July 22, 2008
Despite all SMART values being way above thresholds my internal 500 GB Samsung was giving up on me which I realized when I suddenly couldn’t copy over a file to my external Samsung Spinpoint F DT USB backup disc. A deep scan with Samsung’s ES Tool revealed several defective LBAs so I cloned the entire disc to said external to swap them. When I booted up my machine the new disc wasn’t detected by my board’s VIA 8237 RAID controller revealing the flaw I’d overlooked so far:
SATA interface speed cannot be switched to 1.5 Gb/s!
Apart from SATA’s touted backwards and forwards compatibility which should ensure operating a 3.0 drive on a 1.5 connector the manual on Samsung’s product page explicitely mentions a SATA 1.5 Gb/s Speed Limit Jumper setting to avoid speed negotiation issues on older motherboards. The manual however depicts 8 jumper pins whereas the HD753LJ has only 4 (!) none combination of which does any good.
So I tried both patch downloads mentioned in the FAQ to set the speed via software on a friend’s PC whose motherboard can stomach 3.0 devices attached to it. Curiously enough both tools do not show the current setting so to verify patch results you gotta boot ES Tool again. 3 boot CDs, how’s that for convience?
Of course applying the patches did not work as confirmed by Samsung support the next day. I’d tried to contact them by mail but their German support form did not list my drive model so I had to call the hotline which failed to call me back. When I called again the next day the droid on the phone had no explanation on why manual and support form where out of date nor what the 4 jumper pins are supposedly used for (since they are not used for master/slave or 32 GB clip settings anymore).
Samsung – what’s the (Spin)point?
Update, August 6th
I’ve just read on a german forum that only after using the second tool on Samsung’s FAQ page ES-Tool 2.11 would get a new option ‘Set Max UDMA’ which at last would allow adjusting interface speed (’process’ ). Can anyone please confirm that with a comment. I’ve already sold my Samsung and got a WD but I’d really like to know if Samsung tried to fix this flaw.
Update, November 4th
Since I’d sold my drive to a friend I was able to test it again yesterday at his computer and now it worked for me too! I was able to switch SATA speed setting by doing it as Ken Cowin suggested: set to 3.0 GB in SSpeed instead of 1.5! It appears whoever coded the tool accidentally labeled the routines the wrong way cause after using SSpeed I could verify (and even change) speed with ES Tools and option ‘Set Max UDMA’.
28 Comments | 
Consumer electronics | Tagged: 1.5/3.0 interface speed, outdated manual, pointless jumper pins, SATA backwards compatibility, SMART OK, Spinpoint | 
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Posted by Marvin
July 18, 2008
They’ve done it again! At least that’s what I thought while I was browsing the dvd player section of a retail chain here in my town where I noticed a bunch of returned Philips players. The packaging had clearly been opened before so I took the liberty of checking out the manual and as you may have guessed already the device appears to be limited by a serious flaw: 640 files max! Now that I’ve had the chance to borrow a friend’s unit for tesing it turns out:
Philips manuals suck!
MCM 393: Number of albums/folders: maximum 99, Number of tracks/titles: maximum 500
DVP 3260: The unit can only support up to a maximum of 300 folders and 648 files.
Just compare both entries above, the MCM can play a total of 500 songs, the DVP 648 songs per folder! You couldn’t derive this from the wording? Well neither could I!
Of course the DVP cannot handle FAT32’s 65535 entries per folder. Still this is a vast improvement over the puny 500 files of the MCM393.
It’s kind of ironic though that the lack of official USB HDD support is allegedly due to the large storage capacity making navigation very difficult rather than the filebrowser’s embarrassing limit of 14 (!) chars! The real problem of course lies in USB powered 2.5″ HDDs which sometimes draw too much power so that compatibility cannot be assured. Of course Philips wouldn’t bother to write this valuable info into their manuals either.
But what do you expect from a company that’s too stupid to list the firmware update’s version number on their support page? Hey, there’s a new one out on October the 10th 2008! Your newly bought player reveals the version number but not the firmware date it is using. So do you upgrade or not? I’ve written a FAQ that might help you decide.
Philips – they just don’t get it!
3 Comments | 
Consumer electronics | Tagged: FAT32 sucks, file limit, incomprehensive manual, USB Stick | 
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Posted by Marvin
July 12, 2008
Admittedly I got hooked on this one’s iconic design when I saw it mentioned in a computer magazine some years ago half a year prior to it’s release. When it finally hit the market I’d already gotten another cell phone from my carrier. Thus when I switched to prepaid two years later everybody else already got it so I could get a new one cheap on Ebay. Despite it’s wide adoption one of it’s major flaws unfortunately had eluded me for all this time:
None of the five (!) keys on the closed flip can be used to deflect incoming calls!
I kid you not! Despite the external display’s major feature to enable you to “see who’s calling without opening the flip” you still gotta open it (thereby taking the call) cause only 3 of those keys trigger functions with the flip closed. I actually had to mod my device just to get this basic function working.
Motorola, design over usability!
1 Comment | 
Consumer electronics | Tagged: design isn't everything, missing basic functions, poor usability | 
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Posted by Marvin
