YADL, a dummy load for VHF/HF

I recently change my antenna cable and noticed I didn’t have a dummy load (“carico fittizio”) rated for VHF/UHF, so instead of buying or borrowing I decided to make one. I mostly do QRP: power rating isn’t really an issue, but I didn’t want to risk the RFP. I just bought a 50 ohm RFP … Leggi tutto

Encryption on Asus Fonepad FE170CG, or how to transform your phablet in something slow as a dog

I recently fixed a problem on an Asus Fonepad FE170CG. This tablet (or technically, more a phablet, since you can also make phone calls with it) is sold in Italy at the bargain price of 99€ and is quite popular in circles where people need a cheap appliance that can stand as access point, and make the occasional phone call.

Asus FE170CG fonepad
Asus  fonepad (courtesy asus.com)

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Today, we made history·

12.11.2014: boldly bringing @philae2014 where no man-made object has been before. Thank you @ESA_Rosetta for letting philae piggybacking and for waking up on time. Thank you @philae2014 for getting us a comet, no less! We are so proud! Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t that romantic? People often say Engineering is aseptic. I beg to dissent. This is … Leggi tutto

Usb Device Driver not found

Now and then I used to come in touch with a PC (a laptop) of a friend of mine. This PC used to display a rather strange behavior.  This PC, running Windows 7,  would not correctly mount any usb hard disk or pendrive, except for a few new USB 3.0 drives. This Asus laptop had a really convoluted installation history, as even specifying the precise model it is not very easy to uniquely determine the specific driver to install for a given device. It turns out that every re-installation is made is a sort of trial-and-error procedure and the final outcome is, as one can see, not very nice.

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