Seagate’s customer support

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As preamble it should be noted that Seagate had the last time huge problem with some of its hard drive firmwares (read more here or here).

Hopefully I have no Seagate hard drive in my MacPro, but I had a doubt wether the drive in my LaCie d2 Quadra is a Seagate or not. The only possibility I had was to open the case and see the label on the hard drive itself. I let you guess what I see on the label. Bingo you named it Seagate.

And this is were it become interesting. As I was aware of the problem I directly went to the Seagate support web site to check if my hard drive (with the product number and the serial number) was concerned. Both the serial and product number check told me that my hard drive was concerned. I then follow the pretty complex guide in order to upgrade the fimrware. After some amount of time the updater says that my firmware cannot be updated.

Of course I take contact with the customer support in order to determine if my drive was affected or not. Here’s their first answer after 4 days:

Dear Jerome Paschoud

Thank you for sending your Seagate E-mail inquiry.

I apologize for the late reply. I am going to refer your e-mail to one of our Team Leads for information on whether this specific drive can be updated or not. They should be in contact with you shortly. Thank you for your patience.

Regards

The short period was of course not so short and after 20 more days I send once againg an email asking for an answer to my problem. Here’s the answer:

Hello Jerome,

You will need to contact the original place of purchase for any support on your specific drive. If further assistance is needed please let us know.

Regards

Conclusion:

  1. It tooks nearly a month to Seagate support to tell me that they can do nothing for me.
  2. After nearly a month I still don’t know if my drive is affected or not (that is, I still don’t know if I can use/trust it)
  3. The promise that they will answer my question is not fulfilled
  4. I’ll never ever buy anymore a Seagate product.

Dump maps from your Garmin to your Mac

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I recently bought for my parents a new automotive GPS: the Garmin nüvi 765T. It comes with pre-loaded maps (in my case western europe) and I naively thought that the same maps will be also available on your computer. Unfortunately this is not the case, that is, the maps you get on your GPS aren’t available on your computer. You neither have the choice to dump them from your device nor to download them freely from Garmin.

In two words:”It sucks”

But, as you know, the answer it’s not possible, forseen is not enought to prevent me from trying, and, this time, with success (yeah I’m not that masochist to report my failure).

The only drawback is that currently the generated map is not “searchable”, that is, you cannot enter an address and have it displayed on your map.

Prerequisite

Windows side: dump (adapted from sorcieremonique’s forum)

  1. Create a temporary directory (for example C:/temp/garmin)
  2. Run the Free cGPSmapper installer (FreeSetup.exe)
  3. Move the cgpsmapper.exe and sendg.dll to the temporary directory
  4. Extract the content of wgmaptool040.zip to the temporary directory
  5. Extract the content of MapSetToolKit_v1.50.zip to the temporary directory
  6. Connect your Garmin to your computer with the USB cable
  7. Copy the gmapprom.img file from you GPS (located in the Garmin directory) to your temporary directory
  8. Wait as this might take a long time, in my case the file is 1,52 Gb in size
  9. Start GMapTool.exe:
    • Files tab: choose the gmapprom.img file you copied in step 7
    • Options tab: set correctly the path to cgpsmapper.exe
    • Split tab: choose an ouput directory (in my case C:/temp/CNEURONT2009), select create “files for MapSource”, check “Compile preview map”” and click the “Split all” button
  10. Wait as this might take a long time. You end up with a directory containt a lot of .img file
  11. Start MapSetToolKit.exe
    • Check the “install in Mapsource” checkbox
    • Click the install button. A new window appears
    • Set the path to the TDB file (in my case C:\temp\CNEURONT2009\mapset00.tdb)
    • Set the path to the Overview map (in my case C:\temp\CNEURONT2009\mapset00.img)
    • Set the path to the TYP files (in my case C:\temp\CNEURONT2009\I000017A.typ)
    • Fill the Registry name field with a sensible name
    • Click the install button

Windows side: convert

  1. Install Garmin MapSource software (as the only download provided is only valid for update you have to trick the installer as follow)
    • Install WinRAR
    • Unrar the content of MapSource_6141.exe
    • Run the MAIN.msi from the extract directory
    • Start the Setup.exe and install the software normally
  2. Start MapSource
  3. In Menu “Utilities” open “Manage Map Product”
  4. In the newly opened window go to tab “Unlock Regions” and click “Add”
  5. In the Garmin website, navigate to “myGarmin” and enter you login and password
  6. Navigate to the “myMaps”, “Manage Maps” and select you device in the drop down list if necessary
  7. In the section “Maps installed on this device” you should find your “Unlock Code”. Jot it down
  8. Back to MapSource copy the unlock code in the first field and click ok
  9. Start MapConverter, click “Next” till you get to the point where you can chose the map you want to convert. Select the one you want to convert and click “Next”. Choose a destination and click “Next”. If you don’t have space problem choose “No” for the compression and click “Next”. Wait for the conversion to finish.
  10. Copy the .gmapi file to your Macintosh

Macintosh side: install

  1. Double click the .gmapi file that you copied from Windows, this opens the Garmin MapManager
  2. Click the “Install” button and when finished “Quit”
  3. Start Garmin RoadTrip, in the upper right corner of the window you shoud now be able to select the newly imported map.

Radar en direct au dessus de Zürich

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Ma mère m’a fait découvrir une petite perle du web. Il s’agit, ni plus ni moins, que d’un système de suivi en temps réel des avions en vol au dessus de Zürich. Il y a quelques limitations cependant:

  • Il semble que le temps réel soit parfois un peu exagéré (une observation rapide, qui nécessitera d’être confirmée, m’a permis de me rendre compte que, en levant les yeux au ciel, certains appareils que je voyait ne se trouvait pas au bon endroit sur la carte).
  • La position du récepteur ADS-B ne permet pas de “voir” les appareils en dessous de 600m environs.
  • Certaines informations au sujet des appareils en vol semblent parfois fantaisistes (en tout cas pour l’aéroport de départ et la destination)

Ubuntu 8.10 on a PowerMac G4 450 mhz

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After buying a new MacPro and giving the old PowerMac G5 to my mother, I had a spare machine with no clearly defined role. I choose to give a try to Ubuntu on this PowerMac G4 450 Mhz.

This machine is now an 9 years old, but I never had any problem with it except that I had to change the power supply.

My previous experience of installing Ubuntu on an old Mac was performed on an PowerMac 7500 and was far from successful. This time I had no problem at all to install it.

Step-by-step guide

  1. Download the latest Ubuntu release for PowerPC (currently 8.10 Intrepid Ibex), be carefull to choose the alternate install CD (the other download is server version without a GUI)
  2. Burn the CD
  3. Start the Mac with the option(alt) key pressed down and insert the CD in the CD-ROM drive
  4. Choose to boot on the CD (the icon with the CD and a small pinguin on the bottom left)
  5. Follow the on screen indications
  6. I had a problem during the installation when the installer tries to detect my CD-ROM drive. In order to circumvent the problem I had to issue the following command in the second terminal (you access it with option+F1 key combination): modprobe ide-scsi You should ear the CD spinning in the drive and by restarting this step of the install this should go through.
  7. Take a break, the installation now goes till this end without a problem but last in my case 1 hour.

That’s it. As you see there’s no major challenge in this operation.