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Hamsphere: Virtual Ham Radio transceiver on your PC

Hamsphere simulates a full blown virtual Ham radio transceiver on you system. It can be operated by licensed and unlicensed DX’ers for free. If you are not having Amateur radio license, they will issue you a “call sign” while registering.

What is so great about this Ham Radio Software Transceiver?

No extra hardware needed, just your PC, a microphone, speakers and you are ready to call CQ on the virtual Ham Radio bands.

You can feel audio on Hamsphere with simulations of occasional band noise and fading, as in a real radio transceiver. The user interface looks like a real HF transceiver

If you are interested in becoming an Amateur radio operator, here is the opportunity to practice it without buying costly amateur radio gear.
Forget about building complex antennas, raising it on high mast, antenna tuners etc. All you need is an Internet connection and Java support.
Voice (SSB) and CW (Morse code) are allowed on most bands. On the lower bands we can turn on/off(noise-free) the simulation.

Digital modes were prohibited on HamSphere earlier, but are now supported on the 30m band. RRTY, PSK31, SSTV etc can be used.

Pre-requisite: Download JAVA

Download Hamsphere (Windows, Mac and Linux )

For more updates @Hampshere

DmiDecode for Windows

The MS-Windows port of the popular Linux tool can be used in Command Line Interface (CLI) of Windows (XP onwards).

Dmidecode reports information about your system's hardware as described in your system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI standard.

Download DmiDecode

Install it, then you have to set the path

open a command line window and type

path=C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\sbin

if it is installed in C:\Program Files\

Three additional tools come with dmidecode:

biosdecode prints all BIOS related information it can find.
ownership retrieves the "ownership tag" that can be set on Compaq computers;
vpddecode prints the "vital product data" information that can be found in almost all IBM computers

Now you can execute commands

dmidecode –t x

where x can be

0 – BIOS

1 – System

2 – Base Board

3 – Chassis

4 – Processor

5 – Memory Controller

6 – Memory Module

7 – Cache

8 – Port Connector

9 – System Slots

10 – OnBoard Devices

11 – OEMStrings

12 – SystemConfiguration Options

Using the Recovery Console in XP

If you cannot boot into safe mode you can try using the Recovery Console in Windows XP. This requires you to have a Windows XP CD. Knowledge Base Article 307654 has directions on how to use it. You do not need to follow the instructions for how to install it. In fact, if you have a problem like the 0×00000024 issue above, you probably can not boot from an installed recovery console anyway.

In brief, to boot from the recovery console in XP, do this:

1. Insert your Windows XP CD
2. Boot the computer
3. Select to boot from the CD. On many computers you have to hit a button to do that. On Dell computers the button is usually F12. On HP it is usually ESC.
4. The computer will work for a while and eventually you get a screen that says “Welcome to Setup”. Hit the R key here
5. If will ask you which installation you want to boot. If you have several XP installations on this computer, select the one you want. Of course, if you have several installations, and one still works, you would not need these steps.
6. Type the administrator password for the installation you need to repair.

At this point, you should be at a command prompt. The commands you can run are very limited and they are often different from what you are used to. If you have disabled the intelppm driver on an Intel-based computer and need to re-enable it, run “enable intelppm SERVICE_SYSTEM_START”.

If you need to run chkdsk you can do it from the recovery console window as well. The C: drive is the boot volume in your Windows XP installation. To run the full check run “chkdsk c: /p /r”

Removing the problem of System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can’t access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn’t work for me. Here’s what you do:

1. Click on Start / Run, type ‘msconfig’, then click ‘OK’.
2. Go to the ‘Services’ tab, find the’ Background Intelligent Transfer ‘service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

This problem with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service should have been corrected in Windows update Q 314862, part of Service Pack 1.

Remove Annoying Delete Confirmation Messages – Windows XP

Although not strictly a performance tweak I love this fix as it makes my machine ‘feel’ faster. I hate the annoying ‘are you sure?’ messages that XP displays, especially if I have to use a laptop touchpad to close them. To remove these messages:

1. Right-click on the ‘Recycle Bin’ on the desktop and then click ‘Properties’ 2. Clear the ‘Display Delete Confirmation Dialog’ check box and click ‘Ok’If you do accidently delete a file don’t worry as all is not lost. Just go to your Recycle Bin and ‘Restore’ the file.

Disable Prefetch on Low Memory Systems – Windows XP

Prefetch is designed to speed up program launching by preloading programs into memory – not a good idea is memory is in short supply, as it can make programs hang. To disable prefetch:

1. Click ‘Start’ then ‘Run’ 2. Type in ‘Regedit’ then click ‘Ok’ 3. Navigate to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters’ 4. Right-click on “EnablePrefetcher” and set the value to ‘0? 5. Reboot.

Add Correct Network Card Settings in Windows XP

Some machines suffer from jerky graphics or high CPU usage even when a machine is idle. A possible solution for this, which, can also can help network performance is to:

Ensure XP Is Using DMA Mode for Faster Performance

XP enables DMA for Hard-Drives and CD-Roms by default on most ATA or ATAPI (IDE) devices. However, sometimes computers switch to PIO mode which is slower for data transfer – a typical reason is because of a virus. To ensure that your machine is using DMA: