Slashdot Mirror
Terapin Mine Review
Ian Bell writes: "Designtechnica has just posted a review of the Terapin Mine. This handheld device has a 10gb hard drive, ethernet port, PCMCIA port, USB 2.0 and a front display. On top of all this it has a Linux OS installed complete with scandisk and defrag. You can hook this unit up to your television to view pictures as well. I know that the stats on this unit sound great, but you would be surprised by just how usable it is. Click Here for the full review." Whether it's 10 or 20 gigs (the review mentions both figures) doesn't really affect the reviewer's conclusion.
scandisk and defrag on a Linux OS device? dont they mean fsck?
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
As the review states:
"its inconsistent performance coupled with its hulkish dimensions make it seem quite undesirable to those of us who can only afford to invest in a technology once."
They have the things needed stuffed in there, but did not have the budget to get it work, maybe it could work as opensource?
After all, they already have so many mines that whole organizations dedicate themselves solely to their removal.
sorry, you have to admit, it was a pretty obligatory offtopic/troll/bait post. and its getting boring always having 50 karma.
"Old man yells at systemd"
What a very strange name this thing has. A terapin is a turtle, and a mine is a place where you dig up riches.
So if you get one of these you will become rich with turtles?
One +2 posting, and the site is already slashdotted...wow.
Needless to say, I have not read the review, but the battery life on this sucker must be horrible! Either that, or you wear around a battery on your belt.
The features mentioned in the slashdot summary sound great, but I don't believe current battery technology can power such a package for any reasonable amount of time. I may be wrong, as I said, I havn't read the review, but I bet battery is what will make this unit suck.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
From article: Maybe students aren't out of the closet and don't want people to know they're going to the Gay & Lesbian Resource Center
Student 1: Why didn't you take a free PDA? Student 2: Ummm.... I.... I'M NOT GAY!!! Student 1: Sure thing.
Offtopic, yes I know. But, since the site is totally /.'ed...
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/usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php on line 29
/usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php on line 29
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/usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php on line 231
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I've been one of the people who complain about the slashdot effect, lack of cached content, etc. etc.
But in this case, the guy did it to himself. With a database backed site no less... oh well....
Here's the havok that has been thrust upon his server if anyone is interested...
Warning: Too many connections in
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in
Warning: MySQL: A link to the server could not be established in
Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at
Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in
Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in
--
There seems to be scores of companies that are coming to the portable mp3 device way too late in the game. Is there enough market share to handle dozens and dozens of devices that do the exact same thing? Doesn't seem to be. My real question is, why hasn't anyone released a device similar to the ipod (in physical size, speed, and hard drive space) with a decent sized color screen that includes pda and cell phone capabilities? yeah, it would probably cost a pretty penny, but i think these things would sell like crazy and *nobody* has done it yet.
sig.
USB2 is 480mbs, theoretically anyways.
Firewire would have been great for interoperability, but there is one option, anyway. They are probably MAC users who use built-in firewire.
Just my assumption since the slash effect is still running rampant.
Bye!
It's not a linux handheld... It's a file store that happens to run Linux on the backend... But you're completely isolated from any of the OS by their software... Thinkgeek has been carrying these for a while now, but they're expensive.
Here is the user's manual, which has some good screen shots...
wizzy
Terapin Mine Review
Terapin Mine Review
In the last year or so we have seen a practical onslaught of hand held storage devices. The Terapin Mine is one of many such devices currently on the market. Boasting the Linux operating system, a 20 gig hard drive, and an impressive array of connectivity options, the Mine appears to be a unique entry in this extremely competitive industry. Practically a Swiss Army Knife of file sharing options, this Linux based behemoth would appear to be the clear front-runner on anyone's hand held wish list. With all that being said let us get down to the nitty gritty. Does this bad boy deliver or not?
Looks and First Impressions
Upon first opening the box, I was surprised to see what appeared to be an oversized protective carrying case for the Mine. It wasn't til I removed the item that I realized that in fact it was the Mine itself. To put it frankly, the Mine is huge. Weighing in at an impressive 1 lb and measuring 7" x 3.5" x 1" it will undoubtedly give your notebook computer a run for its money. The actual ergonomics of the Mine seemed quite fine with its various controls and ports located in a logical and intuitive manner. The sheer amount of connectivity options is staggering. Located on top is a 16 bit Type II PCMCIA card slot. The bottom contains a LAN port, a USB master port, and a USB slave port. Rounding it off is a standard head phone jack and Video Out. The absence of Firewire is a legitimate complaint though.
Specifications and Features
Size (HDD) 10GB
Dimensions 180mm (Height) x 90mm (Width) x 27mm (Thickness)
Weight 375gms
480gms (with 4AA Alkaline batteries)
Operation System Linux
Video Composite video out for still images (JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, CRW, NEF)
Video Format PAL and NTSC
Audio Stereo Playback
Mono Recording (with external microphone, in WAV format only)
Audio Format MP3 and WAV
USB Master 1
USB Slave 1
10 Mbps Ethernet 1
16-Bit PCMCIA Type II Slot 1
Screen 16 Characters x 4 lines high contrast LCD
panel with back lighting
Power 4 x AA Alkaline batteries
Internal Rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery (Optional)
External Rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery (Optional)
Simple 3 front-panel buttons and 3 side buttons for all device controls
Upload and download from Digital Cameras (via USB or via PCMCIA Memory Card Adapter)
Display photographs and graphic files on a TV or projector
Rotate photographs
Upload and download MP3 Players (via USB or via PCMCIA Memory Card Adapter)
Removable HDD (Compatible with Windows 98, 2000 and ME)
Share via Local Area Network (LAN)
Receive attachments and send email
Auto online backup, download and upload
Online and FTP sharing
Online upgrading and diagnostic features
Setup and Use
Given the fact that the Mine is running the Linux OS, I was curious as to how fast the boot up sequence would be. The average boot up time was a mere 10 seconds....I wish my Windows box could do the same. The user interface for the Mine consisted of simple text options laid out in a no nonsense fashion. I suppose that the Mine's interface emphasizes readability and clarity but I found it to be rather plain and much of the precious LCD real estate was wasted. Navigating the menu's proved to be extremely easy. After a few minutes of playing around I felt confident that I had a complete run down of the Mine's basic features.
As far as configuration is concerned this is handled through your PC as opposed to through the Mine itself. Using the USB slave port, I proceeded to hook the Mine up to my PC, which at the time was running Windows 2000 Professional. As expected, Windows immediately detected the presence of the Mine and assigned it a drive letter. Located on the Mine was an executable that allowed me to configure its various and plentiful capabilities. The configuration process was relatively painless although I did resort to the manual.
Testing
So far my experience with the Mine had been all smooth sailing. Installation and configuration was a breeze and the impressive feature set was begging me to put it to the test. Unfortunately, this is where the Mine truly distinguished itself from the rest of the pack. Here's what I found.
With the Mine still hooked up to my PC, I copied onto it a collection of MP3's and some images I took with my digital camera. For comparison sake I burned onto CD the same MP3's that I had placed on the Mine. The MP3's on CD sounded fantastic when played on my dedicated stereo but upon connecting the Mine, I was simply shocked at how mush the sound quality had degraded. I can only assume that in the D/A conversion process the Mine simply cannot compete with my dedicated CD player. I'm not talking a difference that only an Audiophile would notice, I'm talking a substantial decrease in the overall clarity and imaging of the music. This seemed pretty unfortunate since one of the main selling points of hand held storage devices is their ability to transport large volumes of digital music.
A little disapointed, I proceeded to hook the Mine up to my TV via the provided RCA connector. Taking into consideration the resolution restrictions of a composite connection, I was very satisfied with the image quality. Without any configuration on the users behalf, the Mine will automatically display your stored images in a slideshow manner. Just as I had gotten comfortable watching the images, a blue screen of death appeared indicating that the image to be displayed was corrupt. After several minutes of troubleshooting and several attempts at downloading the images onto the Mine, I eventually gave up without resolving the situation. The images seemed fine on my PC but simply would not display correctly when viewed via the Mine.
At this point, I was feeling a bit let down so I decided to try out one of the Mine's features that would be of most use to me. Via the USB master port, the Mine should in theory be able to connect and control a USB compliant device. This would be a fantastic option for anyone who has a digital camera and has felt the wrath of storage limitations. For the sake of this I broke out my Olympus C-3020 Zoom camera. Like the old saying goes "3 strikes and your out". For the life of me, I could not get the Mine to connect to my camera. Although it detected the fact that my camera was an Olympus, it failed to properly recognize its model.
Up until this point, the Mine had behaved flawlessly via USB. Every time I connected it to my PC it was detected immediately and mapped as a local drive. The same was not true when I tried to access it via my LAN. I followed the directions to the letter but I was never able to access it. Its FTP capabilities seemed attractive but failed to materialize during my test. If this process proves difficult for me I can't imagine the frustration that would be experienced by a less technology savvy owner.
Conclusion and Final thoughts
At this point in time it's hard for me to recommend the Terapine Mine to anyone but those whom are willing to invest in bleeding edge technology. On paper it boasts an impressive feature set and seems to offer more than any of its competition. But its inconsistent performance coupled with its hulkish dimensions make it seem quite undesirable to those of us who can only afford to invest in a technology once.
Linux Does have defrag but its very very buggy for the ext3/ext2 file system. fsck does not do a defrag.
keanmarine.com
Way too big, way too heavy, too much extra crap that's not needed for a portable storage device.
No, you should have seen it before you claim that it's too heavy and too big.
I just went to CompUSA during lunch break, and had it on my hand. It's very ligh, and fit into my hand very nicely. It's slick too.
Unfortunately, like all display model, it does not work. No battery, no shit. So I don't know about the sound quality.
An advice for retail store managers: Please have your floor models work properly (put in the god danm battery, if needed), and loaded up a couple of mp3 so people can test it. It would be a quick sale for gadget afficionado, like me, who tend to jump on this kind of things impulsively.
Since the site is gone for the moment, here are some quick links:
Web Site:
www.terapin-mine.com
Purchase:
http://www.thinkgeek.com
Reviews:
http://www.digitaljournalist.org
http://www.edgereview.com
http://computers.cnet.com
its great how pornography industry has finally gotten its hooks into linux portables.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
This really isn't news. The product has been on the market for a really long time. I remember reading about it last year. ThinkGeek.com has had it for sale for months. Why do we always post such old news?
Well, enough trolling, I do have a legitimate question that perhaps a few here have resolved. I've looked into this and other devices as an easy way to carry around a lot of my work, since I tend to bounce from using a computer at home, at work, and on campus. I have control over the computers at work and home, but not on campus. From what I understand, you would need to load certain drivers or other software to get this device to work with Windows, which is what they have on campus (please correct me if I'm wrong). So, since I can't load the drivers, I wouldn't be able to access any of my stuff stored on the drive when I on campus, right? Is there a solution to this? How do some of you carry large amounts of data around (other than zip disks or burned CD-ROMS)?
Who said Freedom was Fair?
sweet, the display does four whole lines of text!!
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
On top of all this it has a Linux OS installed complete with scandisk and defrag.
[root@cerberus root]# scandisk
bash: scandisk: command not found
[root@cerberus root]# defrag
bash: defrag: command not found
Sh*t, my Linux is not complete ...
:wq
USB 1.1 transfers at a maximum rate of 12Mbit/sec whereas USB 2.0 (which the T/M uses, at least according to the story write-up) can transfer at a maximum rate of 480Mbit/sec (or 60MByte/sec).
Thats nice and all, but my laptop has usb1 and firewire, and doesn't have usb2, so I'm still stuck at that 12MBit/sec (and even that is a theoretical max I'll likely never get close to).
Has usb2 really been adopted very widely yet?!
In any case, I'll take a firewired Apple iPod over one of these any day.
The big selling point for the slashdot crowd seems to be that it runs linux, but with a proprietary front end running on that 4-lines-of-text screen, and fat32 for the filesystem, I hardly think thats very cool. The instructions don't even mention how you'd connect it to anything besides windows; this isn't really a linux (or mac) user targeted product at all. Methinks they went with linux not for the "love of the game" but rather because it makes for a good cheap embedded OS.
btw, anyone know anything about hacking these things?
ie actually getting a shell on it?
(on your pc, of course, on it's own screen would be a joke)
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Why do you need 4 megapixel, TIFF images for vacation shots? I mean, if you're doing pro work for magazines or something I understand... but I take 1600x1200 JPGs, which look great printed on 8.5 x 11, and I can store 150-250 on my 128MB card. (Depending on compression) Or, if I don't intend on printing them out, I take 1024x768, and can store about 600, or even slum down to 640x480, and store almost 2000! :)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Give me a break, like no one has ever seen a battery before. The real problem is that usually the display models are fake empty shells of the real deal.
I personally like to zoom way the hell in. I like my uber zany levels of resolution, you apparently don't. Therefore, congratulations, technology has provided you with a product that you never have to replace.
And to continue your nonsensical logic, why don't you just decrease your rez to 32x32, you can store a crap load and you don't even need to waste cycles making thumbnails.
My question to you is, why do you care that other people want higher rez pictures?
I personally like to zoom way the hell in.
I suppose you have one of those $20k professional digital cameras where the optics don't limit your resolution no matter what kind of film you use. Yes sir, nothing like using the highest resolution film in a $75 fixed-focus camera.
able watching the images, a blue screen of death appeared indicating that the image to be displayed was corrupt. After several minutes of troubleshooting and several attempts at downloading the images onto the Mine, I eventually gave up without resolving the situation. The images seemed fine on my PC but simply would not display correctly when viewed via the Mine.
I've run into image problems from MicroShit lately. Specifically, their imaging softwar produces broken bit-map and tif format images. I would not have used said software had the TWAIN interface to my parallel scanner worked with any other software as it once did ... antother story. The images produced would not open in Paint Shop Pro under Doze, nor would their tif files. The GIMP was equally puzzled with the images under Debian, but Electric Eyes pulled through by ignoring the errors. From there the images could be ported over to reasonable formats like jpeg and portable net graphics. Needless to say, the format errors must be intentional as there has been NO IMPROVEMENT or real change in these ancient image formats.
Simarlly, I expect M$ to play Digital Rights Denial tricks on portable devices. Look forward to this happening to CD burners as the fools think they own the world.
As for the camera control problem, no new here. All those damn USB devices are different and painful to configure. How could it be any different with M$ threatening to silently retaliate against anyone friendly to Linux?
There you have it folks. It will be difficult indeed for any company to overcome these problems universally, even with 10 gigs of disk space for drivers. M$ will continue to change formats, and this will continue to make others, including themselves look bad.
Show me a WinCE device that does half of what this one can. Microsoft's backers will fight to the death to keep people from being able to create, move and share their movies and music. Microsoft will go along with it, as long as they keep getting to resell paintbrush on a yearly basis.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Ummm, it's got an ftp server. Plug it into your local network and go to town. Does iPod do that for you? WinCE, ha ha ha! You might also try a shell escape on the ftp prompt like:
! ls -lh
to see what comes up. Sounds more portable than a key fob, and yeah hacking it would be cool.
Sadly, I'm not buying any $500 devices anytime soon. My poor man's answer to this has been to take plastic Quick (the drink) boxes and cram hard disks in them with some packing foam. Yeah, it's ugly and I have to open the target computer's case, but the hard disks are spare. It works great with older laptop hard disks which fit into the smaller boxes. My wife laughted at me for not knowing my quick drive was acutally in a Quick box. Eh, so what. Mounted media custom Debian installs, here I come. Perhaps I should call it the Quick Liberator?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Linux OS installed complete with scandisk and defrag
Kinda like Windows?
What's the difference between a $100 SLR and a $5000 SLR? Not a whole hell of a lot, all the cost is in the optics.
Which is why I'm wondering why the person I was replying to was storing 4.4 megapixel images when the optics in his digital camera likely couldn't resolve to that level.
I could be talking out of my ass, but it seems to me that a $300 digital camera won't have great optics on it since all that cost is in the CCD and hardware.