#Tom's Weblog

Something that I have been wanting to do forever is to hard mod an original Xbox by flashing a custom bios to the system, also called a “TSOP flash“. Where the name TSOP (thin small outline package) refers to the type of IC package used on the original Xbox. Flashing the bios is a fairly straightforward procedure if you know how but if you are starting out fresh it can seem like a daunting task as there is so much information available. Hence I thought it would be a good idea share my experience. Disabling write protection The first step… Read More »Flashing the bios on an original Xbox in 2024

This post will serve as a reference for myself and maybe also others. After successfully setting up PCI (GPU) passthrough on a Ubuntu virtual machine I wanted to see if it would also work with a Windows virtual machine. During this process I ran into some challenges that are documented below: After setting up the Windows virtual machine I found that it did not correctly identify the graphics card. Device manager showed that a device was found but it did not recognize it as a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070. This meant that the NVIDIA driver installer was unable to determine… Read More »Windows GPU passthrough with proxmox

Let me start out by saying I’m a fan of Synology. I have owned a DS216Play in the past and have upgraded to a DS918+ in recent years. In my view Synology DSM is one of the more user friendly interfaces for NAS type devices and so I decided to revisit the XPEnology project when I came across my old HP N54L. While I found several other posts of people already running XPEnology on their N54Ls I did not find a detailed installation post specific to my needs. I decided to visit the installation FAQ and from there the DSM7x… Read More »Installing Synology DSM 7.X on a HP N54L in 2022

Why this post? I ran into problems while automating domain registration using WHMCS and my registrar VIMEXX. VIMEXX does provide a registrar module but it does not work out of the box with my version of WHMCS. I was able to get it to work and thought it would a good idea to share my experience along with a updated version of the module. About WHMCS WHMCS is an all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for online businesses. Handling everything from signup to termination, WHMCS is a powerful automation & support tool. About the problem The module is fairly straightforward… Read More »WHMCS-VIMEXX

I recently replaced my Macbook Pro (early 2015) with a newer model. As I make use of Time Machine for making encrypted backups on my Synology NAS I thought it would be a great opportunity to actually test my backups as a non tested backup is no backup at all (Schrodinger’s backup). During the initial setup of my new Macbook however, I ran into a problem. The migration assistant found my NAS, I was able to connect to it and see the backups but at the same time I got the following message: “No volumes found in backup”. My heart… Read More »Restoring an encrypted Time Machine backup from Synology