Cool method to test analog & digital (DVB-T) TV receivers?

There seems to be a cool unconventional method to test your analogue (PAL / SECAM) or digital (DVB-T) TV receiver (set-top box, unit, tuner etc.);
all you need is a PC running Linux with X11 and a video card with analog VGA output (preferably not very old one),
just read the following article (by Fabrice Bellard, 2005):

• Analog and Digital TV (DVB-T) Signal Generation

(I've not tested it personally yet, but it looks promising enough).

dd utility: the rescue versions

Apart from the traditional implementations of a Unix dd utility (e. g., one found in the GNU Core Utilities), there are some special versions of it, dedicated for rescuing the data from damaged (badly readable) disks:

1. GNU ddrescue (by Antonio Diaz Diaz);
   seems to be the best choice from these two ones [1, 2];
   there's a GUI log viewer for it (ddrescueview), and also some other helper utilities (ddrutility);
2. dd_rescue (by Kurt Garloff);
   there's also a wrapper script for it called dd_rhelp.

The Debian distribution software archives, starting from version 7.0 ("Wheezy"), have only the GNU ddrescue; you can install it the following way:

# apt-get install gddrescue

The convenient way to use this utility is to make an image (a binary dump) of the whole defective disk (FDD, HDD, CD, DVD etc.) with its help, and then apply data recovery / content extraction programs (e. g., TestDisk) directly to the disk image.

Anyway, regular backups & redundant data storage solutions should save you from data recovery problems :-)

References:

1. Disk drive recovery: ddrescue, dd_rescue, dd_rhelp - System Administration Bits of Knowledge (by John Gilmore)
2. Damaged Hard Disk - CGSecurity

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Last updated: 2013-12-08

Seagate: download finder

Just in case you're looking for downloads for your Seagate product (i. e., HDD firmware updates, manuals & software), here's a useful link:

• Seagate Technology - Download Finder

MS Windows installation on Sun / Oracle computer with SPARC CPU (video tutorial)

MS Windows XP & 7 (and more): installation on Sun Fire V240 server (with UltraSPARC IIIi CPU) — video tutorial (in Russian) :-)

Adobe Flash Player: useful URLs

Adobe Flash Player: misc. useful links.

1. A table of current player versions for various platforms.
2. Download the current version of Adobe Flash Player.
3. Archived Flash Player versions.
4. Problems playing protected video content (Linux, Flash Player 11).
5. Flash Player Settings Manager.