Fortysomething Geek

Anandtech first reported that the new 2012 Ivy Bridge Macbook Pros support the USB 3.0 Attached SCSI protocol (aka UASP). I decided to test it for a spin and try it out for myself.

You can think of UASP as a supercharged version of USB 3.0. Faster and better bang for the buck (lower CPU utilization).

UASP promises faster transfer speed with SCSI like protocol, eliminating the previous BOT (Bulk-Only Transport) method of USB transfer. Prior, USB was notoriously known for sucking up CPU resources during copies. There is quite a bit overhead with BOT and UASP solves this. In short, USB 3.0 devices with UASP are faster than regular, traditional BOT USB 3.0 implementations.

You need a host and a device that both support the protocol to realize any benefits of UASP.

The only USB3 - SATA dock that I know of that supports UASP is the Thermaltake Blac X 5G which I have in my possession. The dock requires a firmware upgrade to unlock the UASP features.
It is a rather nice dock that is similar to the Voyager Q but only supports USB. You can use 2.5 and 3.5" drives. It also comes with some handy drive covers to keep it clean and tidy looking.

I previously used quad interface (firewire400/800/esata/usb) NewerTech Voyager Q but I had so many problems that I switched to the Blac X. The Blac X doesn't get much notice in the Mac community and the Voyager Q's popularity is due to the fact OWC sells it as their main SATA dock.

For mid 2012 Macbook Air/Pro/Retina owners, it is now time to look at the Blac X.



My initial impression of the Blac X wasn't that favorable due to the fact it perform rather so-so under Lion (OSX 10.7). It was not giving me the speed improvement compared to using a Seagate USB3.0 to Sata Go-Flex adapter. In fact, I was ready to return it until Mountain Lion was released.

Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8) changed all that. I don't have a reasonable explanation but it is definitely faster. Possibly, Apple had more resources to optimize their USB 3.0 drivers for Mountain Lion rather than concentrating on Lion. Whatever the reasons, the Blac X 5G's performance under 10.8 is very good.

First, compared to other docks and SATA interfaces I've used, CPU utilization running test and large copies were under 5% versus 7-10% on others. Could this be UASP at work?

My tests consisted of using a Crucial M4 Sata 6 SSD. I tried formatting HFS+, exFAT and FAT32.

My initial tests under Lion was a bit of a disappointment as seen below. 135.5 MB/s reads from a SSD.



With a Go-Flex adapter, I had better performance under Lion


With a 5400 rpm Toshiba Drive (the one that came with my Macbook) and the Blac X perfomed like any other dock. This may be due to the bottleneck of the 5400rpm drive because the using a Go-Flex adapter gave me similar results.


For platter drives, as I mentioned in my other posts, USB 3 and Firewire 800 are pretty close. It is only with SSDs you see the major benefits of USB 3.

With Mountain Lion now officially released, I decided to do the tests again.

Here it is with the Crucial M4 again. As you can see, it is a big improvement. 268.2 MB/s reads and 179 MB/s writes via USB 3. The Blac X 5G is definitely now worth the investment.




Compared to the Go-Flex,there is little change between Lion and Mountain Lion. As you can see the, the Blac X is definitely much faster now under Mountain Lion.


There you have it. Mountain Lion brings in some new speed optimizations for Macs with USB 3.0.

Update 2012年10月07日.

It seems 10.8.2, it is even faster. Read my update with video here:

http://fortysomethinggeek.blogspot.com/2012/10/blacx-5g-usb-30-update-fastest-usb-30.html

This is a simple guide for those Thinkpad T/W owners with expresscard slots hoping to use USB 3.0 in Ubuntu 12.04.


I wanted to add USB 3.0 to my Thinkpad T420 so I decided to pick up a cheap 34mm NEC controller based expresscard USB3.0 adapter on Amazon.



The NEC based USB controllers have been supported by the Linux kernel since version 2.6.31. However, in Ubuntu 12.04, it isn't quite a plug and play affair. I had to run the following command to get my laptop to recognize the PCI expresscard.

 sudo modprobe acpiphp 

Once you do that, you can check to see if the system sees the device by typing in:

 lspci | grep USB 

Once you see the NEC USB 3.0 controller, you are pretty much good to go. You will need to do this after every reboot unless you modify your GRUB boot loader. Also, I had to disconnect and re-connect a few times before my laptop could see the card.

Next, there is the issue of power. Some portable USB 3.0 devices need power and the particular adapter I have uses a USB pass through cable to connect to a free USB port. Unfortunately, this was a trial-an-error. Certain ports of my laptop did not generate enough power for a 2.5" HDD drive. The only one that worked for me was the lower esata/usb combo port. Furthermore, there is one thing that these expresscard manufacture fails to mention is that you only have enough juice to power one USB 3.0 device. USB 2.0 will only have about 5 volts worth of power so it make sense that only one port will be powered.

Now for some speed benchmarks. The expresscard USB adapter did make a difference.
As you can see below, with a Seagate Go Flex, I got almost twice the read speed using USB 3.0


USB 3.0 w/ 1TB Seagate Go Flex HDD 5400 rpm portable drive. The results are acceptable considering the source is a platter hard drive.




I also wanted to test it with an SSD and I got some decent results.

USB 3.0 w/ 128GB Crucial M4 SSD. These results are almost as a good as plugging a drive to the eSATA port.



I did not test the card in Windows so I can't comment on the Windows performance. However, if you are an Thinkpad Linux user, I strongly suggest getting an expresscard USB 3.0 adapter for your older rig. It is well worth the investment.

With a simple adapter and bluetooth, you can convert a Samsung Galaxy Nexus into a full desktop computer.


You will need a micro USB to MH/HDMI adapter, a HDMI compatible monitor, and a set of bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse. I use the Apple keyboard and bluetooth mouse.


This will basically mirror everything you see on the phone to the monitor. If you don't have an HDMI monitor, you can use a HDMI to DVI adapter like the one I use on this 24" Samsung.



The screen res will be what is on the phone, 1280x720. Some apps don't work quite right due to the fact they require or shift from landscape to portrait mode. For example, pulling up Netflix's movie browser looks like this:




Overall, it is a silly demo to show off your friends and colleagues. Running ICS on a large monitor is not really that intuitive when you consider the oversized icons and UI elements designed for a 4.65" phone. The phone should have outputted a 1920x1080 display which would have been my preference.
Now, if this could dual boot into something like Ubuntu, then I can see the value of it. The original Atrix and their webtop was a very promising idea in 2011. Since, it the concept and execution has sort of fizzled into obscurity.

One last note, the MHL adapter requires power. You will need to use the existing micro-usb power adapter to power it. This sorts of kills the whole idea of using the Galaxy Nexus as a portable presentation machine. In comparison, the iPhone 4S and iPad 2/3 can be docked with a 30pin-HDMI adapter and run on battery alone.






LINK for MHL adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Menotek-Adapter-IMPROVED-Protocol-Sensation/dp/B005F9W6DU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1342718283&sr=8-3&keywords=MHL+adapter+nexus

This post may be 4 years too late. MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) and UMPC (Ultra Mobile Portable Computers) have been overtaken by new, lightweight tablets like the iPad. In 2008, this particular model went for a pricey 420ドル euros or roughly 450ドル US.


Retailers have recently unloaded some N-O-S (new old stock) inventory of the Benq S6 (BenQ has since gone belly up) at an amazing price of 60ドル shipped. They had this in cold storage somewhere for over four years!

So what is so special about this device? Well, long before the iPad, this was one of those few UMPC devices to sport a full x86 processor. It was incredibly small compared to its contemporaries. In theory, you can install any x86 OS that is supported by the hardware such as GNU/Linux or Windows 98.

It runs a 800mhz Atom CPU and an Intel GMA 500 GPU. It also sports a 3G WLAN modem and sports some of the accouterments such as USB and microsd. Unfortunately, it has an anemic 2GB of SSD storage and 512MB of RAM. Later models came with 8GB of disk storage to accomodate Windows XP. This particular model originally came with Red Flag Linux.

So I bit the bullet and took a gamble. Worst case scenario, I figure I could MacGyver jerry-rig this device into something like a MAME console, in-car 3G wifi hotspot, personal firewall,etc.

I am currently backing up the drive image and I'm going to take a crack at seeing what I can do with it.

There is a renewed interest in the device so I'll post some detail pictures for those interested.

Here are some size comparison. It has a 4.8" screen 800x480 resolution vs a Galaxy Nexus 4.65" 1280x720 screen. Physically, the have the similar viewable area. I was cloning the drive with Clonezilla when I took these photos.


Here it is compared to a 7" Galaxy Tab 2.



This is the default OS running Red Flag Linux. It has some basic Office apps, MP3 music player, video, photo viewer, Pidgin messaging and a midori like browser. There is about 400MB free but you do have the option of adding micro-sd cards and USB storage. As you can see, this device has some Italian carrier branding. I assume this was one of those devices subsidized by the telco carrier.





I wanted to see if I could upgrade the internals so I opened it up.

Here are the internals. From top-left: sd-card reader on riser daughter card. Next to it is the copper colored heatsink fan. Then the middle PCB may be the flash storage. It is marked PLOTECH E169497. I will investigate further and check the ZIF ribbon connectors. The module with the black cover on the top right is a removable HSDPA modem pcie card. Then you have the battery cavity. The panel, based on its markings, is a LG panel.


Top view shows the heat sink's opening and vents for airflow.


There is something underneath the motherboard inside a heat shield. The top riser is the WLAN antenna daughter card. I will investigate further.


As I wrote earlier, this post is about 4 years late. You will be better served with the thinner, sleeker, lowe powered ARM tablets/phablets/phone devices that can play 1080p video with hours and hours of run-time. This is a gadget for those who like to tinker. There are a few people who have installed a slimmed down XP running on the 2GB drive.

Should you buy one? The forty something geek in me says no unless you are a die-hard tinkerer.

Here is a Youtube video of it in action.

With some accessories, the 7" Galaxy Tab 2.0 can be turned into a productive desktop workstation.
Docked in an Arkon fold-up stand and connected to a Graybean USB OTG hub, the Tab 2 can be propped up with extended storage and input I/O.

The Graybean OTG USB hub supports 3 USB inputs and various sd/tf/mmc cards. I already have other OTG cables but I like the fact this sport several USB ports.

Here, I attached the Tab to a USB docked 2TB SATA drive, various USB sticks, USB keyboard and mouse.

A few notes on this setup:

A power adapter does not come with the hub yet it has a port for external power. You can't even power a keyboard or mouse without external power. I don't know if this an oversight or missing items from my order. Luckily, I had a spare power adapter on hand that worked with this hub.

Next, you can't have more than 3 USB drives connected. I've tried and it will randomly unmount drives until it has two available. The hub's sd card reader will override the internal micro-sd card. This is with a stock non-rooted device. Rooted, you can probably mount more devices.



Everything else works since Android's ICS supports USB HID and storage device. The mouse and keyboard works great. I noticed that many applications do not work as well as their desktop counterpart. For example, in Chrome, you can't right click and open a link in a new tab nor can you create a tab with a keyboard. Scrolling is reverse (aka natural scroll) similar to what you would find in OSX Lion. If you move the mouse down, the page scroll ups. Furthermore, I can't seem to disable the on-screen soft keyboard. It gets annoying whenever I reach an text input area and the soft key pops up.

So far, I use the Tab to type up simple Word compatible .docx notes and use connectbot to turn the Tab 2 into a SSH terminal. I tried a few RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) apps but the 7" screen is too small to make it useable even with a mouse and keyboard.


I am using an Arkon stand and I think it is amazing piece of accessory for 8ドル. It is compact, folds up easily, and works with 7" and 10" tablets like the iPad. A few people I know who have seen the Arkon stand rushed out and ordered ones for themselves. I seem to prefer using it over propping up the Tab 2 with a folio case.



Overall, this new setup has renewed my interests with the Tab 2. I prefer the 10" Tablet size and I'm constantly trying to justify the 7" form factor. This now keeps my interest on the Tab 2 from waning.



LINKS:
Arkon Fold-up tablet stand at Amazon
Graybean USB OTG Hub at Amazon

On June 6, 2012, Google announced Offline Maps for Android devices. Wow, this sounds great until you actually use it. Like many people, I had the expectations I could ditch my Navigon and Co-Pilot satnav apps on my 7" Galaxy Tab 2. For those expecting to get a free satnav solution for the Asus Nexus 7 device will be in for a big surprise as well.



How it works? You can store offline maps by selecting a coverage area.


For actual usage, it only works as a pre-cache or a backup data source for your navigation route. If you have a route/navigation set, you can use it as a cache in the likely chance you may encounter dropped data connections while travelling. In theory, this works fine if you have a data connection like I do on my Galaxy Nexus.

If you use it on a WiFi only device like the Galaxy Tab 2 or Nexus 7, you will need to make your route beforehand while you are in the vicinity of a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Now for my complaints. It shouldn't be called offline maps. Rather, it should be billed as a backup cache for your navigation. Sure, you can scroll around the map but thats it. You can't do much else.

You can't find POIs (Points of Interests like your local supermarket/ATMs) while offline. You can't make new routes while offline. In fact, you can't even enter in an address offline. You can't even drop a point on the map and expect it to route to it. In essence, this is a useless gimmicky feature for wifi only devices.







If you have a phone or 3g/4g tablet, is it still worth it to use? It depends. The base map is only covers a small area so routing a trip from say San Francisco to Los Angeles won't be supported in offline maps. Forget about over-seas usage unless you have data connectivity abroad to initiate a route. The largest size you can cache offline is about 70-80MB which covers a few counties in a major metropolitan area. What about dropped connections? The likelihood of this ever happening in the San Francisco Bay Area is close to zero. You may some some pennies by having the phone access the offline the maps instead of draining your monthly 3g/4g data allotment.

In short, companies like Tom Tom, Garmin, and others have little to worry about Google's offline maps. In short, Google simply increased the cache size to 70-80MB, Before June 6th, you could already pre-cached your route to a 10 mile radius.

When people speak of virtualization on the iPad, they are referring to a remote desktop session to a hypervisor. In short, an iPad remote desktops into a host computer running the virtualize operating system. You can't quite yet use an iPad as an x86 host hypervisor.

Today, I am going to review Parallels 7 Mobile Access. Parallels 7 is a popular Virtualization application for Mac OSX. The mobile client has been billed as "retina" ready so I decided to take it for a spin.

Why not VirtualBox? I'm a big fan of VirtualBox (VB). I use it on all my computers and I like the fact I can move VMs across platforms. I use VB for testing all my console OS (server builds). However, for rich GUI driven OSes, Parallels is much faster, has better Mac OS integration, and a better user experience. Most notably, it has an excellent mobile client.

In some hypervisors like VirtualBox, you can set up an RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) port and use an RDP client on the iPad to access to virtual machine. The screenshot below shows how one can set up and configure RDP access in VirtualBox. The only problem with this method is that you must be on the same subnet as the VM host; meaning you must be in the same network. Furthermore, your experience will be totally dependent on whatever RDP client you are using. Some of the RDP apps are hit-or-miss on the App store.





Parallels Mobile Access's major key features are tunnelled access and Retina display support. Those may be two compelling reasons to choose Parallels over something like VirtualBox.

The Main menu allows you to instantly access your available VMs.



With a simple signon to Parallel's centralize servers, you can access your VM hypervisor from anywhere. Even behind firewalls, there is a secured tunnelled access (akin to reverse NAT) to your Macintosh from your iPad. Another key unique feature is the ability to start and close VMs. Compared to VirtualBox, you can remotely boot up your VM. VirtualBox can be setup using a 3rd party web based client or you can remotely start up VM from an SSH session but that is a different topic for a different day. In short, Parallels makes it easy to start and stop VM.


Parallels Mobile Access has a good set of multi-touch gestures for things like enabling the soft keyboard, right-click, double click and hiding the touch menus. Overall it works good except with a high res display, you really need to be patient and zoom-in when you deal with vertical scrollbars such as those on web browsers.




In Parallel's Modality or Window mode, you can run the VM's resolution independent of the host computer. What this means is you can pump up the resolution to as high as you want on the iPad.You can run at 1920x1200, 1680x1050 and as high as WQHD (2536x1440). With the iPad's retina screen, you can rub 2536x1440 with amazing clarity. The scaled screenshot below cannot convey the breathtaking clarity and sharpness. Running Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon, the VM display is absolutely gorgeous. Typeface, window transparencies, icons, and graphics are super sharp on the iPad 3's 9.7" HiDPi screen.


Look at the real estate available on a 2536x1440 workspace!


If you are on the same wifi network, you can pair a keyboard to an iPad 3 and have an excellent super-sharp high res mobile desktop experience.

There are many great uses on why one would use an iPad as a hypervisor client. I recently bought some old Macromedia based DVD interactive Disney learning games for my son. I failed to read the box requirement and notice it supports Windows 95-98 and Mac OS9. Running on a live Window 7's laptop is horribly painful because most modern computers are not good at scaling to 256-colors at 800x600 resolution. On a 15" HP laptop,my son's Disney program takes up 1/4 of the screen and the rest is filled in black. Furthermore, children now are used to point-n-click touch screen tablets. He has a hard time accidentally right-clicking a mouse which often closes/quits his application. For those old apps that run horribly on new hardware, a Virtualize Win98 is the way to go. The iPad helps revitalize and access the old applications.