Do you have a white or black dot appearing on your DLP TV. Well the bad news is that means a hundred more will appear within a few weeks. What are these dots and how do you fix it? Well these dots appear because of a failing DLP chip. Your tv is probably a few years old with this starts to happen. You fix it by calling your TV manufacture and request they send you a new chip (and you volunteer to replace the chip yourself). That is what I did with my Mitsubishi WD7373. At first they wanted me to pay for a certified installer to put the chip in, but I had the ticket elevated and the ended up shipping the chip directly to me via ups.

dlp dots appearing on someones dlp tv

Exchanging the chip is quite simple. Especially if you know how to change the processor in your computer. It is simply a chip that is seated in a special socket with a locking mechanism. It also has a heat sink just like a computer processor. I will go over each step in this article.

First you need to wipe away all dust on the outside of your TV. Then unplug the TV. Then you need to scoot your TV/Stand out so you have full access to the rear of the TV. You will need to unscrew all of the screws holding the bottom back peice of the TV on. This is called the service plate. Its basically the whole bottom rear part of your TV enclosure.

after removing service bracket

Now that you have removed the service bracker we need to uplug all of the wires going into the mainboard. Once completed, remove the hearsink. Now you will be looking at the mainboard that is held in place by a few screws. Some of the older TV’s have this board specially fitted so that the dlp chip is perfectly lined up with the light engine so the image on the screen fits the TV. If your tv is like this, use masking tape and a marker on each side of the mainboard to be able to align it back after you removed and exchanged the chip. I found that my mainboard had slots that it had to line up with in order to be seated properly so alignment was not an issue.

Now it is time to unscrew and remove the mainboard….but be careful. There is a small ribbon cord that you need to remove carefully so that it doesnt break. After removing the board this is what you are left with:

Once you have the board out flip it over. You will see the socket that you dlp chip is locked in. Simply turn the locking mechanism and remove the chip. Then place the new chip in …. only one way possible (make sure it is seated properly). Then lock it in. If you are certain it is seated and locked in properly go ahead and put the board back in. Make sure to insert the ribbon cable back where you found it in the board.

Next step is to plug all the wires back in (don’t put heatsink back on yet). We want to power up the tv and make sure there are no vertical lines on the screen that would indicate the chip is not seated properly. If you see the vertical lines then remove the mainboard and reseat the dlp chip. Repear these steps until the chip is seated properly. It took me two trys. Never run your tv longer than 10 minutes without the heatsink on the dlp chip.

a look at the mainboard durring testing

Once you are happy with the image on the screen, it is time to replace the heat sink (use cpu termal grease if you have some…i used artic silver #5….this should help the chip run cooler and last longer) and all the cableing back the way you found it. Now screw back in the service bracket on the back and viola! your done!

good as new after dlp chip change

The chip I was sent was generations newer than the one that originally came with my tv and broke. I am hoping the new chip will last longer than the 4 years that my first chip lasted.

dlp chips front and back

new chip model left vs old chip right

Internet Radio is one of L337Tech.com best and most entertaining apps. Having the ability to listen to thousands of internet radio stations easily is great. What about automatically listening to music with no user interaction with your phone? We have a solution thanks to WebOS Internals.

With the use of WebOS Internal’s Mode Switcher, we now have the ability to have your phone automatically start playing the last station you were listening to with Internet Radio simply by your phone making a bluetooth or headphone connection. This is super useful for when you start your car and your phone automatically pairs with your stereo unit. Your phone will begin to rock out without you touching it or removing it from your pocket!

So how is this achieved? Lets get started with the walkthrough. First, download and install preware (if you already haven’t). Now search preware for “Mode Switcher” and install that. You also have the option to install “start Mode Switcher on boot” patch that will keep Mode Switcher from running in dashboard mode.

Of course you will need to download Internet Radio or Internet Radio Pro:
Download Internet Radio

Download Internet Radio Pro

Now we need to setup each application. In internet Radio simply find a station you like and listen to it for a brief moment. Then go to the preferences page and click “Play last on start up”. On Mode Switcher it is a little more complicated so I suggest using the images below to guide your settings. If you need more help with Mode Switcher go here.

Now create a pairing with your car or bluetooth stereo unit or headphones or whatever. Now Internet Radio launches and starts playing automagically! So the next time you step into your car or turn on your bluetooth headphones you will enjoy music without touching your phone!

Enjoy!

Casey Broome
L337Tech.com
number1pete on precentral.net forums

It has been talked about all over the internet in many blog posts and articles from popular websites. Apple computers have been using weird mouse acceleration algorithms for a while now. Snow leopard Macs have a mouse acceleration formula that drives windows and linux users crazy. Most people suggest free and pay programs that try and modify apples acceleration scheme to mimic windows. However non of the programs will make you feel like your using a pc on linux machine. This is because non of them are effectively overwriting the apple algorithm.

The solution is to not fight the algorithm but use it against itself. Here is how your going to fix your mouse scrolling to a point where you actually feel in control of your computer. First off, figure out what mouse you have. You need to know if its Microsoft, Logitech, Saitek, etc…. Then download their drivers from their website for your operating system whether its Leopard, Snow Leopard, 32bit, or 64bit. Then install the drivers and reboot.

Now open up to system property windows. Navigate one to the default Apple mouse tracking speed page, and the other one to the mouse’s proprietary setting page (like Microsoft, Logitech, etc..). The trick is to scale back Apples acceleration curve usually to the third from last tick mark. This effectively smooths out the acceleration curve to something your used to in windows. At this point your left with a mouse that moves to slow. Now you will go to the mouse’s proprietary settings page and move up the tracking speed to a point where its fast enough for you. Voila! Now you have a mouse that wont drive you crazy! I am currently using a Logitech mouse and here is a screenshot of my setting (Snow Leopard on a MacBookPro with intel).

So basically the trick is you have to use Apple’s settings to smooth out the acceleration curve to something suitable for windows and linux users. Now go enjoy using a mouse again on a Mac!

Okay, we at L337Tech have replace our iPhones out of sheer bordem (had iphone for 2 years and am now bored with it). We now have Palm Pre’s. I love my Palm Pre but was not happy with the battery life. Luckily the Palm Pre is the easiest phone to hack ever. Heck, to access developer mode you type in the konami code, come on thats awesome!! I wrote some code that uses power saving features built into the linux operating system used by the Pre. This has literally increased my battery life by 40%. It is only a matter of time before Palm sees this and writes their own power saving script. But as of right now the Pre has now power saving features so use my code.

This is basically a repost of the work i did in the forums of PreCentral.net

Okay i have been doing extensive testing. I believe i have solved most of the problems related to cpu scaling.

noted problems:
1. Video playback flickers and can be choppy
3. Phone freezes usually in standby or some other low state like listening to pandora in standby.
2. Can force the phone to have a 250mhz minimum instead of 125Mhz minimum

Fixes:
Two new scaling schemes. The first uses 1 second sampling rates and an 11% cpu utilization speed up threshold. The second method uses powersave_bias to turn on the 250mhz minimum (this will cause the phone to quit going down to 125Mhz, it goes down to 250Mhz instead during standby or other lowly states)

The fist scheme fixes video playback and phone freezes during lowly states, but does not fix the 250Mhz minimum problem so you phone will use 125Mhz for its lowly state.

The second scheme fixes phone freezes during lowly states like standby and Pandora, and makes 250Mhz the minimum cpu frequency. This method does not fix video playback flickering issues.

Here is the code:

First scheme (my favorite and the one im currently using)
assumes you are at root@castle:/#

echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 500000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 250000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq
echo 11 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
echo 1000000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate

Second scheme (not my favorite because of video flicker and other reasons i will explain latter but it does utilize the 250mhz low state which is a little snappier than 125Mhz)
assumes you are at root@castle:/#

echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 500000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 250000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq
echo 11 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
echo 10000000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/powersave_bias

The main problem with the methods people were doing before is that the chip was switching between low and high state several times over the course of a few second no matter if they were playing a video or pandora. The first scheme above fixes that issue. The second scheme still suffers from this but i tried to lessen its severity by changing the sampling rate to 10 seconds (in reality it seems like 2 seconds durring testing). 10 seconds was the lowest i could go without it wanting to change states from low to high several times in a few seconds. There is something wrong with the powersave_bias function that makes it switch states faster than the sampling rate. I am looking into possible workarounds.

I would have liked to make the speed up threshold 5% but the lowest the up_threshold function would let me choose is 11%. 5% is usually low enough to have the phone running full power during pandora. Your phone is almost always lower than 5% during standby or when not doing anything on your phone.

If you want these codes to stick after a reboot then you will need to prepare a script in vi editor inside you pre’s linux system in the format similar to how they did it at pre dev wiki here

scroll down the page till you see how they made it stick. Just change the code to the codes in the post, but you need to change the format slightly. If you dont know how to do this then you do not need to be trying anything mentioned in this post.

And as always i am not responsible for any damage this may cause you. But the consensus is that the ondemand scaling function is pretty harmless to your phone. Freezes are fixed by unplugging you battery. If you want to be extra careful then just run these codes without making a script. That way when you reboot everything goes back to defaults from palm for the cpu.

If anyone can get powersave_bias stable let me know what you did. I was using trans_table in the /cpufreq/stats folder and also time_in_state within the same folder. Another usefull tool is cpuinfo_cur_freq within the /cpufreq folder. Also use top command to monitor your cpu utilization, this command can be executed anywhere within linux.

I have decided to include some code that will help anyone if they decide to do their own testing of cpu scaling and power save bias. Here is the code I use for testing:

current speed
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq
time in different frequencies
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/time_in_state
number of switches between power states
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/trans_table
current sampling rate
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate
current up threshold
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
current power save bias
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/powersave_bias
current max freq
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
current min freq
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq

turn off power save bias
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/powersave_bias

overclocking
echo 550000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 600000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 1500000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate

good luck

-L337Tech