Collecting surveys from 50 teams

For my master thesis I had to gather enough data to do scientific research. Upfront I was told that collecting surveys from 50 teams on your own was “impossible”. I proved the opposite, in 3,5 months, which also involved a summer holiday so less responents were active. I am very proud of the result. Here are some tips if you would like to achieve the same result. Continue reading

3D printed buttons for my Behringer SCMS remover / sample-rate converter

54d71d4e7d7d0c97c4e6ec11717e2abcI wanted to remove SCMS copy protection from my home made CD-recordings to my Minidisc deck or vice versa. Unfortunately, When playing my Minidisc my CD-recorder refused to record. Since it’s music that I recorded from the radio or from tv it irritated me. So I decided to buy a cheap SCMS remover. Building was not an option since the printed manuals in Elektor were complicated. Buying a DIY Velleman kit was not an option (out of production) and an M-Audio CO3 was way too expensive to import from the US. It has several options like SCMS passthrough and some other options like original. Continue reading

OMSI with PS3 Dualshock / Sixaxis

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OMSI is a bus simulator for Windows, I picked it up recently and it’s very fun. Unfortunately I have a steering wheel (Logitech Formula GP without Force) but am not allways able to mount that. Luckily I have a PS3 controller (Dualshock Sixaxis). So I decided to look if it was possible to map it. Continue reading

DVD Hard disc recorder recovery on PC

So you recorded tv shows on the (Philips) DVD hard disk recorder. But how to get those to a pc without burning to disk?

What we do know is that:

  • The operating system on the hard drive seems to be fixed, that’s why putting in a new drive into the recorder fails, it cannot recognize the formatted drive.
  • Jumper needs to be set to Master, standard on Cable select
  • OS seems to be VXworks, filesystem vxext, other indication is OS20?
  • Several attempts have been done to extract raw data via Hex editing, via Hex Workshop.
  • Search for an offset, copy that to pc and rename to .ts or .mpeg.
  • No files are encrypted, just raw mpeg files are on the drive, because the recorder needs to access the files fast.
  • Another option is to copy over the whole drive to a larger drive with Hex Workshop and then extract this .bin file with ISO buster. But this is very time consuming and does not deliver the MPEG files we are after.
  • Merging of  the files is needed since they are fragmented.
  • Some dvd recorders store in .VRO format or .TS. Philips recorders leave .mpeg files.
  • I have done some investigation with Nucleus JFS Kernel but this has failed due to hard drive loss of power.
  • Ubuntu live image did not recognize the drive, shows as empty and unformatted.

Let me know if you have further information regarding dvd hard disc recorder recovery.

Philips DVDR Service mode via RS232

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For some time, I own a Philips DVDR3590H dvd recorder, which has a 250GB harddrive and is capable of recording both on DVD’s and on the harddrive. To see what was inside, I opened it some years ago. Maybe to spot if the harddrive was upgradeable, the dvd drive was exchangeable or which components are inside. Continue reading