Recently I bought a Toshiba Netbook NB200. If you use a computer mainly for email, browsing, music etc. this is a great machine. It has good performance with pre-installed Windows XP. The only problem I found was the power LED which is a major irritant during daytime.  Don’t even think of using a Netbook as your primary development machine.

Usually I don’t put a BIOS password on the computers I use. I normally keep my content protected and never felt the need to use a BIOS password. But when I got Netbook, I decided to put a BIOS password. A few days later I removed the BIOS password. After a few reboots suddenly the NB200 started asking for BIOS password. To my horror, it refused to accept the earlier password and after 3 attempts I got a nasty message on screen – “System Disabled. Error 0004” (Sometimes it was Error 0000).

The Toshiba Netbook NB 200 comes with a Phoenix BIOS named “phoenix trustedcore setup utility”. It probably has a bug related to password reset. I am not sure about the bug, but one thing is sure – Entering incorrect BIOS password three times causes some flag change in CMOS/EPROM and it permanently disables the system. The only option left was to take it to a Toshiba service centre with proof of ownership to get it unlocked! In short “trusted” means customer is screwed[If you own a NB200, I suggest you update the BIOS firmware immediately].

But then I realized that there are no Toshiba service centers in my area and the only option was to send it via courier. It meant that I may not see the NB200 for the next few weeks and it is sure to cause me a lot of headache. So the next thing to do was to see whether there is a way to either clear the password or bypass the password. After a bit of Googling I came to know that earlier Phoenix bios chips had backdoor passwords such as PHOENIX, CMOS, BIOS etc. Some Toshiba laptops had “Toshiba” as the backdoor password. However none of them worked on Netbook NB200.  So the only option was to open NB200 and see whether I could pull out the CMOS battery. I was pretty excited since it was a while since I did some hardware hacking!

Hacking Toshiba Netbook NB200

Step 1 : Getting the tools for the Netbook surgery 

Following is the toolset I used to disassemble Toshiba NB200. I had recently purchased a screwdriver set for mobile devices from Bangalore ($3) and it came really handy for opening NB200. I also used a multi-LED torch so that I can take a look at the edges to see how to open a specific section. A torch is must have if you don’t have the technician manual with you.

Toshiba cover design is such that without technician manual, it is very difficult to open the Netbook. Also the screws are not tough enough and if you don’t select a correct screw driver bit you may damage the screws and then you are completely stuck. I had to saw the inner cross section of one of the screws after it got damaged by a wrong screwdriver bit.

Step 2 : Getting the Netbook NB200 ready for the surgery

Before opening the Netbook ensure that you have removed the battery. It is very important and initially I forgot to do that. Luckily nothing bad happened.

Step 3 : Opening the back cover of Toshiba NB200

To remove the battery unlock the switches indicated above as B1 and B2 and then pullout the battery on top. Then remove screws indicated as C1, C2 and C3. It is fairly easy to remove the plate behind C1/C2. However removing C3 plate requires some effort and requires you to pull it out hard. Behind C3 plate you will find RAM module and behind C1/C2 you will find hard disk and WLAN card.

Step 4: Removing hard disk, WLAN card and memory module

To remove memory module, press out the locks indicated as 1 and 2 and then pull out the memory card. To remove hard disk push the hard disk as indicated. Removing WLAN card requires you to remove two screws. Unless you want to completely dismantle Netbook, it is better not to touch WLAN card. The red circle indicates the screw damaged due to wrong screw bit.

Step 4: Removing BIOS password on Toshiba Netbook NB 200

After removing the memory module I noticed a paper sticker behind it. So I removed the paper sticker and then noticed the jumper as indicated by the red circle. To remove the CMOS/BIOS password all you need to do is to short circuit the jumper leads. Use a screw driver to do that and keep it short circuited for 10 seconds.

Now you may be wondering how I found this without the technician manual. To be frank it was pure luck. From a couple of other sites I came to know that resetting password required short circuiting some jumper. For example, the instructions to reset BIOS password on Toshiba Satellite L10 is,

- Open Wi-Fi Cover
- Locate & Short Out JP1 for 15 Seconds

I think the same technique might work on other Toshiba Netbooks namely NB100, NB205 etc.

Step 4 : Dismantling Netbook completely

If you want to dismantle the NB 200 completely you need to remove all screws marked as F6 and F4 at the back cover. Then you can remove the top cover over the power light as shown above. After removing the cover above, pull out the keyboard completely. Before pulling it out  ensure that you remove the keyboard connector.

Step 5 : Final steps

Now to dismantle NB200 completely you need to remove a number of connectors including monitor connector (top left with white sticker) and a number connectors on the right. Then you need to remove four screws on both sides of the monitor lid. This way you can completely detach LCD screen from the Notebook base. By this stage I had already spent about 5 hours on it and hence assembled it back.

Last week I sold NB200 since I realized that a Netbook is not something I needed. It is too big to replace a mobile device and was not good enough to replace a laptop.

I have been toying with the idea of getting into full fledged iPhone application development for sometime now. To get into iPhone development, you need to be familiar with Objective C language and Cocoa framework. But the iPhone development environment is only available for Mac platform (which includes Xcode IDE and iPhone simulator). If you want to run iPhone development environment without a Mac machine, you have two options,

• Use a virtual machine platform like VMWare to run OSX under Windows – However it is not legal to run OSX under non Apple hardware.
• Another option is to use OSx86 which allows you to install Mac OS on top of your Intel or AMD computer.

But if you just want to learn Objective C language or Cocoa framework programming, you don’t need any of the above. You just need the GNUStep and ProjectCenter tools. This article explains how GNUStep can be configured as a Objective C development environment on Windows.

Objective C Programming in Windows using GNUStep

GNUStep is a free, object oriented development environment with built in tools such as a compiler. The C/C++ compiler included (gcc) also supports compiling Objective C programs. It also has a graphical development kit with API similar to Cocoa framework (since both of them were derived from the old OpenStep framework). So installing GNUStep on Windows gives an instant development environment for Objective C programs. An extension to GNUStep is the ProjectCenter (Xcode equivalent) using which graphical programs can be built.

Installing GNUStep on Windows

GNUStep is available as a Windows installer from the official page.  I recommend downloading and installing GNUStep System, GNUStep Core and GNUStep Devel. Note that the latest version available as of October 2009 is 0.23.0 and this version is not compatible with ProjectCenter 0.50.  If you are planning to use ProjectCenter I recommend that you download 0.22.0 version of GNUStep from the download page. Here is a summary of what is required,

• Objective C programming only – GNUStep 0.23 (System | Core | Devel)
• Objective C Programming and ProjectCenter 0.50 -  GNUStep 0.22 (System | Core | Devel)

You can download pre-compiled version of ProjectCenter 0.50 for Windows from here.

Once you install all the binaries above, you will have GNUStep shell under Programs->GNUStep (See figure). Click on the Shell to invoke the command line interface. This shell is based on MinGW (collection of gcc compiler and command line tools) and using it you can compile and run Objective C programs. The command line is similar to Unix/Linux command line and you can navigate to any folder in your windows machine. Using the built in gcc program you can compile and run Objective C programs.

Compiling and running Objective C programs in GNUStep on Windows

Create the following program and save it with the name helloworld.m using notepad,

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h> 
 
int main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
  NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
  NSLog (@"Hello World!");
  [pool drain];
  return 0;
}

Now using GNStep shell navigate to the folder where helloworld.m is stored (in my case it is cd w:/prg). Type in the following command to compile helloworld.m.

Please note that the various switch options such as -lobjc should appear at the end of the command. the -o switch specifies the name of the executable created (helloworld.exe) in this case. Following is the result of compilation,

You can see that helloworld.exe is generated in the same folder (Ignore compiler output and warnings or use -enable-auto-import switch to fix them). To run the program type in ./helloworld.exe at the command prompt,

Common Errors during Objective C compilation

• error: cannot find interface declaration for `NXConstantString’ – This means that you haven’t added the switch -fconstant-string-class=NSConstantString to the gcc command line.
• Foundation/Foundation.h: No such file or directory – This means that gcc is unable to find Foundation header classes. Use the switches -I /GNUstep/System/Library/Headers -L /GNUstep/System/Library/Libraries
• stray ‘@’ in program – This means that you have the wrong double quote in your source code. Use " instead of ”.

Now you are all set for Objective C programming and a bit of Cocoa programming on Windows. Good luck! and buy a Mac machine when you are ready to write iPhone programs.

Further Reference

• GNUStep FAQ
• Objective C 2.0 reference
• What is MingW?

I have recently added twitter updates to the sidebar of this blog. While this blog contains details about my projects and articles written by me, my twitter updates give micro updates on stuff I work with or the interesting things that I come across. That is the beauty of twitter – you can share stuff without actually going through the trauma of writing a full fledged blog post!

To add twitter updates I ended up writing my own plugin named WP Tweets. This is a very lightweight plugin which directly pulls twitter updates from the client side. It is also easy to customize the appearance of this widget by changing few lines in the plugin css file. And best of all I can help if you are stuck with style customization.

You can WP tweets from project homepage or from the official WordPress plugin repository.

I have been following Barcamp Kerala from its inception, but never attended it till Barcamp 6. This time I had both motivation and time to attend it and it turned out to be better than what I anticipated. A large and highly enthusiastic group of intelligent youngsters, highly informative sessions from people who are self motivated and a really informal atmosphere makes it an irresistible environment, especially for geeks (or the new age geeks who has no problem in connecting with others).

I had gone to Thrissur one day before the Barcamp and on the day of the Barcamp I realized that it is a minimum 3 hour drive from my home.  So I started as early as I could (7:30) and was on the NH47 by 8AM. Obviously since I wanted to reach the venue before any sessions started, I was in a bit of hurry. So somewhere near Edappally signal, I hit another car. I had braked real hard and it barely touched the car boot and caused a small scratch. The other guy seemed like a gentleman, but was adamant about compensation. I said sorry and paid whatever he was ready to accept for the damage. I am driving long distances for 4 years now and this was the first accident due to my mistake. So Barcamp experience started on a really low note, but it was all uphill from there

I reached Barcamp at 9:30 and immediately spotted some of the familiar faces (from Web that is) – Praseed was at the corridor and I met Manjit, Kenney, Anand, Binny, Eldhose, Arun, Anish, Sudhish, Fahad and a couple of other guys. I also realized that I am not as young as I thought myself to be!   Barcamp could be an overnight event with plenty of time for socializing as well. Since I wanted to attend all sessions and had engagements in the evening, I got little time for interaction and that is my only disappointment.

Barcamp Kerala 6 – Sessions

Praseed had a really interesting session on human biases(Biases and Fallacies of Human Race). The session was like driving through a tornado and I guess many would have found their brains overloaded(at least I felt it – but in a good sense). I found it extremely interesting and I want his presentation(well prepared and I am sure he would have spent a lot of time on it) very badly. There were couple of good books mentioned (I had read only one of them). However personally I felt that we need to be careful when we talk about the advantages of an “objective” approach. After all human beings are emotional animals and I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong about it. I am always an advocate of the “middle path”.  Also I guess only Praseed can get away with so many highly provocative slides!

Kenney made a proposal on the voice based blood search(Voice Based Blood Search – A Proposal). The idea is simple – when you need blood you just dial a number and after a few selections, you get connected to the real donor. The ability for the donor and the recipient to connect directly is very powerful. This to me is a brilliant idea and if Kenney and the team can get government backing at least in principle, they have something really useful. Government backing is essential in getting around any potential legal minefields and also in getting a large number of donors and hospitals to support it. 

During Kenney’s session, another topic came up -  About the formal degrees and on the tendency to over value them. This topic seems to generate a lot of heat almost everywhere and Barcamp was no exception. Getting a degree has become a default qualification for almost anything in our society. There is no point in saying that degrees are useless (I consider it as a period when you can devote yourself for a lot of self study – During my engineering I spent more time on hacking activities than now). But at the same time I want to see that people who for some reason or other couldn’t complete a degree gets opportunity for growth in areas where it is not essential (Which I think was closer to Kenney’s point). Similarly a guy with difficulties in his English communication can’t get  a job where there is little use for English language – and obviously it should change.

Fahad came to the stage and talked about an idea of networking petrol pumps so that thieves cannot get away when they steal a vehicle. Theoretically it may look good, but practically it is useless. First of all, the petrol pump staff are underpaid and a forget co-operation from them. In fact some of them are nastier than thieves who steal vehicles! When I was driving from Trivandrum to Thrissur to attend Barcamp, one of them tried to cheat me by not resetting the meter. Secondly, when something like this is setup thieves just reorganize themselves pretty quickly – hire some pump operators, change the number of the vehicle, have a backup of petrol cans somewhere on the route etc.  And your entire investment went down the drain!

Reading the above paragraph reminded me Rajesh’s session where he mentioned that we(older generation) tend to discourage and de-motivate enthusiastic youngsters. Sorry Fahad!