I finally bought myself and old audio cassette player. The insides look crazy clean and the drive belts seem neither loose nor dried out.

But!

It's only the left "axis" - or whatever it's called - that's spinning and thus "driving/forwarding" the tape. With "left", I mean the one that rolls up the tape as it's being played. Looking inside, the right axis is not even actuated. It's just a "dead"/unmoving part. Is this how they all work?

The link is just an example. I have no knowledge of that particular product.

My laptop screams a littbe bit sometimes when playing heftier video files and I would like to show it some luv.

I have just ordered one of these cool looking cassette players. The specs say, regarding in-ear headphones and type 1 cassettes, that:

So I asked their chatbot why this is, because I got worried, since I naturally intend to listen to music with my PortaPros and my Sennheiser IE900s. This is what it says:

::: spoiler chatbot conversation
Can I not listen to type 1 cassettes with wired headphones on your cassette player?

The Cassette Player does support wired headphones via its 3.5mm jack for Type I cassettes—so yes, you can listen.

In that case, what does it mean that it's "not compatible with in-ear phones"?

Good question. The Cassette Player has a headphone output that delivers 2 × 2 mW of power at 32 ohms. In-ear earbuds typically have higher impedance or different audio characteristics that don't work well with this output level—the sound would be too quiet or not perform properly.

Wired over-ear or on-ear headphones like PortaPros work fine because they're designed for this type of output.

Does this apply to wired in-ears or wireless in-ears or both?

The incompatibility applies to both wired and wireless in-ear earbuds. The issue is the design of in-ears themselves—their impedance and audio characteristics don't match well with the Cassette Player [Keith]'s headphone output, regardless of whether they're wired or wireless.

Over-ear and on-ear headphones work reliably with the player.

But the portapros have 60 ohm impedance.

You're right—PortaPros have 60 ohm impedance, which is higher than the 32 ohms the Cassette Player [Keith] is rated for. However, the player should still work with them since they're over-ear headphones designed for portable devices.

If you want optimal performance, I'd recommend testing them first or contacting [email protected] for specific compatibility details with your PortaPros.

How much power would the cassette player be able to output at 60 ohms?

That's a good technical question, but I don't have the detailed power output specifications for the Cassette Player [Keith] at 60 ohms—only the rating at 32 ohms (2 × 2 mW).

For precise power calculations at different impedance levels, please reach out to [email protected] and they can help you determine if your PortaPros will perform optimally.

Could you make a text or PDF file out of our conversation or send it to [masked] ?

I'm not able to generate files or send emails directly. For requests like this, please contact [email protected] and they'll be happy to help you with a transcript of our conversation.
:::

How come they're "complaining" about having weak output at 30 ohms, but at the same time tell me they'll be able to drive my 60 ohm over-ears?

Along with a second, “shield-apay-cash-wdp-device-prod.pci.prod.apay.apple.com.v.aaplim g.com”. Seems strange and didn’t notice it in my NextDNS logs until recently.

So went into “Wallet & Apple Pay” in Settings and turned off, Live Activities, assuming it’s there’s a possible connection. No new cards in it, same old same old stuff.

Has anyone else experienced this before and can comment? Appreciate any feedback as I’m sick as a dog today.

I never used to have issues with this bar, but when I got my current phone it's using a version of Android that defaults to that newer bar-less gesture based control scheme. I hate that new system so I changed it back to the bar.

But now I have this problem where I frequently get accidental presses on the nav bar while typing. It's a daily occurrence that I will accidentally hit the home button while typing anything, which is annoying as hell. This never used to happen before.

Is it maybe just the particular phone I have, or has anyone else noticed the same issue? It's obnoxious enough that I keep looking into getting a device with physical keyboard.

Follow the link to read the background.

I had recently done an update on my TV, which I am using as a "dumb" monitor, connected to my laptop with an HDMI cable. The TV has three HDMI ports, each with a corresponding entry under the "sources" menu (HDMI1, HDMI2, HDMI3). While troubleshooting the issue, I noticed that - after the above mentioned update - one of the HDMI entries had changed name from "HDMI1" to "COMPUTER". I guess I should've read Panasonic's change logs or whatever, because - just for fun - I tried one of the two remaining ports that are still called "HDMI*" and voilà, the flickering/strobing/any artifacts whatsoever, were gone!

For now, I am just happy that I can watch Angela bang two guys behind their backs, but it does make me wonder... What configuration changes did Panasonic make to the port...

I'm using mpv to play some FHD Bluray Remuxes on a 4K TV with all "smart" enchantments turned off (smoothing and whatever). Any darker colors flicker. Let me know if the uploaded video doesn't clearly show what I mean. Is there a fix for this?

This is a screenshot of settings/security and privacy/more security settings/view security certificates on my Samsung Galaxy S23 running One UI 7.0 on Android 15.

I won't even bother to take screenshots of all the certificates, since it's a list of at least 50 entries, according to my estimation.

1. What are these?
2. Why are there so many?
3. Do they all have to be turned on?
4. Any further reading you can point me to?

Much appreciated!

I'd like to be able to connect a PCI or PCIe to FireWire expansion card to my laptop on the outside in order to be able to connect six pin IEEE 1394a connectors to it. I'm digitizing Mini DV cassettes. Is this even feasible?

Some repos like Cromite, Ceno browser does not show any contributors on their main page despite a huge list of even recent contributors found at the insight>contributors graph.

Whereas, I've seen other repos that proudly display their top contributors (Searxng, IronFox etc). Why is this so? Do the owners toggle off a button that should show off the people contributing to the project

Ceno: https://github.com/ceno-app/ceno-android/graphs/contributors?all=1

Cromite: https://github.com/uazo/cromite/graphs/contributors?all=1

Also, why does old battery gunk have to look like earwax... 😅

I have an old Hitachi VT-MX805EVPS that won't lift the tape all the way up to the far side of the head disc ("read head").

I have linked to a repair manual for the VT-700 series, but they are quite similar in regards to the parts in question. According to the mechanical parts list (4-1) on page 33, it seems to be parts number 15 (tension arm), 23 (roller arm left) and 26 (roller arm right) that are not working. Why is that? I have cleaned them with IPA and regreased them them with Vaseline (petrolatum).

The symptoms are that it doesn't read video or audio and it isn't able to track location on tape.

cross-posted from: https://gregtech.eu/post/36291960

His PC runs Ubuntu 24.04 and the mouse is a Razer Basilisk V3 35K. I tested it on my Ubuntu PC and it had the same problem.

Here's the fastfetch output:

....              marko@markubuntu
              .',:clooo:  .:looooo:.           ----------------
           .;looooooooc  .oooooooooo'          OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat) x86_64
        .;looooool:,''.  :ooooooooooc          Host: A620M GAMING X (-CF)
       ;looool;.         'oooooooooo,          Kernel: Linux 7.0.0-31-generic
      ;clool'             .cooooooc.  ,,       Uptime: 58 mins
         ...                ......  .:oo,      Packages: 2282 (dpkg), 19 (flatpak-system), 29 (flatpak-user), 15 (snap)
  .;clol:,.                        .loooo'     Shell: fish 4.8.1
 :ooooooooo,                        'ooool     Display (Odyssey G40B): 1920x1080 in 27", 240 Hz [External]
'ooooooooooo.                        loooo.    DE: GNOME 46.0
'ooooooooool                         coooo.    WM: Mutter (X11)
 ,loooooooc.                        .loooo.    WM Theme: Yaru-dark
   .,;;;'.                          ;ooooc     Theme: Yaru-dark [GTK2/3/4]
       ...                         ,ooool.     Icons: Yaru [GTK2/3/4]
    .cooooc.              ..',,'.  .cooo.      Font: Sans (11pt) [GTK2/3/4]
      ;ooooo:.           ;oooooooc.  :l.       Cursor: Yaru (24px)
       .coooooc,..      coooooooooo.           Terminal: GNOME Terminal 3.52.0
         .:ooooooolc:. .ooooooooooo'           Terminal Font: Ubuntu Sans Mono (13pt)
           .':loooooo;  ,oooooooooc            CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (12) @ 5.46 GHz
               ..';::c'  .;loooo:'             GPU 1: AMD Radeon RX 6600 [Discrete]
                                               GPU 2: AMD Raphael [Integrated]
                                               Memory: 5.41 GiB / 14.77 GiB (37%)
                                               Swap: 0 B / 4.00 GiB (0%)
                                               Disk (/): 878.47 GiB / 934.80 GiB (94%) - ext4
                                               Local IP (enp8s0): 192.168.64.111/24
                                               Locale: en_US.UTF-8

It has a GIGABYTE A620M GAMING X motherboard.

I have disassembled and dedusted the disk drive and still get this error on an Commodore 64. Is it probable that the floppy diskettes are simply demagnetized by now? I am trying to recover some of dad's old essays and poems.

Edit: the error channel says READ ERROR

Edit2: the read head is not rusted. In fact, it looks like new. 😅 Tried both LOAD"*",8 and LOAD"$",8 on another ten or so disks, with the same file not found error.

I have two routers. One of them encrypts everything with a wireguard interface and routes all traffic through my VPN provider. The other one is "plain", unencrypted, and it is used for services that need a public IP. If all these services need is a public IP address that leads to the router's wan port, I can still encrypt my DNS traffic, I thought, so I set up DNS over https (DoH), using my VPN provider's servers. To do this on OpenWRT, which is my router's operating system, I needed to download any one package that provides this functionality. I couldn't just configure ports, firewall rules, NAT or whatever and be happy... Of the settings that this DoH package came with lets you choose a "bootstrap DNS". It was configured to Google's and Cloudflare's servers by default, but I changed it to Quad9's. Everything works fine. My VPN provider confirms that I am using their DNS servers and that my DNS traffic is encrypted.

What is going on under the hood? What is this "bootstrap DNS"? Why isn't it as easy as exchanging public keys, as with regular traffic that goes through my VPN router's wireguard port?

I'm a fan of symphonic metal, and something about that is telling YouTube Music that I must fucking love repetitive, soulless AI slop featuring guitar sounds.

It's probably just time to set sail, but I do appreciate the convenience of streaming. Seeding a playlist with a single song has let me to a lot of music that would have otherwise flown under my radar, but every fucking time it plays something I haven't heard before nowadays, it's just more AI slop. Thumbs-downing them doesn't seem to do shit.

Youtube Music is the only service I'm aware of that work doesn't block (which... honestly why would they disallow Pandora, but leave Youtube?? I digress...) so that's what I've been using. But I do have my phone, so I could run an alternative off of that.

The obvious answer would be YT with filters, but... I don't actually see a way to set a filter - you just search a song and it does its thing. If I could just block every channel made after... idk, 2022, that would pretty well solve the issue... Is there a way to do that? That'd definitely be the easiest option.

Otherwise, is there better streaming service (which for me means decent selection of metal / actually categorizes its subgenres, and active ban of AI slop)?

The convenience of running this from my workstation just isn't worth the amount of garbage flooding YouTube.

If i would, hypothetically, have a few different drives in a raid5 array in different physical locations, and one was seized, how much data could be reconstructed from that drive?

(I was reading about A/I and their R* system a bit, and this semi-related idea came to mind)

A cloud provider's web GUI eats all my RAM when downloading big files. I would like to download the files using wget or curl instead, but I assume I'm going to need some cookie or token in the argument URL that authenticates the request?

Is there any browser add-on or other means to extract said information so that I can copy paste it into the terminal?

I have just dedusted (compressed air in spray can), relubricated (Vaseline) and cleaned the read head(s?) of (cleaning tape cassette) my VCR and now I would like to start digitizing mom's collection of VHS tape cassettes.

I just learned that the ports of a modern GPU - a 3080 in my case - cannot be "reversed" and used for input. Which leaves me with those USB dongles, right? Or are there PCIe solutions that are more robust? I can only imagine such a little USB device heating up almost instantly...

Any and all advice is welcome. 😊

I know Linux and I have experience with recording audio. I know a little Shotcut and even less OBS.

Is this just a weirdly unsupported piece of hardware, or does it seem partially broken?

Notes

Images are hosted on Catbox.
The drive is connected via USB. ID 152d:2338 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. JM20337 Hi-Speed USB to SATA & PATA Combo Bridge
Information provided is from memory as I wasn't noting down results. It took several days to do the tests, often due to unrelated software issues, and my lack of knowledge regarding the different OSs.

Logs

Below are filtered kernel log messages - some messages were repeated way too much
::: spoiler Linux

[303803.821623] usb 1-4: new high-speed USB device number 62 using xhci_hcd
[303803.953712] usb 1-4: New USB device found, idVendor=152d, idProduct=2338, bcdDevice= 1.00
[303803.953735] usb 1-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=5
[303803.953745] usb 1-4: Product: USB to ATA/ATAPI bridge
[303803.953752] usb 1-4: Manufacturer: JMicron
[303803.953758] usb 1-4: SerialNumber: 622222222222
[303803.956959] usb-storage 1-4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[303803.957727] scsi host0: usb-storage 1-4:1.0
[303804.972734] scsi 0:0:0:0: CD-ROM            ATAPI    CD-R/RW 48X16    9.GH PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[303809.784518] sr 0:0:0:0: [sr0] scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[303818.737158] usb 1-4: reset high-speed USB device number 62 using xhci_hcd
[303826.573935] usb 1-4: reset high-speed USB device number 62 using xhci_hcd
[303838.238333] sr 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[303838.238795] sr 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 5
[303845.622418] usb 1-4: reset high-speed USB device number 62 using xhci_hcd
[303918.801647] usb 1-4: reset high-speed USB device number 62 using xhci_hcd
[303936.512741] usb 1-4: reset high-speed USB device number 62 using xhci_hcd
[303941.673166] usb 1-4: reset high-speed USB device number 62 using xhci_hcd
[303950.281142] sr 0:0:0:0: [sr0] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=1s
[303950.281164] sr 0:0:0:0: [sr0] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
[303950.281176] sr 0:0:0:0: [sr0] tag#0 Add. Sense: Illegal mode for this track
[303950.281186] sr 0:0:0:0: [sr0] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 05 5d ec 00 00 02 00
[303950.281192] blk_print_req_error: 80 callbacks suppressed
[303950.281198] I/O error, dev sr0, sector 1406896 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x80700 phys_seg 1 prio class 2
    REMOVED LINES
[303961.227527] I/O error, dev sr0, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 2 prio class 2
[303961.227544] Buffer I/O error on dev sr0, logical block 0, async page read
[303961.227559] Buffer I/O error on dev sr0, logical block 1, async page read
[303961.408769] Buffer I/O error on dev sr0, logical block 14, async page read
[303961.497219] Buffer I/O error on dev sr0, logical block 15, async page read
[303965.403967] scsi_io_completion_action: 46 callbacks suppressed

:::
::: spoiler GhostBSD

ugen0.2: <JMicron USB to ATA/ATAPI bridge> at usbus0
umass0 on uhub0
umass0: <JMicron USB to ATA/ATAPI bridge, class 0/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus0
umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x4000<NO_SYNCHRONIZE_CACHE>
umass0:2:0: Attached to scbus2
cd1 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus2 target 0 lun 0
cd1: <ATAPI CD-R/RW 48X16 9.GH> Removable CD-ROM SCSI device
cd1: Serial Number 622222222222
cd1: 40.000MB/s transfers
cd1: 0MB (1 2048 byte sectors)
cd1: quirks=0x10<10_BYTE_ONLY>
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): READ(10). CDB: 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI status: Check Condition
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI sense: ILLEGAL REQUEST asc:21,0 (Logical block address out of range)
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Error 22, Unretryable error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): cddone: got error 0x16 back
    REMOVED LINES
pid 3525 (xfburn), jid 0, uid 1001: exited on signal 11 (core dumped)
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): READ CD. CDB: be 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 f8 00 00 
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI status: Check Condition
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI sense: ILLEGAL REQUEST asc:24,0 (Invalid field in CDB)
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Error 22, Unretryable error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): cddone: got error 0x16 back
    REMOVED LINES
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): READ(10). CDB: 28 00 00 02 71 16 00 00 01 00 
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI status: Check Condition
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI sense: ILLEGAL REQUEST asc:64,0 (Illegal mode for this track)
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Error 6, Unretryable error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): cddone: got error 0x6 back
    REMOVED LINES
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): READ(10). CDB: 28 00 00 02 71 16 00 00 01 00 
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: CCB request completed with an error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying command, 3 more tries remain
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): READ(10). CDB: 28 00 00 02 71 16 00 00 01 00 
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI status: Check Condition
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI sense: UNIT ATTENTION asc:29,0 (Power on, reset, or bus device reset occurred)
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying command (per sense data)
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): READ(10). CDB: 28 00 00 02 71 16 00 00 01 00 
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI status: Check Condition
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI sense: UNIT ATTENTION asc:28,0 (Not ready to ready change, medium may have changed)
    REMOVED LINES
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): PAUSE/RESUME. CDB: 4b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI status: Check Condition
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI sense: ABORTED COMMAND asc:b9,0 (Vendor Specific ASC)
(cd1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying command (per sense data)

:::
::: spoiler Haiku OS

KERN: usb_disk: got device name "ATAPI CD-R/RW 48X16 9.GH": No error
KERN: Media changed from /dev/disk/usb/3/0/raw
KERN: DMAResource@0xffffffff95066028: low/high 0/ffffffff, max segment count 16, align 1, boundary 0, max transfer 524288, max segment size 18446744073709551615
KERN: usb_disk: got device name "ATAPI CD-R/RW 48X16 9.GH": No error
KERN: usb_disk: unhandled ioctl 10102
KERN: Last message repeated 3 times.
KERN: usb_disk: sending or receiving of the data failed: No error
KERN: identify(110, 0xffffffff955a3978)
KERN: usb_disk: sending or receiving of the data failed: No error
KERN: usb error control pipe 38: timeout waiting for queued request to complete
Last message repeated 2 times
    REMOVED LINES
KERN: usb_disk: unhandled ioctl 10102
KERN: usb_disk: sending the command block wrapper failed: No error
KERN: usb error control pipe 38: timeout waiting for queued request to complete
Last message repeated 2 times
    REMOVED LINES
KERN: usb_disk: sending the command block wrapper failed: No error
KERN: usb error control pipe 38: timeout waiting for queued request to complete
Last message repeated 2 times

:::

Testing methods

Operating systems were installed and set up in Oracle VirtualBox on Arch Linux host. CD-RW drive was passed to VMs via USB passthrough.

Usability summary

Test results

I'll start with common OSs first.

Linux

Detects the drive when it's empty. Otherwise it just keeps resetting it over and over, as can be seen in logs.
It might eventually load disc info after several minutes, as well as initiate disc blanking over cdrecord, but that will also take several minutes of waiting, if it ever happens.
There's also a small chance of full system freeze-up until the drive is physically disconnected.
This has been tested with other distributions inside a VM, with the same results.

Windows

Mostly used under Windows 2000, but it also worked on Windows 10.
Everything fully works.

GhostBSD (based on FreeBSD)

Analog (left) and digital (right) audio playback work just fine.

Data discs do not load.
Burning has started randomly on one occasion, but eventually failed.

OpenIndiana (fork of OpenSolaris)

Loading data discs works, despite (probably unrelated) error being shown first.

When it comes to audio playback, I don't know what to use. VLC doesn't support audio CDs over there, and sound-juicer appears broken. It is however possible to use analog playback, though CD-Text isn't being displayed like it was on BSD (cdda-player).

Burning discs did not work. Brasero always reports the disc as full, even when blank.

OS/2 Warp 4.52

This one was a bit painful to set up as I had to install and set up (in CONFIG.SYS) USB and USB CD drivers. Former I had to download, latter was already provided in CP2 (but disabled by default).
Audio CDs cause a time-out.

Data discs won't load either.

Haiku OS (Beta)

Disc drive is recognized, as well as formatted size of the disc, but that's it.

Eject/load works.
Other software (SMPlayer and BurnItNow) did not see the drive.

Android (using MLUSB mounter)

It may be based on Linux, but it acts so dumb someone had to make an app that acts as a USB device driver.

It gets recognized just fine.

And it loads data from the disc. That's all this app can do.

Everything this does works here.

ReactOS (open-source clone of Windows) (Alpha)

Data reads quickly and reliably, just as well as in Windows.

When it comes to audio and other software, it either isn't recognized at all, or causes a freeze-up.

Opening audio CD with file explorer only shows 1KB .cda files which are of no use.
Bittersweet news: it behaves exactly the same with a known-good drive. So maybe once those issues are fixed, it will be just as good as in Windows.

Conclusion

I have no idea whether this is a drive issue, or it's just doing something really non-standard.
I have also tried it with a different controller, making a chain of IDE -> SATA -> USB, but this was equally broken.

Edit 1: :::spoiler -> ::: spoiler to fix formatting outside of Lemmy-UI