Canon PIXMA MP830 Hack to enable direct to CD/DVD printing on printable media.

Ok, I just bought on of these babies refurbished for $199 at Fry's Electronics. I've used nearly every all in one printer on the market, and I can say, for my needs, this is the best one out there (well under say $600).

Oddly in the US this printer does not ship with a tray to print on CD or DVD printable media, but you can purchase a tray separately and enable the feature. I haven't been able to confirm this but it appears that it was disabled in this country because someone other than Canon holds a patent on that feature (which sounds silly to me... like holding a patent on printing on paper) and they would not license it to Canon.

You'll also have to remove the plastic door that was placed over the CD/DVD tray insert slot. Just open the printer, and snap it off by pulling or prying. This was easier than I expected and took only a few seconds. I only pulled it off with my hand (and fingernails.) No tools required.



Anyway, to switch it to UK (instead of US) mode and enable printing, follow these instructions:

1. Plug the printer in, but leave it powered off. If it is already on, turn it off.
2. Press and hold the Stop/Reset button.
3. While still holding the Stop/Reset button, press and hold the Power button.
4. Hold both of them down for 5 seconds, then release the Stop/Reset button, continuing to hold down the power button.
5. Press and release the Stop/Reset button 2 times.
6. Release the power button.

At this point the printer should power on, but it will enter a special service mode.

7. Wait until the green copy light on the control panel stops flashing. This takes about 30 seconds.
8. (Optional) If you wish, you can press the Stop/Reset button 1 time, then press the Power button, and a ROM page will print. It should indicate US region at the top.
9. Press the Stop/Reset button 5 times to enter the "Set Region Mode". Then press the Power button.
10. Press the Stop/Reset button 4 times for Europe/UK (3 times for the US if you wish to change it back later). Then press the Power button.
11. (Optional) If you wish, you can press the Stop/Reset button 1 time, then press the Power button, and a ROM page will print. It should indicate Euro region at the top.
12. Press the Power button 2 times to save the changes.

I purchased my CD/DVD tray Type D from here: annocjr on eBay

Command Paths not working, and %SystemRoot% not resolving...and a fix

This happened to apply to my brand spanking new Dell Latitude D820, however, I believe it is a more general problem that can occur with Windows. I don't know what situations create the problem, but I did find a solution. Also searching the web for this problem reveals others have been troubled with it as well.

Ok, so I found simple "always there" commands weren't working, such as ping or ipconfig. When trying to launch ipconfig from the command line I would get: 'ipconfig' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. (You can see it in the screenshot of my Command Prompt below.)

I did an echo %PATH% and observed that %SystemRoot% was not being evaluated. You can see from the screenshot below instead of showing "C:\WINDOWS" it was showing %SystemRoot% (I've highlighted them in red.) This is the state the computer shipped from Dell with a purchased copy of XP Pro installed so this situation is going to affect a LOT of users. Of course, maybe most Dell customers don't use the command line.


Scroll down to see the screenshot... argh these blogspot templates suck at handling wide images.


















Here's a screenshot of the error, and the faulty path lookup in action.


So my immediate thought was that %SystemRoot% hadn't been setup in the Windows Environment Variables. However, bringing up the dialog showed me that it was:



Anyway, the solution is just to kick Windows XP into re-evaluating the %Path% variable. The entries were all there, but somehow Windows has cached an invalid lookup for it. The easiest way I believe to do this is to go into the environment variables. Just click edit, you don't even have to change anything, and then click OK.




Now your old command prompt if it is open won't be updated, but if you open a new one, everything should work as you expected.

New Dell laptop error: Insert the Sonic Update Manager disk and click OK and the fix.

I've got a spanking new Dell Latitude D820. Of course, like all Dells, instead of shipping with a clean install of Windows, it has a lot of stuff pre-installed.

I supposed that's ok, considering, for example, the Roxio Sonic DVD Creator software wouldn't normally ship with Windows, and it's the only way I can burn DVDs with my new internal DVD burner.

However, Dell, doesn't apparently make sure all of their software is installed correctly. When I launch Roxio Creator Plus (by Sonic Solutions...who owns who here?) I was presented with the following dialogs:




Now this one wouldn't necessarily mean it's an error, as sometimes you see this dialog the first time you launch a newly installed application. However, things went downhill quickly:


Insert the Sonic Update Manager disk and click OK.

Hmm. So now it is asking me to install a CD that I don't have and most likely is a side effect of Dell's setup/installation procedure prior to shipping out the laptop. Attempting to continue at this point finally ends in failure with this message:


An installation package for the product Sonic Update Manager cannot be found. Try the installation again using a valid copy of the installation package 'UM.MSI'.

The message indicates that UM.MSI is the name of the installation package that Dell used to setup my laptop, which of course, I don't have. Worst, while the Roxio Creator software does launch and looks like it might function, canceling out of these software dialogs just brings up new ones. As long as the Roxio Creator software is open, an infinite loop of these pop up dialogs displays, making the software completely unusable.

Luckily the problem is known. It's actually a problem with the Update Manager component in the InstallShield software that Roxio used to package their product and Dell then used to install their product. A fix for the problem can be downloaded from the makers of InstallShield here.

So you got that new printer, that does borderless printing...but you can't find out how?

UPDATE May 2007 This doesn't seem to apply with the latest drivers for Intel Macs. It looks like for those Epson figured out how to get the features into a single printer, where they belong. Unfortunately they didn't release the update for PowerPC Macs, which ALSO means you can't printer share from an Intel Mac (with one of these Epsons) to a PowerPC Mac because the printer driver need to be the same version. Ugh!END UPDATE

In Mac OS X, possibly the most convoluted configuration issue is printers that handle different or abnormal page sizes.

I own an Epson 2200 and an R200 (actually my R200 just died, and I'll be throwing it out but that's beside the point.) Both of these printers support borderless printing (and another mode called "minimize margins") as well as roll paper printing. However, after installing the printers, and going through every option in the Page Setup and Print dialogs, it looks like those features are not available in Mac OS X 10.4.

Well those features are available, they just aren't enabled by default. Apparently Mac OS X handles printers in a way that doesn't make it easy to change things like roll paper additions or differing hardware margins in a single printer. You'd think that would be handled just fine in the paper settings from the Page Setup dialog, but it isn't. It's possible this shortcoming is actually Epson's fault for how they implemented support for these features in their drivers, but no matter who is to blame, the configuration isn't obvious. You have to basically setup a different printer on the computer for each of these features that affects the paper margins and paths. So for example, instead of just having the R200 listed as an available printer, you'll have the R200 and the R200 "borderless" and the R200 "Roll Paper" etc. Of course, they are all the same printer, but to your Mac they all look like different printers with different capabilities and will be listed as different printers in your print dialog.

To get access to all these wonderful features, just follow these easy instructions:

You need to open the Printer Browser window. There are two ways to get to the Printer Browser:
Go under the Utilities folder under Applications and launch the Printer Setup Utility. Click the Add printer icon.
-or-Inside the Print & Fax control panel inside System Preferences, select the printing tab and click the + symbol to create a new printer.

Either one of those steps bring up the Printer Browser:




At this point, your current Epson printer should show up in the Printer Browser. Now click More Printers...

In the drop down dialog sheet that appears click on the pop up menu at the top and select "Epson USB" (or "Epson FireWire" if you are using a printer with a FireWire connection like the 2200.) It takes a while sometimes for these dialogs to update as they are scanning the USB busses as well as searching every known printer driver installed on your computer.




At that point your printer should appear with the different features listed in the Page Setup pop up menu. For example, if you now select your Epson 2200 printer, under the Page Setup menu, you should see an entry for your 2200 with borderless printing, another entry for roll printing, etc.




Add any of the ones you want to have available or all of them. Then when printing, you have to choose which printer to use based on what features you want (they will all appear in your printer dialog as separate printers, and you can even designate one of them to be your default printer.) Oh and make sure you select them in both your Page Setup dialogs as well as your Print dialogs if you need features (such as special paper sizes) available. The Page Setup dialog will let you choose the larger paper types supported by roll printing, etc.

So there you go, now you can take full advantage of your expanded printer capabilities.

Excel doesn't even give me the option of running Macros

I have several Excel spreadsheets that I use regularly that have macros, one of which is a time tracking sheet that automatically downloads and uploads job and client codes based on P.O. information stored on our private server.

Anyway, these normally open fine, with a warning dialog about macros and their inherent security risk, giving you two buttons to let you choose to enable or disable macros for that session. No problem, since I'm familar with the documents, and know they are safe, I always choose to enable macros.

Oddly about once every other month it shows a different dialog saying macros need to be enabled to use this feature, and it doesn't even give me the option of enabling them.

Here's the solution if you wish to open an Excel spreadsheet with macros enabled, and you aren't being allowed to:
To solve this delima, you can go into Excel under Tools -> Macro -> Security and set the setting to Low.

What I couldn't understand was why this setting kept changing. It apearred to me that everytime I install a Microsoft Office update, it seems to change that setting to a higher level. So don't be surprised if you have to change that again after installing an update from Microsoft.

Debugging my latest Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

Turns out a service called crypserv.exe was causing my laptop to blue screen. Read below for more info.

My laptop started randomly blue screening. Nothing too unusual for a Windows machine, but as I try to keep my XP laptop for development very clean, it was actually the first BSOD I had seen on this machine that I've been using for over a year now.

Ok, so I knew something in my config. had changed. So I had to think of what I installed recently. I was trying to work with a large source code dump I had gotten as a 3gig tarball. The first thing I needed to do was make some space on my horribly inadequate 40GB hard drive. For some reason Windows Explorer doesn't have the simple ability to list or sort by folder sizes in the Detail View mode. In order to see which folders were taking up a lot of space to know which ones to delete I installed an application called ViewFolderSize Pro. Now I did a search for utilities that would calculate the folder sizes and display them in the File Explorer. I found about three, and ViewFolderSize Pro appeared to be pretty polished and got some good recommendations, so I downloaded it and installed it. It had a timed trial period (30 days I think) after which they wanted you to purchase the software. Apparently they used crypserv.exe as a way of enforcing their licensing.

No blue screens yet and the product basically worked as advertised. It was very slow, apparently made a cache file that it didn't tell me where it stored it, and sorting seemed a bit random. After using the product to find a couple large directories I decided to uninstall it mostly due to concerns about it slowing down my machine, and an uneasiness in how stable the software was based on some of its shortcomings. Apparently the uninstaller didn't remove the crypserv.exe service.

Once I rebooted after the uninstall, the laptop could not function for 10 minutes without BSODing if simply left alone. Oddly I noticed that if I kept the laptop active, it would take much longer to BSOD. I also noticed the CPU fan came on about 2 seconds before BSODing meaning of course, some process was pegging the CPU at 100% just before the BSOD. Ok, so my theory was that some process was running away with the CPU and causing a memory exception. So after rebooting another time, I launched the Task manager, told it to sort by CPU, then I sat there staring at it. After a few minutes a process jumped up to using 99% of the CPU. It was crypserv.exe. In less than two seconds, the laptop BSODed.

Ok, great, I found my culprit. I rebooted, disabled the service in the services control panel, and then removed the crypserv.exe file from my hard drive. Rebooted once more to make sure the crypserv.exe didn't reappear, which it did not, and I've been blue screen free ever since.

New Version (1.2.7) of Fetch Art Released

The changes are:

• This version fixes a Perl error on systems that did not have the Apple development tools installed. (The message looked like, "Can't locate LWP/Simple.PM...")
  
• Select All under the Edit menu now works. Also remember there is a Copy All Art to iTunes command under the Fetch Art menu.
  
• The problem with the installer not placing Fetch Art in the Applications directory, or creating a script menu in iTunes for some users has been corrected.
  

This version is still NOT compatible with Intel Macs. To donate and help the development of an Intel Mac version, please visit my donations page www.aric.org/fetchart/donation.html

To download the latest installer: www.aric.org/fetchart/

There's actually been renewed interest in Fetch Art since the release of iTunes 7. I figured that with iTunes including an album artwork download, I would no longer be contacted by people interested in Fetch Art. However, I've been told that the iTunes art download doesn't work as well as Fetch Art for several reasons:

• It requires an iTunes account, which not everyone has or wants.
  
• According to what I've been told it only works for U.S. customers.
  
• It actually isn't that great at finding artwork, leaving many popular albums without art.
  

Found a bug in the built in Mac OS X FTP server

So let's say you are using the FTP sharing abilities in Mac OS X to share a 5GB file.

Now, as a 5GB FTP download will likely get interrupted a few times before completion, you use the REST (restart or resume if you like) command to resume the download from where it last stopped. That will work fine if your download is less than 2GB. It appears for anything over 2GB it won't work, as the FTP server reports: "Restarting at 2147483647" no matter what. Apparently it can't go higher than 2147483647 bytes for the start of a resume download. I've done some searching and Mac OS X isn't the only FTP server to have this problem, however, many do work fine over 2GB.

If anyone is aware of a fix for this, let me know. Until then, I'll be submitting this as a bug to Apple in the next few days.

Running shell commands with Automator or AppleScript and executing with sudo privileges

Automator is very cool because it will give you a compiled app that can run AppleScript and execute the more powerful Unix shell commands as well.  Actually AppleScript gives you this ability too via the do shell script command i.e:

 do shell script "mkdir /Library/StartupItems" 

What this example shows you:

1. How to show a dialog with AppleScript where you can ask for a hidden password that is not visible (not shown) as typed.
2. How to run commands in a bash shell with sudo access in Automator.
3. How to run bash shell commands in AppleScript with sudo access.

Ok, so now if you are like me, you know the power of Unix shell scripting, you also know it won't be long before you'll need sudo to run one or more commands in your script.  Now I did a quick search on the internet to just find some sample code, and in all my searching I found most people have not posted a good solution.  Most people in their sample scripts or Automator workflows resorted to storing the password in clear text within the script.  Not only is that a security risk, your script is no longer portable and has to be edited for every user.  I found responses like this basically saying it couldn't be done.

Ok, so here's what you do.  I created an Automator script, that first runs the following AppleScript (this would also work, just in plain AppleScript without Automator):

on run {input, parameters} 
    tell application "System Events" 
        set the_username to do shell script "whoami" 
        set the_password to "password" 
        display dialog "You now need to enter the password for the currently logged in account: " & the_username & " 

This account must have Administrator access to this computer." default answer "password" buttons {"OK", "Cancel"} default button "OK" with icon 2 with title "Password" with hidden answer 
        set the_password to text returned of the result 
    end tell 
    return {the_password} 
end run

Ok in the Automator script, then my next step in Run Shell Script (in bash of course).  That script looks like:

exec echo $1 | sudo -v -S; 
if [ $? -eq 1 ] then 
    echo "you are not a sudoer"; else 
    echo "you are a sudoer";  # replace this with your entire script. 
    exec echo $1 | sudo -S ls /private/var/root/; 
fi

Now all you have to do is put your sudo needing commands inside the else fi block and you're set.  If you want to download an Automator script with this code as an example, click here.
BTW if you are running within an AppleScript app you can call sudo like this:

do shell script "sudo ls /private/var/root/" password the_password with administrator privileges  

Fetch Art Beta Testers Needed

I need a few beta testers, to test some fixes for Fetch Art.

If you've read some of the comments, many people are getting this error:

Can't locate LWP/Simple.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /System/Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level /System/Library/Perl/5.8.6...

I haven't been able to reproduce this error on my system. In fact Fetch Art is working great on all the systems I've tested.

I need some beta testers that meet the following criteria:
1) You get the error shown above when you run Fetch Art
2) You are running a PowerPC based Mac (sorry no Intels at the moment)
3) You are running the latest Mac OS X (10.4.7) and iTunes 7
4) You are willing to have me send you via email a .zip beta version and install it.
5) You'll report back the results to me.

If you meet the above criteria and would like to help, please send email to me at here. (Privacy promise: I will not give your email out to anyone else or post it here.)

Fetch Art 1.2 and iTunes 7

Today apple announced iTunes 7. I'm currently at work and cannot test it with Fetch Art (although I am downloading the new version, it's going slow, the servers must be busy.) However, they claim they've added an album art download feature which may make Fetch Art obsolete.

I'll have to do some testing to see how it works (and how well it works) to see if this will signal the end of development on Fetch Art which of course will break my heart.

UPDATE: I've completed testing with iTunes 7 on several PowerPC Macs and am happy to report Fetch Art runs great on all the machines I tested on. Still working towards Intel Mac support though.

I'd love to hear you comments as well. Let me know if you think the new feature of iTunes successfully replaces Fetch Art or if there are still reasons to continue developing the application.

I Found another bug in Microsoft Office.

Found another bug in Microsoft Office for Windows. This one causes the application to crash. This simple small document (see download link below) I created with Word 2003 will crash Word 2000 when you try to open it. Word 2003 and 2000 are supposed to be file compatible but apparently they are not. I have many clients that still use Word 2000 so this is a huge problem for me.

This document doesn't contain any revision info, changes tracking, or metadata, so that can't be causing the problem. It's also just a few words of text, so no embedded images etc.

If anyone (hello Microsoft?) has a fix for this bug, please let me know.

Download test file (scanned to be virus free): .zip version 16K
.doc version 56K

Fetch Art Manual Installation Instructions

The most common support email request I get is with help installing Fetch Art. I'm not sure why, but for some users the installer does not successfully put the files on the user's hard drive. This may be a permissions issue, or possibly a bug in the Apple Installer (the Fetch Art installer, is actually just an installation script that is used by the Apple Installer application).

Installing Fetch Art manually is very simple, and solves most reported problems except for Intel Mac users. Fetch Art doesn't work yet on Intel Macs. I'm working on it (See donation page.)

To install Fetch Art yourself, without the installer:

1) Place the Fetch Art application in your Applications directory:
[your hard drive]/Applications
You can get the Fetch Art application here.

2) Place the Fetch Art iTunes script in your iTunes script directory:
[your hard drive]/Library/iTunes/Scripts/
Note that if you haven't installed any iTunes scripts before, you may not have a Scripts directory. That shouldn't be a problem, just create one and put the Fetch Art script in it.
You can get the Fetch Art iTunes script here.

Fetch Art Uninstallation Instructions

So let's say you've installed Fetch Art and now you want to uninstall it.

It's really quite simple. You will find files installed in two locations.

The application itself should be installed at:
[your hard drive]/Applications

The script that appears in the iTunes menu bar is at:
[your hard drive]/Library/iTunes/Scripts/

If it was the only iTunes script you had, you can delete the Scripts directory and the script menu in iTunes should disappear.

Alternately you could go in the Finder, go to File->Find... and search on Fetch Art to find the locations of the files and simply delete them from the Find results window.

SourceOffSite for Mac OS X

Ok, today I did something I thought I would never be able to do.

I used SourceOffSite on my Mac to download a source tree. The makers of SourceOffSite have compiled an X-Windows version of their client application for Mac OS X.. It was a bit difficult to install, requiring, first to install Fink and download some unix packages. The detailed instructions were nicely spelled out here (props go to Lee Givens who wrote this):

Step by Step Instructions using Fink to get Needed Libraries

Amazing. It worked great!

For some background, SourceOffSite is a remote client for MS Visual SourceSafe. SourceSafe doesn't cache well and works very poorly when you are not local to the SourceSafe server. My company has purchase in addition to SourceSafe, SourceOffSite server which "mirrors" the SourceSafe repository but works with their own SourceOffSite client to improve performance when away from the local network, such as over a slower VPN connection.

There is currently no Mac OS X SourceSafe client since Metrowerks dropped support for their SourceSafe tools prior to releasing them for Mac OS X. Right now, SourceOffSite is the only way I know of to work with a SourceSafe repository natively on Mac OS X and of course, require that your company is running the SourceOffSite server product. The client is free to download as the licensing is based on the server purchase, and the 4.x client appears to work with the 3.x server.

Fetch Art 1.2 NOT Compatible with Intel Macs

Well you may have already discovered that Rosetta (a part of Mac OS X) is not working well enough to help Fetch Art work on the new Intel Macs. In an effort to solve the problem initially I used my PowerPC based Mac to create a Universal Binary version of Fetch Art. I gave this out to a few users who were having problems on the Intel based Macs. Unfortunately, it didn't solve the issue.

Right now I cannot say whether it is a problem with Fetch Art, Perl, AppleScript, or Rosetta but I can say I'll need some quality time with an Intel based Mac to debug the problems.

Currently I don't own an Intel Mac, and I wasn't planning on purchasing a new computer for a while. My finances are a bit thin to spend several hundred dollars on an unplanned purchase, so I am taking donations towards the purchase of an Intel Mac mini.

If you are interested in supporting Fetch Art, please visit my donation page, here.

Thank you.

Treo 650 HotSync bug that reports "Both versions of this record were copied to the Palm Desktop and the handheld" and a fix

Ok, I've found an odd bug and an easy workaround with HotSyncing my Treo 650.

I've been using Palm devices for years, and have always been very happy with their HotSync technology. I tend to edit data on both my computer and my palm so the fact that it could automatically tell which records were the most recent and copy them to the other device has saved me a lot of effort. Occasionally when I edited the same item on both the computer and the Palm device, it would warn me when I HotSynced and put both copies on both devices and let me choose which one to delete. Great!

Unfortunately, when I upgraded my Palm phone from the beautiful Samsung SPH-i500 to the large and clunky, but more powerful Treo 650, I was dismayed to find, that if I edited a record on my computer, when I synced it I always got a message stating:
The following record was modified on both the Palm Desktop and the handheld:
“some record name”
Both versions of this record were copied to the Palm Desktop and the handheld. Delete the unwanted record and perform a HotSync operation again.

Then, of course, I had to manually delete the duplicate record on the Treo 650 even though I had NOT edited the record on my Treo 650 as it was stating. Deleting the duplicate record on my computer didn't remove it either, as the next time I did a HotSync it would do the same thing again and once again I had two copies of the same item on both devices.

This was happening when syncing to my Mac OS X Tiger versions 10.4.x (I tried with all version of 10.4). I normally edit most of my data on my Palm phone so it wasn't a huge problem, but after a while, when I found myself updating several items on my computer, I got frustrated enough to debug the problem. I could reproduce the situation 100% by editing a memo in Palm Desktop (and not editing the memo on the Palm device) and then performing a HotSync. I was HotSyncing by pressing the HotSync button on the USB cable that came with the phone. I decided to try and use Bluetooth which is built into my Mac and supported in Mac OS X. When I did the same thing via Bluetooth, I didn't get the error.

Ok, now I was getting somewhere...

It turns out you will see this problem if you have the HotSync connection setup on your Palm device set to Bluetooth but do a HotSync via the USB cable or cradle. I altered my HotSync connection setting to use the cable/cradle option, and did another HotSync with the cable. Again the error was gone.

But I want to be able to sync with my cable, or Bluetooth without having to change the phone settings. Luckily this works to...as long as you create a separate/new connection setup on the phone. Just create one set to Bluetooth (which I made my default when I click the onscreen HotSync button in the HotSync app on the Palm device) and create another one set to cable/cradle, which it uses automatically when you initiate a HotSync by pressing the button on the USB cable or cradle you connected it with.

Problem solved!

I did a search before I started debugging the problem myself and found several people reporting this problem on Treo 650s. The Bluetooth option has probably introduced the bug in the behavior. Oddly, no posting I saw solved the issue, so hopefully this will help someone else out with the same problem. I don't know if it behaves the same under Windows but if someone has tried this out under Windows, I would like to hear from them.

So hopefully this will help some other people who are having the same issue.

Fetch Art 1.2 Verified Compatible with iTunes 6

I've done some testing with the new version of iTunes, and am happy to report Fetch Art 1.2.0 is fully compatible with iTunes 6.0.

I've tested under Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.2.

For the people who have contacted me with questions:
1) Yes, I am working on a new version.
2) I haven't been able to reproduce most of the bugs reported. Many of them seem to be installation issues with the Apple installer.
3) I do try to respond to all my emails, but the response to this application has been overwhelming, and it's difficult to respond to every one.

Thanks for all the support and kind words. This application seems to work for most people but a few do report bugs or installation problems. I will address some of those issues with the next release hopefully by the end of the year.

Alpine KCA-420i Interface Adapter for iPod is the buggiest piece of consumer electronics that I’ve seen in years.

Ok, so normally on my tech blog, I mention fixes and solutions to technical problems. Unfortunately no such fixes or solutions exist, so this amounts to a review of the Alpine iPod interface along with the CDA-9853 head unit. The review, unfortunately for me who has already invested in the product, is not favorable.

First the basics
Here is Alpine’s info on the iPod connection kit they sell
and here is information on the 9853 head unit to which I connected it.

And lastly my iPod is the 60GB Photo version. I don’t store many photos on it and have about 7.8GB free. Some of that music was purchased off of iTunes although most has been ripped off of my own personal CD collection. Yes, all of my wife’s music that I don’t like is on there too.

Now previously I was using my iPod with a cassette adapter in a cassette stereo. This worked as well as can be expected. It sounded much better than any FM transmitter I tried and it charged my iPod. It wasn’t integrated in any way, however, so that I had to have my iPod out and handy, and navigate using the iPod’s scroll wheel and screen which is not as easy while driving as operating an in dash stereo.

Enter Alpine
I purchased the Alpine 9853 CD player (in dash head unit) and the 420i iPod connection kit at the same time. They MSRP at $400 and $100 respectively. I was very exited to have integrated control of the iPod and to be able to keep the iPod out of site. I had the dock cable installed in my center console where my iPod would spend most of its time.

The KCA-420i does work about as well as the cassette adapter. It provides high quality sound (actually better than the cassette adapter) and it charges the iPod. However, it doesn’t do much more than the cassette adapter did.

Navigating Playlists, Artists, and Albums
Alpine claims the KCA-420i will allow you to control your iPod with the head unit. Well, sometimes. When connecting the iPod to the Alpine deck it always sees the iPod and will play songs from it but for some reason that I haven’t been able to identify about 50% of the time the Alpine deck will not display playlist information, allow you to search, or scan, or do anything other than skip to the next or previous song. It seems to default playing from the whole library in this case, instead of a play list. The navigate button (which looks like a document icon) is supposed to bring up all the items you could normally navigate on the iPod screen such as Artists, Albums, and Playlists. However, in this case it simply doesn’t function. It beeps, so you know it’s being pressed, but it does nothing. Power cycling the head unit doesn’t solve the problem either. I have found the only thing that works is disconnecting the iPod and reconnecting it. This has always solved the problem, and suddenly you will be able to navigate your songs and playlists as expected. Very frustrating but at least we found a work around.

Shuffle and Repeat Settings
Most people I know listen to their iPod music in shuffle mode (or random or as Alpine calls it MIX or M.I.X. mode, I’ll call it shuffle from here on out) so the songs are never played in the same order and I too personally always listen in shuffle mode. I also always have repeat turned off. When I’ve listened to an entire album or playlist, I want the iPod to stop playing, so I know it’s time to choose another album or playlist instead of thinking to myself later… “did I hear this song already?” Of course the Alpine controller understands these functions and has the same settings.

That would be great if it remembered your settings. I expected the head unit to use whatever settings the iPod was currently set for. So for example, after connecting my iPod I expected it to active shuffle (shows up as MIX on the Alpine display) and make sure repeat was off based on my iPod’s settings. It doesn’t. It starts out at the factory default of shuffle off and repeat All. Ok, so I have to manually go through the process of changing those on the deck. It requires a total of 5 presses of three different buttons to make those changes. A bit cumbersome, but you figure, you’ll only have to do it once, right? Wrong! You’ll have to do it, not only every time you disconnect your iPod but every time you turn off the car. That’s right. It remembers these settings for CD playback after you’ve turned off and parked your car, but even if you leave the iPod connected in the vehicle, after you turned off the ignition it goes back to the default settings. That’s an example of how CD playback works better than iPod playback.

Messes the iPod's Settings
While that’s annoying, I’ve saved the best part for last. Ok, so right now you are thinking, “Wow, Alpine didn’t debug their product very well, and has a lot of issues, but still, it seems like maybe it’s ok.” After you’ve used your iPod in the vehicle connected to the KCA-420i, when you remove it, you’ll find not only does the Alpine not remember the settings you gave it correctly, it modified the settings on your iPod to be repeat All and shuffle Off. Every time I disconnect my iPod I have to turn these settings back on. Even when I already turned them back on in the Alpine head unit. Amazing! So not only does the Alpine not handle its own settings correctly, it messes up your settings on your iPod. Seems to me a playback device should not write data to the iPod, it should only read data from it. Anyway, the cassette adapter never had THAT problem.

Conclusion
So in summary of my review…the KCA-420i promises a lot, and delivers very little. It’s obvious it was rushed to market with little debugging and will not operate as expected, or even as the Alpine instruction manual claims. If all you care about is getting the sound from your iPod into your Alpine stereo, it works, however, if you expect flawless song and playlist navigation or consistent playback settings, you will be disappointed. So in conclusion, it really doesn’t work as well as a cassette adapter.

Update
I contacted Alpine. They are aware of all of the issues. The customer service person on the phone was very friendly and said he owned an iPod and had the KCA-420i product in his vehicle as well. He said Alpine engineers were aware of the issues. He also said they would post information on their web site when a firmware update was available. I asked him, “Oh, so a consumer can update the firmware on the KCA-420i? You supply them with a downloadable CD ISO image they can burn and load into their deck and it’ll update the firmware or something like that?” He replied, “No, it would be an Apple firmware release for the iPod to fix the issues.” At that point I asked him how an update to the iPod would improve how the Alpine product worked. He insisted all the logic of the KCA-420i was handled on the iPod. If that’s true why does it cost $100? Anyway, so it doesn’t sound like Alpine has a way or any plans to fix the issues I’ve listed. Seems like false advertising and misleading marketing to release a product that doesn’t perform as stated, and then not try to solve the issue.

I’ll post here if an update or solution to any of these problems are found.

Software Update in Mac OS X Tiger Doesn't work if Ethernet is turned off.

Ok, found a bug today in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. I have a computer, and the only networking it uses is wireless (Airport). So it made sense to me to turn off the Bluetooth, FireWire, and Ethernet ports in the Network settings, since they weren't being used.

Once I turned off Ethernet, however, I found Software Update hangs right after launching. The Software Update progress bar display fills in about 10% and just sits there forever. As soon as I checked the Ethernet port in the Network settings it worked. I'm not using Ethernet, there is no cable connected, and it's set to DHCP right now, but for whatever reason Software Update won't work without it.