Thinkpads Forum

I've retired my 365XD to recording a few broadcast radio shows at various hours of the day. With the screen off, it draws about 8 watts AC, so it ranks up there with my "energy star" vampire power bricks.

It only runs about 3 of 24 hours. Is there any setting which will turn it on automatically on application of AC power, such that I could put it on an external timer?

Windows 95, it's been awhile for me.......

I know that the Windows 95 Plus pak included "System Agent" that is equal to "Task Scheduler" introduced with Win98 through XP.

Incase you don't have it here's a link; http://www.freebyte.com/fbtaskscheduler/

Here is another interesting site; http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/sol ... duler.html

What app are you using to record your streams?

phool@round wrote:Windows 95, it's been awhile for me.......

I know that the Windows 95 Plus pak included "System Agent" that is equal to "Task Scheduler" introduced with Win98 through XP.

Thank you for the links. I've used the Win95 Task Scheduler-type apps before, they're not quite as sophisticated as later editions, but I don't really need anything fancy either.

What I'm looking for, is whether there is any way to strap the hardware or BIOS to boot up without throwing the lever. I guess I could rig up a solenoid "finger" to push the button at the right time, but rig would use as much power as is saved.

I can run the same configuration on an old Dell P150 desktop, which consumes a bit more power active, but can be counted on to boot from an AC timer and power down when finished. I'd just rather do it on something smaller, and have reason to keep the Thinkpads running.

phool@round wrote: Incase you don't have it here's a link; http://www.freebyte.com/fbtaskscheduler/

Here is another interesting site; http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/sol ... duler.html

What app are you using to record your streams?

I use "Cybercorder 2000" from Skyhawk Technologies, recording from the line-in jack. It has a VCR-like program schedule, and will save the files either named or date-stamped, in WAV or MP3 format, at your choice of sampling rates.


In "player" mode, it has a fixed-increment fast-forward feature, i.e. fast-forward 15, 30, 60, 120, 300, 600 seconds, which I use as a "commercial skip" - my often-missed and too-early-morning show has about 8 minutes of commercials between content.

There are two Panasonic portable radios plugged into the line-in jack, tuned to two different stations; their AC power is controlled via X10 - my two programs don't come on at the same time. The radios are in the next room, the cable is about 30' long, to isolate them from the RFI produced by other PC equipment. The radios draw less than 1 watt.


I evaluated about a dozen "VCR-Radio" programs, settling on Cybercorder, as it works more consistently with various soundcards and older OS variants (Win95, Win2K).

I've tried doing this more elegantly, with both an ISA AM/FM card (AM reception inside a PC... stop laughing!) and an outboard serially-controlled digital tuner. The latter worked, but the tuner was less than stellar, while the software was very picky about its operating environment. So I regressed a bit for the sake of signal quality.

I believe the machine can wake up from standby at a specified time, set either by the BIOS or the power management control panel.

I don't know of any way to get the machine to turn on at a certain time. You could use a solenoid, or wire in a relay across the power switch contacts, or...

If you wanted to be really smooth, you could connect to the docking connector. Those usually have power switches, so you could emulate that... somehow.

This is pure speculation on my part...

What if you put in a PC card modem or network card... perhaps you can configure it to wake up the computer if a signal gets sent into the card. I know that many desktop PCs have a "wake on LAN" capability...??

The first thing that came to my mind was "Mac". I know that a Mac would have no trouble accomplishing exactly what your wishing. I'm speaking of the older, less expensive hardware - beige G3 or Pismo Power Book. At least the audio hardware on board is decent to work with.

Second thing, I don't think with the current set of conditions that it's possible unless........ you can somehow bypass the momentary power switch first or accept the fact that sleep will be the lesser of two evils. It's not impossible and a very interesting challenge.

Third, an IR port is available. What could be done with that? It is networkable/controllable. Hmmm. I'll take a look around for an IR solution.

Here's a link to some interesting IR software; http://www.epanorama.net/links/irremote.html

phool@round wrote:The first thing that came to my mind was "Mac". I know that a Mac would have no trouble accomplishing exactly what your wishing. I'm speaking of the older, less expensive hardware - beige G3 or Pismo Power Book. At least the audio hardware on board is decent to work with.

Second thing, I don't think with the current set of conditions that it's possible unless........ you can somehow bypass the momentary power switch first or accept the fact that sleep will be the lesser of two evils. It's not impossible and a very interesting challenge.

Third, an IR port is available. What could be done with that? It is networkable/controllable. Hmmm. I'll take a look around for an IR solution.

Here's a link to some interesting IR software; http://www.epanorama.net/links/irremote.html

Thanks for further suggestions. As it were, Macs are allergic to me. But I think you've helped clarify what the solution will be...

I'm pretty dangerous with a soldering iron, but how much damage can I do to a $10 thinkpad? I don't suppose there are thinkpad schematics online anywhere...

Hmm, I thought Mac's where Hypoallergenic?

Schematics? There are no freely available schematics. This forum is highly popular for that very reason, we overcome the lack of schematics.

elray wrote:I've retired my 365XD to recording a few broadcast radio shows at various hours of the day.

This application definitely interests me. Right now I'm using a non-PC method to record something that happens very early (to me anyway) in the morning on one of the local classic rock stations in San Jose. Sometimes, as part of their call-in contests, radio station KUFX 98.5 FM announces key information around 7am. The morning jock, Greg Kihn (yup, the same guy from the late '70s; here's an answer to one of those, "whatever happened to that rock star?" trivia questions) will give out a time period during the day when to expect the contest "trigger". Currently they are running the "12 Days of K-FOX". Each day during the 12 days they add a new prize to the collection so that the winner on the 12th day (Dec. 21) gets all 12 prizes. As most of the regulars here know, I'm a contest junkie. I've taken to using a Panasonic RR-XR320 handheld digital recorder placed atop a clock radio to record this info. It can be programmed to turn on at a specific time and record for as long as you want (to the capacity of the SD card anyway). However, it's a one-shot deal; one program time during any 24-hour period. After the event occurs, you have to re-program it for the next day. The clock radio is setup to turn on a few minutes before 7 and automatically shuts off after an hour. Automating this using a PC with recording software sounds interesting. I've noticed before that the T23 BIOS has a Resume on Time option, with both a time and date field but I have never given it much thought. I guess I'll have to play with this and see how it works. Some questions then:

- does the system have to be on and in standby for the BIOS timer to activate
- how to launch the recording program when the system wakes up (schedule a task I presume)
- how to get the system to shut off or drop back to standby or hibernate mode after the recording is finished

I suppose that if it's not possible to power up/down the system, then leaving it on and programming some scheduled tasks to control the recorder and TV/FM tuner card (now I've got an excuse to get one!) might work out.

Ray, from previous posts I know that you own a Mac or two. With a Mac completely off you can schedule a Mac to turn on through "System Prefernces ->Energy Saver -> Options -> Schedule ->Start up or wake/Shut down". Through a native Mac application called "Automator" you can then "drag" a sequence of events to turn on your broad band, connect to the exact radio stream and record through Stream Ripper. This can be scheduled for every day or Monday thru Sunday - no dates needed.

What I'm trying to accomplish by informing you of this (if you not aware of it) is that it would be pretty cool if these actions could be mirrored using a Thinkpad. Is it possible? Right now it appears to be daunting enough, a challenge worth following. Great reason to keep old hardware alive and useful.

I've been trying to acquire information about what Windows apps (free - as in free beer) might give me similar control. Control over the BIOS is what I'm homing in on right now, something to schedule the laptop to boot up with. Here's a link with a general idea of what I'm speaking of here. On HP servers we use an ILO - Integrated Lights Out over a network connection to reboot servers remotely. I'm also looking for an inesxpensive ILO device, possibly serial.
Right now elray is using "Cybercorder 2000" which is a great program for recording and worth building off of.

One other note; elray is using a system with the old "EZ Setup" BIOS. Not as configurable as the newer BIOS's (T23'). I happen to have 760's with the same setup so it's a matter of what software/hardware will work with it.