Restarting I2C when touchpad is not working
January 11, 2022 - Reading time: ~1 minute
After I replaced the Clickpad of my Lenovo L440 with a touchpad (see https://mastodon.xyz/@nause_marc/107111989617471186) the Touchpad would not work occasionally under Debian when returning from suspend. I created a small script called restarti2c.sh with the following content:
sudo /sbin/rmmod i2c_i801 && sudo /sbin/modprobe i2c_i801
This restarts the I2C bus kernel module, which makes the touchpad work again. I run it whenever necessary.
The Benefit of Upgrading the Super Snapshot V5 to 32kB RAM
January 4, 2022 - Reading time: 8 minutes
After upgrading the RAM of my Super Snapshot V5 from 8kB RAM to 32kB, I was hoping for considerably better performance when copying disks with the built-in Disk Copier program. I was quite disappointed when I found out that copying a regular 35-track disk with a single disk drive only improved from requiring 4 read/write cycles (7 disk swaps) to 3 read/write cycles (5 disk swaps).
I did not put any further energy into looking more closely at how the memory of the C64 and Super Snapshot V5 is used when copying disks until I noticed that VICE is able to emulate the Super Snapshot V5 with both 8kB and 32kB cartridge RAM.
German Operating Manual of the Super Snapshot V5
January 3, 2022 - Reading time: 2 minutes
The Super Snapshot has never been hugely popular in Germany, as far as I know. I ordered my cartridge from a company called GSK Import en Export from the Netherlands in 1990. GSK could have taken the easy route and just shipped the cartridges with an English manual, but they translated the text into German for what was probably a rather limited market. Kudos to GSK!
After more than 30 years I finally got around to scanning the manual and provide it for download as a PDF file.
Unfortunately the cover of the manual was lost at some point in the past 30 years, but I think it was identical with the cover of the English version anyway.
Publish to Maven Central Repository
April 21, 2021 - Reading time: ~1 minute
Just some random notes to myself (aka "Move along, folks. Nothing to see here."):
https://dzone.com/articles/publish-your-artifacts-to-maven-central
mvn verify gpg:sign install:install deploy:deploy
Remove superfluous apps from Lenovo Yoga Smart Tab
June 5, 2020 - Reading time: 2 minutes
I tried to deactivate several apps which I did not use on my Lenovo Yoga Smart Tab. Unfortunately the Play Store displayed updates for them soon after and they were activated again by some kind of magic.
To remove the apps I do not want on my device I connected via
adb shell
and uninstalled them by running the following commands:
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.android.chrome
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.calendar
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.microsoft.office.outlook
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.youtube
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.photos
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tachyon # Google Duo
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.magazines
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.googleassistant
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.lenovo.screenassistant
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.wellbeing # Digital Wellbeing
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.nbu.files # Files
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.gm # GMail
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.docs # Google Drive
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.skype.raider # Skype
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.videos # Google Play Videos
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.music # Google Play Music
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.podcasts
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.android.contacts
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.keep
Packages can be searched with
pm list packages | grep SEARCH_TERM
Viewing the output of a C64 on a laptop via an STK1160 based video grabber
January 22, 2020 - Reading time: 2 minutes
I bought a cheap (< €15) USB 2.0 video grabber which is based on the SyntekSTK1160 chipset. My goal was to display the output of my Commodore 64 on the screen of my laptop. The cable which connects the C64 with the video grabber allows me to use an s-video signal.
