Installing Dual XHD6425 in 2008 Ranger. Purchased from Crutchfield.

I just got in my Dual XHD6425 I ordered from Crutchfield.   I mainly got this deck because it had HD Radio, front input Jack, and played MP3/WMA files off of a USB device…

I’m installing it in a 2008 Ford Ranger.

I took some pics of the install to help anyone doing an install in a Ford Ranger.

Or course, all of this is covered pretty well with the instructions that Cructhfield sends, but it helps to have some specific pictures.

First, you’ll need to remove the factory radio.  You’ll need a set of DIN removal tools for this.   If you bought from Crutchfield, they’ll include them.  If not, you can run to Wal-Mart or Best Buy or a similar store.

Once you get the radio out, you can see the wiring harness from the Ranger.  At this point, you can cut off the harness, but that’s kinda the hard way.  They make harnesses to plug into the factory harness to give you bare wires.  You can purchase this at Wal-Mart or BB or similar or Crutchfield will have shipped it with the deck if you purchased from there….

So you take this wiring harness and the wiring harness that comes with the deck and make them one piece.  Luckily all of the colors in mine matched exactly.  I soldered the wires together and put heat shrink tubing on them.  There’s a picture of the finished product.

Now you’ve got the wiring ready to go.   We just need to mount the deck in the adapter.  If you bought it from Crutchfield, they’ll include the adapter.  If not, you’ll need to purchase one elsewhere.   For mine to fit exactly, I had to remove the two tabs at the top of the adapter.  You can see in the pictures.  I just used a Dremel tool for that.

I simply put everything together as their instructions said.  Then installed the finished piece into the dash.  I used the trim piece that came with the adapter.  It just looked a lot nicer than the one that came with the receiver…

If you are going to order some equipment from Crutchfield, enter the following code to get $20 off of your $200 purchase: pqc0f-9w244-0dv0u

You won’t regret it.  They include so much extra stuff with their products it is more than worth any extra cost…

After factory deck removal

factory harness and harness from Crutchfield

Haness that came with receiver

My completed wiring harness

Adapter from Crutchfield

Almost Complete

The USS Flier: Death and Survival on a World War II Submarine by Michael Sturma

I just finished the book: The USS Flier: Death and Survival on a World War II Submarine by Michael Sturma.

The book was very well written. I really enjoyed it. Once you get past the first pages of the book, you’ll realize that everything mentioned is pure fact. You’ll believe this once you notice the extreme number of endnotes on every page. Then at the end of the book, page after page of documented testimony, interviews, Navy paperwork is quoted. Anyway, if you are a history buff, or just enjoy subs, this book is for you.

I’ve always been fascinated by submarines. I’m not at all claustrophobic, but there is just something about being in one of those underwater that just upsets me. I’ve been inside the USS Cavalla in Galveston, TX. Even after watching numerous movies and documentaries on Subs, I was surprised at how tight everything was. I’m a fairly large person, so just maneuvering through the doorways was a challenge. I can’t imagine running through the sub in an emergency situation (and even sometimes in the dark to conserve battery power). Anyway, it wasn’t like it was a surprise that the sinking of the sub was coming, but I was still riveted to the book to find out the details.

Following is a link from Amazon where you can look at (or purchase) the book. A very good read.

The USS Flier: Death and Survival on a World War II Submarine“

HP DL380 G5 PCI Mappings for VMware ESX

I’m installing VMware ESX 3.5.0 on 12 DL380 G5’s. I’m using the two integrated Broadcom nics and I’ve installed two additional nics. Both additional nics are Intel Dual Port Pro 1000s. My issue came in that It was hard to tell which nic was which from within VMware. It was easy enough to tell that the onboard nics were 3:0:0 and 5:0:0, but for the Intels, it was more difficult. And I could see an even bigger problem if I needed to additional nics into this server later as the mappings would get all messed up.

Anyway, I sat down with a DL380 G5 and one singe Intel Card. I put the card in a slot, went through the install to the point of seeing the network adapters and recorded the PCI info. The I would move onto the next slot and do the procedures again. The following picture shows my results. I hope to also do this on a DL385 G1 as we have ESX running on 4 of those also.