Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Just got a quartet of 12 V 7 A·h lead batteries, prompted by a big Belkin UPS that instantly shut down during a power blink. It needs only two batteries, but the shipping was the same for two or four and I’m sure the spares will come in handy.
A stiff 2 A discharge test shows that SLA batteries really don’t like high currents, which is exactly what they must provide in a UPS:
Rhino SLA – 2013-01
The capacity is barely 4 A·h at 2 A, not to mention that I’m using a conservative 11.4 V cutoff.
The two batteries with the highest capacity also were the closest matches, so they’re now in the UPS.
As nearly as I can tell, Epson designed a number of features into the R380 specifically to thwart CISS installation, including the awkward bridge across the middle of the printer that interferes with the flat tube feeding ink to the flying cartridges. I managed to route the previous CISS tubing around the bridge, but this time I figured enough was enough.
So I tucked a shop rag inside the printer, put a vacuum cleaner nozzle near the operation, and applied a fine-tooth pull saw to the bridge:
Epson R380 – bridge removed
That certainly simplified the rest of the installation…
Mary gave a gardening presentation at the local library, popping a 4 GB USB memory stick with the presentation into a library computer connected to the display projector. Back home, she deleted the presentations and was about to add more files, when she noticed something interesting:
drwx------ 4 ed ed 4096 Dec 31 1969 ./
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 4096 Jan 31 19:21 ../
-r--r--r-- 1 ed ed 59288 Mar 21 2009 autorun.inf
drwx------ 3 ed ed 4096 Jan 30 19:31 RECYCLER/
drwx------ 4 ed ed 4096 Jan 31 19:10 .Trash-1001/
Ubuntu 12.10 automagically mounts FAT filesystems with the current user as owner and group. The .Trash-1001 directory is the Linux trash heap, but where did all that other stuff come from? The autorun.inf definitely looks Window-y, doesn’t it?
Perforce, the library runs Windows, but that shouldn’t add files to a USB memory stick that just was plugged in and used for a read-only presentation, should it?
Huh. You know where this is going…
Let’s hand autorun.inf to VirusTotal for a second opinion. The first three results from their long list confirm my suspicion:
Antivirus
Result
Update
Agnitum
INF.Conficker.F
20130131
AhnLab-V3
Win32/Conficker.worm
20130131
AntiVir
Worm/Kido.IH.40
20130131
The executable file containing the actual payload is, of course, buried in a subdirectory that might look more innocent on a Windows box: /RECYCLER/S-5-3-42-2819952290-8240758988-879315005-3665/
It sports a randomized name to evade a really stupid malware detector: jwgkvsq.vmx
Here’s what VirusTotal reports from some heavy hitters in the AV field:
Kaspersky
Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.ih
20130131
Kingsoft
Worm.Kido.ih.(kcloud)
20130131
Malwarebytes
Worm.Conficker
20130131
McAfee
W32/Conficker.worm
20130201
McAfee-GW-Edition
W32/Conficker.worm
20130131
Microsoft
Worm:Win32/Conficker.B
20130131
The Wikipedia article gives the details. I suppose that PC got it from somebody else’s USB stick, but the library really should be running some defensive software; Conficker dates back to 2008, so it’s not new news these days.
That kind of Windows Genuine Advantage makes up for all the hassles of running Linux, right there. Mary reported the problem to the library; we’ll never know the rest of the story.
Parallel port breakout boards of this ilk run about $14, complete with cable, on eBay:
5 axis parallel port breakout board
The PCB has no part number and the inferred URL isn’t productive. The “driver CD” accompanying it has doc for every possible board the vendor might sell and, absent a part number, the file names aren’t helpful. An exhaustive search suggests it corresponds to the HY-JK02-M 5-axis interface board manual.doc file.
Despite any implication to the contrary, the board does not have optoisolators between the parallel port pins and the outside world. The stepper driver bricks should, but the input signals from limit switches and suchlike connect directly to the guts of your PC.
This overview (from the manual) shows the physical pin layout (clicky for more dots) and reveals the hidden silkscreen legend:
HY-JK02-M Breakout Board – overview
It looks like the board I got added a spindle relay driver transistor, plus a few resistors over by the manual control connector on the right.
Notice that the fourth terminal on each axis is GND, not the positive supply required for the optoisolators on the 2M415-oid driver bricks, which means you can’t just run a section of ribbon cable from the breakout board to the brick. You’ll need a separate +5 V (or whatever) power supply wire for each brick, with a common return to the system ground for this board. Those terminals are firmly bonded to the top and bottom ground planes on the board, so there’s no practical way to re-route them.
The small switch in the upper left, just to the right of the parallel port connector, selects +5 V power from the USB port (which has no data lines) or the power connector in the lower left. The LED near the switch won’t light up until you have both the parallel port cable and the USB cable plugged in.
The doc includes a timing diagram with no numeric values. I established that it can’t keep up with a 500 kHz pulse train and seems content at 100 kHz, but that’s conjecture. Setting the timing to match whatever the stepper driver bricks prefer will probably work. The diagram suggests the setup and hold times for direction changes are whatever you use for the minimum time between step pulses.
This shows the functional labels:
HY-JK02-M Breakout Board – function labels
The parallel port connector output pins, sorted by function:
Pin
9
1
2
14
16
3
7
8
6
5
4
17
Function
Spindle
motor
Enabled
X step
X dir
Y step
Y dir
Z step
Z dir
A step
A dir
B step
B dir
The parallel port connector input functions, sorted by pin:
X -Limit
Y- Limit
Z- Limit
A- Limit
Emerg Stop
10
11
12
13
15
The table uses Chinese for Pin 15: 急停.
It’s not clear whether the pins on the manual control connector are inputs or outputs, nor what the three separate Enabled lines do:
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
P7
P8
P9
P10
P11
P12
P13
P14
P15
B step
B dir
A dir
Z step
Y step
X step
X dir
Enabled
5V/VDD
5V/GND
A step
Z dir
Y dir
Enabled
Enabled
The three white connectors in the middle drive an LED readout board that’s probably most useful as a DRO for CNC-converted manual mills using the pendant for positioning.
The small white connectors duplicate the functions of the green screw terminals. They’re probably useful in a small machine that I’m not building.
This isn’t the board I intend to use in the final setup, because I need far more I/O pins, but it’ll serve for the short term.
It makes measuring PC power consumption much easier!
I picked up some cheap AC plugs and sockets, cut a short IEC extender cable in half, and wired ’em up. If the IEC extender link breaks again, search amazon.com for something like “computer power cord extension” and rummage around.
US NEMA 5 plug / socket hint: the blade marked W is neutral. More expensive hardware will have dark brass = hot, light brass = neutral, but don’t bet your life on it.
This may not be a LibreOffice problem, but that’s where it shows up: the font selection dialog won’t display fonts with nonstandard Style names. There is, of course, no documentation anywhere (that I can find, anyway) on what Style names are permitted, so you discover this only when a font style that’s properly installed and accessible by other programs (like, say, Inkscape or Scribus) doesn’t render properly and doesn’t appear in the list.
In Xubuntu 12.10, LibreOffice 3.6.2.2 can’t handle the American Typewriter font style called Medium, which is what I’ve been using for the return address field on my (very few, these days) mail envelopes. Over the years, various versions of OpenOffice and LibreOffice have alternately accepted and rejected the Medium style, so this isn’t exactly a regression. It is, however, Yet Another Annoyance.
The solution, hinted at in that thread, involves using FontForge to rename the offending Style to, say, Regular, then saving the font. It’s actually the Weight property, hidden in Element → Font Info → PS Names tab. In this case, I changed the word “Medium” in the Fontname, Name for Humans, and Weight fields to “Regular”, which also updates the values in the TTF Names tab.
I save the modified font files in ~/.local/share/fonts using TrueType format, just to be sure I don’t confuse them with the original Postscript version in /usr/share/fonts/custom, delete the original, and then run fc-cache -v -f to update the caches. This surely isn’t the cleanest way to make it happen and almost certainly isn’t allowed by the Adobe EULA I agreed to, back when I actually bought the fonts, but so it goes.
I bought an off-lease Optiplex 780 in the Small Form Factor (SFF) version to replace my ancient Pentium D; it’s also available in Small Desktop Tower (SDT) and Ultra-SFF variations. The SFF box has two PCI slots and one PCI-E slot, which let me install a half-height dual-output video card, with results described yesterday. I innocently believed the PCI-E slot would have enough clearance for the video card, what with these things being standardized and all.
Turns out that the heatsink collided with a flange on the hard drive carrier, with about 5 mm of overlap. Fortunately, the bracket is plastic and I have no qualms about chopping up the hardware. A few minutes of Quality Shop Time removed a section of the offending flange and gave the video card just enough clearance:
Optiplex 780 SFF drive bracket
The heatsink reflects in the shiny surface of the carrier, with the scar from the missing flange just above that. The small dark-gray disk on the far left is a grommet holding a pin that supports the drive; it installs through the larger circular opening and snaps leftward.
You must install the video card and then snap the drive carrier into place. The heatsink protrudes above the flange, with the left side just barely clearing that grommet.
