moto4lin on Mac OS X

Thanks to quite a bit of help from the lead developer for moto4lin (who hails from Ukraine), I was able to get moto4lin compiling and working on Mac OS X, and I've solved 2 of my top issues with my new phone due to this through SEEM editing.

It turned out that there were quite a few obstacles to getting this working. I had made an attempt at this a while back with no luck. I assumed when I couldn't compile p2kmoto because libusb was missing that it was futile because libusb was a Linux specific library. Later, I saw a post on motomodders.net from a moto4lin developer (Dion) which claimed that moto4lin could be ported and asked for a Mac user to help test it. I later was able to chat with the developer through Jabber over the course of the past couple weeks. First we were able to get libusb compiled and installed since this already had Mac OS X support. Next, we started by trying to compile the p2kmoto library and associated p2ktest command line tool. This is the lowest level device interaction code. At first I couldn't compile at all due to the autoconfigure stuff having some problems. Finally I hand made a makefile to compile the two files of interest. Then there was a lot of back and forth testing p2kmoto. At first, it was able to switch the phone into p2k mode, but not do anything more after that. The phone would freeze until I either removed the battery or unplugged and replugged the USB cable several times. A bit later we realized that the p2kmoto code was assuming the host system was little endian, which was causing problems since the phone is natively big endian and it was swapping the bytes unnecessarily. I then fixed part of the problem and was able to get a slightly different error and not lock up the phone. A couple days later Dion provided me with a fixed p2kmoto.c and I was able to run through the full test successfully yesterday evening. Then we started working on getting moto4lin compiled and working. Once I had Qt installed, this was actually not too bad. Dion ported the changes over from p2kmoto to moto4lin and sent me updated files for that, and I made a couple small tweaks to get the build environment working. So currently I have a working moto4lin.app which I was able to do seem edits and browse the phone filesystem with. So far I've fixed the dashes not showing up in phone numbers, strange SMS messages for voicemail notification, and turned off the startup animation. I also had to turn off the voicemail dial for the 1 key in order to keep my automatic password entry. I just added a phone book entry with the voicemail number and password and assigned that to speed dial 1. Now, if only I could figure out some way to deactivate the side buttons when the flip is closed. Update: I was able to deactivate the "smart" button on the side by editing the key mapping SEEM. No more unintentional ring mode changes! As a bonus I didn't have to disable the volume up and down buttons so everything else works as before.

New TiVo arrived!

The new TiVo arrived a bit more quickly than I expected. Things are working well so far and I think I have most of the season passes set up again. (I ended up hooking up my 15 inch Apple display to the old TiVo and doing a sort of poor man's picture in picture to make sure I had things correct on the new TiVo.)

A few observations for now... more later once I've had it running for a while:

- TiVo's activation web page went down right around the time I started trying to get activated… I'm not sure if it took or not, and of course TiVo's support number closes at 8 pm and it was about 8:05 when I realized this. Oh well. Luckily there's a grace period for a new box before it gets grouchy about that.
- You can't watch a DVD before guided setup completes as far as I can tell (though I didn't actually try)
- There's no subtitle button… it's buried inside the Settings. Bummer. Instead I get the Angle button on the remote… does anyone actually use that feature?
- I can't figure out how to show time remaining on the built in display when playing a DVD.
- Picture quality seems fine to me so far. Using the component inputs probably gives it somewhat of an advantage over my old TiVo which uses S-Video.
- Playing DVDs with the TiVo UI is pretty cool (time bar at the bottom, instant replay, slow motion, etc.)

New TiVo ordered

I finally ordered my new TiVo/DVD Recorder combo... a Humax DRT800. The guarantees on delivery time are not that impressive (usually within 4-6 weeks but could be as much as 8-10 weeks). I'm hoping this is a case of underpromise and overdeliver, since I already goofed and just barely missed the number of points needed to get the DVR on last month's credit card bill and had to wait an additional month due to that.

So, it looks like I'll be taping some stuff to start the season due to conflicts.

blogging from the front lines

I don't even know where to begin on what is happening in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It has to be the worst natural disaster the US has seen in my lifetime by far. Probably ever. The area has apparently become essentially a war zone where it's every man for himself. Not to mention the lack of power or communications, and much of the city is 10 feet or more underwater. Thousands are crowded into the Superdome and the Convention Center waiting to be bussed out. The Astrodome is already full and turned some busses away.

There's a group in an office building blogging "from the front lines" so to speak that has a generator and internet connectivity. The photos are hard to believe. I hope there's still a chance that we can turn this around before it gets any worse.