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The Guts Of An iPAQ
slashdot.org writes: "For anyone interested in the bowels of the iPAQ, this guy has taken one appart and put about a zillion pictures on a website. This may help for that in-dash installation you've been thinking about ;)" Cool engineering inside -- interesting to see the various companies that make the pieces going into one of these things, and a brave guy to take one apart. (iPAQs are still about 3 years from eBay prices for me.)
No, the best way to get an iPaq is to wait for the next model.
There are some hardware limitations in the current breed that are moderately annoying, and the reason why I'm not even considering droping a wad of cash on one until the next model has been out for quite a while. It's not even a matter of saving up my pennies. I've got the money, but it would feel like a waste.
The button controller on the iPaq has a bug. You can only get events from one button at a time. This means there's no way to have button-controlled games on it.
The audio is a little more limited than it has to be. They chose to use the built-in audio capability you have when you combine an SA1110 and an SA1111 -- this is 16 bit 11khz. So, although it has all the processor oomph you need, it won't make much of an mp3 player.
I hope that, if they do come out witha new ipaq that addresses these concerns, they keep the case the same and of course the sleeve interface the same. It's a great product, with two annoying shortcomings.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Really? Have you ever *HEARD* the audio from an iPAQ, or are you just repeating some specs you read? It certainly sounds fine to me, but what do I know, I've only been running an HHLinux iPAQ since September...
This is a long dead thread, but, What the hell. I'll get the last word in anyhow.
Yes, I have heard the audio from an ipaq.
iPaqs are extremely common in my workplace. We aquired a case of them. Yes, a case. We have connections. And all of them are running Linux.
Several of my coworkers contribute to the handhelds.org effort. I have not only heard an ipaq play mp3s, I have heard an ipaq in a PCMCIA sleeve with a WaveLan card play mp3's off a wirelessly mounted NFS volume.
I realize most of you mundanes can't tell the difference in audio quality between your Rio, or whatever. It doesn't mean it's not there.
The SA1110 + SA1111 combination is capable of 16 bit 11khz audio. Period. Says so in the datasheet. Known fact. Not up for dispute. Just because you think it sounds great doesn't mean that it's not extremely limited.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Suprisingly enough Compaq makes great laptops and other small devices, and of course they are involved with alphas, now when it comes to x86 desktops from Compaq, I wouldn't touch one with a 10 foot pole.
hes the only one that can say he has an 'i unpaqued'
Why, oh why can't we just leave good enough alone? I mean, clay tablets are good enough for anyone. Why did someone have to go out and tinker with the design. Paper, I mean, yeeesh! The stuff burns! We shouldn't ever tweak any designs, it just messes things up!
Why did people have to take apart the math theories of the Pythagorean crowd? It was good enough in their hands alone. I mean nobody else needs that knowledge, right? We should leave stuff like that into the hands of professionals alone.
Especially those computers. I mean, what would happen if just anyone could make one in their garage? I mean, those pros at Apple never started by tinkering, I bet!
I assume that you mean 11khz maximum frequency, not 11khz sample rate (which would allow 5.5khz maximum frequency).
11k is not that bad. It's only one octave short of 20khz, which is generally accepted as the limit of human hearing. There is very little musical energy in this top octave. It merely adds a sense of 'air' or 'space'. I know from experience (working in professional sound) that you can have a great-sounding sound system that is mostly or completely lacking the top octave. For example, the Meyer MSL-10's used by Ultrasound on the Grateful Dead tours top out at 12khz. Out of the many things that contribute to great sound, this top octave is not one of the most important.
Anyhow, people seize on numbers like this because the things that affect the quality of digital audio playback are so complicated that it's tempting to focus on something simple and understandable. I would bet that there are serious problems with the ipaq's dac/amplifier that greatly outweigh the loss of one octave. By the same token, 16 bits is overkill for a device like this, because it implies 96dB dynamic range, which can't be accomplished in a small battery-powered device. Even good electronics running on split 15volt supplies have trouble reaching 90dB dynamic range (ratio of loudest signal to noise floor). To phrase it differently, the least significant bits of this DAC might as well be disconnected because they cannot output a signal that will rise above the noise floor.
The Compaq PC have generally been nothing but trouble for our group. They lock up regularly, particularly on CAD or other graphic intensive work. They also are just generally rather flakey. Nothing huge, but it's kind of like the death of a thousand paper cuts. Weirdness with service packs, stability issues, odd software conflicts, etc. It just eats at you little by little until you are ready for some "percussive maintenance".
The other machines we have aren't without their quirks but the Compaq's seem to overall cause the most trouble. It's only the desktop PCs that seem to have issues. The servers and occasional laptop seem to work as well as any other make running Windows. Don't know why this is but it does seem to be an ongoing problem for us.
...is to get on a waiting list at your favorite tech store. I got on a Best Buy waiting list and got one in about a month, for retail price, not some inflated eBay price. They're doling them out in small increments to all the retail stores, so if you're on a list, you'll get one sooner or later. Don't fiddle around with online retailers who claim they have some or waste your money on eBay. It's not THAT important to have one RIGHT NOW (as opposed to a month from now).
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