Dave’s Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

Recently, I wrote about Creative Labs going after a certain community software modder whose sin was to make his audio drivers work the way they’re supposed to work. Here’s an excerpt of what he had to say about it:

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It all started when Creative released the first beta of ALchemy for X-Fi cards, saying it used X-Fi’s advanced capabilities (EAX5). After some investigation, I’ve found an EAX5.0 check and patched it… and it worked! Sometime later, they released the final version of ALchemy X-Fi and the paid version of ALchemy Audigy.

 

I was really mad at them, they didn’t release a new Audigy driver and were charging Audigy owners for a software that runs on top of bugged drivers? What is the point of that? Then I modified the X-Fi “free” version of ALchemy, not the paid version. I did the same with the later versions, but when they released the 1.00.11, I couldn’t patch it anymore. So I bought it, just for the sake of it.

 

Well, I did manage to patch the latest version of ALchemy X-Fi to run on any card, without even removing Safecast, but I’m done with that.

 

[...]

 

Modding is OK

 

I don’t think there was something wrong with mods themselves. Modding is a common practice among enthusiasts and I don’t recall some company threatening a modder, unless you allow an exclusive feature to be used with competitor products (ie: SLI on non-NVIDIA chipsers or ALchemy on competitor products, as I’ve said before).  Remember the Promise Ultra to Fasttrak mod? It was even published on a well known review site. There was also the GeForce to Quadro mod, the NVIDIA nForce 4 to SLI mod, also published on review sites.

 

What I did wrong

 

I’ve asked for donations. Do I really need the money? No, thank God I don’t. I thought it would be ok to ask for donations so I could buy new hardware to support. I did buy some hardware: an used Live! 5.1 for ~$15 and a new Audigy SE for $60. Computer hardware is really expensive here in Brazil. An X-Fi Xtreme Gamer costs about $240 here, with taxes and shipping, The same card can be bought for ~$80 in the US. I just can’t spend my money buying new hardware that I won’t even use. Even the features I’ve enabled, I don’t use.

 

Later I tried to encourage donations to release the DDL feature for X-Fi and Crystalizer for Audigy. I said something like “the more people donate, the faster I’ll release”. This was even worse, but I was so eager to modding that I didn’t think straight. I was hoping to get a X-Fi asap. While I did ask for donations, once released, the downloads would be public. I do recognize that I deserve some criticism for that. To date, I’ve got $146, with amounts ranging from $1 to $50 (this value is still uncleared).

 

Reversing ALchemy was also wrong, I know. But I reiterate, what is the point of improving ALchemy and charging for it, when it requires an improved driver? It was my protest against Creative.

 

What Creative did wrong

 

- They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance. If they had contacted me by e-mail or private message I would do the same thing (remove everything) and no one would know about their insatisfaction.

- Removed everything I posted in the forums, even if unrelated to the “forbidden” stuff.
If they can’t provide better drivers, let people make their own choice.

- They did not recognize my hard work.

I’ve been supporting about every Creative PCI soundcard, would even support USB devices if I had one of them.  To date, the Audigy Vista Support Pack was downloaded about 20,000 times.

 

The current situation

 

DDL encoder and Crystalizer were not publicly released. I’ve deleted the P17 to Xtreme Audio mod and ALchemy from FileFront (where I store the files). I’ve been told they will allow me to continue with my mods, except the “forbidden” ones. I’m also allowed to receive donations.

 

Download of my mods
http://hosted.filefront.com/braziliantech/

A client of mine recently wiped his computer clean when they accidentally initiated a destructive recovery via the F10 key during POST. This caused their hard drive to be formated and their OS to be reinstalled as it was when it was originally installed at the factory. The lost files on the system were not recoverable, and the only alternative would be to have an advanced data forensics lab extract the old data off, the cost of which could go up as high as a couple thousand dollars.

There are some simple things you should get in the habit of doing if you want to decrease your odds of facing such a horrid situation as the one above:

Unplug your PC when there is lightning outside

I shouldn’t have to tell people this, but some of you uber-nerds out there think that the bigger their basement-computer-bedroom-cave-hermit dwelling is, the more invincible they are. It’s not a matter of probability of being struck, but probability of surviving a lightning strike unscathed. Like the Black Knight from Monty Python.

Don’t let the price tag on that expensive Uninterrupted Power Supply fool you. Its purpose isn’t to safe-guard you from a lightning strike, but to sustain power to your PC in the event of an unexpected outage and to compensate for brownouts and power spikes. Lightning can still penetrate it and make its way to your computer. Once there, it’s up in the air how much damage it might inflict, and hard to diagnose the extent of damage after the fact. Every time I’ve seen a system that’s been hit by lightning, I’ve ended up having to tell people to buy a new computer, because so many parts were damaged in a split second.

Do what most people do during severe weather: Watch TV till the power goes out, grab a radio and flash light, salvage the remaining beer from the unpowered refrigerator, and hope for the best when you regain consciousness in the morning. Or whatever floats your boat.  If you have an Internet addiction like I do, use a wireless device like a laptop or a cell phone to get your info fix.

Backup to an external storage device

Here’s what I’ve got pictured above from left to right:

• An external USB hard drive. Advantages: Cheap for price per megabyte, easy to setup and use. Disadvantages: Subject to failure from old age after several years of use (see your warranty), and sometimes bulky (depends on how cheap you are).
• A USB Flash Drive. Advantages: Small, handy, convenient, instant plug-and-play capable (usually). Disadvantages: Must be replaced after about 250 uses, easy to misplace and lose (get a nice 4 dollar lanyard like I did). Costly if you have lots of data to backup.
• A cell phone with a MicroSD card. Same as the USB flash drive, but slower. The advantage is that it’s in your phone, and you probably aren’t as likely to misplace that thing.
• Network Attached Storage. Network attached storage is basically a “computer-less” hard drive that attaches to your local network (router) and shares hard drive space to other computers on the network. Advantage: Highest fault tolerance (there are multiple copies of files spread across hard drives, so if one drive fails, the file is not lost). Disadvantage: Expensive.

You can also backup data to external CD’s or DVD’s and keep them in a dark place. Doing so will keep your data safe for a long time. But it’s good to shed old storage media after several years of data sitting on them and move data to a fresher medium that is less likely to suddenly flake out unexpectedly.

You can also use software to automate backing data up. A good one is Amanda Open Source Backup. I’ll write more about it sometime in the future. But for now, you should consider using one of the external devices above and practice good habits to protect your computer and your documents from being lost.