u/Darkhentaint recently posted looking for a "lost gaming distro" from a 2006 Linux Magazine coverdisc: https://www.reddit.com/linux/comments/11z1u8u/looking_for_a_lost_distroany_chance_someone_can/
The disc was easily found on Internet Archive, which explained the story - A Spanish local government wanted to switch to Linux but couldn't find a distro which did everything they wanted, so they made their own distro. For fun, the creators also released a "gaming edition" too.
There is also a PDF of the DVD inlay from Linux Magazine's website: https://web.archive.org/web/20061101000000*/https://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/64/Linux_Magazine_DVD_Inlay.pdf
I was interested in this, so I ran it up in KVM and made a little screenshot tour: https://fosstodon.org/@suprjami/110087525461720186
It's Debian 3 Sarge with kernel 2.6.8 and GNOME 2.8.1. "Gaming edition" just means they pre-install literally every game that Debian provides. It also seems to install the fglrx package for ATI video drivers, and the nVidia driver.
There are many funny things to be seen. Multiple inconsistent menu systems, each with different icons and contents. 2006 was not Year Of The Linux Desktop.
The "network" setup asks for your ISP phone number, the idea of providing Ethernet GUI setup hadn't yet occurred to anyone, probably because nobody would have had Ethernet at home in 2006.
There are old versions of many familiar and outdated games and other things. It still has hits like Wesnoth and LinCity which exist today.
Of interest to me were old DOSBox 0.63, ZSNES 1.36, and ScummVM 0.6b.
You can even still visit Google in the ancient Firefox 1.0.6 too!
I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane as much as I did.

Hi,
I'm using Mac OS Monterey and the Preview app.
I want to jump to a specific page in a large PDF file.
I understand there's a menu item (Go > Go to page) as well as a keyboard shortcut to reach the "Go to page" feature.
But I'm looking for an even more obvious way of doing it.
Next week I'm going to be doing a presentation in front of a relatively large group of people and during the presentation I need to switch from PowerPoint (or whatever) to Preview (with an opened PDF) and then jump to a specific page.
I'll need to do this multiple times. Whatever I do in Preview will be shared in the projection screen for everyone to see.
The PDF in question has +400 pages, and I don't know which pages I'll need to open, in advance.
Two features I'm looking for:
1) Easily access the "Go to page feature". My idea is an always visible input field that allows me to jump to any page.
2) To be able to show the thumbnails while in full screen. For some reason I can't do this... Is it possible?
If Preview doesn't allow this, is there a different PDF reader that does?

To download the instruction manual for eMachines D442 in PDF format, please follow these steps:
Go to the eMachines support website at mans.io
Click on the "Drivers and Manuals" link on the top menu.
Select "Notebook" as the product type.
Select "D Series" as the product family.
Select "D442" as the product model.
Scroll down to the "Documents" section and click on "User Manual" to download the manual in PDF format.
Alternatively, you can click on this direct link to download the manual: https://mans.io/item/eMachines/D442

I am relatively new to Chatt (moved in 2020) and am looking to do a bowling league this summer at Spare Time off Brainerd Rd. I work remotely for a company out of state and haven’t really made that many friends in Chatt since moving here so I’m looking for chill people to bowl with. I usually focus on Disc Golf, but I want to try a bowling league for the summer. This is a 12 week summer league that starts May 4th. Teams of 3. I’d be happy to join an established group or go with newbies. I’ve been bowling since high school, so about 15 years, although I’ve never done a league. Anybody down?

This is from the "What's new" page:

Enhancements
You can now view PDF documents as you browse, no need to download them and open external applications anymore.

What if I wanted the previuos behavior? For instance, if I want to download a PDF, it only views the file.
There is this way: you have to choose "download link" from the menu, which downloads it. But the problem is that it doesn't save the file with its name, as with the old way.
Is there a setting to change back to automatically downloading the file?
(Edit: also even when it views a file, it's kind of messed up sometimes and it's not showing the file normally, text of the file is messed up, although it seems this doesn't happen always as I viewed a file and it was normal)

In a recent discussion on Micro.blog, someone mentioned Anybox as being an interesting alternative to Raindrop.io. As a light user of Raindrop.io, I was curious, so I spent some time investigating what Anybox was all about. Boy, I quickly became enthusiastic about it. In just a few hours of use, it was clear that my content creator workflow would be somewhat transformed. Here’s why and how.

How it started

Anybox came to my numeric life while I wasn’t really looking for a bookmarks manager. Sure, I heard about Goodlinks in the past and used Raindrop.io in recent years, but I didn’t feel the need to invest in a bookmark manager simply because I thought that bookmarks were useless. Thanks to Google or Safari, anything always seems to be in close sight. Why bother saving bookmarks? Then, I started thinking about all the bookmarks I stored in Craft for preparing articles or working on my monthly newsletter. When the quantity of bookmarks increases, Craft isn’t the right tool for storing this collection without any metadata capabilities. This is where an app like Anybox comes into play and becomes essential. The ability to set metadata for each bookmark is valuable over time.

Getting things in

Anybox is a native app on macOS, iOS and iPadOS. There is no web version of Anybox; I can live without it for now. Most of the time, bookmarks are saved using the provided Safari extension, which allows bookmarks to be assigned to collections and starred, as well as a brief comment. I’m still pondering how I could put the starring option to good use, but the option is there. Things like images and files can be saved into Anybox. This is not something I plan to do for now. I have other means of keeping those objects.
According to my incomplete statistics, Anybox supports importing bookmarks in more than 14 ways, which is the most exaggerated application I have ever seen. — Found on the internetI wanted to get my data out of Pocket too. Using the /export webpage, I could easily export the content as an HTML file. I didn’t want to reuse the tags in Pocket, so I simply saved them in my newly created collection. The next step was to create a collection to receive my Pocket data. Then I revoked all access to my Pocket account and deleted the account data before cancelling my subscription through the Mac App Store. The whole process took less than five minutes to complete.

Organizing bookmarks

Anybox SidebarAs the bookmarks collection grows, this is where collections become mandatory. Collections are presented like tags in Anybox, but the naming refers to collections. A bookmark can be assigned to many collections. Anybox allows for just the right amount of customization. Each collection can have its icon and colour, something I like to customize to my liking.
Anybox is incredibly flexible. The app isn’t overly complex, yet it offers just enough options and advanced features to allow more demanding users to tailor it to a wide range of use cases and workflows.The number of collections can grow quickly. Anybox allows for collections grouping using something like “headers”. In fact, headers act like folders. In one of the screenshots, “Areas of interest” is grouping four collections.
The exciting thing about collections is the ability to download the webpage automatically pointed out by the bookmark. This setting is done at the collection level. Articles are saved in the Safari Reader format, with the visual noise removed. Any bookmark with downloaded content contains a pair of glasses indicator, just like with Safari’s Reader mode. I set up an “Archive now” collection to quickly save any bookmarks with website content at my fingertips. It’s pretty handy. Right-clicking on the bookmark and selecting Show Reader will display the downloaded content. Make no mistake; it won’t replace Inoreader or become a read-later app. It’s just handy to have this.
Anybox can copy a deeplink pointing to any collection or header. Then, using the generated URL scheme, you can reuse the link within an app like Craft or Things 3.0. I like the integration possibilities between those three apps, something vital in my content creation workflow. I use this to create a recurring to-do that reminds me to look into a specific collection as writing inspiration sources for linkposts. This is an example: anybox://collection/8273617A-6C0E-43B2-BF1B-F21EE5915EE9.

Many useful goodies and observations

Anybox is essentially a bookmarks manager with many small goodies that a power user like me appreciates. Here are a few of them.

• Anybox feels native and light.
• Anybox contains an extensive metadata sidebar. Collections assigned to the bookmark can be removed from there and see the read view if there is one saved for the bookmark.
• The collection’s icons are based on Apple’s Symbols, the most extensive set of high-quality icons you can imagine, all searchable with keywords. I love this.
• Anybox can save a webpage as a PDF or an image. For example, the latter is a great way to create a thumbnail for use in a Craft document. Here is an example.
• Anybox supports creating smart lists to display bookmarks based on more or less complex criteria, as shown in the following screenshot.
  
• Anybox offers Anydock for frequently storing used bookmarks that you can quickly open from a floating toolbar on the screen. The Anydock supports a different set of bookmarks grouped within profiles which the user can switch between them from the keyboard. Moreover, since Any supports adding bookmarks with a URL scheme, it can become an app launcher. Clever. I don’t use the feature much, though.
  

Anybox Anydock - Anybox adds a menu item in the menu bar, which can be configured to your liking with frequently used bookmarks. - Anybox also has a Raycast extension for a quick search of bookmarks from Raycast and many commands Anybox can execute. - Anybox’s bookmarks are indexed with Spotlight on iOS, iPadOS and macOS. - Anybox automatically maintains four smart folders: Today, Starred, All, and Inbox. They are pretty handy. - I like the information density in the bookmarks list and the navigation sidebars. - Anybox is well integrated into Apple’s ecosystem, supporting things like Spotlight, Shortcuts, AppleScript, widgets, etc. It’s crucial to see such a commitment by the app developer. - Bookmarks can be copied in the clipboard in many format arrangements: as markdown with or without the bookmark description, with the description followed by the link. It’s handy for adding a reference in Craft or Ulysses. The following was generated using “Copy As / Link with Title”: The Craft Bible 📔 https://www.craft.do/s/vgvQKijqkbyo6q - List content can be displayed as icons or as a gallery. It’s a per-collection setting. When asking Anybox to generate a screenshot of the website, the thumbnail is replaced with the screenshot. It doesn’t always work, though, for some reason.

What Anybox helped me replace

I love when a new app replaces one of the similar apps I currently use.Adding Anybox in my workflow triggered a significant cleanup in my Safari bookmarks. Some were as old as fifteen years old. With Anybox, I moved my bookmarks off Craft where it made sense. I had a few documents for storing interesting bookmarks on websites that I wanted to keep track of, but I couldn’t add metadata to each bookmark cleanly. These bookmarks are now saved into collections within Anybox. Raindrop.io is also definitively retired and out of my numeric life once and for all. I know this is a popular bookmarking and text highlighting application, but I never really liked the iPad or the Mac app nor used the text highlight feature.

Concluding words

I feel that 2023 is the year of focusing on the right things that make a difference in my digital life and one discovery like Anybox. I never thought that a bookmarks manager was something I would add to my toolset. At some point during my first few moments with Anybox, I wanted to surf the web just for the pleasure of saving bookmarks. I know it’s a bit crazy, but I guess this speaks to success from a design perspective. Anybox is a joy to use and offers features for power users like me while not feeling intimidating for casual use.
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hi all, I have no idea about coding. I asked chat GPT to create me a code. It does not work though… 😒
I asked for the following:

1. I want the script to search based on an email address
   
2. I want files to be saved in the format “email received date and subject’s name”
   
3. i want the script to include all emails (also old ones) by searching within the mail folder what has already been extracted from the inbox
   

that is what I got — not working:
on run {input, parameters} set theSender to "[email protected]" set pdfFolder to (path to iCloud folder as text) & "Matt" set processedFolderName to "Processed Emails"

tell application "Mail" set theMessages to (every message of inbox whose sender is theSender) repeat with theMessage in theMessages set theSubject to subject of theMessage set theDate to date received of theMessage set formattedDate to my formatDate(theDate) set theFilename to formattedDate & "_" & theSubject & ".pdf" set theFilePath to pdfFolder & theFilename if not (exists (POSIX file (theFilePath))) then tell theMessage save as "rtf" in theFilePath end tell do shell script "/System/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit " & theFilePath delay 2 tell application "TextEdit" activate tell application "System Events" tell process "TextEdit" set frontmost to true click menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu 1 of menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1 delay 2 keystroke "G" using {command down, shift down} delay 2 keystroke pdfFolder delay 1 keystroke return delay 1 keystroke theFilename delay 1 click button "Save" of window "Export Your File" end tell end tell delay 2 close front document without saving end tell do shell script "rm " & quoted form of POSIX path of theFilePath -- Move processed email to a separate folder set processedFolder to (first mailbox whose name is processedFolderName) if not (exists processedFolder) then set processedFolder to make new mailbox with properties {name:processedFolderName} end if move theMessage to processedFolder end if end repeat end tell return input 

end run
on formatDate(theDate) set {year:y, month:m, day:d} to theDate set monthNumber to (m as integer) set formattedDate to (y * 10000) + (monthNumber * 100) + d as string return formattedDate end formatDate
Any experts?

After purhcase All-access pass and download Allergens module in-app, I get only a zip containing source code of module, but after including it, I see it as installed in apps menu, but I don´t see configurations related to module nor Allergens menu option in side menu. Also I did not found the 50 icons that includes the plugin.
Some help?

Never posted here but just a heads up Jimmy John's new pesto salami caprese sandwich contains a pine nut pesto and the most recent allergen menu lists the pesto as nut-free. I almost made a big mistake for lunch today

Never posted here but just a heads up Jimmy John’s new pesto salami caprese sandwich contains a pine nut pesto and the most recent allergen menu lists the pesto as nut-free. Almost made a big mistake for lunch today

Hello! I'm a graphic designer with over 4 years of experience. I have worked with 70+ businesses globally. I specialise in designing Logo, Business cards, Labels, Menu cards, Identity cards, Birthday/greeting/Invitation cards and more. Send me a dm with your requirements and you'll have it designed!
Here's my whole portfolio behance

What my cleints say

Web design: Starting at 30$/page

I design websites in figma,wordpress and Shopify as of now and also have a brief knowledge of html and css.
Restaurant website
landing page for Beauty products
New Jeans website

Projects completed in 2021

Logo design (starting at 10$)

•I will design Logo's as per your requirements, eg- clean, minimal, descriptive,typographic,etc for your business. The cost will be fixed upon the complexity of the design. project

Merch design

Tshirt design (starting at $5) Sample

Stationery design(starting at 10$)

1)Thank you cards sample
2)Posters Sample
3)Menu Sample
4) Happy Birthday Cards Sample
5) Invitation cards Sample
6) Business Cards sample
My process: Getting a brief and your expectations from the designs>sketching and brainstorming for the concept>presenting the concepts to you>wait on your approval and then start the final work.
What you'll get 2 concepts 3 revisions Files in png,jpeg,pdf,svg,etc
Note: I accept 50-60% of the cost upfront so you and me are both on the safe side.
Email address: [email protected] Discord: pvbdesigns#3887

I want to add my own link to jellyfin, but it doesn't work
My config:

{
"includeCorsCredentials": false,
"multiserver": false,
"themes": [
{
"name": "Apple TV",
"id": "appletv",
"color": "#bcbcbc"
}, {
"name": "Blue Radiance",
"id": "blueradiance",
"color": "#011432"
}, {
"name": "Dark",
"id": "dark",
"color": "#202020",
"default": true
}, {
"name": "Light",
"id": "light",
"color": "#303030"
}, {
"name": "Purple Haze",
"id": "purplehaze",
"color": "#000420"
}, {
"name": "WMC",
"id": "wmc",
"color": "#0c2450"
}
],
"menuLinks": [
{
"name": "Custom Link",
"url": "https://jellyfin.org"
},
{
"name": "Custom Link w. Custom Icon",
"icon": "attach_money",
"url": "https://demo.jellyfin.org/stable"
}
"servers": [],
"plugins": [
"playAccessValidation/plugin",
"experimentalWarnings/plugin",
"htmlAudioPlayeplugin",
"htmlVideoPlayeplugin",
"photoPlayeplugin",
"comicsPlayeplugin",
"bookPlayeplugin",
"youtubePlayeplugin",
"backdropScreensaveplugin",
"pdfPlayeplugin",
"logoScreensaveplugin",
"sessionPlayeplugin",
"chromecastPlayeplugin"
]
}

My docker volumes:

volumes:
- /home/dawid/ct/jellyfin/config:/config
- /home/dawid/ct/jellyfin/config.json:/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/config.json
- /home/dawid/data/jellyfin/cache:/cache
- /home/dawid/data/jellyfin/metadata:/metadata
- /home/dawid/data/media/filmy:/data/media/filmy
- /home/dawid/data/media/seriale:/data/media/seriale

I've been ready to throw my Ricoh C261SFNw out the window. I use it every once in a while to print return labels on plain copy paper and every time it's a battle (requires 25-40 prints to get one good one). I'm a developer and worked in a print shop during college so have plenty of experience dealing with these machines and followed the normal troubleshooting steps from a printer hardware and software/driver perspective.
Background: I've had the printer for 3 or so years now. I refilled the OEM toner cartridges and replaced the chips and thought the printer was punishing me via some kind of firmware treachery (as the test prints always come out 100%, printed from the printer's menu).
Symptoms: It'll take about 25-40 prints to get one where the barcode is scannable and the text is readable. Black text on this printer has always been abysmal.
Fix: Print from Android.

What I've tried:

Consumables:

• Tried different (brand new) paper to rule out humidity issues.
• To buy a genuine replacement toner cartridge from the OEM. It turns out Ricoh doesn't want your money! My serial number will not allow to me to register for a myRicoh account to order consumables (you cannot leave this field blank!). I cannot find genuine Ricoh products locally or on Amazon. I can't even determine what the price would be for a black toner cartridge.
• To buy a new remanufactured cartridge. Most of the Amazon listings were using reused listings as the reviews don't describe print toner. These all looked super suss and there were real bad reviews that looked legit.

Printing:

• Rasterized the PDF before printing
• Printed from different applications: Preview, Browser, Photoshop
• Fiddled with all options available in print properties, including black & white, duplex, color, and media weight/toner saver (everything) - nothing changes
• Confirmed that print quality is via test prints initiated from inside the printer.
• Ran any available maintenance routines built-in to the printer.
• Bypassed AirPrint and used LPD
• Used the official Ricoh PPD instead of the Generic Postscript Driver

Hardware:

• Shook/and reseated all of the toners (we're only focusing on black right now).
• Updated the firmware to the latest version

TLDR: HAS ANYONE SEEN A RICOH PRINTER THAT DOESN'T WORK WITH MACOS BUT WORKS WITH ANDROID/LINUX?!
Edit: Added what I've tried

(Shared by Ed Durrant's blog. View more details: https://www.radioddity.com/blogs/all/adding-bluetooth-support-to-the-xiegu-g90-hf-transciever)

A “proof of concept” action.

First, it is important to define what we are doing here. Some modern radios have Bluetooth built-in so that they can be operated remotely. The G-90 does not.
I want to add such control to the XIEGU G90 (this may also work with the X5105 model as well, but this has not been tested). I do not intend to open the radio case, rather I will add standard external modules that are available over eBay and other online retailer sites. There are two parts to this action.
​

Audio via Bluetooth.

The first stage is to get audio to and from the radio from some Bluetooth enabled headset or earpiece, as used with many Smartphones these days. I expected this should be the easy part of the solution while there are many standard solutions available for this that can be purchased for a few dollars/Euros/pounds. Unfortunately, this part of the solution caused me the greatest problems as the issue with the common units is that they operate as a transmitter or a receiver needing to be manually switched between the modes or even they only operate one mode at a time by a cable being inserted into one or other socket. This is not going to work with a Bluetooth Headset (note we need to use a Headset, not Headphones – a Headset is Headphones with a microphone). The Bluetooth electronics in Smartphones have this “duplex” capability but to find an external adapter with the same capabilities is not easy. Investigation showed that “aptX” support can supply what is required to handle audio going to and coming from the headset at the same time but even an adapter that says it has aptX (often one that also has NFC) isn’t always one that will handle two-way audio! The alternative using two BT adapters, one running as TX and the other as Rx path, will not work as the headset is designed for use with a smartphone and hence a single (duplex) channel.
The audio connections (ought) to be the simpler part of this project – it seems not to be the case!
I gave up looking at the direct adapter solution when I saw that an audio plus PTT solution is already available for HTs. These kits include adapter, earphone/headset and PTT button are not cheap, so shop around but make sure you are buying the complete kit and not just the earphone at the advertised price, which is not always clear!
The ideal would be just to buy the “HB-6A” adapter in the middle of the picture above and I did eventually find one company selling just that at $25 plus P&P after I had ordered a complete kit. Prices for the same kit can vary from €29 to €90! The headset alone costs €13.95. Shop around and the “kit price” from several AliExpress and eBay sellers is around €40 including tax and shipping. Of course, if you don’t already have a Bluetooth headset that you wish to use, then the one in the kit might be fine as it’s supplied to use with the adapter in a communications mode. I already had an over the ears BT headset, so now I have both Headset and earpiece/microphone.
After wiring this set via 2.5mm and 3.5mm stereo jacks to the ACC socket mini-DIN plug, pairing the headset to the unit and testing, I found two problems.

1. I had no audio coming out to by Bluetooth headset or earphone. This was simply solved by switching the output from the Internal speaker in the G90 to the ACC socket in the system menu. This is reached by pressing the button once so that the orange light comes on and then the button on the right-hand side of the radio, twice and then using the main tuning knob to change the setting from SPKR to LINE. You can also access the levels of the line input and output in these menus and I suggest you set both of these to their top value of 15.
2. Then the microphone level was far too low. As I have wired to the ACC socket – it expects computer level (1v peak-to-peak) audio, whereas the HT, where this BT adapter would normally connect to, would be expecting electret microphone level audio. Now I could wire up an inline RJ45 connector and feed the audio into the microphone socket of the G90 but I decided rather than doing that I would add a small €3 LM386 amplifier module that is normally used with Arduino projects.

This has the advantage of having a volume control, so I can set the audio input level correctly.
The first test of this modified set-up was fine up to about 3 watts but after then there was constant output indicated even when I wasn’t talking – RF Ingress! So I added a parallel pair of a 0.1 (104) and 0.01 (103) µF ceramic capacitors across the input and output of this pre-amp module and a 0.1 (104) µF capacitor directly on the mic connector on the 3.5mm jack socket, to the ground (earth) connection on the 2.5mm jack socket and with my next test… No RF Ingress – all levels were quiet until I spoke then the output meter indicated full scale on 20 watts. I suspect I will need to back the gain off a little now H.I.
A total surprise was that after pairing the little PTT button that also came with the audio adapter set, it worked straight away with no issues at all, meaning I can use this rather than the PTT option in the remote-control app (more about that app below).
To avoid always having to unplug the module to charge its internal battery via a micro-USB cable, I added a regulator board designed for the Raspberry Pi to take the 8 or 9v coming from the G90 ACC socket down to 5v for the mini-USB socket so that the Bluetooth audio module is constantly being trickle charged while in use. This supply also has a spare micro-USB plug to charge the PTT button unit when needed.
​

CAT Control via BT.

The second part of the solution is to get CAT (Computer Aided Transceiver) remote control commands over a Bluetooth serial connection to the radio from the remote device.
Only by having a separate “remote control console” with the Bluetooth headset can the G90 radio be operated fully “cordless”.
The remote device and software to do the control work is not discussed in this article. You may have your own choices but my choice is to use an Android Smart Phone and the PocketRxTx software ($5/5 Euro/5 pound for the full version – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ro.yo3ggx.rxtxpro ). The software handles the CAT side of this project. In addition, the phone itself could also handle the BT Audio but I prefer to use a BT headset.
Background – ICOM has used a 3.5mm jack for their CiV CAT connections on their rigs for some time. Xiegu on models other than the X108G (which uses a micro-USB port) has also adopted the 3.5mm stereo jack along with a subset of the ICOM CiV command set for remote control of the radio. There is one important difference, however – the ICOM radios although fitted with a stereo jack, have Tx and Rx on the tip of the plug shorted together and don’t need a connection to the ring. The case is earth. Xiegu keeps Tx and Rx signals separate and uses therefore all three connections.
There are already BT comms adapters that plug into the ICOM rigs on the market and cost around 15 Euros from China.
Using the graphic for the HC-05 module and tracing the lines back, it is clear these are the Rx and Tx data input lines which both go to the 3.5mm plug, so this bridge needs to be removed so that we have TxD and RxD separate as supplied and needed by the G90.
As the voltage is regulated down to 3.3v by the carrier board, a supply of 5-9v DC is fine to power the dongle. Of course, I had to remove the full-sized DIN plug from the lead and fit a suitable mini-DIN plug and wire to the available supply pin from the G90s accessory socket. Later for the combined BT CAT and BT audio solution, the audio in and out wires was also connected through to the mini-DIN plug.
All good so far – now comes the tricky part. The G90’s serial port ONLY works at 19200 bps, so the module needs to be re-programmed from 9600 to 19200 bps before it will work. For this, you will need another small par-dollar interface board and some free software to do the speed programming change. Full details can be found on pages 4 & 5 of this document:
https://www.yo3ggx.ro/btcat/FT8x7\_DIY\_Bluetootth\_CAT\_interface\_v1.pdf Credit: Dan Toma YO3GGX.
After updating the serial speed of the dongle, I was able to control several useful functions of the G90 radio from the PocketRxTx App running on my Android phone.
The final combined design using modules for adding Bluetooth Audio and CAT connectivity to the XIEGU G90 and possibly other radios.
In line with using modules, as the Handy Talkie, BT audio unit runs from an internal battery that has to be regularly charged up and the BT-Cat module needs to be powered, we need to supply their required DC voltages. While the BT-CAT module is happy with the 8/9v that the G90 can supply over its ACC socket – the Audio interface only expects 5v onto its micro-USB charging port.
In theory, a very simple solution might be to insert a resistor from the G90’s 9v DC supply however as the load will change depending upon how charged or uncharged the internal battery is, it’s best to use a proper regulator.
Looking around I found the small board below, that is used to power a Raspberry Pi with 5v to its USB connector, so this should suit our needs quite well. The charging cable supplied with the HT-BT audio unit has one USB-A connector and two micro-USB connectors so one will be connected permanently to the HT-BT unit and the other I will leave available and accessible to charge whichever Bluetooth headset is in use or the PTT button.
The cable with the mini-DIN plug from this box plugs into the ACC socket on the rear of the G90 and the stereo 3.5mm jack into the data socket on the side of the head unit.
Note: do not plug the data connection in until the radio is operating as otherwise, the presence of a cable in this socket can cause the radio to think it is in the middle of a firmware upgrade and to set it back into normal operation can be difficult should this occur.
When starting the use of the Bluetooth adapters, the HT module needs to be turned on by a long press on its button – this is inconvenient as it means the clear plastic box has to be opened. Once devices have been paired to the HT-BT unit once however they automatically pair again when they are turned on. (for the first time pairing procedure, refer to the HT BT-adapter documentation that it is supplied with (a magnifying glass may be needed).
​

Improvements planned.

The intention of building everything into the clear plastic box was always going to be a temporary solution. The use of the 2.5 & 3.5mm sockets on the HT-BT unit and its need to be turned on manually every time it is needed are two non-ideal situations. In a hope to resolve this into a better final solution, I have ordered an inline cable connector that has the stereo sockets in the correct spacing for the HT-BT unit and I have decided not to trickle change the BT-HT unit but rather have it accessible in an elongated cable harness with plus one end into the ACC socket and the other into the G90s data-port so that adding Bluetooth to the G-90 will then be the addition of just one cable with a small box in its middle housing the audio pre-amp and the BT serial board.
The main thing is that the solution has been proven here – it is possible to add Bluetooth support externally to a Xiegu G90 using easily available modules and without any changes to the radio being needed.
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View more details with images: https://www.radioddity.com/blogs/all/adding-bluetooth-support-to-the-xiegu-g90-hf-transciever