I've personally enjoyed my emachines m6805 laptop(Athlon64 3000+, 512MB ddr333, 15.4" widescreen), which btw is made by the same company who makes quite a few of voodoopc's athlon64 laptops. Since gateway bought emachines, they've carried on the tradition of offering athlon64 laptops from the same company with their name on it and a better screen.(I think gateway calls it the 7405GX or something like that)
either way, great laptop, and I love mine!
ok enough of the advertisement, to make a long story short, gateway does AMD, the whole world besides Dell does AMD, and I personally don't want to see a Dell with an AMD on account that dells are pieces of trash. They are badly engineered, fall apart, use extremely proprietary parts (and bios), and have dreadful cases (they are bad to work in, put back together, and they collect dust better than any other design ive ever laid my eyes on.)
I think Dell aquiring AMD chips, although good for AMD, would also be a curse.
oh come on, the ST 251 wasn't a piece of shit... I've enjoyed mine for years, and to it's credit it still works perfectly fine in my IBM PC. The ST-225(20meg) was a really great drive too. (I have one still going strong in my Columbia Data MPC1600)
the shit drives were all Western Digital(esp the 42 meggers) and Miniscribe(which turned into maxtor)...
Of that era, I find it really difficult to beat a Seagate, Microscience, A DEC labeled drive, or a CDC.
getting back to the topic though, of the old days, you couldn't beat a home built PSU with extera large sinks. If you build it right, it will run perfectly find passivly cooled-you used to just stick a fan in it to remove the heat from the rest of the system and prolong the life of your work. (back in the day, you had seasonic's, BTC's, IBM label, Kingspao and I think Delta was around. BTC's were a mixed bag, some were awesome, some...not so much, IBM's were always good, you couldnt kill those darn things, although they sometimes lacked the power to do 4 HH MFM's, the mainboard (and it's dip's including the cpu), and a pair of controller cards.)
I've found Antec's to be the best PSU's around today..followed by Sparklepower's line. (To whoever said there wasnt a sparklepower, Forton (or FSP) is sparklepower!)
I do not agree on their testing method and conclusions in this article though, as they seemed biased and they said certain useful features in PSU's they tested were only a negative thing.
Well I figure I better get my 2 cents in
on
Mac mini to PC Hack
·
· Score: 1
This thread really has detered from the original article, so let's get back to the subject.
Processor
He stuffed a VIA Eden nanoITX board which only scales to 1GHZ.
VIA's have traditionally been very_slow chips, even bowing to a lower clocked P3 celeron as far as most benchmarks go. While G4's are indeed slow, the eden is still slower. a 1.4ghz g4 compared to a 1ghz eden? no contest
Now lets look at other things people were bitching about in this thread....
Expandability.
Memory
the nanoITX board has 2 memory slots..soDIMM, one underneath the board, and one on top. The Macmini has a single full sized ddr slot. Upgrading the macmini to 1gb would be cheaper than upgrading the eden (which uses laptop memory).
PCI/AGP/Graphics
Not too much here.....neither the nano ITX nor the mac mini has any type of expandability pci wise, agpwise, and graphics wise.
OK next thing Ive been seeing is that since you cant upgrade the vid card in the mac mini, you should also know the dame is true for the via eden,
lets compare what we are "stuck" with
Mac Mini - Radeon 9200
Via Eden nanoITX - S3 Graphics UniChrome Pro
I Dont think there is a contest here...
So all in all, if we stick to the article, he downgraded his mac mini =\
Re:The freezer trick does work though
on
Creative Data Loss
·
· Score: 1
use a ziploc baggy, and if you have any beef jerky or asprin around, borrow it's silca gel packet/container and put it in the baggy with the hard drive....i find 20mins in the freezer works...just be aware that if it works you have a limited amount of time to copy data, so have a plan of action ready.
Re:The freezer trick does work though
on
Creative Data Loss
·
· Score: 3, Informative
there are two major ways freezing can help
1) by cooling the electronics package, pathways that have been messed up will conduct electricity
and
2) by cooling the platters, a stuck spindle/head problem can be resolved by the contracting of the metal or mylar coated platters since that moves the heads away from the platters just enough that the hdd can spin up.
the issue with heating is that it will neutralize magnetic fields on metal...
Re:Not quite creative...
on
Creative Data Loss
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
hmmm havent had luck with upside down drives, but i have had luck with sideways ones...
before i try the freezer trick i find that once in a while turning a drive on it's side seems to work...
ive recovered data from a 425mb wd and a 1gb maxtor that way....the only thing I can think of that would cause it to work in a wacky position would be wear on the bearings of either the head mechanism or the spindle.
Back in the day i remember heated arguments on exactly how a hdd should be mounted, some said horizontal, the circuitry facing the bottom, some others said that hanging it updide down would put less force on the heads (?) and still others hung em sideways. The reason to hang em sideways was that most desktop style cases had areas to mount hdd's next to the floppy drive...anyone else remember the arguments, their reasons, or have any links?
Re:The freezer trick does work though
on
Creative Data Loss
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
whoops i didnt mean to post that AC....im normally logged on with this comp but i guess the cookie expired and i didnt notice. (oops)
Didnt the TR-1 only have 3 transistors?
sure the TI reference design had 4, but i could swear that their engineers managed to cut one of em out to make it cheaper.
thanks for the extra info-it is very much appreciated...
it would also be interesting to get this into the sub atomic field and seeing how certain close bandwidths of photons (as radio waves arn't really waves for se) actually will interact with eachother.
one wonders how it would screw with theese types of multiple transmissions to have very precise surfaces in which one spectrum of photon would go through, yet one with a spectrum just above it would---- ok im going off into theoretical (and probably absolutly wrong territory, sorry)
ok getting back to the subject of wireless tech.. how much bandwidth do you think we could possibly have in wireless if we A) figured out how to actually accuratly detect neutrinos B) built miniture accelerators (and detectors) which would send neutrinos in some sort of pattern(and recieve respectivly) from some controlled element reaction ok mabye all i needed to ask is how much data is it possible to send if we utilize neutrinos which are less likely to interact with anything know today instead of photons(radio)
360mbps seems like alot for wireless, considering the mess 108mbps (by using 2 different spectrums) created, what would a multiple dynamic frequency wireless setup leave us...what happens when you have 50+ different networks together?
Re:CERN birthday gifts should be money
on
Happy 50th Cern!
·
· Score: 5, Funny
and if you can't give em money, at least give them your best wishes at finding the 'darn ellusive higgs boson =)
hmmmm
I guess that would make playing "Half-Life" more realistic....
now the question is are you referring to a pet mouse or a computer mouse?
if it's a real mouse, i dont think they can fit an RTG inside one easily, if it's a real mouse, there is a real life sollution that has been around ever since mouses were invented- use a CORDED MOUSE! =D
The biggest issues I see...
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The issues I personally see are 1) manufacturing the battery-in order for there to be a small source of radioisotope in somthing there has to be a big source of it the manufacturer spilts up... this means safety becomes a concern, especially for people who manufacture them - not to mention the low level waste that will be created from the machines directly involved with manufacturing(ei getting irradiated) Now a good counter to that may be that we've been doing that with smoke detectors for years without problem (Americium 241 for those who want to know) so why should we have a problem with batteries? (in which I would then say that Am241 is a alpha particle(a high speed helium atom) emmiter rather than a beta emitter(a high speed electron and a neutrino) like the tin proposed in the batteries may be different to work with manufacture-wise also 2) the other thing is what if a large shipment of these batteries happens to be involved in a fire [for reality, lets say a wholesaler's truck is the one in question {ei costco, sam's club}, so the quantity of batteries is fairly large]---that means the F.D. is dealing with ultimatly a HAZMAT fire....While burning sulfuric acid is bad, i think that burning radioactive tin would still be worse healthwise....
also they mention that this form of tin decays into beta particles, I just know if there was a weak space in the shielding of the batteries it wouldn't be me who would be at risk, but rather my cell phone or pda-ever see what even insignificant background radiation does to electronics? (hint it is the same way they are harnessing power from the beta particles-through silicon electron displacement)
so for now as far as regular battery life extenders go, ill stick with a solar pannel glued to my hat thank you.
for a humerous note to a fairly large post, also as i saw the phrase "nickel-plutonium" battery laid out-please humor us with what isotope you are gona use;) (remember if you use Pu280 like in RTG's then you A) have to shield it....ALOT, B) somehow minitureize it, and C) have to take the form of energy(heat) and harness it to the most efficiency that you can(as the more energy you take away, the less the overall compound heat is-which you also have to deal with getting rid of [I wouldnt want to burn myself on my PDA now would I? =D ]
well probably not....now because i for one AM crazy i say first of all-NOT UNATTENDED...bad idea...now a remote control lawnmower would be cool...
stick a couple wireless cameras on it, link the throttle to a servo and some kind of quick release for the stop lever....make sure the quick release is activated when(or if) the mower goes out of radio range...
proximity sensors are easy enough to pull off, and if you were dedicated you could set it to stop the wheels when one was set off.....
as for the drive mechanism, find a couple old electric wheelchairs and you are set...you are gona have to do some serious hacking with th lawnmower to get them to fit and to seal them off from all the dirt and grass which gets thrown by the lawnmower...
i like the concept and almost built one myself, but realized that it would be incredibly stupid granted my yard is small =)
hmmmmmm
The worst tech for 2003...hmmmmmm
there are too many canidates
lets start off with paladium, and then the P4 Celeron, followed by the geforceFX 5200NonUltra.
HOWEVER The 'protection' initiated by the RIAA on cd's to defer owners from ripping their music is definatly the worst technology I can think of
also i definatly aggree on the voting machines
as for the best, the opteron and the g5 top my list.
Slashdot Mirror
I've personally enjoyed my emachines m6805 laptop(Athlon64 3000+, 512MB ddr333, 15.4" widescreen), which btw is made by the same company who makes quite a few of voodoopc's athlon64 laptops.
Since gateway bought emachines, they've carried on the tradition of offering athlon64 laptops from the same company with their name on it and a better screen.(I think gateway calls it the 7405GX or something like that)
either way, great laptop, and I love mine!
ok enough of the advertisement, to make a long story short, gateway does AMD, the whole world besides Dell does AMD, and I personally don't want to see a Dell with an AMD on account that dells are pieces of trash. They are badly engineered, fall apart, use extremely proprietary parts (and bios), and have dreadful cases (they are bad to work in, put back together, and they collect dust better than any other design ive ever laid my eyes on.)
I think Dell aquiring AMD chips, although good for AMD, would also be a curse.
oh come on, the ST 251 wasn't a piece of shit...
I've enjoyed mine for years, and to it's credit it still works perfectly fine in my IBM PC.
The ST-225(20meg) was a really great drive too. (I have one still going strong in my Columbia Data MPC1600)
the shit drives were all Western Digital(esp the 42 meggers) and Miniscribe(which turned into maxtor)...
Of that era, I find it really difficult to beat a Seagate, Microscience, A DEC labeled drive, or a CDC.
getting back to the topic though, of the old days, you couldn't beat a home built PSU with extera large sinks. If you build it right, it will run perfectly find passivly cooled-you used to just stick a fan in it to remove the heat from the rest of the system and prolong the life of your work.
(back in the day, you had seasonic's, BTC's, IBM label, Kingspao and I think Delta was around. BTC's were a mixed bag, some were awesome, some...not so much, IBM's were always good, you couldnt kill those darn things, although they sometimes lacked the power to do 4 HH MFM's, the mainboard (and it's dip's including the cpu), and a pair of controller cards.)
I've found Antec's to be the best PSU's around today..followed by Sparklepower's line. (To whoever said there wasnt a sparklepower, Forton (or FSP) is sparklepower!)
I do not agree on their testing method and conclusions in this article though, as they seemed biased and they said certain useful features in PSU's they tested were only a negative thing.
This thread really has detered from the original article, so let's get back to the subject. Processor He stuffed a VIA Eden nanoITX board which only scales to 1GHZ. VIA's have traditionally been very_slow chips, even bowing to a lower clocked P3 celeron as far as most benchmarks go. While G4's are indeed slow, the eden is still slower. a 1.4ghz g4 compared to a 1ghz eden? no contest Now lets look at other things people were bitching about in this thread.... Expandability. Memory the nanoITX board has 2 memory slots..soDIMM, one underneath the board, and one on top. The Macmini has a single full sized ddr slot. Upgrading the macmini to 1gb would be cheaper than upgrading the eden (which uses laptop memory). PCI/AGP/Graphics Not too much here.....neither the nano ITX nor the mac mini has any type of expandability pci wise, agpwise, and graphics wise. OK next thing Ive been seeing is that since you cant upgrade the vid card in the mac mini, you should also know the dame is true for the via eden, lets compare what we are "stuck" with Mac Mini - Radeon 9200 Via Eden nanoITX - S3 Graphics UniChrome Pro I Dont think there is a contest here... So all in all, if we stick to the article, he downgraded his mac mini =\
use a ziploc baggy, and if you have any beef jerky or asprin around, borrow it's silca gel packet/container and put it in the baggy with the hard drive....i find 20mins in the freezer works...just be aware that if it works you have a limited amount of time to copy data, so have a plan of action ready.
there are two major ways freezing can help 1) by cooling the electronics package, pathways that have been messed up will conduct electricity and 2) by cooling the platters, a stuck spindle/head problem can be resolved by the contracting of the metal or mylar coated platters since that moves the heads away from the platters just enough that the hdd can spin up.
the issue with heating is that it will neutralize magnetic fields on metal...
hmmm havent had luck with upside down drives, but i have had luck with sideways ones... before i try the freezer trick i find that once in a while turning a drive on it's side seems to work... ive recovered data from a 425mb wd and a 1gb maxtor that way....the only thing I can think of that would cause it to work in a wacky position would be wear on the bearings of either the head mechanism or the spindle. Back in the day i remember heated arguments on exactly how a hdd should be mounted, some said horizontal, the circuitry facing the bottom, some others said that hanging it updide down would put less force on the heads (?) and still others hung em sideways. The reason to hang em sideways was that most desktop style cases had areas to mount hdd's next to the floppy drive...anyone else remember the arguments, their reasons, or have any links?
whoops i didnt mean to post that AC....im normally logged on with this comp but i guess the cookie expired and i didnt notice. (oops)
Well it can't be done on newegg...
s cription=13-135-153R&type=Refurbish)s p?des cription=11-171-037&DEPA=0)a sp?des cription=19-103-156&depa=1)s p?des cription=22-137-123R&type=Refurbish)s p?des cription=20-223-007&depa=1)u ctDesc.asp?des cription=35-151-110&depa=0)
$36.80 ECS mobo (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?de
$10 case and PSU
(http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.a
$41 AMD Athlon 1.33
(http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.
$52 20gb maxtor hdd
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.a
$21 128mb ddr
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.a
$7.99 heatsink/fan
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProd
=
$168.79
where is the 4th transistor located then? http://people.msoe.edu/~reyer/regency/clear1024.jp g
Didnt the TR-1 only have 3 transistors? sure the TI reference design had 4, but i could swear that their engineers managed to cut one of em out to make it cheaper.
thanks for the extra info-it is very much appreciated...
it would also be interesting to get this into the sub atomic field and seeing how certain close bandwidths of photons (as radio waves arn't really waves for se) actually will interact with eachother.
one wonders how it would screw with theese types of multiple transmissions to have very precise surfaces in which one spectrum of photon would go through, yet one with a spectrum just above it would----
ok im going off into theoretical (and probably absolutly wrong territory, sorry)
ok getting back to the subject of wireless tech..
how much bandwidth do you think we could possibly have in wireless if we A) figured out how to actually accuratly detect neutrinos B) built miniture accelerators (and detectors) which would send neutrinos in some sort of pattern(and recieve respectivly) from some controlled element reaction
ok mabye all i needed to ask is how much data is it possible to send if we utilize neutrinos which are less likely to interact with anything know today instead of photons(radio)
i better end this now-im sorry lol
360mbps seems like alot for wireless, considering the mess 108mbps (by using 2 different spectrums) created, what would a multiple dynamic frequency wireless setup leave us...what happens when you have 50+ different networks together?
and if you can't give em money, at least give them your best wishes at finding the 'darn ellusive higgs boson =)
and the folks at fermilab celebrated with cake!
hmmmm I guess that would make playing "Half-Life" more realistic.... now the question is are you referring to a pet mouse or a computer mouse? if it's a real mouse, i dont think they can fit an RTG inside one easily, if it's a real mouse, there is a real life sollution that has been around ever since mouses were invented- use a CORDED MOUSE! =D
The issues I personally see are
;) (remember if you use Pu280 like in RTG's then you A) have to shield it....ALOT, B) somehow minitureize it, and C) have to take the form of energy(heat) and harness it to the most efficiency that you can(as the more energy you take away, the less the overall compound heat is-which you also have to deal with getting rid of [I wouldnt want to burn myself on my PDA now would I? =D ]
1) manufacturing the battery-in order for there to be a small source of radioisotope in somthing there has to be a big source of it the manufacturer spilts up...
this means safety becomes a concern, especially for people who manufacture them - not to mention the low level waste that will be created from the machines directly involved with manufacturing(ei getting irradiated) Now a good counter to that may be that we've been doing that with smoke detectors for years without problem (Americium 241 for those who want to know) so why should we have a problem with batteries? (in which I would then say that Am241 is a alpha particle(a high speed helium atom) emmiter rather than a beta emitter(a high speed electron and a neutrino) like the tin proposed in the batteries may be different to work with manufacture-wise
also
2) the other thing is what if a large shipment of these batteries happens to be involved in a fire [for reality, lets say a wholesaler's truck is the one in question {ei costco, sam's club}, so the quantity of batteries is fairly large]---that means the F.D. is dealing with ultimatly a HAZMAT fire....While burning sulfuric acid is bad, i think that burning radioactive tin would still be worse healthwise....
also
they mention that this form of tin decays into beta particles, I just know if there was a weak space in the shielding of the batteries it wouldn't be me who would be at risk, but rather my cell phone or pda-ever see what even insignificant background radiation does to electronics? (hint it is the same way they are harnessing power from the beta particles-through silicon electron displacement)
so for now as far as regular battery life extenders go, ill stick with a solar pannel glued to my hat thank you.
for a humerous note to a fairly large post, also as i saw the phrase "nickel-plutonium" battery laid out-please humor us with what isotope you are gona use
my roof next to the fricken condensor.... ummmmm anyone know how to fix a freon leak? =X
well probably not....now because i for one AM crazy i say first of all-NOT UNATTENDED...bad idea...now a remote control lawnmower would be cool... stick a couple wireless cameras on it, link the throttle to a servo and some kind of quick release for the stop lever....make sure the quick release is activated when(or if) the mower goes out of radio range... proximity sensors are easy enough to pull off, and if you were dedicated you could set it to stop the wheels when one was set off..... as for the drive mechanism, find a couple old electric wheelchairs and you are set...you are gona have to do some serious hacking with th lawnmower to get them to fit and to seal them off from all the dirt and grass which gets thrown by the lawnmower... i like the concept and almost built one myself, but realized that it would be incredibly stupid granted my yard is small =)
but not for $200 you can get a Canon DR-2080C off of ebay for $630 and it can accept both usb2 and scsi-II interfaces
hmmmmmm The worst tech for 2003...hmmmmmm there are too many canidates lets start off with paladium, and then the P4 Celeron, followed by the geforceFX 5200NonUltra. HOWEVER The 'protection' initiated by the RIAA on cd's to defer owners from ripping their music is definatly the worst technology I can think of also i definatly aggree on the voting machines as for the best, the opteron and the g5 top my list.