I write for a Star Trek sim.
Before you get all excited by the use of the word “sim”, let me first qualify that this is not, in fact, a computer program which simulates Star Trek adventures for which I write dialogue trees. (Though – holy shit! – that would that be cool. Is anyone hiring for that?!) It is not, in fact, a giant flight simulator to help you brush up on your docking procedures for the next time you find yourself in a starship approaching spacedock.
Simming is, in fact, a bunch of people who create unique1 characters in the Star Trek universe, throw them together on a ship, and let hijinks ensue. Each player has a character and contributes to the central story via that character’s perspective. You have your various methods (and various universes, I might add; I’m told the writing is typically very good on the Firefly sims, though I’ve never tried one personally) with IRC, forums, and email being the three big ones. IRC is a little too dorky for me (it sounds impossible, I know), forums are a little too informal for my tastes and generally don’t handle time disjuncts very gracefully, and email… well, email is just right.
For those of you who are horrified/vastly amused/vaguely nauseated by this very idea, let me introduce myself: Hi, I’m blah. I’m a dork. I refer you to all previous and, I suspect, all subsequent posts.
So yeah. I write for a Star Trek sim.
Now, contrary to…
Ahem. Are you done laughing?
All right then. Now. Contrary to what you might…
Okay, you just… you just finish. I’ll wait.
Thank you.
As I was saying… contrary to what you might think, it’s not all holodeck shenanigans, sweaty turbolift sex, mirror universe bondage escapades followed by awkward looks across the bridge, or viruses that somehow always manage to target the impulse control centers of the brain2. One of the greatest things about Star Trek – and about all sci-fi and fantasy in general, I think – is its ability to act as a proxy for human exploration, to function as an allegory we can use to explore fundamental human conditions, to provide a framework we can use to test our assumptions about those fundamental conditions. Star Trek, for all the heat it takes for its idyllic, antiseptic approach to science fiction, provides an easy mechanism for these explorations, one that is unencumbered by more realistic though endlessly complex elements like drug trades and social and economic stratification so crippling that non-government ship owners can’t even buy new port compression coils. These are dirty things, hard things and I think we need to consider them. If we need to cloak them in a fantastical allegory to make it go down more easily, sure. The power of Star Trek, I think, is that it gives us a clean slate we can use to look at each of even the dirtiest, hardest things in turn and in isolation.
This isn’t to say that Star Trek is particularly subtle about the issues it explores. It can be downright hamfisted at times. Did anyone else watch Let That Be Your Last Battlefield and immediately think of the Star-Bellied Sneeches3?
Now, aliens from Cheron had white and black faces.
The colors were reversed in half of the cases.
The difference wasn’t big. It really was small.
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
But because they were ‘right’ all the dudes halved like Bele
Would brag to themselves, “We’re the best sort of fellows!”
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort,
“We’ll have nothing to do with the wrong-colored sort!”
And whenever they met some, when they were out walking,
They’d hike right on past them without even talking.
When the White On Left kids went out to play ball,
Could the White On Right play? No, not at all.
You could only play ball if your black was on right,
So the others sat by, lamenting the white.
When the White On Left grown-ups had frankfurter roasts
Or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts,
They never invited the White On Right crowd
They were left out cold. All that white’s not allowed!
They kept them away. Never let them come near.
And that’s how they treated them year after year.
ANYWAY, while Star Trek is at times about as subtle as Kirk round-housing a Nazi, it really does provide a nice, clean baseline from which we can construct the very issues we need to explore. Note that I’m not saying that this is the right way to use science fiction as an allegory or that this is the only way to use it. Rather, I’m pointing out that the very sterile, tidy environment that the Federation and Starfleet together create gives us a chance to set a clean baseline we can work from, delving into issues in targeted doses… in short, that the supposed weakness of Star Trek as an exploratory device is actually its greatest strength.
And this is why I love writing for a Star Trek sim. Not the only reason, mind you. I like writing. I like having an outlet. I like Star Trek in general. I think the uniforms are hot. But beyond all that, it gives me a platform to think about things and moreover, I often have a chance to explore interesting ideas and concepts with other writers. Challenging cultural and sociological issues are cropping up all the time as part of our gameplay (unsurprising, I suppose, since it wouldn’t be Star Trek without a convenient Weird Forehead Of The Week). Take, for example, this recent exploration of the process of enculturation as an analog to Borg assimilation:
“Spunau bolayalar t’Wehku bolayalar t’Zamu il t’Veh,” Nerali said, her attention still on her console. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or one. It is not so dissimilar an approach. The Collective simply enslaves its practitioners where Vulcans enculturate theirs. It could be argued that the Borg approach is morally superior in that it does not inherently and by design prevent the development of individuality; it merely removes it at a later time.” She peered over her shoulder in his direction. “Will the modifications to the deflector array impact any other onboard systems?”
Enculturated? Qeynan’s brow furrowed as he focused first on her latter question. “The modification to the deflector array will not interfere with any functional control of the ship. The only problem I see is the need to lower the Cross’ shields around the shuttle bay in order for us to disembark and return. With these shuttles adjusted to match the Curie they’ll never be able to get back through the Cross’ shields until they’re remodified to their original settings.” He shifted in his seat to look back at her. “As for enculturated ideals I could argue by the rogues in the annals of history that such still allow for the freedom of choice. It’s part of sentient nature to pass on such core values to the next generation in order to establish safe boundaries of conduct; and the responsibility of the next generation to examine those values and decide whether or not to perpetuate them in the generation beyond.” He paused for a moment, considering the differences between boundaries and cages. Shaking his head, he went on. “The Borg approach is not morally superior by any means, Nerali. They do not allow individual development in the noble manner in which you suggest. Rather they allow each species own kind to enculturate their beliefs and ideals only to rip such from them and replace it with their own directive – assimilate or die. How is that morally superior?”
Nerali raised an eyebrow, saying merely, “I am speaking precisely of freedom of choice, Ensign Sehvi, and the development of the individual. Very few of us are offered the chance to choose our society, its morals, its bounds, its structures; I was able to choose, but so many others do not realize such a choice even exists or are afraid to take it if they do. Most often, we are simply born into it, trained via pervasive enculturation processes to accept it, to conform to it, to pass it on, all before we are capable of sentient, individual, self-aware thought. Cultural assimilation, Ensign Sehvi. It is a socio-evolutionary necessity for the continuance of cultures. But just because we associate the term ‘culture’ with family traditions, language, music, and works of art rather than assimilation tubules and regeneration alcoves does not mean that cultural assimilation is benign or that it is in any way less invasive than the atrocity you suffered. You were assimilated, made to fit into the whole, constrained, separated from self, unable to protest what was being done to you as it happened, and unable to fight against it once it did. And when you grew up, the Borg did the same.” She turned back to her console. “I don’t wish to justify the works of the Collective, Ensign, and even if I did not find you as pleasing as I do, I would never seek to dismiss the great cruelty you suffered at its hands. But as one of the very few who was able to choose her own cultural collective, I find it difficult to imagine a more heinous crime than denying a child self-determination.”
Seriously, now. Where else do you get to have a Vulcan with daddy issues and a liberated Borg drone debate sociological issues?
Answer: The same place you can go to explore the Prime Directive as an absolute extreme view of cultural relativism. I know, I know. You couldn’t watch an episode of Voyager without tripping over a Prime Directive violation and I’m pretty sure you could power a Type-9 shuttle with all the Earl Grey Picard went through as he wrestled with those issues in his ready room. But I don’t think I believe in the Prime Directive; I want to take a closer look at it. Oh, I believe in it as a plot-hole filler and I believe in its ability to generate character-building moments. I even believe in what I think it was originally intended to be. (It’s all supposition, of course, but I’d be a pretty easy sell if you were to tell me that a premise introduced in the 1960s could have been related to two technologically advanced groups of people taking advantage of lesser advanced peoples to further their struggle against each other.) But… Whew. Cultural relativism is one thing. Cultural determinism is one thing. The Prime Directive is way beyond both.
Thanks to the sim, I have the perfect place to explore this. And thanks to Star Trek, I have just the right foundation to do it on. I have a security chief on one ship. She just broke the Prime Directive4. We’ll see where this goes.
- I use the term “unique” loosely. (Yes, I know it’s a binary. Shut up!) Everyone creates their own characters, rather than usurping an existing one from Star Trek canon, but I don’t think I’ve ever been on a ship where at least 50% of the characters weren’t either telepaths or shapeshifters.
- In terms of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I find nothing remotely wrong with any of those things and should one of my ships end up having a mission like that, I will jump on the bandwagon with reckless, bodice-ripping abandon.
- By the way, did anyone else find it actually quite ironic that the Enterprise crew, upon first meeting Lokai, assumes that his coloration is a mutation? The entire episode is about racial segregation, social stratification… and the crew’s first impulse is to assume that the dude’s color must be a mutation, must be a flaw because it isn’t like theirs. Niiiiiice.
- Er… I think she broke the Prime Directive. There could be some extenuating circumstances – i.e. prior contamination of the culture in question though I think that argument is only valid if the actions then taken are taken only to correct that previous contamination – that would make her representation at the court martial breathe a sigh of relief, but close enough. She broke it enough for a good look. I blame my lawyer husband for this footnote.
Original post by blah
…with pony rides and dancing bears…
…and yes, there will be snacks.
I was able to pick up the Andrew Bird iTunes Session EP last week and it has renewed the love I have for this man. Some of the notable tracks on the album are “Skin is, My”, and “Opposite Day”. All of the tracks were recorded live and more than live up to the expectations I have for the Bird man: they are not at all like his other recordings or previous performances. That’s what I’ve always loved about him. That’s what music is; the true craft. It’s a living, breathing, changing thing. To me, Andrew Bird keeps the spirit of performance alive.
I forgot which composer believed that music should never be recorded…that’s up for some googling later. Regardless of who it was, I understand where he’s coming from. The true form of music lies in the performance, where things can change and mistakes can be made. With a (studio) recording, you’re getting the same canned performance of the piece. Listen to 5 different orchestras of the same ability play the same symphony. You’ll find none of them play it quite like the other. I don’t mean that you can just take a symphony and butcher it into some unrecognizable piece, but you can take it and make it your own within what the composer has set out for you. Andrew Bird definitely captures this feeling in his performances. He doesn’t strictly follow the map, he only uses it as a guide.
Don’t get me wrong, recordings definitely have their place (and ho ho, this post is about a recording). I have tons of recordings of symphonies which I use for reference when performing orchestral repertoire, and I enjoy listening to recordings of my favorite artists on a daily basis. But they aren’t the be-all, end-all way a piece should sound. That’s what’s great about this album. I don’t ever expect to hear Bird play these songs like this ever again, and he probably wont.
If you haven’t checked out Andrew Bird’s iTunes Sessions EP, or you’ve never listened to him at all, I definitely recommend listening to this album. It is purchasable here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/itunes-session/id336832184.
So don’t you,
don’t you worry
about the atmosphere.
Original post by Sufjan
Artificial Intelligence has always fascinated me. I think it’s probably fascinated everyone… even people who didn’t grow up wanting to play poker with Soong-type androids or reading about paranoid androids and robopsychologists,… or, you know, growing up a little and wondering exactly how the Enterprise’s main computer does its natural language processing and if the Universal Translator actually assists with or simply serves to complicate the syntactic ambiguity problem.
That said, I’m not a linguist (I wish I were, by the way, but that’s a story for another time) and I certainly don’t have the intellectual chops to be an actual AI researcher. Case in point: I know enough about basic probability theory to understand the underlying principles of Bayesian learning and to think to myself, “Hey, that’s pretty neat. I could use this here and here and here.” But that thought is quickly replaced with something along the lines of “OH DEAR GOD, MY EYES ARE BLEEDING”, augmented with a lot of teeth-gnashing and garment-rending, as soon as the equations start popping up.
So long story short, am I going to be the one who solves the natural language problem? No. I’m much more likely to just spend my time bitching about comma-splicing in Facebook statuses. Am I going to be the one who develops a self-learning defense grid? No. I’m much more likely to join Cyberdyne for their awesome dental. Am I going to be the one who builds a protocol droid that can speak the binary language of moisture vaporators and can grumble humorously about how some nerf-herding smuggler’s hair-brained scheme is going to make him violate all three Asimovian laws? No. I’m much more likely to write a short story about said droid learning said binary language after being stranded in the unforgiving deserts of Tatooine and finding himself nursed back to health by a beautiful moisture vaporator with dreams of getting off her backwards world and seeing the galaxy beyond. (She dies at the end.)
There are much, much smarter people out there who are going to do these things. They’re working on it now. And even if I can never solve the problems they’re solving, I want to start understanding the challenges they’re facing. And I don’t meant that I want to understand it in a mathematical sense. (Well, that’s a lie. I do want to understand it in the mathematical sense. I just think I should understand the actual manifestations of it first. That will also give me time to get over the whole eye-hemorrhaging issue.) I mean that I should understand what it means to try to get an artificial system to make decisions, to do something human, and be able to see firsthand what is stopping us.
So can a robot write music? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. There are even efforts to generate music that is capable of provoking an emotional response in a human listener by capturing the principles of music psychology in knowledge bases that can be used as decision weights by the system’s inference mechanisms.1
How cool is that? Seriously. Next thing you know, we’ll have androids shredding.
So anyway. I’m building a rule-based system that’ll generate music. I call him BachBot. He probably gets beat up at the Young Robots Finishing School for that name but we hang out sometimes. We’re starting with species counterpoint. One of his first epics: Ode to Beefy the Musical Wondercow2.
1. Hmm. Who owns the rights to music generated entirely by a rule-based system?
2. Title mine. BachBot doesn’t create his own titles yet, unless you count auto-incrementing his test outputs. He does that just fine. We’ll tackle the whole natural language thing, you know. Later. Right now, I’m more interested in him not shredding my gorram ears apart by insisting that a minor second is perfectly okay in first species counterpoint.
Original post by blah
If you’re a fan of Dragon Quest (aka Dragon Warrior), my net-friend Tom-Servo has been translating Dragon Quest V (PS2) to English. You can find the patch over at his website http://www.dqtranslations.com/. You’ll also find a patch for Dragon Quest III (SNES), as well as a few translations of other games.
Original post by ojuice
The Dork
Believe it or not, it has occurred to me that I’m pretty dorky. I know. Between the hours a week I spend writing for a Star Trek RPG (yes, it’s measured in hours), my habit of muttering “failed reflex save” whenever I trip into or out of the conference room (because simply tripping in front of the executives isn’t quite the right kind of embarrassing), and the fact that I have my WoW raid schedule in my work calendar so no one schedules a server maintenance window they expect me to attend over the dragon-slaying, it took me a long time to come to the same shocking conclusion… but here we are. Pretty dorky.
Or rather, there we were.
I have realized today that I may have stepped away from the realm of “pretty dorky” and, if not entirely doused myself in, at least tested the waters of “Good god, what is wrong with you?” levels of dorky. Perhaps I’m even ascending ever closer to the tantalizing heights of the transdork threshold1.
What could possibly be dorkier than spending one’s free time writing for a Star Trek RPG and playing WoW?
It might just be worse than you can even imagine2.
The Meta-Dork
Have you ever wondered about the population variations between PvP and PvE realms? What the most popular gems are by class and spec? If the character gender distribution skews toward female for more attractive models? I have. So has zardoz, of recent WoW Insider fame. He has managed to collect a great deal of raw data and, between a little SQL and a dash of xsl, has started giving us some neat insights into population characteristics.
But beyond simple data collection and reporting…
Have you ever wondered about causality? Suspected anecdotally that there has been some sort of change to the population, proven or disproven by actual comparison to a baseline that such a change has actually occurred, and then wanted to dig deeper to identify possible causal relationships? A content patch? A major class modification? A critical change to PvP mechanics? Changes to gear scaling or stat mechanics?
Have you ever wondered what makes a world-class guild precisely that? Beyond the simple explanations – They’re better players. They raid more often. It’s a hardcore guild. – are there other behavioral traits that contribute to their success, traits we can actually tease out from the data about their players? How do members of a world-class guild spend their time in game? What is the temporal relationship between a dungeon/raid launch, the accumulation and dissemination of gear, and the receipt of achievements? How quickly do members change specs, gems, or gear following a significant mechanics change? Do gear, gem, stat, and build preferences vary greatly between functionally-analogous individuals within a class or are the same trends occurring between all? If it’s the latter, does it occur all at once, suggesting a much more structured, top-down guild management structure, or is there a waterfall effect between members, a more bottoms-up kind of view, with the changes occurring at the individual level before spreading over time to the rest of the group? If it’s the latter, are there individuals who consistently drive the changes, power-players we can identify simply through these relationships?
Given a spectrum of characteristics, some relevant and some not… have you wondered where your guild lies compared to the world-class ones? Have you wondered where you lie on that spectrum, compared to same-spec toons in those world-class guilds or sitting pretty on top of the PvP rankings? Which of those characteristics are relevant? Which are suggestive? Which are evocative?
Oh yes. I wonder about these things all the time.
And more than that, I wonder how I can answer these questions using nothing more than raw, clinical data. This is the good stuff, the holy grail hand grenade.
I’ve been mining both the Armory and Wowhead for quite some time3. We’ll see where this goes.
1. Or maybe I just need a new kind of
dilithium.
2. Please just take my word on this and don’t even try. The Borg are still
working on it.
3. I’ve actually been mining my Star Trek RPG for years too and there’s some great stuff there. (And maybe some not so great stuff. Do I really want to know why the writers on one ship in the fleet write proportionally more posts – we’re talking a statistically significant number of posts here – with their characters on the holodeck versus any other location? I’m not so sure I do…) But really, we’ll have to save that discussion for another day. There’s only so much dorkiness a single post can hold.
Original post by blah
Source: http://www.wow.com/2010/01/25/patch-3-3-2-patch-notes-on-official-korean-wow-site/
The Good News:
Shield Slam: Damage modifier from block value decreased, and scales worse at low block value levels. Players in high-end gear shouldn’t notice the change. In addition, threat generated by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
The Bad News:
The only PUG warriors out there are the ones who are tired of waiting in the dungeon finder queue and spend the first ten seconds of the instance respeccing to Prot and changing into their 2.5k GS tank set.
The Good News:
FoS: Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.
The Bad News:
Now we have to wait for the PUG mage to fail at assisting, somehow pull aggro despite his terrible dps, and die after running out of healing range instead of just Arcane Missile-ing himself in the face.
The Good News:
Dead players are now able to re-enter the instance when the Ick/Krick and Forgemaster Garfrost encounters are active.
The Bad News:
They don’t get automatically booted from the group and replaced with a toon not being played by a monkey. They celebrate this small victory by pulling all the packs you diligently and efficiently avoided the first time through.
The Good News:
YES! They have finally heard our prayers and are removing all the repetitive fight mechanics that make all the vastly overgeared players who are running the instance only for frost badges heave much-put-upon sighs and afk.
HoS: Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he’ll run faster during the escort event.
Nexus: Anomalus will create rifts only once.
OK: Elder Nadox’s Ahn’kahar Guardian will only spawn once.
OK: Jedoga Shadowseeker will initiate her volunteer phase only once.
UP: Players can bring down Skadi’s drake using only three harpoons, down from five.
UP: Svala Sorrowgrave only casts Ritual of the Sword once, down from thrice.
VH: Portals will open faster after Portal Guardians are killed.
The Bad News:
PUGs will still
- Diligently stand in Searing Gaze. They will avoid Searing Gaze only when there is Dark Matter to go stand under. Once afflicted with this debuff, they will then resume standing in Searing Gaze.
- DPS Anomalus even though he’s invulnerable. After not noticing that they are doing no damage at all during this phase and allowing the tank and healer to carry their dps, they will celebrate the boss kill by jumping off the first platform and falling off the ledge.
- DPS Elder Nadox even though he’s invulnerable. After not noticing that they are doing no damage at all during this phase and allowing the tank and healer to carry their dps, they will celebrate the boss kill by running out of the healer’s dispel range with Brood Plague on and pulling the geist pack.
- Diligently stand in the lightning AoE and Cyclone Strike. They will avoid these only when there is an add for them to fail to dps.
- Diligently stand in Grauf’s frostfire breath. They will avoid this only when they are busy asking what the harpoons on the ground are for.
- Diligently stand directly underneath the Ritual of the Sword while looting Svala’s corpse.
- Mention between 5 and 20 times that they only need one more boss for Lockdown! as they skin the mobs from two earlier portal spawns.
Original post by blah
I’m taking a beginning web development class for my degree. I already expected to be extremely bored in this class, especially since it focuses on Dreamweaver and not having any knowledge of code. Dreamweaver can be handy, mostly the code view since it’s color coded and lets me see syntax much easier. So this class should be easy, right? Just ignore the stuff about using the design view and build the assignments by hand in the code view (because to me that’s easier). Then I looked through the course schedule and found something interesting. It was almost offensive, yet comical at the same time.
It reads, “Assignment #9 – Abstract = Design: Nesting Tables.”
My first reaction was “LOL”. Really? Did we time warp back to 2004 when people were using tables for layout purposes? I actually asked someone what year it was and checked to see if Bush was in office. Honestly, teaching this seems like a huge disservice to the students considering it’s an extremely outdated technique.
Let me go over the reasons why this is terrible:
- It’s semantically incorrect markup.
- It’s terrible for screen readers. We’re supposed to be learning about accessibility, and this contradicts that.
- Tables are more bytes per markup than other options.
- We have CSS. Using a table locks you in the table for good. If you use Divs and CSS, then you have much more flexibility with your layout. Should you ever choose to change some part of it, it’s much easier, not to mention that building the page in the first place would be easier without using tables.
- Last but not least… TABLES ARE FOR TABULAR DATA ONLY!
To be fair, using tons of divs, ids, and classes just for styling is also semantically incorrect markup. But that’s the best we’ve got for design until HTML5. I’d rather use the better of the two options.
Fortunately, the professor teaching the first half of the class doesn’t seem to be teaching this, which is awesome, because I like her a lot. But come on, why is that junk part of the curriculum anyway? I still haven’t decided if I should quietly do the assignment or challenge the teacher on the terrible way she’s teaching us how to make a layout. At least she’s not teaching us to use framesets.
Original post by Sufjan
And here we are.
Original post by blah
A lot of people ask me why I prefer FLAC to, say, V0 ripped MP3’s, or some other form of lossy music.
Really, it’s a simple question of math. Let’s assume I could play the music straight from the CD to my brain. We’ll call that a 100 on our perfect-music-injection scale. Let’s also say that a crappy pair of headphones degrades that pure audio by %10. I’d be getting a 90 on my audio-perfection scale once I started listening through my headphones. Still an A, but not perfect.
Headphones aren’t the only thing degrading my audio experience, though. There are a few other things to go through:
- Source
- DAC
- Wiring/Jacks
- etc
There’s a bunch more, but this will do for our thought experiment.
Say that the best MP3 I could get degraded my audio 8%, my DAC another 8%, and my headphones 10% (I have crappy headphones). That would net me this result:
.92*.92*.90 = .7616
or a 76 on my perfect-audio-injection scale.
A C grade. Not that great.
But if I start with an exact copy of that first audio source, I get this:
1*.92*.98*.90 = .828
or an 83 on the scale.
I don’t know about you, but I can tell the difference between B and C work. Neither are 100%, but one is definitely better than the other. Even through a portable music player, the FLAC will always better, mathematically.
This is of course discounting the storage issue between the two. I don’t currently have a portable player, so its not really an issue for me.
Original post by logikal
So out of curiosity I googled myself, and something unexpected came up. Check it out:
I wasn’t aware of this! I never attended UC Davis nor have I ever discussed with anyone about performing my arrangement there. Weird! That’s pretty awesome. It was also listed on a Saxophonist’s web site under his list of repertoire. Even cooler! It’s been performed by 4 colleges now, the first performance was right after I wrote it…I was like 18. The UCD performance was a few years ago.
Original post by Sufjan
Ξ December 20th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Hacks |
I was commisioned with a task to upgrade a couple 360's. Needless to say one of them was brand spanking new. Still in the box to be exact. Well, the 83850c Lite-on drives don't like to have their firmware dumped. Reading through countless articles and posts i decided a solder method was the only way to go.
With permission, i dove in.
This is the board with the protective film removed. I used my leatherman and scraped it off with my knife.
Here are my soldered joints. Not bad for a first time on a super small board ;)
And a close up of the solders.
The switch to enable/disbale the ground.
All put back together and ready to dump :)
Notes:
Use jungle flasher
1. Intro the drive
2. Read the firmware.
3. Make a dummy copy (right click)
4. Load dummy in source, let it auto-ixtreme it.
5. Repair drive (put all the cuts and solders back)
6. Intro it again.
7. Click "Write"
8. Enjoy
Original post by Extreme
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