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» rec.fm – Recommend products you love, help charities you care about.

CP437, yo

In my search for a good monospaced font for coding and other fixed-width uses, I began looking for a Windows version of the original Code Page 437 “OEM font.”

Unable to find a suitable replacement, I created .FON versions of the font using Fony, a spiffy freeware tool for editing bitmap fonts.

There’s both a 9×16 and an 8×16 version. Those of you who ever knew too much about EGA will recall that it had an 8×16 character size, whereas VGA’s is 9×16. I find that both are suitable for modern use, but I like the 8×16 a bit more because it seems better suited to the aspect ratio of a modern display (9×16 feels a little too “loose”).

Download them both here (Windows .FON format): 8×16, 9×16.

Feel free to re-use and re-distribute as you see fit.

So, I ended up manually building a category tree based on the categories listed in the CJ console. Download it here:

CJ Categories.sql

The category tree is set up in a simple adjacency list (parent-based category) structure. Read this article for more information on tree structures in MySQL.

Use this query to retrieve a complete list of all categories in list format:

SELECT COALESCE(c2.id, c1.id) id, c1.name, COALESCE(c2.name, '') FROM category_map_cj c1

LEFT JOIN category_map_cj c2 ON c2.parent_id = c1.id AND c2.parent_id != c2.id

WHERE c1.parent_id = c1.id;

Leave a comment if you encounter any issues with this or if you have any questions.

About two months ago, the car started jerking and hesitating again, and it gradually got to the point where it took a good amount of gas-pedal-coaxing to get it to hold 25 mph up a steepish hill. I decided that rather than taking it in to the dealership for another $250, I’d just order a new set of coils and replace all six at once myself. This ended up being a little more work than I had anticipated, but, all in all, was a great success and not too difficult, and certainly well worth the potentially huge savings I netted by avoiding a trip to the shop.

Firstly, the subject of acquiring the coils. The coils seem to run anywhere from $65 to $100 when ordered individually or purchased from an auto parts place. Here is what you are looking for:

• Motorcraft part DG513.
• Standard part UF406.

Now, rather than paying a lot for all six and buying them individually, order a set of six from Amazon using the link here. It should run $155 plus shipping, which is a great price for the set of six. These will fit a 2002 through 2005 MPV, and possibly a year or two under or over.

Under construction. Stay tuned for the rest of this post!

This post is big with a lot of images, so click below to view the whole thing.

Pictures:

What I started with. The dash was in pretty good shape (just one small crack in the center where the center speaker would have gone) but the rest of the plastic wasn’t so good. No carpet either.

The back seat and floor. Dirty and lots of junk laying around. Notice the weird color on the rear panel visible behind the seat. It was either faded heavily or someone had tried to paint it in the past.

Top off and back seat removed.

Seats, junk and extra rugs removed. A bit of minor surface rust in places but nothing major at all.

Dirt all over.

Worn out inner padding behind the rear panels.

The other side.

Driver’s-side door panel removed. The plastic was the worst on these.

A growing pile of trim pieces.

The inside of the driver’s-side door. The window wasn’t working — ended up removing the motor, using some nuts to replace the ground-up bushings around the gear, put it back in and it worked fine. Had to then re-glue the window track to the glass using some silicone.

The top of the dash sitting on the rear seat. You can see the small crack on the speaker grille.

The bed cleaned up and sprayed with Rustoleum red primer.

The rest of the floor is even dirtier now that all of the dirt from the bed was swept on to it.

The headlight and wiper knobs. The headlight knob came off with no problem, but the wiper knob was a pain to remove and took a while.

Cleaning up the floor with Simple Green, brillo pads and shop towels.

All clean with no rust to speak of.

After reading on here, I ended up using Peel and Seal to sound-deaden the floors. It took five rolls to do the entire floor and some spots on the doors, rear walls and ceiling. Went on very easily using a pair of scissors and a dull metal paint scraper to flatten and form it.

Peel and Seal under way on the bed. I eventually figured out that a pillow or some other kind of padding really helps your knees while doing this.

Cannon approves of Peel and Seal.

Mostly done in the bed area.

Moving in to the main cab area of the floor. Used up the last of my fourth roll here and had to go and buy roll #5.

First trim panel painted. I used Krylon Fusion in the “River Rock” color. It worked pretty well but took about seven cans to do everything since it all needed three or more coats. I also used a Krylon Fusion clearcoat over the dash and other parts that will see a lot of UV exposure or friction.

Old versus new. I cleaned each part with Simple Green, dried, and scuffed with a 220 grit sanding block before painting. Some parts had plastic that was degraded badly (”dusty” and scratched easily) and needed more sanding than others.

I went with a darker brown Krylon color for the dash pieces that were previously black/fake woodgrain.

Cruddy as hell door panels. These took a ton of sanding but came out looking okay.

Midway through sanding one of the door panels. Had to wear a dust mask and keep a Shop-Vac nearby to periodically remove the large volumes of powder that were sanded off.

Closer shot of the other door panel showing all the powder.

Comparison shot with the first coat of paint on a door panel.

Another comparison shot.

The door panels had a darker fake-wood-laminate insert that held the power window switch. I removed those and painted them with the darker brown. I also removed and later put back the chrome moulding which was in good shape. Rather than mess with the friction clips that held the trim pieces to the door panel, I just siliconed them back in place on the panel. Here is the insert siliconed and drying with pressure from some pots.

A completed and assembled door panel, minus the arm rest. The arm rests were in super-bad shape and are going to be replaced entirely (haven’t gotten around to ordering them yet).

The dash minus the instrument cluster. Took me a little while to remove since I was worried about breaking the speedometer cable, but it turns out that it just pulls out of there.

Front of the instrument cluster.

Rear of the cluster. You can see that something is not quite right at the bottom by the gear indicator…

The plastic tubing that holds the gear indicator cable is broken in several places, starting at the point where it meets the indicator housing, which removes from the rest of the cluster with two screws. I ended up removing the cable entirely (which was broken as well) and replacing it with a thin piece of wire (from a CAT5 cable, actually) that is flexible but rigid enough to not bind. I still need to find a thin enough piece of plastic line to house it before I can reattach it to the shift arm, though.

The top of the shift indicator housing.

Masking off the dash for paint.

The dash is painted. I was more thorough than I usually am with masking and it came out really well.

Test-fitting the center panel in the dash to see how the colors looked.

Top of the dash painted and ready to go back in. I hit it with around five coats total and two additional coats of clear since it will see a lot of exposure. The dents on the right are from a handle that the PO added; I put it back on.

The headliner removed. I painted it but will be redoing it with fabric before too long, since the paint made the vinyl liner material tighten, causing it to detach from the backing in places on the middle and on the edges.

The Peel and Seal is down. Next I put down a layer of carpet backing from Lowe’s. $30 per roll. I don’t remember the exact dimensions but it took about 1-1/2 rolls to do the entire floor, door padding, and padding on the rear walls. I used 3M Super 77 spray adhesive for everything.

Padding down in the rear. Still needed to do the passenger side wheel well.

View towards the front.

Padding all down. I enclosed the rear speaker brackets with padding and hit them inside and out with rubberized undercoating spray to attempt to make a somewhat sealed enclosure for them. It worked okay, though the spray took a long time to dry. Haven’t installed rear speakers yet to see how it will sound.

Next, I put down a layer of 6 mil plastic sheeting on top of the carpet padding, adhered with more Super 77. I don’t know if I would recommend this step, since it is probably not necessary (may help prevent spills from seeping down to the metal, which was my reasoning for putting it in). The sheeting made the final carpet installation a bit more difficult since it has a tendency to detach from the padding and slide around when the carpet is glued on top of it.

Plastic sheeting down in the front. To keep track of the bolt locations for the seats and the center console, I just left the bolts in there, threaded in a few turns. It worked pretty well.

Masking off the indicator light areas on the instrument panel trim piece. I laid a piece of masking tape over it and then cut the individual holes out using a blade.

The plastic film for the Hi-Beam indicator had come loose, so I reattached it with some glue.

Starting to install the carpet. I removed the mounting brackets for the rear seat and had to use the metal broom handle as a redneck cheater bar for the socket wrench since a couple of the bolts were stuck really well. An impact wrench would have come in handy here.

Gluing the rear piece down. The wheel well pieces are glued down. The front section is just laying there here.

Scrubbing and painting the rear seat mounting brackets.

Test fitting the carpet in the front. The carpet is an ACC kit ordered from JBG. Overall I was pretty happy with it — it took some work to make it fit properly (probably due in part to the fact that I had put the carpet padding down beneath it), but it ended up looking good once it was all in.

Glued down in the rear with the mounting brackets reattached.

Carpet down in the front, seats going back in. The wire hanging from the steering column is the pull wire for the shift indicator for which I still need to find a housing tube. One of the speakers is in on the driver’s door.

Another view. Speaker installed on the passenger side. New speaker wires emerging from the radio area.

New head unit, Pioneer DEHP4100UB

New speakers for the front doors, Kenwood KFC-M1625I

The dash trim panel for the radio was the old style with the holes on either side for knobs. To make the new radio fit, I traced the outline of the mounting insert and cut it out with a Dremel. It worked well and the mounting insert fit with no problems (after whittling on the plastic in places). I then glued it all around with Gorilla Glue. There was a small gap above and below the mounting insert — to fill it, I put a piece of black electrical tape on the inside up against the gap. Once installed it’s barely noticable. (Note that the other, easier option here is to go to a JY and find a dash trim panel from a 1986 or later, I think, which has a standard DIN opening rather than this kind.)

From the back side.

Driver-side door panel installed. The power window switch faceplate’s mounting tabs were broken on the back so I had to glue it to the switch mechanism, which is why it’s hanging out and taped together here while the glue dries.

Passenger side door panel and map pocket installed. Driver side didn’t have a map pocket.

Kenwood tweeters installed on dash. May end up relocating these later; they are just adhered there for the moment.

Outside for the first time in a while.

The carpet thresholds still need to be installed. I ran plastic wire loom to carry speaker wires in the gaps, so I can fish wire through later without needing to remove the threshold.

Some of the used cans.

Last but not least: running boards and big mudflaps removed! Looks much better now, though the exhaust pipes need to be raised up a bit now.

Before, with ugly bent-up aluminum running boards:

After, no running boards and no flaps:

Another angle:

Still to do:

• Find and install arm rests.
• Rear speakers and amp.
• Reupholster headliner.
• Upholster roof of canopy to match headliner.
• Exterior work.
• Engine compartment cleanup.
• Etc.

Before installing the carpet, I ran 14ga speaker wire all over. Three stereo channels from head unit preamp to under the driver seat for amp installation. Also two separate sets for each rear speaker — one to the head unit and one to under the driver seat, so the rear speakers can be run off of either the head unit or the amp. Also ran new speaker wire from the doors. (Coaxial cable works well to fish the lines through the rubber enclosures between the door and the inner wall.)

Starting around late 2007, the minivan started to occasionally stall while decelerating or braking. The RPMs would drop to near-zero and the engine would die. It only happened a couple of times over a few months but began to get more and more frequent as time passed. Generally it would only happen between 15 and 50 MPH, and only when letting off of the accelerator. After the first few times, I learned to avoid it by tapping the gas as I saw the RPMs plummet; if I did that in time, I was able to keep it from dying. If I didn’t however, my only recourse was to shift into Neutral, start the engine while rolling, shift back into Drive and keep going. Of course, this was quite unsafe, and by the time it was stalling once or twice every time I drove it, it was time to do something about it.

I did a bit of research online and found the occasional mention of a faulty IAC valve being the cause of stalling and rough idling. The folks at Kragen didn’t know what an IAC valve was, and I didn’t pursue it any further from there.

The van began to show a check engine light, so I took it in to the local Mazda dealership to have them check it out. It turns out the check engine light was the result of a sensor that was blocked by excessive carbon buildup in the intake manifold, which was caused in part by the stalling behavior. According to the tech, the stalling was causing the engine to run a richer fuel/air mix on restart (because it interpreted the stall as an indication of a fuel/air mixture that was too lean), and this frequently-richer burn was causing an undue amount of carbon buildup. They cleaned out the intake manifold with Seafoam (or a product like it), did a firmware upgrade, changed the plugs and wires (which I’d asked them to do as a maintenance step while they had it in there), and, $1,100 later, was given a clean bill of health. The MPV passed Oregon’s emissions testing, the stalling was gone and all seemed well.

A couple of months later, the stalling started to act up again, and grew in frequency as it did before. I did a bit more research and all available evidence still pointed at a faulty IAC valve. As it turns out, the folks at Kragen weren’t able to find the part I was referring to because it seems to go by several name/acronym combinations: IAC valve, idle air control valve, idle control valve.

Still not sure that a fix was in sight but willing to try it, I ordered a replacement IAC valve from an online parts retailer for around $65 and put it in. Replacement of the valve was very easy; it is attached to the intake manifold by two bolts, and has a simple wire harness attached to it. Here are two pictures showing its location on the engine. I saved these when I was doing my research and, unfortunately, can’t find the original source, but here they are:

Location of idle air control valve on MPV engine

Closeup of IAC valve

As you can see, the valve is fairly easy to locate. It should be in a similar location for the following years:

• 2002 Mazda MPV
• 2003 Mazda MPV
• 2005 Mazda MPV
• 2006 Mazda MPV

Years 2001 and earlier have the IAC valve attached to the firewall, but it should not be too difficult to find (the part itself looks the same as the one seen here).

Since installing the replacement valve around four months ago, the minivan has been running as good as it did when I bought it. There have been no issues whatsoever with stalling or rough running.

Update: Slightly better image of the IAC valve below.

It's the gizmo with the red circle around it.

In planning the venture, I needed the hard drive’s format to be as universally compatible and as universally stable as possible. I needed to be able to reliably interact with the drive under FreeBSD and Linux, as well as OS X and Windows (should the need ever arise, I want to be ready).

After some thought, I ended up settling on ext2 for the drive’s file system. I chose ext2 because:

• It is fairly universal, in that it can be mounted and used reliably from most OSs.
• I did not want to use FAT32; plus, FreeBSD’s msdosfs driver could not mount the drive properly (even with the -o large switch).
• Did not want to use NTFS because of general shakiness on any non-Windows platform.
• I initially tried UFS, but gave up after repeated failed attempts to get FreeBSD to partition and label it properly. (Not sure why; suspect the drive’s detected geometry may have been an issue.)
• Considered ZFS but decided I don’t want to be that cutting-edge; plus I wouldn’t have a use for most of its extended functionality. (I just need a basic filesystem.)
• Considered HFS+ but FreeBSD support is shaky (old driver, could not get it to compile on 7.0).

So, I plugged the drive into an Ubuntu Ibex box, formatted it into one ext2 partition and plugged it in to the FreeBSD box.

mount -t ext2fs /dev/da0s1 /mnt/media

So far, so good. The output of the mount command shows that the drive is there and mounted. But then:

cd /mnt
ls -la
ls: media: Bad file descriptor

For some reason, the mount point could not be listed.

After some research, I came across this bug report that described the problem in greater detail. Basically, newer versions of Linux seem to format ext2fs partitions using a 256-byte inode size, versus the previous default of 128 bytes, which is what the FreeBSD ext2fs driver expects it to be.

Fixing The Problem

To fix it, you’ll apply a patch by Josh Carroll, who posted it in the bug report linked above. Under a standard FreeBSD 7.0 installations, the commands will be something like this (as root):

cd /usr/src/sys/gnu/fs
cp -R ext2fs ext2fs.orig
cd ext2fs
fetch http://pflog.net/~floyd/ext2fs.diff
patch <ext2fs.diff
cd /usr/src
make buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC && make installkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC

If all goes well, you should then be able to restart, mount the drive, and have it work as expected. Good luck!

Initially, I picked up a Logitech Harmony 550 remote, hoping I could make it work with the laptop’s built-in IrDA transceiver, but to no avail — the IrDA unit apparently cannot communicate on the Consumer IR spectrum that a standard remote control uses. Not one to be easily defeated, I picked up a cheap, generic Windows Media Center remote control and receiver. I plugged the receiver in and, to my dismay, Windows was unable to locate a driver for the device.

After months of sporadic attempts and research, I finally found the solution. Under Windows XP, the receiver will show up under “Other devices” in the Device Manager as an “eHome Infrared Transceiver”, sporting an exclamation mark badge over a question mark — missing drivers. Windows Update turns up nothing, and a patch for Windows XP MCE that is suggested by many seems to not help anything either.

Make it work!

To install the drivers for the device, follow these steps:

• Right-click on the device entry and select Properties.
• Click on the “Reinstall Driver…” button. Opt to not check Windows Update; you’ve probably already tried with no luck.
• Get esoteric with the “Install from a list or specific location” option.
• Get more esoteric with the “I will choose the driver to install” option.
• Under the “hardware type” box, choose the “Universal Serial Bus controllers” option.
• On the next page, a correctly-labeled driver should appear as the only option in the box. Continue.
• Skip affirmatively past any prompts you receive.
• After the driver is installed, wait a bit while it churns through the resultant child devices that will appear.

You should now be good to go! I just discovered this earlier this evening and was very excited, so I figured I’d make a post about it to save others the pain and heartache that I experienced.

Additional Note: In order for the correct driver to appear, you may need to install this update. It is for XP MCE 2005 but should also install cleanly on XP.

Second additional note (December 2009): It’s worth mentioning that the remote and receiver work perfectly out of the box on Windows 7 (as I assume they would also on Vista, though I never tried).