Monthly Archives: February 2016

Project FAX is now online!

Posted on February 28, 2016 by lui_gough

I suppose readers by now would know that I do love old technology in general, and watching the slow demise of voiceband modems has led me to conceive of a small project I would like to call Project FAX. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Telecommunications | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Freeview Update: Channel 7’s Multiplex after the launch of 7flix

Posted on February 28, 2016 by lui_gough

Today marks the official launch of 7flix, Channel 7’s new movie-oriented channel. Since the channel is now running actual content, the configuration of the encoders should have reached their “production ready” state, so lets see where the chips have landed. … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Telecommunications | Tagged , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Salvage: Audio Telex Communications ATC 5400 & Australian Monitor ATC5101-3 PA Speaker

Posted on February 27, 2016 by lui_gough

When you see one of these grilled on the ceiling, your first thought may be “Hey, that’s a fire alarm evacuation speaker!” Indeed, you would be right. In the past few weeks, Wormald Fire Systems have been upgrading the fire … Continue reading →

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Quick Review, Teardown: Uniden DECT 1015 Cordless Phone

Posted on February 27, 2016 by lui_gough

Since I’ve been playing around recently with running my own Asterisk server at home and having many ATAs to create internal extensions to create virtual POTS lines to play with modems and other telephony devices, I desperately needed some nice … Continue reading →

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Review, Teardown: Philips LuxSpace G3 ANZ (DN498) LED Downlight

Posted on February 27, 2016 by lui_gough

Following on from the same vein of LED retrofit solutions as my last posting, those with suspension ceilings or existing recessed lighting will also have a desire to retrofit older PAR globes, halogen downlights and CFL based “can” style downlights … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Lighting | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Freeview Updates: TEN HD to launch 2nd March

Posted on February 25, 2016 by lui_gough

Earlier this month on 14th February, I was alerted by a Justin L. about a potential new channel coming to Freeview named TEN HD. In anticipation, I immediately grabbed my TV tuner only to find nothing was on the air, … Continue reading →

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Review, Teardown: Philips SmartPanel 2.0 (RC160V) LED Panel Light

Posted on February 25, 2016 by lui_gough

The LED retrofit market has been growing considerably, both in commercial and residential contexts, as LEDs offer instant-on to full brightness, superior energy efficiency and long lifetimes, reducing labour costs and saving on cooling. Commercial interest in retrofits have been … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Lighting | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Teardown, Review: Grandstream HT702 VoIP Analog Telephone Adapter

Posted on February 20, 2016 by lui_gough

Seeing as I’ve been playing with my internal PBX and modems, and I recently just had an ATA power supply fail on me, I thought it would be a good time to order a few ATAs before they disappear entirely. … Continue reading →

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Failed: Linksys/Cisco PAP2T Power Adapter (AD 5V/2F PSM11R-050)

Posted on February 20, 2016 by lui_gough

Rather interestingly, and rather suddenly, I came home to find one of my PAP2T ATA’s that served the home phone line to be offline. A closer inspection showed no LEDs were lit, and a quick exchange of power adapters proved … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Telstra’s “We’re sorry” day Experiment: 4G LTE Speed vs Time of Day

Posted on February 20, 2016 by lui_gough

Rather embarrassingly, on February 9th, Telstra suffered a significant mobile outage across the country owing to human error in handling a hardware failure in a set of redundant mobile nodes, resulting in the shut down of too many nodes and … Continue reading →

Posted in Telecommunications | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Review, Teardown: Cisco SPA112 2-Port Analog Telephone Adapter

Posted on February 14, 2016 by lui_gough

I think it was clear from my last post that the Linksys/Cisco PAP2T was my favourite VoIP ATA. Unfortunately, as it is a dinosaur, it is no longer available. As I was interested in adding a few more lines to … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Telecommunications | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

VoIPey Valentines Day: Demonstrating V.61 Analog Simultaneous Voice and Data

Posted on February 14, 2016 by lui_gough

The way we communicate has changed substantially over the past few decades. What was once the most important staple of communication at home, namely the POTS land-line, is slowly disappearing altogether in favour of VoIP and mobile based services. Along … Continue reading →

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Freeview Update: 7flix launches 28th February

Posted on February 11, 2016 by lui_gough

Channel 7 had been teasing us with a New Channel Coming Soon since some-time in December last year, and speculation went wild as to what might happen. Many ideas were floated by various online forum members, no least, in Austech … Continue reading →

Posted in Radio | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Review: Meizu HD50 Hi-Fi On-Ear Headphones

Posted on February 8, 2016 by lui_gough

When it comes to portable audio, users are increasingly enjoying their music on-the-go from portable music players and their mobile phones. While some of these products are bundled with included earbuds which seem to serve some people well enough, an … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Project: Make a Netcomm RoadsterII USB Modem work in Windows 7 x64

Posted on February 7, 2016 by lui_gough

Over the weekend, I had some hankering to get some voice-band dial-up modem action happening just for curiosity sake. I stumbled across my pair of old-reliable Netcomm Roadster II USB V.90 56k modems which seemed like good candidates for an … Continue reading →

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Repair: Audio-Technica ATH-ANC9 Noise-Cancelling Headphone Ear Cushions

Posted on February 6, 2016 by lui_gough

For someone who travels a lot on public transport, having a good set of noise cancelling headphones is indispensable for making the trip a lot more enjoyable and stress free. By shutting out the external noise with passive cancellation, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

“Sigh-Quests”: More forgotten cartridges arrive, but fail to turn up data

Posted on February 1, 2016 by lui_gough

A while ago, I was in contact with a reader about their long-forgotten set of Syquest cartridges and their Syquest drive. As it turns out, it was a set of 88Mb cartridges with matching drive, connected to a computer of … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments