Forced Change to Crap

Well, Microsoft learned one thing from the whole forced Windows 10 upgrade fiasco. If users don’t want to use your product because it lacks functionality, just force the upgrade on them as often as possible. Although with Skype they had opportunity to go further - just intentionally brick the old version short time in the future.

Yes, Skype Classic is going the way of the dodo. Is the new Skype good at least?

Well, the most notable change is the removal of a split (multi-window) mode. This makes is impossible to track two conversations without a load of clicking back and forth. Of course, Copy/Paste from the far history in one conversation will result in loads of scrolling since Skype will always jump to the last message as you switch.

And of course, just in case that hasn’t caused too much trouble, they had to be sure docking it to the display’s edge (so it doesn’t use too much space) also makes it unusable unless you are actively monitoring messages. You see, if you get into discussion when window is too small, any message that comes will be only indicated by tiny counter in title bar. And yes, of course they would remove advanced filtering, why not?

To ensure you feel as uncomfortable as possible, Escape key is no longer supported. It used to be possible to close window using a single key - no more - now you get to use Alt+F4. Just be careful which window is selected because, unlike every other tray icon since the dawn of time, double-clicking on Skype in the system tray actually deselects its window. But that is not a major issue since using keyboard to navigate is exercise in futility anyhow.

And there are multiple smaller issues too. For example, not following the system settings for time. Regardless of me using 24h time format (H:mm) in Windows, Skype insists on AM/PM nonsense. And no, before you ask, it doesn’t respect my date format either.

I believe you get the gist of it - the new Skype and its app-like behavior is again design winning over functionality and force-feeding the least common denominator on everybody. Considering amount of substandard applications we got with Windows 10 (don’t let me start about Calculator) I guess this was expected.

Well player Sir!

[2018-08-07: Microsoft decided not to kill proper desktop client - for now. They didn’t really specify the date so there’s no way to know for how long. My guess is that they’ll just have Skype 7 remind you to upgrade even more than now. And yes, their pages don’t have Skype 7 for download anymore, so one wrong click is all that’s needed to make you “happy” version 8 user. Fortunately direct link still works (SHA256 for 7.41.0.101: 1e4ca5d441a00ac6 91c58e0aa5890c3f eb395d2dc53dbae8 2faec7c9df4e52fc).]

[2018-08-11: Yep, as anticipated, Microsoft is pushing upgrade whether you want it or not. I got asked 4 times in the last 24 hours to download the new version. Frankly, at this time I am looking for alternative chat application to replace Skype altogether on my desktops.]

_[2018-10-02: Death of classic Skype is now planned for November 1st.]

[2018-01-10: Old Skype cannot be used anymore and of course none of the issues with the new one have been fixed. I personally moved to Discord - not perfect but quite decent platform.]_

Enabling Disk ID (/dev/diskid/*) on XigmaNAS

While the standard FreeBSD disk device enumeration found under /dev/sd* works just fine, I always found the serial number irreplaceable.

Not only it doesn’t depend on the ordering of SATA cables but it also ensures you don’t delete drive on the wrong machine. If you dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda, you better be sure you’re on the correct machine. On the other hand, if you run dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/diskid/DISK-SERIAL-123 on the wrong machine, you will just see an error telling you the device was not found. Much better.

But I don’t have /dev/diskid/, I hear you complain. XigmaNAS, as pretty much any FreeBSD system by default needs a slight modification to track disks this way.

To turn it on, go to System, Advanced, and loader.conf tab. There add kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable=1 and reboot. Once system has started again, all your disks will have their entry in /dev/diskid/*.

PCBWay

Creating hardware projects usually involves a lot of time spent creating PCB design and then even more deciding which prototype service to use. When PCBWay approached me to consider their service, all I could say is heck yeah. :)

The first thing you’ll experience ordering boards from them is a page full of options. While you can select a few simplified “deals” from main page, they will all bring you to this page for customization. And you can customize a bunch. It’s like a prototype service on steroids.

You can select number of layers (up to 14), material (including flex construction), board thickness (0.4 to 2.4 mm), copper thickness (1 to 4 oz), and surface finish (including hard gold - great for edge connectors). Yes, not all combinations are supported at the same time - for example you cannot have 14-layer aluminum board) - but there is enough choices to make you happy and/or crazy.

You can also select track/spacing (up to 4/4 mil) and hole size specification (0.2 mm) with or without plugged vias (great for BGA work). If you click on special option you can further select castellations, edge plating, impedance control, blind vias, the list goes on and on. If you need it, chances are you can order it. A more “standard” customization of solder mask and silkscreen color almost goes unnoticed.

All these options do come at price. Not only the cost of board can go into hundreds of dollars but it also makes the whole process way more complicated than what you’ll need 99% of time. Clicking on various options can get you so sidelined that you’ll forget about the most basic stuff.

For example, I managed to order all my boards without ENIG finish (immersion gold) just because I somehow missed that option. I would kill for a few simple templates with the most logical options preselected (e.g. ENIG for surface-mount soldering) and with only limited customization allowed (e.g. solder mask and silkscreen color). Yes, there are “specials” available but they still end at the same overly-complicated page.

Upload process is rather pain-less and even supports my favorite RAR format. I used the exactly same files I usually use with OSH Park and PCB:NG service without any issue. Unfortunately, there is no gerber preview here so you might be up for a surprise if something goes wrong.

As one has to define size for board during upload, I intentionally selected a smaller size for one of them. Person doing verification caught it and corrected both board size and the price. This gives me hope that any gerber errors might be caught too but note that such manual review will probably happen a few hours after the upload. This means delay for any issue not easily correctable. I would consider first uploading gerbers to OSH Park and using their awesome preview to perform a sanity check.

Combined with overly extensive customizations, lack of preview makes service much harder for hobbyist (such as myself) to use and I believe even professionals don’t care/need about most of these options on a regular basis. Even when such extensive customization is needed, I doubt one would prefer to go from scratch each and every time.

It takes a few (five in my case) days for boards to get produced but then comes the longest part - shipping. As PCBWay is in China, this means that any cheap shipping will take a while. The cheapest option actually took 2 weeks to arrive, making it slightly slower than US-based competitors. Of course, this assumes you are in States. For international customers timeline might not differ as much. Moreover, there is option for courier shipping but at a significant premium.

Once boards arrived, I found a few things in common to all - most noticeably v-groove routing for external edge. It makes board much cleaner and without any sharp edges to deal with. Boards themselves come either vacuum packed or in a baggie for the small sizes. While vacuum packing might be a bit annoying to open, it does protect the boards quite well in transport.

I immediately hated the addition of order number to the silk screen. While it seems engineer took care to place it underneath big components where it wouldn’t be visible, it’s kinda lottery if you need a really clean look (e.g. customer facing panel). If you note where their number can and cannot go on the silk screen in the comment field, I am reasonably sure they will cautious. However, such instructions are an extra step you need to remember and there is still some risk the number will be written right where you don’t want it.

Testing consisted, as usually, of hand-soldering the boards using Hakko D-888 soldering iron. As I use lead-free solder, the temperature was set to (rather low) 350 °C most of the time. All fine-pitch soldering was done by flooding all pins with solder and then wicking the extra away.

First board I got to solder was TmpUsb. It’s a small board with all SMD components and white solder mask did look awesome initially. As I went soldering, I noticed a residue forming whenever I touched the solder mask. Not only this sticky residue was ugly to see but it also stuck to the tip. As this was actually my first board with white solder mask, I am not sure if this is something common for that color or PCBWay uses a formula that’s not particularly heat resistant. In any case, not ideal for soldering iron work.

Second board was for Binarko. Not only this board has a fine-pitch component (0.2 mm TQFP-48) alongside quite a few 0603 passives but it’s intended to be press-fit mounted into the case. The good news is that fit is as close to perfect as it gets. Use of v-groove also means there are no breakout tabs to get rid of resulting in much cleaner look. Since I forgot the HASL coating, getting microcontroller aligned was a bit of challenge. Interestingly, the black solder mask handled high temperature much better than it’s white counterpart making much less mess.

Fine-pitched PIC meant I had to use solder wick a lot and that has shown another issue - it’s really easy to lift a trace. When it happened the first time I played around a bit and noted this seems to be related to the temperature. While I didn’t seem to have issues dragging 300 °C tip, at 350 °C dragging soldering tip was much more destructive.

The final board was of UsbAmps. With 0.25 mm pitch TQFP-44 package, it was a bit easier to solder. It’s green solder mask did its work well and I haven’t noticed any heat-related residue. However, sensitivity of traces to heat/dragging remained.

To conclude: If you are still using lead solder or you do reflow soldering, there are no major downfalls considering this service. While it might not be as cheap as OSH Park or PCB:NG for smaller boards (especially considering shipping is not free), it does get better with larger sizes. If board color or a bit more involved customization is necessary (think filled or buried vias), suddenly this service makes real sense. Yes, you are paying a bit (sometime quite a bit) extra but you do get something not commonly found in prototype market.

Default selection of lead HASL finish and paying extra for lead-free or ENIG is a bit of nuisance for me as I prefer poisoning my self with more fancy stuff but it’s probably not a problem for many considering the love hobbyist market still shows toward the good old 60/40.

There is quite restrictive service offered by OSH Park and PCB:NG where selection of anything other than 2 or 4 layer process is simply not possible but you get your board quickly and at a reasonable price. On the other hand there is almost infinite possibility of customization PCBWay embraces but not without the cost.

Now, only if they would stop adding their numbers to boards…

PS: I was given boards for free by PCBWay. I don’t believe that affected my review, but I believe it’s fair to disclose. :)

[2018-08-16: It seems that PCBWay decided to add extra $3 charge if you use PayPal and you will only see it on the last page. Not nice… :(]

[2019-11-24: At this time PCBWay asks you to pay extra $3 if you want your boards without their custom number. Essentially you are paying for them not to deface your board. Nickel and diming…]

Unscaled Doesn't Mean It Won't Scale

One application I created had to show a simple, fixed image on screen. As it’s size is fixed and no resizing is needed, one might assume following code would be sufficient:

var left = (ClientRectangle.Width - bitmap.Width) / 2;
var top = (ClientRectangle.Height - bitmap.Height) / 2;
e.Graphics.DrawImageUnscaled(bitmap, left, top);
e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(SystemPens.WindowText, top, left, bitmap.Width, bitmap.Height);

However, running this code might result in image significantly larger than the rectangle.

You see, DrawImageUnscaled will not necessarily ignore all scaling. It will attempt to preserve physical size - not size in pixels. So, if you have a screen punching above ancient 96 DPI, you will see scaling happen.

So, if you want to draw unscaled image, just use the normal DrawImage function and specify the size yourself.

Supermicro's IPMI Firewall Rules

If your internal firewall is very restrictive or you need to expose IPMI to the outside world, you might be presented with a bit of a challenge due to quite varied port selection.

The first ports you have to allow are of course TCP 80 and 443 for web management interface. Almost all IPMI implementations have it and quite often it’s the interface with the most features. For example, Supermicro’s implementation only allows BIOS update and port number changes over web interface. This interface unfortunately stops just short of allowing console access.

To get access via IPMI tool (I use Supermicro’s IPMI View) you need to have UDP port 623 allowed through. This will allow logging into the IPMI interface and seeing machine’s status. Unfortunately, this too stops short of console access.

The key to the console (aka KVM) access is in TCP ports 3520 and 5900. These will allow you to see and type into. And only if you ever ran IPMI in nonrestrictive network would you notice something missing.

The missing piece is the menu, allowing you to mount virtual media and similar. For this you need to enable TCP port 623. This will finally allow full control over the hardware.

It’s a bit of annoyance that so many ports are needed but in general this doesn’t present the problem. Unless there are special circumstances, you shouldn’t access IPMI from the outside via port forwarding. What you should do is use VPN and then use IPMI via it.