EricBall's Tech Projects

I picked up a Xerox Phaser 6120 earlier this year when they were 100 off at $299(I see they list at $349 now). I've been very happy with it, I plugged it into my network and my Mac picked it up right away with Rendezvous Bonjour, no drivers needed. I did install the drivers on my iMac so I can get the extra info like toner levels, but just left it via Bonjour on my MacBook. I went with this model due to the network support, makes it easier for my folks to use the printer when they're visiting.

 

As for the TIVO - have you tried pointing the remote at a wall or the ceiling? I've found that the signal can be bounced off the wall/ceiling without any problems and will do that if something is blocking me from pointing directly at the AV equipment.

How about a small mod to the controller?

 

Move the LED such that it protrudes from the controller case. Maybe it will radiate enough light to just work with the Tivo.

 

...or a mirror placed on the other side of the room. Did this for a while in an apartment. Worked to bounce the IR to the next room.

You'd think there'd be a market for about 3' of fibre optic cable with integrated lenses and mounting bits. But I haven't found anything (even put a post on hometheaterforum and only got the super-deluxe wireless transceivers). My latest idea is to see whether putting a magnifying glass on top of the TV does anything.

 

I will give my other remote control a try. Maybe the cablebox one doesn't have enough power to bounce off the ceiling.

You'd think there'd be a market for about 3' of fibre optic cable with integrated lenses and mounting bits. But I haven't found anything (even put a post on hometheaterforum and only got the super-deluxe wireless transceivers). My latest idea is to see whether putting a magnifying glass on top of the TV does anything.

 

I will give my other remote control a try. Maybe the cablebox one doesn't have enough power to bounce off the ceiling.

 

The lens is a great idea. I'll bet that works!

 

There are also those little remote repeater things. Costs though. I normally like to just find what I can do to deal with little situations like this.

 

Any progress on your driver? Itching to see it go!

 

I'm getting ready to bag on overlay. Learned something about waitvid though. If it's in the middle of a waitvid, you can't just start another one. That and the VSCL being latched caused me a ton of timing grief. It's not obvious how to just stop and start the video generator. I think doing that during the vblank will get me some progress. If not, I'm gonna move on for a while and work on a character mode screen, for some nice 8x8 text. Why they put that huge font into ROM is beyond me...