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I'm about to buy a Matrox Marvel G400. It is dual head - meaning you can display video on an analog monitor and an NTSC TV at the same time. There isn't a dual analog monitor option. This card also has hardware MJPEG encoding so I can capture video also without the audio sync problem.

I have watched the Matrix DivX using the composite output of my TNT2 card - not too bad. My computer and TV are placed far apart from eachother so, yes a remote will be nice. X10 has some remote control options. I might try one of the RF ones since the computer and TV are in separate rooms. Anyone try any PC remote control options?

BTW, you could also build a computer entertainment system based on PC hardware instead of using your main computer. Here are a couple links for the BookPC:

http://www.directron.com/bookpc.html

http://www.dansdata.com/bookpc.htm

Nice remote!

This site seems to sell pcMods stuff, and offers some additional opinions and uses: http://www.dansdata.com/neon.htm

I reviewed the mid-sized PC-60 (silver) a while ago. It's got full-tower drive capacity in a much smaller form factor, it's pretty, it's light, it's easy to work on. Review here. A few days ago, I got a PC-31 (black) to play with, as well. Smaller, but still with plenty of room, and a front panel design that means you can use beige-bezel drives without them looking too ghastly. Review here.

I reviewed the mid-sized PC-60 (silver) a while ago. It's got full-tower drive capacity in a much smaller form factor, it's pretty, it's light, it's easy to work on. Review here. A few days ago, I got a PC-31 (black) to play with, as well. Smaller, but still with plenty of room, and a front panel design that means you can use beige-bezel drives without them looking too ghastly. Review here.

Actually, if you look at the article that story references, you'll see this picture halfway down the page. That little tiny thing is the actual device, and something that size could be easily planted inside a computer.

Now, open up your keyboard and look inside it - basically, there's a small circuit board in there that has a little 4-wire plug (a lot like floppy drive power plugs) to connect the cord from your motherboard to. If you had one of these recording devices made to just plug into that spot, and then an output plug to connect the original cord to, you could probably plant this bug inside the keyboard in under 2 minutes. Undo the 8-10 screws holding the keyboard together, open up, swap a few plugs, screw back together.

Heck, even if they scraped the underside of your keyboard up a bit, or had to remove a label to get at one of the screws you'd probably never notice. How often do you look at the underside of your keyboard?

Are you sure you haven't been bugged already?

...just a thought...

--The Rizz

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." --G. B. Shaw

Actually, if you look at the article that story references, you'll see this picture halfway down the page. That little tiny thing is the actual device, and something that size could be easily planted inside a computer.

Now, open up your keyboard and look inside it - basically, there's a small circuit board in there that has a little 4-wire plug (a lot like floppy drive power plugs) to connect the cord from your motherboard to. If you had one of these recording devices made to just plug into that spot, and then an output plug to connect the original cord to, you could probably plant this bug inside the keyboard in under 2 minutes. Undo the 8-10 screws holding the keyboard together, open up, swap a few plugs, screw back together.

Heck, even if they scraped the underside of your keyboard up a bit, or had to remove a label to get at one of the screws you'd probably never notice. How often do you look at the underside of your keyboard?

Are you sure you haven't been bugged already?

...just a thought...

--The Rizz

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." --G. B. Shaw

No remote monitoring (they're working on that...), but it's simple, relatively cheap, and comes in various inconspicuous form factors. Distilled evil, in a small beige box.

one of the biggest advantages of "normal" routers is that they're solid state. there aren't any moving parts (fans/spindles/etc) to wear out.

Hmm...

1. Most 486-class CPUs are adequately cooled with just a heatsink (an i486DX4-100 might need a fan, but <=66-MHz and/or 3.3-volt (Cyrix/AMD) CPUs often don't; my firewall uses a Cyrix 5x86-120 and it only has a smallish heatsink epoxied to the processor).
2. If your router setup will fit on a floppy, you can set things up so the floppy is only accessed at bootup. If more space is required, you could get one of those CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters and an appropriately-sized CF card and use it in place of the usual spinning-metal contraption.
3. Once you've gotten the overall power consumption down low enough, if you're a little daring you could try removing the power supply fan. With an old, slow processor and no HD, power consumption should be a small fraction of what the power supply can deliver.

My contribution to the fray: Damn, but the P4 sucked for distributed.net :-)!

your searching talent leaves much to be desired. it is NOT a troll! ok, clueless, here's your links spoon-fed for you:

directron (a place who sells them)

review of book pc

another review of it

short specs page

another place to buy them from

MODERATORS: in the future, I suggest you try to search FOR YOURSELVES before believing [blindly] that "I searched google and found no hits for ...". sigh.. now please moderate my base post BACK UP again and ignore that moron who can't even type 'book pc' at the google search prompt. HARUMPH!

--

It's titled Celebrating Pornography Awareness Week.

One political example is worth mentioning here. Dan's Data did a test of Pornsweeper, which is supposed to filter images. This picture of George and Laura Bush was blocked. Filthy porno indeed!

-- Diana Hsieh

It's titled Celebrating Pornography Awareness Week.

One political example is worth mentioning here. Dan's Data did a test of Pornsweeper, which is supposed to filter images. This picture of George and Laura Bush was blocked. Filthy porno indeed!

-- Diana Hsieh

It's titled Celebrating Pornography Awareness Week.

One political example is worth mentioning here. Dan's Data did a test of Pornsweeper, which is supposed to filter images. This picture of George and Laura Bush was blocked. Filthy porno indeed!

-- Diana Hsieh

...which review was written by me, as it happens :-).

A couple of clarifications:

> just plug it into an IDE cable and tell Windows it's a removable disk drive and it's installed

...and you'll find it won't work at all, because the computer will freeze whenever you remove the card. You can't use a CompactFlash device in its IDE mode as a removable device; you're unplugging the CONTROLLER when you unplug the card, and the computer will have a conniption.

If you want hot swap, you need a card reader. <plug>I review a few recent ones here.</plug>

; The CF-IDE, however, is excellent for no-moving-parts Linux boxes. 8Mb or 16Mb CF cards are pretty cheap, and you end up with a highly satisfactory poor man's solid state drive.

> your students can get cards in a range of capacities, from one or two megabytes to 500+.

The current range of CF card capacities is, to my knowledge, 8Mb (cheap, but not per megabyte) to 196Mb (stupidly expensive, but much cheaper per megabyte than the little cards). The fatter CF Type 2 cards hold more; the IBM MicroDrives are Type 2.

> Zip disks suck! They often lock up and won't read

Sez you :-P. In my experience, Zip disks treated with only a small amount of respect are the most reliable removable read/write devices I've seen. That doesn't make them bulletproof, and they will die in time, but for the money they're superb, if you ask me.

If students don't understand basic backup rules, though, no format will be adequate. They'll kill or lose the media, or they'll thork their own files and not have a copy, et cetera.

...which review was written by me, as it happens :-).

A couple of clarifications:

> just plug it into an IDE cable and tell Windows it's a removable disk drive and it's installed

...and you'll find it won't work at all, because the computer will freeze whenever you remove the card. You can't use a CompactFlash device in its IDE mode as a removable device; you're unplugging the CONTROLLER when you unplug the card, and the computer will have a conniption.

If you want hot swap, you need a card reader. <plug>I review a few recent ones here.</plug>

; The CF-IDE, however, is excellent for no-moving-parts Linux boxes. 8Mb or 16Mb CF cards are pretty cheap, and you end up with a highly satisfactory poor man's solid state drive.

> your students can get cards in a range of capacities, from one or two megabytes to 500+.

The current range of CF card capacities is, to my knowledge, 8Mb (cheap, but not per megabyte) to 196Mb (stupidly expensive, but much cheaper per megabyte than the little cards). The fatter CF Type 2 cards hold more; the IBM MicroDrives are Type 2.

> Zip disks suck! They often lock up and won't read

Sez you :-P. In my experience, Zip disks treated with only a small amount of respect are the most reliable removable read/write devices I've seen. That doesn't make them bulletproof, and they will die in time, but for the money they're superb, if you ask me.

If students don't understand basic backup rules, though, no format will be adequate. They'll kill or lose the media, or they'll thork their own files and not have a copy, et cetera.

...another comment from Michael Tandy.

Dan's Data, a nice little tech site run by an Aussie with a proper appreciation for IBM keyboards, already had something similar posted back on the 18th. Of course, he also has a page on how to properly destroy your PC.

(If you really want a laugh, read the comics, too.)
--

Dan's Data, a nice little tech site run by an Aussie with a proper appreciation for IBM keyboards, already had something similar posted back on the 18th. Of course, he also has a page on how to properly destroy your PC.

(If you really want a laugh, read the comics, too.)
--

Dan's Data, a nice little tech site run by an Aussie with a proper appreciation for IBM keyboards, already had something similar posted back on the 18th. Of course, he also has a page on how to properly destroy your PC.

(If you really want a laugh, read the comics, too.)
--

Dan's Data, a nice little tech site run by an Aussie with a proper appreciation for IBM keyboards, already had something similar posted back on the 18th. Of course, he also has a page on how to properly destroy your PC.

(If you really want a laugh, read the comics, too.)
--

Dan's Data, a nice little tech site run by an Aussie with a proper appreciation for IBM keyboards, already had something similar posted back on the 18th. Of course, he also has a page on how to properly destroy your PC.

(If you really want a laugh, read the comics, too.)
--

With any luck, Slockets for the Socket A Thunderbirds and Duron's aren't too far away, and the Abit KA7-100 (ATA 100 with IDE Raid for free :> ) will be the board you're looking for. Yes, it's got a HighPoint.

On the other hand, perhaps Abit will make a Socket A KA7.

Either way, check out Dans Data and quite a few others for reviews of the KA7.

Maybe you need to read this

that should *probably* read:

http://www.dansdata.com/sbs3.htm is also an interesting read... :)

Or, for that matter, here.

Or, for that matter, here.

Book PC Review

And another link with more details:

PC Chips full color ad

Keep in mind, no slots, not ISA or PCI or PCMCIA. So unless it hooks up to USB, you are out of luck. I thought it might make a nice router, firewall, NAT thingie, but no slot, so no more network ports (unless you use some lame USB to Ethernet adapter).

Although it would make a nice little file server to drag around, just drop in a cheap 40GB IDE drive...

You're still talking $US1300 for it, though, and it's got no USB or SCSI data transfer (serial only), so you'll need a Flash/SmartMedia card reader as well.

That review, again :-), is here.

You're still talking $US1300 for it, though, and it's got no USB or SCSI data transfer (serial only), so you'll need a Flash/SmartMedia card reader as well.

That review, again :-), is here.

Here is a review of the Sony vs an Olympus.

Of course, the Book PC may be small, but it's still much bigger than the Espresso. Way cheaper, though.

I looked at the spliced in part that is built in to the keyboard case, and I swear I've seen one of those before!

My roommate took a keyboard apart, that he got with a used system, and I believe it had one of those, but we couldn't figure out what it did. I remember the heatshrink, the green board spliced in the wires, the three colors of the wires connecting to either end. Yes, now I'm certain.

It would stand to reason, that if a buffering keyboard is indistinguishable from the regular ones, it might go out the door as easily as any other. I've got a box full of old keyboards here, maybe I should do some investigating... ...unless one of us is in trouble with the fed's and don't know it.

Let's do a poll: If anyone else spots one of these devices where they didn't expect it, post it here!

TangoChaz

"It's not enough to be on the right track -- you have to be moving faster than the train." -- Rod Davis, Editor of Seahorse Mag.

I looked at the spliced in part that is built in to the keyboard case, and I swear I've seen one of those before!

My roommate took a keyboard apart, that he got with a used system, and I believe it had one of those, but we couldn't figure out what it did. I remember the heatshrink, the green board spliced in the wires, the three colors of the wires connecting to either end. Yes, now I'm certain.

It would stand to reason, that if a buffering keyboard is indistinguishable from the regular ones, it might go out the door as easily as any other. I've got a box full of old keyboards here, maybe I should do some investigating... ...unless one of us is in trouble with the fed's and don't know it.

Let's do a poll: If anyone else spots one of these devices where they didn't expect it, post it here!

TangoChaz

"It's not enough to be on the right track -- you have to be moving faster than the train." -- Rod Davis, Editor of Seahorse Mag.

Here is a good review of one of the old IBM keyboards www.dansdata.com/ibmkeyboard.htm. It includes a good discussion on why keyboards are still important, good for sending to potential givers of gifts to you:). It also has discussion of the technology behind the old IBM clickety-klackety 'boards, and several sources for keyboards will that old IBM tank 'board feel.

This will do, if you can't afford 1:1 scale...

(It's hit #1 when you do a Google search for the word "psychopath", by the way :-)

> I didn't get one -- wanted something with a
> built-in keyboard.

You can get a keyboard for the Palm - a good one, too. And it's cheap. See here.

This site has details on how to add an extra (BIG!) fan in the front of your case:

http://www.dansdata.com/hx45fan.htm

This guy also added a strap to the bottom for carrying his case around. Kind of neat.