A tale of 3 Naxa radios

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Kevin

This is confusing. I bought what was described as a Naxa NX-716 radio on eBay. I paid $9.98 for it, including shipping. I bought this “cheap” radio because it looked cool. Here’s the picture from the auction:

image

I didn’t pay much attention to the radio when it arrived, except to note that it worked. However, when I tried it on the AM band, there was a problem because the step was 9 KHz rather than 10 KHz, the USA standard. To see if there was a way to change the step, I checked on the Internet. However, when I searched, I used the model number on the radio itself, which is NR-716 (rather than NX). That led me to the radio for sale at Amazon.com, with this picture:

image

Now you can see right off that the two radios are different. So at first one might think the eBay seller just sent me the wrong radio. But the problem with that is that my radio doesn’t look like either of these two! Mine looks like this:

image

Notice that mine has 4 buttons on the right side rather than two knobs (the color is off in my photo due to lighting).

So I went to the Naxa web site and got the product manual for the NR-716 and it was for the for second model pictured above, not mine. I have my own product manual that came with the radio that says NR-716 and matches my unit. Naxa doesn’t list a NX-716 at all.

So I have a Naxa radio that says it is a NR-716, manufactured in June 2011. It’s different from the radio pictured at Amazon.com that’s called a NR-716. Ebay sellers list two differently pictured NX-716 units (top two photos above). I have yet to find one that looks like mine and I still don’t know how to set the step.

What’s cool is that I got a digitally-tuned radio for under $10.

Posted in Radio, Technology | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Degen DE 15 vs. Grundig Mini 300PE

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Kevin

Two budget mini radios go head to head

I collect inexpensive portable radios, mostly for their visual design. A couple arrived today that I might actually use rather than just put on display. One is the Degen DE15 FM Stereo · MW · SW · FML DSP World Receiver and the Eton/Grundig Mini300PE AM/FM Shortwave Radio.

Both radios cover AM, FM and Shortwave bands, have internal speakers and clocks with alarm. Both come with a carrying case, integrated antenna and ear buds. Both fit in a shirt pocket, although the thicker Grundig makes quite a bulge.

Degen DE 15

What impressed me right off the bat was the bright, and I mean bright, green display. You can see this thing! The DE 15 is a digital radio, meaning that the tuning is digital – no tuning dial. In addition to up/down tuning buttons, you can also scan for a signal and set up memory pre-sets. Volume is set digitally too.

Continue reading →
Posted in Product Reviews, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Replacing 2007 Prius hatch opening switch

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Kevin

I am one of the many victims of the defective Prius 2007 hatch opening switch. After 4 years the rubber cover turned to tar. I bought a new switch assembly and thought I’d change it myself.

These instruction at the PriusChat forum help enormously! The disassembly is not difficult if you know what to disassemble!

Double check for yourself, but the part number 84840-47020 is for the 2007 Prius without Smart Entry (the little rubber buttons to lock the door) and 84905-47010 with smart entry. They sold me the wrong switch, the one without smart entry. However, I understand the right one is about $40 more and I should be able to use part of the old assembly with the new assembly to make one that works and not pay the extra bucks.

I will do this!

Posted in Bad Commerce, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

Msi Installer errors on CISCO VPN under Windows 7

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Kevin

Did you see this?

Error 2738:  Could not access VBScript runtime for custom action

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably pulling your hair out because other solutions don’t work.

The  problem is with installation procedures that rely on VBScript, or rely on it in special ways. So here are some solutions:

  1. Some programs won’t use VBScript if you do a “passive install.” If your install is named blah.msi, just type “blah.msi /passive” at a cmd prompt, and it will install with all defaults.
  2. Under Windows Vista and Windows 7, the vbscript.dll may not be registered. Here you need an elevated command prompt (select cmd.exe and RUN AS Administrator) and then enter regsvr32 vbscript.dll from the \windows\system32 directory (for 32 bit) or \windows\syswow64 directory for (64) bit.
  3. Oh, did I mention disabling antivirus software?
  4. You might need to delete the registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11CF-A4B0-00AA004A55E8} on a 32-bit machine or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11CF-A4B0-00AA004A55E8} on a 64-bit machine and then try step 2 again.
  5. But if you’re reading this, you probably already did all that stuff and it didn’t work. What I found out is that when I uninstalled McAfee Antivirus and put in Windows Defender, the McAfee uninstall left a nasty little registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11CF-A4B0-00AA004A55E8} under the InProcess32 registry key that redirected VBScript away from vbscript.dll to a McAfee dll called scriptsn.dll (which doesn’t exist any more after you uninstall McAfee). So what I did was to copy the appropriate vbscript.dll to the directory indicated by the registry key, and rename it scriptsn.dll. Then my install worked fine.
  6. Instead of copying the file, you COULD change the owner of the registry key {B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}, and then grant yourself permission to change it, and then type in the path for the real vbscript.dll (either 32 or 64 bit).

See also:

  • CISCO VPN installation errors under Windows 7
  • Installation success or error status: 1603.
  • Registry key {B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}
Posted in General | 12 Comments

iPhone OS 4 upgrade

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Kevin

I upgraded my iPhone 3 GS to OS 4. Not as smooth as I had hoped.

First, the backup took 14 hours and 30 minutes. Then after the upgrade the phone was no longer recognized by Windows. I ended up having to uninstall iTunes and all it’s pieces, and reinstall. Then the phone synched.

About the only thing I notice different is that there’s wallpaper under the AP buttons. Oh, and all my ring tones went away, and my blue tooth connections.

Posted in Technology | Leave a comment

WordPress 3.0 Upgrade Warning

Posted on June 19, 2010 by Kevin

WARNING: Manually disable all your plug-ins before attempting the automatic upgrade to WordPress 3.0.

Otherwise your blog will die painfully. If it’s too late, do a manual upgrade install (copy all the files via FTP) and then do an automatic re-install to clear any error messages. You may have to delete a file called .maintenance to get access to your blog after a failed install.

Been there, done that.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

SQL Server TSQL Bulk Insert very slow

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Kevin

I was trying to use the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 BULK INSERT to load about 2.2 million records in a table and it was taking FOREVER . I’m used to bulk inserts flying.

I looked into the details and found out that the table had 15 indexes, so I dropped all of those indexes except the single clustered primary key. It still took FOREVER (2 hours) and it looked like the longer it ran the SLOWER it got.

Then I thought for a minute about what it was doing, trying to cluster that data. Every batch of 10,000 records had to be smushed into where other records used to be. So I sorted the input in primary key order and now it takes 5 minutes.

Live and learn

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