the Synergy RPM that you downloaded from link in the earlier part of this post. You need to make sure that you are connected to the internet for the RPM to install correctly. Once you install it, you can test if synergy can connect to your server by typing:

synergy -f

For example, I did:

synergy -f 192.168.1.2

AutoStarting Synergy with YellowDog Linux

All of this won’t be of any use until this setup always runs automatically whenever we start YDL on the PS3. So firstly, you need to configure your Server to AutoStart Synergy everytime it boots. To configure that, you can follow their official guide on this page.

Synergy requires an X server. That means a server must be running and synergy must be authorized to connect to that server. It’s best to have the display manager start synergy. You’ll need the necessary (probably root) permission to modify the display manager configuration files. If you don’t have that permission you can start synergy after logging in via the .xsession file.

Typically, you need to edit three script files. The first file will start synergy before a user logs in, the second will kill that copy of synergy, and the third will start it again after the user logs in.

The files we need to edit are:

gdm/Init/Default
gdm/PostLogin/Default
gdm/PreSession/Default
gdm/PostSession/Default

You need to be logged in as root to perform the steps below. Open up a terminal and type:

su -

Enter the root password when it asks you to. Now navigate to the following directory:

cd /etc/gdm

Then Type

gedit Init/Default

you need to write the following lines into the file. You should write them somewhere on the top of this file:

/usr/bin/killall synergyc
sleep 1
/usr/bin/synergyc

Save it and then open the next file using gedit and enter the following lines into it. Note that this file may be called, Default.sample and you will need to rename it to make it work. It might be empty as well.

gedit /PostLogin/Default

and enter the following lines

/usr/bin/killall synergyc
sleep 1

You need to enter the following lines in the next two files at gdm/PreSession/Default and gdm/PostSession/Default.

/usr/bin/killall synergyc
sleep 1
/usr/bin/synergyc

Save all the files and verify the changes. Logout and restart the client and once you get past booting screen, you will notice that you can now switch between the server and client screens. The server should also display that the client is connected now. This setup will work for all users but you always need to make sure that your server is running.

So, there you have it.

Regards,
M.H.A.Q.S.