Projects
I worked on some things this week.
MediaCow Touch 2
Website
On February 16, 2025, I found out that my website is able to be linked from LinkedIn now, an issue I have been trying to resolve for months. It seems that the recent fix for StaticSite to copy robots.txt from the root of the configuration directory to the output directory fixed this. I have noticed that Google is now indexing my website as result of this.
I recently decided that I would keep the ctcl.lgbt domain for the time being. I may or may not register a second domain when I eventually renew the ctcl.lgbt domain
On February 16, 2025, I added gzip compression to the website nginx configuration for clients that support it. Other fixes include fixing the typo in the HTML DOCTYPE tag (""), improvements for touchscreens and the adding of "preload" to the stylesheet tag.
StaticSite
On February 16, 2025, I added the ability to generate a sitemap.xml file.
Tojock DVP-506 Diagnosis and Repair
On February 10, 2025, I was given a DVD player to fix as discs failed to read. I first suspected the issue to be from cables being disconnected during shipping.
Initially, I opened up the DVD player to test that theory and see what was inside. I was met with a small PCB with the Sunplus Technology SPHE8203R SoC, an IC I have seen before with the Coby DVD-288 DVD player. The SPHE8203R specifically introduced me to Sunplus in April 2019 with the latter DVD player. The IC seems to have been produced in Week 24, 2024 with other components dating mid-2024. The SPHE8203R seems to have been in production since at least 2008. There is no public documentation for the SPHE8203R or anything else except for the SP7021. Unlike the DVD-288, the ROM is soldered to the PCB in an SOIC-8 package while on the DVD-288, the ROM is socketed DIP-8.
After reseating connectors and inserting a DVD, the Simpsons Movie that I have used before to test DVD players, then waiting over 20 seconds, the message "ERR DISC" appeared. I thoguht the FPC cable on the laser module was flipped, I turned it over though then upon attempting to read the disc, after about five seconds, "NO DISC" appeared meaning that the module was able to communicate with the SoC beforehand.
I tried cleaning the lens with 99% isopropyl alcohol, which seemed to have left an odd residue on my hands. The bottle of alcohol has been in the lab since before the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 and had an expiration date of November 2022. There was no visible residue on the lens though the read error persisted.
The SPHE8203R got quite warm to the touch, though not like the SP7021 where I had to put a heatsink on it, I doubt this is related but I found it interesting. I tested the USB port on the DVD player and it was able to read a USB drive. As expected, videos encoded in AVC did not play. I tried re-encoding a video in MPEG-4 though this was not successful. My experience with ffmpeg is limited so I may have missed something.
I figure that the laser module is non-functional. I may try to use the DVD drive out of the Coby DVD-288 as a replacement if the connectors are the same.
Personal
I have found it difficult to find any interest in college. Maybe this would change soon but I am not sure.