Category: Hardware

Posts related to computer hardware

Gamer played on an integrated GPU for 4 years

Lukas Rox Games, Hardware , , , , , , ,
Gamer played on an integrated GPU for 4 years

Some Reddit user has just recently realized he’s been gaming on an integrated GPU instead of his nVidia GTX 1050 Ti.

Integrated GPUs, while not nearly as robust as dedicated cards, are getting increasingly more powerful. Alternative_Essay880 only realized he’s been using iGPU because he read about a similar issue on Reddit. So just in case he has checked behind his PC, and voila! He found out that his HDMI cable has been plugged into motherboard instead of his nVidia GPU.

How come he did not realized he’s been playing on iGPU all along? Well, most likely due to his budget setup:

  • AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
  • Integrated GPU Radeon RX Vega 11 Graphics
  • GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
  • 16 GB of RAM

While GTX 1050 Ti is way faster than RX Vega 11, the gamer did not know what exactly to expect from his nVidia card, so he’s been blaming poor performance on his budget GPU. He even added more RAM and replaced his HDD with a SSD.

The unlucky gamer played many games like Call of Duty: Warzone, GTA V, DOTA 2 or Civilization 6. And to be really honest, the performance was not so bad for an iGPU. On low and medium settings he often got up to 100 FPS. After connecting his Display connector to the proper card, his PC has gained a second life. Free upgrade? 😉

Exploration finally comes to EVE Echoes

Lukas Rox EVE Echoes, Games, Mobile , ,
Exploration finally comes to EVE Echoes

In EVE Online, the original PC version of the game scanning uses Scanning Probes: special modules and ammo, which, when deployed into space can pinpoint the location of interesting deadspace pockets, player structures and ships. The process takes a few iterations, where the first scan shows the rough location, and further scans increase the accuracy to a point where you can warp to it. This mechanic opened up a whole new profession of Exploration.

When EVE Echoes was finally deployed on August 13th, 2020, it came out without scanning. The in-game explanation was that some kind of supernova event caused the whole universe to mirror itself, and EVE Echoes happens in this “echo” universe, where certain quantum phenomena caused probe scanners to stop working. Empire Factions and Sisters of EVE have been researching it, and finally, almost ten months later a discovery was made: special neutrinos caused by the supernova explosion can be used to scan things in space.

Two new types of modules starting at Tier 7 were added to the game:

  • Wide Resonance Scanner
  • Narrow Resonance Scanner

These two modules are counterparts of Core Probe Launcher, which launches Core Scanner Probe and Expanded Probe Launcher which can launch Combat Scanner Probes, respectively. Instead of probes, these new modules require fuel, which is mined on planets using Planetery Interaction. When activated, the module will sweep the system and if any signatures are found, a special minigame will appear, where the player is presented with the detected signals and interfering stellar body signals in that system. The players task is to filter out all interference from the detected signal, and if the player manged to do that, the signature becomes warpable.

PVE

Resonance Scanner used for PVE can datect many different signals, including Deadspace anomalies and Nihilus Space gateways. You will need to have the Wide Resonance Scanner fitted, and by activating it in space, you will receive list of signals from the current starsystem. Once the scan is complete, player can tap the information check the scan report and begin the analysis minigame.

PVP

The Resonance Scanner can be used for PVP, just like Combat Probes were used in EVE Online. You have to fit the Narrow Resonance Scanner and activate it in space to receive different signals that show the ships in the current solarsystem. Then you can tap the information and begin the analysis minigame.

Fuel

Resonance Scanners need 200GJ worth of fuel to be present in the ships cargohold for each scan. Different fuels can be used, but each fuel type has different amount of energy in it, so different amount of fuel will be used each time you scan.

Fuel can be mined on planets like any other planetary material, and has to be one of the following:

  • Heavy Water (2GJ, 100 needed)
  • Suspended Plasma (5GJ, 20 needed)
  • Liquid Ozone (13GJ, 16 needed)
  • Ionic Solutions (37GJ, 6 needed)
  • Oxygen Isotopes (83GJ, 3 needed)
  • Plasmoids (196GJ, 2 needed)

EVE Project Galaxy – ARkit 2 enabled game for iOS

Lukas Rox EVE Echoes, EVE Online, Games, Mobile, Tablets , , , , , , ,
EVE Project Galaxy – ARkit 2 enabled game for iOS

This morning I was reading information about iOS 12 on the official polish Apple site.

To my surprise, I’ve noticed some EVE Online assets on an iPad in one of the photos. When I clicked on the photo, my jaw dropped so hard on the floor, I’m still looking for it.

Here’s what I saw:

When I bought my first iPad in 2011, one of my dreams was to play EVE Online or at least a mobile game set in New Eden. Fast forward 7 years, I bought an Intel-based Windows 10 tablet, which can just play EVE Online (or any other PC game). But for Project Galaxy, I guess I should’ve chosen a new iPad Pro instead.

In June, at Apple’s WWDC18 event, CCP Games and NetEase announced their coooperation in making a mobile game codenamed EVE: Project Galaxy. The game is scheduled to be released in 2019. It is said to be released for all major mobile platforms (so we can speculate iOS will not be the only one). Contrary to Project Aurora, which I have covered in this post about EVE: War of Ascension, Project Galaxy will be a scaled down version of EVE Online, with all core gameplay experiences like combat, mining, industrial manufacturing, trade and exploration. The game is also said to use the ARkit2.0 library, revealed by Apple at WWDC2018, which brings several new features to AR-enabled phones and tablets, such as persistent and multiuser virtual space which can now be shared across time and fixed to real-world locations, 3D object recognition, face tracking or scene reflection (ability to reflect real environment by virtual objects).

More information is in the official press release on ccpgames.com.

Ready to blow up some spaceships in your living room?
 

EVE Hype is real.

Apple spilled the beans! @CCPGames is making an iOS game for AR-kit called PROJECT GALAXY! I’ve noticed it on the polish IOS 12 description page: https://t.co/ehpCqTu5Zn I look and see EVE graphics on iPad and I’m like WTF?! #tweetfleet #eveonline #AR #iOS12 pic.twitter.com/qe6kYTz1z0— Lukas Rox (@rox_lukas) October 3, 2018

Mobile apps for EVE Online on Windows Phone

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games, Mobile , , , , , , , , ,

companion-apps-all

» For iOS and Android apps please view this post «

About two years ago I’ve written a post about iOS and Android apps for EVE Online, but I didn’t have any Windows Phone device at the time, so I had to skip this fledgling platform. Said post has become very popular and is one of my top post to the date. Few months ago I’ve become owner of Nokia Lumia running Windows Phone 8.1, so I am now able to test EVE apps on Windows Phone. Enjoy!

Windows Phone 8 apps

EVE Mail

EVE Mail is in-game mail client. Entering API Key is straightforward – simply press the plus sign on the first page. Once you’ve done that, your characters will appear on the front page. Each toon has their own set of mailboxes including “Inbox” (all mail), “Personal” (character mail), “Corporation” (corp mail) and “Alliance” (as name says). You also see your “Mail lists” and “Sent” which holds all messages you’ve sent. XML EVE API does not let messages to be sent from device, so this app is of course read-only.

Unfortunately the app does not have a Live Tile, which would utilize one of the most powerful features of Windows Phone. There is also no notifications when new mail arrives – you have to open the app to manually refresh the mails.

All in all, the app is still useful, because it gets the job done.

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Eve Mercenaries

This is an ultra simple reference app. Looking for a Mercenary? Download this app and you’ll know who to talk to. Information is divided by space type (high sec, low sec, null and wh space).

While the app does contain some potentially useful information, it is very poorly designed. Readibility and formatting is well below acceptable level. There is not even an “About” screen, so I had to go back to Windows Store to find out who to blame. Sorry Team R Helix, I am no Windows Phone dev, but I can make a better looking app in under an hour.

eve mercenaries

Eve Mining Monitor

Now something well designed for a change (and quite useful, too). This is another reference app, this time for miners. It does exactly the same thing as LMeve Ore Chart: shows the ISK value per cubic meter of every ore and every ice in game. However, you have to make sure to update the prices before using the app, or the Ore chart will be inaccurate. Go to Settings and choose either Region or Trade Hub prices and then hit refresh. Good job, Vagus Malakhov!

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Eve Price

Another reference app, this time for market traders (but let’s face it, everyone needs a Jita price check now and then). There is two lookup modes:

  • Quick – simply enter item name and system – app will try to guess what you mean and will provide a quick  drop down list with most relevant choices
  • Search – enter item name, choose region (and optionally system)

What I find useful about this app is that you can save your favourite searches on the “Favorites” page – so there is no need to enter item and system names every time.

All price data comes from eve-central.com.

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EVEision

First character tracker for Windows Phone in this test. It is very simple, but gets the job done.

  • “Details” page shows characater name and portrait, amount of ISK, character attributes and clone data. Note: no numer formatting on the ISK field. Can’t see if I have 3 billion ISK or three hundred million.
  • “Now Training” page shows information and progress bar for the skill currently in training. You can add a reminder when the skill is trained.
  • “Queue” page shows the current skill queue. Note: on the small screen of my Lumia, the font used for the skill list seems a little too big.
  • “Skills” page shows all the skills currently trained by the character.
  • “Certificates” page currently shows nothing (bug?)

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EveLet

Another character progress tracker. This one allows one more thing, compared to EVEision: it shows market transactions. Unfortunately (again) has problems with number formatting. While ISK amounts look fine, training times are shown in a weird format: D.H:mm:ss

It does however support Start Tiles (not Live Tiles though, but still, it’s better than no tiles support whatsoever). You can pin any of your characters to the start menu. Tapping the tile brings up EveLet showing this specific character. Neat!

  • Summary – shows corp, ship, ISK and SP amounts, Skill Queue and Market Transaction summary
  • Queue – shows current skill queue
  • Transactions – shows the list of last market transactions
  • Orders – shows the list of current market orders

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EVEMON 7

Yup, it’s the same EVEMON you know from the “big” Windows and it’s been developed by the same team of people.

Unfortunately… it does not work 🙁 After entring API key it complains about the format of the Characters.xml.aspx endpoint, so it probably requires some compatibility work. I will review it again when (and if) it is properly updated.

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EVE Profiler

One more character tracker. And I must say I’m impressed, because it is very well designed. It looks both like a native Windows Phone app (puts emphasis on fonts, font sizes and minimalistic design), and an EVE Online themed app. Menu slides in from the left and looks similar to NEOCOM strip in game. Very good design, Mr Jeremy Shore!

Regarding features it is rather limited when compared to the other character trackers. It offers the following:

Character Summary page: corporation, when joined, security status, active ship

Eve Mail page – a very neat mail reader

Skills page – I was unable to load all the skills Lukas has 🙁

Unfortunately it is less stable than the other apps and crashed to start menu a few times. Maybe it is just my budget Lumia. I hope Jeremy updates his app soon, because it looks really great.

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EveWP

Probably the best character tracker for Windows Phone so far, it is both stable, good looking and has quite some features. Don’t let that home brew icon fool you. After entering the API key, main menu is shown and it consist of:

  • pilot list
  • notifications
  • eve-news (several sources news reader, including eve news 24, tmc and official eve online feeds)

After choosing on of the characters, several pages worth of information are shown:

  • sheet – shows security status, currently piloted ship and location, ISK balance, SP amount, Clone grade, date of character creation and attributes
  • queue – shows skill queue
  • skills – displays currently trained skills. Note: it’s the only app that has skills grouped like in game
  • notifications – like name says

And it supports Live Tiles on the start menu! I really recommend this app. Good job, 3rd Rock Studios!

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Mili: Damage

Another ultra simple reference app. Remember when everyone had damage dealt/weakness for all factions in their bio? Well, this is it.

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Ship Browser

This app is a ship database. It takes a while to load, but is packed with information, and can even display some of the ships in 3D. It looks very much like a show info window and contains the same st of information (ship stats, description, ship image). If you can’t live without spinning ships on the go, this app is for you.

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iPad games to play when PC is away

Lukas Rox Games, Mobile, Tablets , , , , ,

There are times when it’s not possible to access the gaming PC, be it a hardware failure, summer vacation or a trip to family. In my case, the last two weeks was house repairs, which means the PC was hidden deep under furniture from the other rooms.

How to play EVE Online in such a case? Well, if you have a laptop with a separate video card, then you’re lucky. But what if you’re only left with an iPad?

Well, you won’t be able to play EVE on it yet, but there surely are some other great AAA titles available.

First game I’ve played when my PC was unavailable was…

World of Tanks: Blitz

That’s right, Wargaming made an excellent port of their flag game, World of Tanks for Apple iOS. It plays great and while it’s easy to learn, it is very hard to master. It’s worth mentioning, that the game is not an exact 1-to-1 port from PC. Game rules and the content are a little different.

First, there is only a Random Battle game mode, where during a seven minute match, two 7-player teams try to blow the other team up, or conquer “the base”, whichever comes first.

Visuals are a little different, too. WoT: Blitz looks much like older PC version of WoT, but considering this game is  running on iPhone or iPad, visuals are simply excellent.

Unfortunately for PC WoT players, all the progress that you’ve made on PC will not transfer to your tablet, mainly because there are only three Tech Trees: German, Soviet and US. The amount of available tanks is smaller, too.

World of Tanks: Blitz is free to play, just like it’s PC counterpart, so in order to start playing, you don’t have to pay. If you are willing to support Wargaming devs for their hard work, you can choose between buying premium tanks (which are usually faster, but weaker than their free counterparts), adding premium time (+50% to exp and rewards), or converting experience points earned by premium tanks to so called “free experience” that can be used to unlock more “free” tanks on the Tech Tree. If you don’t want to pay, that’s ok, you don’t have to.

To sum up, you get a great quick fix PVP tank game, that looks much like it’s PC counterpart, that you can play when your gaming rig is inaccessible.

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What was the other game? You’ve guessed it right, it’s…

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Hearthstone is a digital Collectible Card Game by Blizzard, set in the Warcraft universe. This game is a complete port of the PC version. The cards you bought or unlocked on your PC will wait for you on your tablet. The same applies to progress and stats. When playing the game online, you play against both tablet and PC players.

Visuals are amazing and besides some textures being in a slightly lower resolution, the game looks exactly identical to the PC original.

The game has several playing modes, but all of them, even single player, require a network connection. You can test your deck and level the basic cards by playing against AI, you can play against other players in Casual mode, or in Ranked mode, where each win gives you a “star” (and a set of stars make a rank), and each loss above rank 20 takes a star from you. The last mode is “The Arena” which is nothing else, but a draft tournament. You choose your cards from a random pool and compete against other players.

Hearthstone is free to play, and you can buy additional cards either completely free by using in-game “gold” or with real money. The same applies to Arena entrance fee (150 gold or 1,79 EUR).

Is Hearthstone fun? Is it challenging? 20 Million players think it is.

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Wrapping up

As you can see, tablet games are already catching up to what’s available on the PC. I hope a mobile client for EVE becomes available at some point (even with reduced set of things that a pilot can do).

Could games like Valkyrie be released on mobile?

Lukas Rox DUST 514, EVE Online, EVE Valkyrie, Games, Mobile, Tablets , , , , ,

New Eden is already expanding beyond the boundaries of EVE Online, and it’s a fact. Blog Banter #50 touched an important topic of the future of EVE, and expansion to mobile devices is only natural thing to happen. It can already be happening, but we just don’t know it yet…

EVE Valkyrie already has quite a history, even though the game itself haven’t been released yet. It all started as a technological demo for Oculus Rift virtual reality headset presented on Fanfest 2013. A small crew of CCP employees have used existing EVE Online assets, imported them to Unity3D engine and created “EVE VR”. Players who’ve tried it on Fanfest were so amazed, that the going question was “When can we have this?”

It only took a few months for CCP to come up with a business case for that demo, and on August the 21st CCP has confirmed that EVE VR will be released as a full game in 2014. The name “EVE VR” was also extended into “EVE Valkyrie”. The remaining question, deliberately not answered by the devs is what platforms will this game run on.

Some players have already tried answering that question. It’s not a secret that CCP cooperates heavily with Sony, so the first rumour was that Valkyrie might come to PS4 – you can read the entire Abaddon21’s post here.

Recently something else came to my attention. Some time ago toucharcade.com has published this story about CCP planning a mobile release. We’ve already heard of DUST514 companion app called “Neocom” scheduled for release on Playstation Vita, but from the story above we can guess that there is possibly more mobile apps to come from CCP.

Could Valkyrie possibly be one of those apps?

To answer this question, first we need to answer another one: if it’s technically feasible at all.

There’s still very little we know about EVE Valkyrie, but let’s have a look at what we know already:

  • it will be a FPS dogfighter game,
  • it will work on Oculus Rift virtual reality headset,
  • it was created using Unity 3D engine
    • which has a version for 10 platforms, including PC, Mac, Linux, Windows Phone, iOS and Android

But can mobile hardware handle it?

Okay, so Unity 3D is ready and available. But can mobile devices handle a game with visuals like that?

  • First, there is Galaxy on Fire II, which is nothing but an FPS dogfighting shooter for iOS and Android:

20131018-144135.jpg 20131018-144224.jpg Galaxy on Fire 2 HD jump animation Fishlabs-Galaxy-on-Fire-2-Supernova-Stealth-Fighter

  • The same studio (Fishlabs) is now developing another game known as “Galaxy on Fire: Alliances” which is about planet colonization. Gameplay loosely reminds of Planetary Interaction in EVE Online:

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Judging by the above screens, I’m pretty certain that Planetary Interaction could easily be made into a separate tablet game in the world of EVE.

  • Then we have a completely different game, but one that shows what kind of visuals tablets and mobile phones can already provide: Infinity Blade Trilogy

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Ok, what about the software?

We’ve mentioned Unity3D, which is a multiplatform 3D game engine that can run on 10 different platforms. The very basic version, which includes mobile device support,  has the advantage of being free. There is already a bunch of games for Android and iOS made with Unity, for example Shadowgun or AngryBots. It’s also worth mentioning that there are some well-known PC games running on Unity, I’m sure you’ve heard of Hearthstone and  Kerbal Space Program? Games built with multi-platform engines can be easily ported to any supported platform without additional development (well, the resources sometimes have to be converted/resized, but that’s all). It’s worth mentioning that Unreal engine used by DUST514 also works on mobile devices (Infinity Blade I, II & III all run on this engine).

And then we have CREST, which is a new read-write API for EVE Online; one that is already used (in-house) by DUST-EVE integration. We could also mention some tech demos, for example the Alliance Tournament CREST endpoint, that provided live telemetry of Alliance Tournament ships. The amount of possibilities these kind of tools give is unprecedented. Not only we will have many new 3rd party apps for EVE and DUST, but it also opens a lot of opportunities for CCP themselves.

As you can see, both the technology and assets to make EVE-themed games for different platforms is already available.

Whether CCP acts based on the above facts or not, remains to be seen. Maybe Valkyrie will become a mobile game after all?

UPDATE: According to this interview with CCP Unifex on Crossing Zebras, EVE Valkyrie will not be coming to mobile devices:
Transcript begins at 7:55

Xander Phoena: So you are now currently leading the fledging Mobile division within CCP and the Valkyrie project. Which is taking most of your time at the moment? As one prioritized?

CCP_Unifex: Yeah absolutely, I mean, right now I’ve had the opportunity to work with Valkyrie so I’m spending the vast majority of my time doing that. And I had some good time, pretty much straight off the Fanfest where I was able to look at CCP strategy around mobile and got some good work done around that, and then Valkyrie kicked off […] But the intention is like I said I’m gonna be handing over, so that I can actually go focus on Mobile.

As you can see, Valkyrie and Mobile are two different projects within CCP. That doesn’t change most of the post below, because it’s about technical possibilities, rather than only about Valkyrie.

PS. Thanks @valkrr for the heads up!

Four new EVE Online apps for iOS

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games, Mobile , , , ,

Last summer I have written a big review of all EVE Online apps available for iOS and Android. The post has been very popular (it’s in the top 3 every month), so I have decided to update it with new apps, which have arrived in App Store since the original post.

While I try to avoid the word “useless”, the usefullness of some of these apps below is well… low. This doesn’t mean however, that they can’t potentially be useful for some players.

EPIc-for-EVEEPIc for EVE

Developer: Adolfo Adorni Price: 1,79 EUR

Description

EPIc for EVE Online is your Planetary Interaction Companion.
With EPIc you can browse Eve Planets and materials you can extract from or build on planets, set up your current warehouse of materials and set up the production goal and study you colony plant settings.

Using EPIc you can share your warehouse whit Eve mates and complete every build target easily!

Review

This is the only app for Planetary Interaction on iOS, it’s also the most expensive one! Since CCP offers no API for PI, the app does not need a key.

Everything is set up in the app itself.

  • First, you need to input your PI related skills on the “Settings” tab – Interplanetary Consolidation and command Center Upgrades.
  • Secondly, switch to the “Planets” tab and set up your colonies. To do this, choose a planet type from the list, press the right arrow sign.
  • Set up colony name and add structures. You will have to enter details such as link lengths as well.

Based on what you have set up, app will determine what you’re producing on the “Recap” screen. It will also let you to set up exportable and importable materials (if you have to move them between planets). IMHO the background on the Recap screen should be less transparent, because the bitmap with the Drakes makes it a bit difficult to read. Otherwise the UI is very clear and intuitive.

Last but not least, you can create a group with other players. Such group will be able to plan goals and import/export commodities between their planets.

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evemineEVEMine

Developer: Robert Bojor Price: FREE

Description

EVEMine will help EVE Online players, miners especially, to optimize their mining time and in the same time increase the ISK per hour ratio.

The Ore Mining tab will serve for when you’re strip mining those pesky belts. Just input your Mining yeld, Cycle time, Lasers used, Asteroid type and quantity and hit Run Calculation.

The Ice Mining tab works a bit different. Input your Cargo space, Lasers used and Cycle time and it will notify you when your cargo is full. This way you can do your AFK jobs and not switch to the game constantly.

Review

Another really simple app, but can potentially be useful. If you are an Ice Miner and you are not afraid of gankers, this is the perfect timer app for Ice Mining. Simply warp to a belt, start mining and minimize EVE. The app will then sound an alarm when the cargo hold is full, so you know when to alt-tab back to EVE.

Unfortunately the app does not seem to be up-to-date with Mining Barge changes in Inferno 1.2.

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eveccEVE Carebear Central

Developer: bbb Price: 0,89 EUR

Description

* Fetching current Jita/Dodixie/Amarr/Oursulaert/Rens mineral/ice prices from server. – It is (buy+sell)/2 atm. Also you can see detailed buy/sell prices in Detail window via detail button.

* Calculating Ore/Ice values at Ore/Ice tab. Listing their refined minerals, also their ISK/volume values so you can see which ore to mine is best at current market prices.

* Character Tab: You can add your characters -click info button at bottom right for info- to see all their minerals worth with current selected data pull with their location. Also main character list shows current wallet + all mineral worth.

Review

The app is quite useful for Tech I manufacturers, because it allows a quick peek at the ice/mineral prices in all major trade hubs (using eve-central as its price source). Unfortunately entering API KEY is a bit complicated compared to other EVE Online apps. First, you need to enter your character name, so the app does a reverse characterID lookup (what for?), then you can copy and paste your API key from EVE Online website. Once you’ve done that, the app will pull the assets API feed and calculate the value of all minerals in posession of your character. It will also display the current amount of ISK in your wallet. The biggest disadvantage however is the fact that the app is a paid one (0,89 EUR or $0,99)

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iskiesISKies

Developer: Simeon Mitev Price: FREE

Description

This is the right tool for everyone who’s playing EVE ONLINE and need to convert ETC60 into ISK or convert ISK into playing time.

Iskies will keep you informed about the actual average sell price and average buy price for a single ETC60 of Eve Timecode Bazaar, right on your iPhone.

If you want to convert ISK from within the game just setup your desired SELL price and Iskies will let you know when the right moment has come.

Using EPIc you can share your warehouse whit Eve mates and complete every build target easily!

Review

A very simple and straight-forward app. You can see the graph of the average price of 60-Day ETC on Timecode Bazaar (on EVE Online Forums). When you slide the first graph with sell prices, a second one with buy prices will appear. Again, EVE API isn’t used here at all.

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Hard drive failure. Bonus: how to repair a bricked Seagate drive

Lukas Rox Hardware, non-eve , , , ,
Seagate ST3500320AS

What the… ?

Last sunday I got hit by an unexpected hard drive failure (are hard drive failures ever expected?). Good thing is I had most of the data backed up. The worst part is, it was the system drive, so the PC was effectively shut down.

The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, also known as ST3500320AS. I have been using the PC normally the day before, I have even managed to take some screenshots of the new V3 Capital Ship shaders on EVE test server. The disk was working as it has been for the past 4 years: smooth and silent. Unfortunately, the next day my gaming rig greeted me with

“NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR

Not good. I have rebooted this time closely watching the BIOS messages:

SATA Port P0: Port reset error!

Okay, so the BIOS can’t access the disk. It must be the cabling! I have opened the case and carefully pushed all the plugs on all hard disks and dvd-rom drive.

No go. Still the same error.

Okay, let’s switch the cables. I have plugged the affected disk to a different port on the motherboard. Error message changed a little bit:

SATA Port P3: Port reset error!

Right, the disk has failed. Damn! Let’s see what uncle Google has to say about this. I entered the disk model number… and… surprise! It’s a known firmware bug.

What happened?

The disk I have is running firmware version SD15. As it turns out, Seagate had a “black series” of 7200.11 Barracudas, which had a firmware bug. The bug usually surfaced much earlier for other owners of the disk (one month up to a few months max). Mine worked for four years, but it eventually got hit by the bug as well.

It is worth noting that these Seagate drives store most of their internal calibration and configuration data on the platters, rather than in NVRAM, so replacing the PCB (which was my immediate idea) wouldn’t work. It seems that the bug is somehow related to this service data: when the drive is powered, it conducts some tests and then attempts to read the configuration information. And it hangs. Hence the bug is also known as “stuck in BSY” or simply BUSY bug.

But can it be fixed?

ST3500320AS connected to a diagnostic cableThe answer is yes, it can be fixed. You will need a special serial console cable (Nokia CA-42 cable can be adapted for this purpose), which will allow running diagnostic commands on the drive itself. An external USB-to-SATA interface with own power supply will be handy as well. You also need a Torx T-6 size screwdriver, because you will need to separate the PCB from the drive for a while.

The detailed instruction is here: Fixing a Seagate 7200.11 drive.

As expected, the drive hangs with an error message shortly after it spins up. Of course the console is inaccesible.

LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051

Untitled-1

but after running all the commands in the solution I linked above, all is fine:

Untitled-2 Untitled-3 Untitled-4 Untitled-5

 

The disk has been put back into the PC and is working just like before, with all the data intact.

Do you still trust Seagate?

Seagate ST3290A, still in working order

Yes I still do. I have many reasons to do that. First of all, I had many hard drives of different vendors, and they all break down roughly the same. Each of those vendors had some “black series” of drives which broke down more often than others. I also do realize that every hard drive will give up eventually. That’s why you can expect hard drives in server disk arrays to fail. That’s why they are so easy to replace. That’s what RAID disk arrays are for. Hard disks are a sort of long life consumables.

But the most important reason is a nearly 20 year old hard drive from my first PC. Guess what? It is still in working order. Although the capacity is orders of magnitude less than the current hard drives, and it is extremely slow and rather noisy, it still works. I need no further proofs that Seagate makes decent hard drives 😉

Why it’s wise to heed warnings in user manuals

Lukas Rox Hardware, non-eve, System Administration , ,

I’ve been reading through a manual for an IBM DS 3400 Disk Array, and found a pronounced warning:

never_look_into_fiber

Many people don’t read manuals at all (claiming it’s a waste of time). Even those who do, often don’t treat warnings seriously. The one above is however quite serious. During my SAN training I was told to never look into an operating fiber link. Why? It’s simple. A long-wave fiber interface (which means it’s both for long distance and uses long wavelength) emits an invisible, but nevertheless powerful laser beam. Why it’s invisible? Because the wavelength is in deep infrared 1310-1550nm. Cheap cameras, which don’t have an IR filter (for example mobile phone cameras) can easily detect such IR radiation. This turns mobile phones into cheap, portable devices to check if there is signal on the fiber:

IMG_0782 IMG_0047

Apple’s new iPads very likely to support LTE in Poland

Lukas Rox Hardware, Mobile, Tablets , , , , , , ,

Apple’s press conference on 23rd of October not only unveiled highly-anticipated iPad mini, but also brought a new-new iPad, 13-inch Retina Mac Book Pro, and a slightly tuned Mac Mini.

While for Apple fans this is a great news in itself, for people genuinely interested in mobile technology, this might be interesting as well. A closer look at the new iPad 4th gen and iPad mini specs unveils an LTE module, which is compatible with European LTE bands. The new A6X CPU is just a performance tuning really, as A5X had a hard time powering the huge Retina display.

Two models, namely A1460 (iPad with Retina display, 4th gen) and iPad mini A1455 support LTE bands 700 MHz, 850MHz, 1800 MHz, 1900 MHz and 2100 MHz. All LTE networks in Poland currently use the 1800 MHz band, so the 4th gen iPad as well as iPad mini should work without problems. The only issue, one might encounter, is the nano-SIM standard. Such SIM cards are not widespread yet and migh not be readily available.

It is worth mentioning, that both new iPads can use high speed WiFi using either 2.4 or 5 GHz bands (a/b/g/n), as well as 40MHz channel bonding mode in 802.11n, which can nearly double the throughput.

This is not all. Both models mentioned in the previous paragraph also support CDMA networks (EV-DO) such as American Verizon, or polish Orange Freedom Pro. Unfortunately the latter uses a very specific 450 MHz band, which is not widely used worldwide, and new iPads unfortunately don’t support it. It might however become supported in future, which means iPad with cellular module might in future become The internet tablet, able to use nearly any band and almost any wireless technology. It would give Apple an unprecedented technological edge.