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Convert a PC Drive Bay to a Docking Station
Anonymous Coward writes "The Screen Savers are featuring a case mod worth looking at. This article describes how to create a docking station for your PDA out of a PC drive bay. The instructions are little hard to follow but looks feasible and the finished product is pretty slick."
Why hide a perfectly good display on the PDA? Yes, this mod is slick, but I personally would like to see an attached display device show me info... much like LCD and other serial/parallel display case mods do now on the case itself.
Similar to this product, a PDA attached to a desktop machine (and a charger) could and should extend the usefulness of both. Maybe a game controller like that linked product, maybe a desktop clock, maybe weather updates, stock tickers, an mp3 playlist interface, etc etc.
Like I said, a slick mod, but seems slightly counterproductive. Not that there are many satellite display apps that work with many PDAs available presently, but I'm hopeful. With bluetooth catching on, it might happen.
1. The conversion of mouse to paperweight.
2. The conversion of old computer to doorstop.
3. The conversion of mousepad to non-skid, multipurpose pad on top of dashboard.
Anymore suggestions ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Who the hell has an extra drive bay to waste??
i believe you are thinking of http://www.fufme.com
If, as in my case, there is more room left over in my PC case than on the desk, this mod is actually _useful_.
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
Oh wait, they didn't show any. In all honesty, a PDA docking station doesn't take up that much room, it's no worse than one of my speakers. Why don't they just go back to making fish tanks out of old Mac monitors?
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While I see this as being a good idea, I often do things on my PDA while it is in the sync cradle. On top of that, I have two PDAs (Visor and iPaq) and only one free drive bay. :)
proton != antielectron
...with a Palm m505 (possibly others). The newer Palms don't just slide onto the cradle; they snap in, and removing them from the cradle requires pulling the Palm out horizontally a couple of inches. With the cradle mounted the way it is in the mod, you would have to pull the Palm up, past the boundries of the slot.
Besides, I like to sit my Palm on my desk and still have access to the screen. But at least the mod looks cool!
Theres a small flaw in this design. Handspring and Palm cradles are designed so that you push the PDA in downwards then backwards to 'lock' in place. Not locking the PDA in place leaves you with non-secure connectors, and I've had computers reboot because of static discharge over 'not quite conected' PDAs in cradles. Since the 'bay' design only allows you to put the PDA in sideways without 'locking' it, this is a major problem.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"An external docking cradle for your PDA is good for portability, but it's a waste of valuable desk space. "
If a PDA dock roughly the size of a 3.5" disk counts as valuable deskspace that you'd go through the troubles of building the Quasimodo of all mods wouldn't a more obvious solution to the problem be to have gotten a bigger desk in the first place? Ofcourse you may have a hard time finding a desk at $30 but none the less - my Visor dock tugs neatly away underneath my monitor stand.
Pardon me, but this sounds more like a geeky excuse to get to mod things than the solution to any problem you may think of. Which ofcourse is fair enough; modding can be a fun activity.
The next thing: modding filecabinets to fit employee's (horisontally) because employee's are simply a waste of good valuable space.
Sorry for being lame.
naah sig schmig
Sure, it's cool, and it might make your tower the Swiss Army knife of home computing, but have they ever heard of that little thing called the (gasp) warranty? I know that i might be ranting about something that expired a year ago, but to me, warranties are worth their weight in gold. (probably because i have the tendency to break things)
mechanicos ergo cogito
It's not a good idea to install a coffee maker on someone's computer. When you take it in for repair & tell the techs that the cupholder is broken, you get a lot of funny looks...
The reason that the instructions are "hard to follow", might be that the site the article is on, TechTV, is a network video broadcasting site... So there's a video show, "The Screen Savers" (Weekdays 7 p.m. Eastern) that's going to be showing more about the project, I assume. Further, I guess that's almost impossible to figure out if you're a Slashdot editor (or, now that I've started to bitch, a story submittor). Heh.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Why not build this mod into the spot where the floppy drive used to be? I just tried it with my Cassiopeia E-125 (which is about the thickest PDA released in recent years) and it fits just fine. The cradle is a bit bulky but it hangs over niceley behind my hard drive, which is in the bay immediately below.
-Major Kusanagi, Section 9
I would have modified a 3.5-to-5.25 inch drive bay sled to hold the hotsync stand but that's just me... the acrylic gives it a certain look of class.
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
I've been waiting for my Palm IIIc to die for AGES so I could upgrade to a Clie, but the damn thing's rock solid, even though I overclocked it to 40MHz! I figure if I overclock it, stick it in a really hot PC case right between two 7200RPM drives (docked so it doesn't turn off) and then do a find / -print, that might do it!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Although some may not realize it, this appears to be a hack intended for Joe Blow the average user who doesn't do anything (technical) with his computer. In that spirit, how about the wooden iPod docking station?
Man, all I see are complaints from the /. crowd, and this is one of the coolest things I have seen here in a long time. Granted, it could use a few tweaks, but this looks like something that anyone with $30 and a spare afternoon could do. I say this is a damn neat idea.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
With the "Stay On in Cradle" feature activated and using BigClock with a custom theme my Palm IIIc is the best looking desk clock I've ever owned.
Does this