USB

All posts tagged USB

Custom Built Fight Stick – Fin

Posted by Andrew Burch on October 4, 2012
Posted in: PS3 / X360 Fight Stick. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Almost 6 months ago, I put a 90% complete fight stick project aside to continue work on a Donkey Kong cocktail cabinet with the intention of finishing it off a few weeks later. Today, I finally put the final touches into the fight stick and can now consider the project complete 🙂

A few nights back I decided to get the project finished. First up was making sure the fight stick itself could be recognised by a PC and PS3. This failed to work. The closest I could get was a windows error saying the USB device failed to load. After some testing and investigation, it looked like the USB connector on the Dual Strike PCB was to blame. A closer look at the USB (Type B) port showed one of the internal pins had been squashed back, ensuring a bad connection. Looks like at some point the port had something lean against it, and cause the pin to come lose. I got out the soldering iron and took it off the board. It probably isn’t clear in the image below, but the top right pin (inside the port) has been lifted up and is completely loose.

A replacement part was found at Jaycar for only $3. I added it to the board, connected up the PCB to the PC and success.
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Installing Backtrack 5 via USB to a netbook

Posted by Andrew Burch on May 21, 2012
Posted in: Misc. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

I carry a small 10″ netbook around with me a lot and wanted to have Backtrack installed. The netbook runs Windows 7 starter – which I want to keep, and the plan is to have Backtrack 5 R2 running also (so a dual boot).

The netbook doesn’t have a CD drive, so installation for Backtrack will have to be done via USB. The netbook does allow for USB booting (very standard these days), so getting it installed should not be an issue.

Following the installation guide from the Backtrack site (http://www.backtrack-linux.org/tutorials/usb-live-install/), I located a 4GB USb stick, downloaded Unetbootin and followed the prompts before rebooting to run the install.

No go.

Each time the laptop would boot to nothing more than a blank screen with a flashing cursor. Keyboard entry did nothing, and leaving it sit for an hour also got nowhere. I tried a few more times, and did notice a linux boot message of sorts appear for half a second (before the blank screen), but otherwise – nothing.

I tried the USB boot on two other machines (thinking maybe it was an issue with the laptop), and had the same issue.

I did some more research and found some comments (found here) from users referencing a tool called “Universal USB Installer”.

Downloaded the tool, ran and had the ISO “burned” to the USB stick and rebooted. WORKED! First time.

You can find the download available here: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

For anyone having issues getting Backtrack (or perhaps any Linux flavor) to install via USB, I’d recommend giving Universal USB Installer a go.