Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 December 2

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December 2

How do you use Coreboot with an x86 or x64 motherboard?

How do you use Coreboot (or other open source firmware) with an x86 or x64 motherboard? Can you use it to replace the BIOS or UEFI on just a random motherboard, or does it work only when the manufacturer has built the firmware into the motherboard? --173.49.79.100 (talk) 10:30, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Boot firmware on modern computers is stored on a flash memory part, which is non-volatile but is field rewritable. Motherboard manufacturers want field engineers to be able to update the BIOS/UEFI (so they can fix bugs), and to this end they usually have proprietary programs which will write a new firmware image onto the motherboard's flash chip. For years this was a DOS program; often these days it still is (so the manufacturer supplies a bootable FreeDOS image). The idea of Coreboot is that one can use this mechanism to write a motherboard-specific Coreboot image instead of the manufacturer's image. Some manufacturers' flash writer programs allow this, others will only write an official image. To overcome this problem, there are several open-source flash writer programs which know the flash-writing scheme for a range of motherboards and which will flash any image they're asked to. Coreboot's site has more info here. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 11:54, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Given an electrical motor and a PC

How can you connect to and control the electrical motor? --Senteni (talk) 17:40, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

What sort of electrical motor? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:43, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

AC, like the one you find in a household kitchen mixer.--Senteni (talk) 17:56, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

If all you want is a means to turn it on and off via the PC, there are USB mains power switches available (see e.g. this one [1] for UK-style sockets - you will obviously need one to match your mains system). AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:06, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

That's kind of expensive for an apparently simple device. --Senteni (talk) 18:13, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Messing with AC is not a good idea if you do not know what you are doing. I assume you do not because you are asking how to make an AC motor controller - which is a very common thing to do if you use motors or controllers. If your issue is that you know the motors and controllers, but don't know how to program a computer, then you need to look into programming for serial or parallel ports. I suggest using the parallel port because you will likely have three different signal wires that you want to adjust all at the same time. 209.149.114.72 (talk) 20:48, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

If your PC is still old enough to have a parallel port, you can use one of these circuits: http://www.bowdenshobbycircuits.info/r_ctrl.htm to drive a relay - and use that to switch the wall-socket power on and off. Modern PC's have given up that easily hackable port and now tend to use USB for everything. For that reason, most people in the Maker culture would probably recommend replacing the PC with a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone computer - or perhaps interfacing an Arduino computer to the PC and driving the relay that way. These aren't cheap solutions though - so a device such as Andy suggests is probably the easiest/cheapest solution.

That said, I did once resort to chopping the LED out from under the "Scroll Lock" indicator on an old keyboard, and interfacing to a relay connected to that. Since the PC can command the keyboard to toggle that light, it can be used to drive an external low voltage switch. SteveBaker (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

The hardware is required to insulate the power grid's hazardous voltage for the low voltage from the computer's low voltage, google for "relay driver" to find circuits and solutions. --Hans Haase (talk) 09:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Adobe Photoshop 7

Someone sent me an image, a '.jpeg' file, they also made some writings fuzzy/foggy/blurry/watery lookalike. How can I get the fuzzy/foggy/blurry/watery top layer off and view the writings? -- (Russell.mo (talk) 18:55, 2 December 2014 (UTC))

JPEG is a lossy, flat file format. It do not - to the best of my knowledge - contain layering information; ie: there is no easy way to get rid of the fuzzyness. The simplest way may be to contact the person who sent you the image, and ask for a non-fuzzy version. It's worth noting that the fuzziness can also be caused by over-compression. WegianWarrior (talk) 19:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

JPEG does have a hierarchical mode that is somewhat similar to Photoshop additive layers. But hierarchical JPEG images are very rare in the wild. It's 99.99% likely that this is just a poor-quality flat JPEG image. -- BenRG (talk) 09:51, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Its a normal file friends, nothing to do with overly compressed... They made it fuzzy/foggy/blurry/watery lookalike so that I don't it see it, and I'm eager (dying) to know what it says. I've done a lot to get this 'AP7' software, if this doesn't work now, will make me sad... Anyways, if the 'AP7' doesn't work tell me of another software that might do the trick... -- (Russell.mo (talk) 10:53, 3 December 2014 (UTC))

See GIGO. While it's sometimes possible to recover info, particularly when someone uses a method that's partially reversable or they leave too much info behind, a lot of the time if someone has intentionally removed the info you can't recover it. Despite what CSI and similar shows may lead you to believe, you can't magically exterpolate information from thin air. Nil Einne (talk) 15:46, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

lol. @Nil Einne: It looks like there is a transparent glass in front of the writing. Obviously they must've used a software. The other writings are normal, just like the way they wanted me to see. I'm curious to know why they would hide it, why they didn't cut the part instead... There must be some way... -- (Russell.mo (talk) 19:21, 3 December 2014 (UTC))

I'm sure they used software but as mentioned unless the function they used is reversible or otherwise left enough info to be able to work out what it was, it's still a case of GIGO. Very often such tools will not leave enough info. Note also even in the case where it does leave enough info, it's often requires a level of expertise many people don't have and couldn't obtain without a large amount of work. I.E. Recovery/reversing is far, far less a case of point and click then the original masking functionality and further, it isn't something the RD is likely to be able to help you with. In some cases it may not be obvious whether there is enough info until you work out precisely what function was used, and how it operates. This is fine for the FBI/CIA/whatever when hunting a paedophile/terrorist/whatever, not that useful for someone on the RD. It does make sense to simply blank out the info which leaves less possibility it can be recovered, but people can still screw up with that, e.g. the person who blanked out their credit card number but left sufficient stalks at the bottom that it's easy to work out what it was, the person did use layers, the person forgot to update the thumbnail and the details is sufficiently visible in it. Nil Einne (talk) 19:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Supposing that it is a relatively simple effect applied to a relatively simple space of possible images (some type of blurring applied to white letters on a solid blue background, say), then, if the effect is localized enough, you could approximate the effect, apply it to a set of possible candidates, then test those outcomes against what you have (letter to letter), to get a probability of what each letter might be. Then, using that, rules of language (like "He" is far far more likely than "Hk" to start a word), you can, maybe, get a probable idea of what was obscured. Of course, even if you have the skillset and competency to go about this, the odds of success are, realistically, not that great, there are a massive number of not immediately obvious variables to account for (like do your test cases line up with the source - as in, is the "H" you compare aligned and sized to the possible letter if that letter was an "H" - because if not, it's going to cause headaches till you account for this, etc.), and it will still take a good while (to an inordinate amount of time). Unless you are looking for a learning experience that may very well fail anyways, you would be better served by offering the other party $500 to just tell you what they obscured than going that route. Short of something like I am describing - or a mathematical description of the filter applied and a whole boatload more data - you aren't going to get anywhere with this (and aside from basic direction, or extraordinary luck, no stranger on the web is going to even try undertaking this for you, especially from a distance without the source image). Not to be disheartening, just trying to convey the immense pain something like this really is in real life (and how unlikely success will be). --The only other route, alluded above, is to be very very lucky and find some trace left behind - like how Microsoft office stored a documents history of changes, thus, allowing you to see what was removed and edited before the file was given; though, in this case, such a boon seems highly unlikely, and given the file format, I would assume no such luck.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 13:25, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

I understand peeps, I just thought ‘AP7’ would do the trick, because I used it long time ago, recalling it use to erase layers. Thank you all -- (Russell.mo (talk) 18:29, 4 December 2014 (UTC))

Argh! OK look, some file formats have "layers" - and in those cases, it's possible that the blurring would be stored in one layer and a nice, crisp, readable version in another - so you'd certainly be able to use photoshop or some other image manipulation tool to remove the blur and make it readable again. HOWEVER JPEG is most certainly not one of those file formats. It only has the internal organization to store a single image - there are no layers. What you see in the JPEG image is all that there is to see. So in this case, there is no tool on the planet that could (even in principle) reveal the original pristine image because it's simply not in there in the data.

That said - there are a few image enhancement tricks that can (somewhat) improve on the legibility of a blurry image by doing clever math on the blurry pixels to make them sharper. Photoshop has a bunch of those tools - but they are sharply limited in their capabilities by the fact that the information you're trying to get at simply isn't there in the first place. So, unless the text is only very slightly blurry, they won't work to make the text readable.

The TV/movie trope where some techy guy is sitting at a terminal and some action hero is looking over his shoulder and telling him to zoom into some tiny feature, "enhance" it, then zoom in some more and enhance it some more until the date of the murder is revealed to be in tiny print on the front of a newspaper carried by a passer by in the background of the photo....that's just nonsense. Image processing cannot (even in principle) be that good.

So basically, you're screwed. There is no chance whatever of turning a blur back into readable text unless it's so slightly blurred that you can more or less read it already...and it doesn't matter a damn which tools you attempt to fix it with.

SteveBaker (talk) 21:37, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Viewing your message gave me the thought of converting the file, then again I thought, guessing that it won't work the more I create it a whole.

I get what you are saying SteveBaker, I just have to face the facts... Thanks for the clarification , I would've waste a lot of time, sometime soon. -- (Russell.mo (talk) 19:03, 5 December 2014 (UTC))

No, converting the file to a different format wouldn't help either. The information you need is simply not present in the data you have - so *NOTHING* you do will work. SteveBaker (talk) 20:59, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I understand, Thanks -- (Russell.mo (talk) 14:00, 6 December 2014 (UTC))

What does fn+f5 do on my Windows 7 laptop?

It has the symbol of the Touchpad. I've pressed it but nothing appears to happen; it doesn't disable touchpad or remove the tap-to-click function (though I wish to God it did, this started with me trying desperately to disable Tap-to-Click). How can I find out what this key command does? (And is there any way I can disable Tap-to-Click other than going to Control Panel > Mouse, I've done that and the Touchpad is listed as a mouse for some reason so the option to disable clicking doesn't exist.) 98.27.241.101 (talk) 19:06, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

1. I have an Acer Windows 7 laptop. The User Guide says the following about Fn+F5: "Switches display output between the display screen, external monitor (if connected) and both." I have never used an external monitor, so I can't add anything to that. Nothing happens when I press Fn+F5.
2. One of my "hidden icons" (tiny up-arrow near the lower right of the screen) is "Synaptics Pointing Device". That's what I use for touchpad settings. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 19:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, if the taskbar Synaptics icon is visible then left or right clicking it gives a context menu with a "Tap to Click" option. Alternatively, Control panel, Mouse, Device Settings, Settings, Tapping, uncheck Enable Tapping is the full path. Thincat (talk) 23:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

This is original poster. I've looked into the problem, and it appears the problem comes from driver updates or something on an industry level; basically my computer considers the touchpad a mouse and only gives me the options to change things as if it were a mouse; i.e. you can't remove its ability to click and it's listed as a mouse under the Control Panel > Mouse > Settings etc. I installed TouchFreeze and while that only partially solves the problem, it still solved the most annoying aspect of the problem so I consider that close enough. 50.54.70.224 (talk) 23:09, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Pulled out my new Asus laptop to check. In your Notification icons, there should be an ASUS Smart Gesture app (the icon looks just like a touchpad). In that, under One Finger, if you uncheck "Select" and then Apply, it should disable the tap-to-click functionality entirely. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:06, 6 December 2014 (UTC)