Archive: Hardware

I've been struggling off and on with an issue on my Dad's computer the last month or so. He said that it would occasionally just shut off completely out of the blue. (He also admonished me not to spe…

Recently I had the opportunity to work on an Acer Aspire One netbook. It's rare that I get the chance to work on a linux desktop system for a client. Most of my desktop users that I support run Windo…

This is a good time of year to think about cleaning out your old electronic (junk) equipment and make room for the new. Now, I've had a tendency to hang onto legacy hardware longer than I should. (I'…

I've seen these new mini notebooks and they look VERY nice. They're about the size of a small book which makes for nice portability. It's nice to see the small laptop form factor making a comeback. I…

Some time back I did an article here about leaky capacitors and linked to some really great photos of a "healthy" mainboard capacitor and "bulging" capacitors. The long-story short version is this...…

I've had a couple of small wireless projects lately and have really been having a great time playing around with the Linksys-Cisco WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router and one of the many GREAT 3rd pa…

Just thought I'd do a quick post - I've had kind of a poor track record in ordering USB thumb drives lately. I ordered one which I absolutely hate... it was about the size of one of those small piece…

This is just a glimpse of the kinds of things I get to do day to day... A week or so ago I had a client that had received a used scanner from a friend. The scanner was a Microtek Scanmaker 4800. I wa…

I've been looking at a new video card lately (X-Plane...) And am certain that many people are confused by Nvidia's product lines of late... Here's a nutshell idea.... They're currently using 4 digit …

Windows users know chkdsk, linux users know fsck... users of each MIGHT have heard of SMART. These are different ways of TESTING hard drives. Well, there's also a utility called TestDisk that looks p…

I thought this writeup was interesting on the idea of using a web interface to customize a livecd. I've built a couple livecd's (that I still use) for tech support, but I'm always thinking of one mor…

As long as there have been wireless networks there have been people trying to squeeze out just a bit more range... there was the cantenna and now there are other variations on trying to collect and i…

I don't recall if I've mentioned my Epson stylus photo 825 before, but I've had one for a couple years. The really nice feature (I thought) was the ability to print direct from camera memory cards (a…

http://www.sleuthkit.org/ Sluethkit... is a collection of tools for forensic analysis of a system. Usually it's something that would be done when you've had a suspected rootkit on the system and you …

There are all sorts of these things out there on the market - I saw an ad for the Hawking HWL1 802.11b/g WiFi Locator... and it looked interesting (directional)... I've seen mixed reviews, but some m…

If you're upgrading to Vista and use an ipod (true Apple branded iPod)... you might want to refrain from hooking the ipod up to the Vista pc. theregister has reported that Apple is sounding the alarm…

Shocking bit of news here.... (sorry, I couldn't help it.) This is a serious piece though. Apparently the Dell models listed above (Inspiron) and their other 17" cousins may be affected by a rather p…

I saw yesterday that Dell has a page advertising computers with NO preinstalled OS. Dimension line... n series and they are targetted towards people that want to install an Open Source operating syst…

I wanted to make a note here about a recent news story related to a topic that's fascinated me for the ~10 years or so since I first heard of such things.... For some time there have been 3d printers…

Anyone that's setup software raid on a system with multiple storage adapters has probably run into this kind of issue, but I thought I'd mention it. Last weekend I built a machine to replace my serve…

I thought I had written about this once before, but when I searched the site to find the solution I had come across before, I couldn't find my post.... so, sorry if this is a duplication, but I've ru…

A few days ago I had reason to investigate iscsi and AoE (ata over ethernet). Both are protocols for sharing a physical drive over the network at the block level. Let me put it in context first. Trad…

One of the tools I looked at having for my expanding kit has been a usb wireless adapter that would work with minimal install on Windows/Mac or Linux. As you can imagine.... it's not as straightforwa…

Here are a few other notes on linux software raid. I created a directory called raidinfo to keep information in to make it easy to maintain the raid array. First... from the software raid howto, I've…

ah... the joys of *nix utilities.... I've just successfully tested a "capture" of a live, running system into a virtual disk image. No, I don't mean that I booted up with an imaging utility. I took a…

I've had a machine for quite a while that I've been working on as a "backup server". My goal with it is to have a RAID1 setup with two 250GB drives and I also wanted USB2/firewire functionality so th…

I remember the question from long ago, we had just shared a printer across a windows network and.... wait for it.... "oh, well could I share my scanner too?" On windows the typical answer was NO, at …

If you're interested I've got a "first impressions" look at the Zoom H4 over on the ashevillemusiclessons.com site. I couldn't decide where it would be more appropriate to post.....

The other day I was trying to partition a drive hooked up via usb. (So it get's /dev/sda as it's device in linux)... I tried a few utilities to access the partition table and all failed, finally, I r…

OK, I know there are probably quite a few looking at this thinking.... "Hello where has he been?" when I'm talking about playing around with software raid under ubuntu linux, but.... in spite of all …

One of the "project machines" I've had that's been retired from other service was to become a "storage server" this week. The twin 250GB drives had arrived and I was ready to setup a RAID1 array (mir…

Vmware has launched a tool (windows only it seems) aimed to convert a REAL running system into a virtual machine. (For use with VMWare's virtualization products. The converter also can convert images…

So, I was formatting a drive the other day. It's an external hard drive that will need to be readable AND writable by both Mac and Windows XP machines. So, the only choice (without paying for MacDriv…

George Ou had a good article on upgrading a laptops wireless to a multiband adapter. It looks like a fairly straightforward process. Personally, I've not risked much with regards to laptop repairs. (…

More than once I've wished for a second (or third) set of keyboard/mouse/video for my main desktop. Linux is a true multiuser operating system which means that it's capable of hosting multiple graphi…

I ran into something I hadn't yet seen firsthand today. A PC (running Windows XP home) with 2 optical drives (CD-RW and DVD drive). However, neither cd drive showed up in My Computer and both of them…

Today is the first chance I"ve had to try out my new usb/ ide adapter "in the field". I have previously used external ide enclosures for either laptop (2.5") or desktop (3.5") drives as well as large…

There's an article at linux.com that gives a good overview of using testdisk and PhotoRec. Testdisk should be able to recover at the partition level and PhotoRec should be able to just pull the files…

I've seen skype I just haven't used it personally until very recently. In fact there was a place (dialpad?) that I had used once upon a time for a few free long distance calls online. It was neat, bu…

This was weird and now that the switch is replaced I haven't been able to duplicate it, but let me explain. There was a netgear fs608 (8 port unmanaged) switch plugged into a linksys router (model nu…

NO, I didn't mean to type satellite. Stratellite. This is an idea that I've written on before and I think it has some interesting possibilities. The idea is to positition a large airship (helium ball…

The title really says most all, it looks like you can get a preconfigured mythtv box starting at $695. Prebuilt, preconfigured no muss/no fuss. (No subscription fees like the tivo's...)

The other day I was struggling with something that should have worked "out of the box". It was a little wireless bridge (Linksys WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge). The idea was to just connect it to…

This is worth reading if you've got a Dell laptop. There have been numerous stories in recent months of Dell laptops exploding into flames and it looks as though now over 4 million batteries from the…

The Channelinsider is reporting that Lenovo will be the first tier one OEM to preinstall a linux distribution on generally available PC's. For years, you either had to order large volume, or find a s…

The forums over at LXer.com have a good list underway of vendors that sell linux preinstalled on PC's (desktops and laptops.) They also list those vendors that sell pcs without an operating system.

It looks like those shredders that take on optical media nor the physical scraping of the reflective surface is enough for some.... Plextor will be marketing a drive designed to wipe optical media (c…

I mentioned some time ago a frustrating issue with the hardware on my desktop that I had finally solved. I got the new system Which was a 64-bit AMD Athlon on an Asus k8N4-E board and a pci-express n…

Well, the Sony Handycam DCR-DVD405 that I ordered from Amazon has arrived today (ordered the 5th of July, arrived the 11th with the "slow boat" free shipping option.) I've had it long enough to charg…

USB thumb drives seem fairly simple, nothing hazardous.... but Lexar has recalled several models of the Firefly series as well as the JumpDrive Secure II, 1GB model. The affected Firefly sizes are...…

Sometimes drives just go bad. Surprise. One recent fresh install of Windows XP had started having real stability problems. On running a chkdsk and looking at the event viewer, it was fairly clear tha…

I've heard rumors of how the 802.11 pre-n wireless networking hardware really KILLS nearby 802.11 wireless b/g networks. Today George Ou has some details. I really think this is a serious problem wit…

The Register had an interesting article on the analysis of what may get classified as the worlds oldest computer (2000 years old - Greek.) Apparently it's been known for a while (discovered in an old…

How often do I get to talk about this? Yahoo News has an article on a couple who, a year ago, took their PC to Best Buy to have the hard drive swapped. Best Buy assured them that the drive would be d…

"We tried scanning and all that happened was the lamp moved back and forth.... Nothing else happened." That was the description I had and the request to see why the scanner was broken. It hadn't been…

I thought this was a great idea.... rsync.net Okay for 2$ per GB of storage per month (or $24 per year for 1GB of storage) you can have your very own secure online storage drive. For you windows user…

Well, it's annoying to me when my own computer has issues that I can't seem to track down and off and on for the last year I've had annoying seemingly random shut downs (I mean it's as if someone pul…

Not long ago a customer offered me a slightly used Linksys BEFW11S4 ver. 4 wireless router for free. He had replaced it with an 802.11g router (this is only a b) shortly after purchase and said if I …

This is going in the basics category. Quite often I visit a computer that has a mouse which is just a trial of patience to use. I mean, you have to pick it up and move it, shake it a bit, turn it ove…

I've probably mentioned before that I like the compactflash format for "digital media". My camera uses Compactflash, so does the nexia audio player I use and the old used pda I've got, uses compactfl…

Sometimes machines stop working, or you install a new piece of hardware and just can't boot again. That's when you have to get back to some basics to troubleshoot what the problem is. Yesterday I saw…

Just saw this over at engadget. It's a Lexar jumpdrive with "amount filled" indicator. The twist is the "amount filled" is done with electronic paper. What this means is that you can see how full the…

Rumors have been around for some time about Google launching Google OS, an Operating System to compete with Microsoft Windows. Well.... now the rumors are circulating around the Google PC (with Googl…

There's another security warning out related to specially crafted image files. This time it's targetted at the blackberry, which is a small portable email/pda device. Basically a corrupted TIFF may l…

So, according to D-Link there is a short list of access points that the DWL-800AP+ will repeat for. They are all d-link branded access points. It seems that there have been firmware updates to improv…

Ok, so here's the synopsis... I've spent the last few articles setting up a D-link DWL-800AP+ as a repeater for a linksys WAP11 (v. 1.1) As of the end of the last entry I had a bit of a problem with …

So, I set a WEP key on the linksys (WAP11 v. 1.1) and it promptly disappeared... it stopped responding (over the WIRED network) to my wap11gui admin tool. I quickly realized that part of the problem …

Ok, so now I had to add the new D-Link's MAC address to the list of authorized MAC's in the Linksys WAP11 (v. 1.1) For this, I call on wap11gui. Used to (since I use linux), I would have to suffer th…

So, now that I was "in" the DWL-800AP+ it was time to see if I could set it up as a repeater. I visited the "wireless" tab of the web based configuration and chose Repeater mode instead of AP mode an…

For starters, I hooked the D-link DWL-800AP+ up and connected it through a crossover cable to my usb network card. That way I could access it exclusively on one adapter and look online for informatio…

I've got a single access point for my wireless network layer at the house and unfortunately have at least one real "dead spot" in the house. As luck would have it that dead spot is at the couch... so…

The Hawking Technology Print Server (HPS1P) is a nice little parallel port to ethernet print server that can be configured to make a single printer available to multiple machines on a LAN (local area…

Ouch, Dell is recalling 35,000 notebook batteries that were shipped between October 5rd and 13th of this year. They were made in China or Japan and "pose a risk of fire." There is a web-site setup by…

For a long time I really disliked seeing USB network adapters. The main reason is the performance. USB 1 can only do ~ 12Mbps which compared to a 10/100 ethernet controller "significantly limits your…

It sounds like Microsoft Windows Vista will not support old DVD drives when it ships. By old, I'm talking about drives that don't support the region selection limits that newer drives have. (In other…

This is the first of a few articles that will highlight some of the tools/gadgets/gizmos that I find useful. I'm starting off with one that's almost essential. External USB hard drive adapter. Recent…

I know it's not an ipod... but I'm looking forward to hearing some word when Fronteir Labs releases their "Nexblack". For background.... the nexblack is priced at around $89 (at the frontier labs sto…

Think about it: one pc, 3 monitors, 3 keyboards, 3 mice, 3 users all on the same machine at the same time doing different things. Ah yes, some of you are saying terminal clients, been there... Think …

This kind of get's glommed into hardware, software and security categories all.... I've mentioned DBAN a couple times already (Darik's Boot and Nuke). I had a chance to sit down this afternoon to nuk…

Although some of the linked reviews are old, PCWorld has released their list of top 100 products of 2005. It's nice to see a number of familiar products in the list, several Google offerings are list…

ZDnet has a showdown between AMD and Intel dual core processors. It looks as though AMD has won in every comparison. This is not the only good news for AMD lately as summarized here. Intel's overwhel…

Linux devices has a story on the Linksys WRT54G wireless routers. The WRT54G has been known for quite a while to be running linux and a community has sprouted up with customized software to add many …

This is something I've wanted to build for some time. I hadn't actually thought about a terrabyte of storage, but... linux journal has the article on making your own home network backup storage solut…

If you've always wanted your own astromech, it won't be too much longer to wait. A voice activated R2-D2 will be available next year from Hammacher Schlemmer. It runs on 4 AA and 4 D cell batteries a…

I can't recall trying Ubuntu (maybe a livecd), but I've heard quite a bit about various variations on it lately. I've seen articles on business desktop use, certification by IBM (?) for running one o…

Reuters has a story about how big the sales of the Apple iPod Nano such as the Apple 2 GB iPod Nano White, Apple 2 GB iPod Nano White, and Apple iPod Nano Armband Grey are exceeding expectations this…

This isn't actually news in the "new" sense, but to many people this is newsworthy. From slashdot... aselabs is running a bit on DSL linux on an older laptop (Pentium 266MMX with 64 MB RAM). Most peo…

Incidents.org has a post on a DNS server outage for Worldnic. Which effects a number of Network Solutions customers. Apparently they're aware of the problem and are working on a fix. It doesn't affec…

InPhase Technologies (lucent spinoff) is readying an optical storage drive that can hold 300GB per disc. It's expected to read and write 10 times faster than current DVD drives and uses "Tapestry hol…

For those of you feeling somewhat cramped by the 4.5-9GB capacity of current single/dual layer dvds.... The inquirer has a story on what is coming.... Ricoh believes that by 2008 they can produce a 2…

Again I haven't been big into console gaming, but here's a bit more XBox 360 news that I've run across. First up, is the Free60 project, whose aim is to port linux and darwin to the new XBOX 360 hard…

Oooops... According to the Sunbelt blog a Japanese storage maker (I-O Data Device) has offered to exchange drives that were discovered to have been shipped out with the Tompai-A, a worm which would g…

I've not been big into console games. The last computer we had that directly connected to the TV all the time was an old Atari 400. (Which I occassionaly wax nostalgic for...) Anyway, the XBox 360 is…

One of the nice things about working on computers is that when it comes to the raw hardware of a system, the engineers have designed a way to communicate what's wrong (even if it's just a general ide…

CNet is reporting that Microsoft will require 64bit processor for upcoming server applications and Operating Systems. Amonge these, Exchange 12, Longhorn Server R2 and a small business version of Lon…

The Nokia 770 linux based Internet Tablet will have it's US debut on November 17th. The details on hardware specs on the device are available at linuxdevices.com, and there's a news forum available a…

I was reading that Apple had offered free copies of OSX for the $100 laptop project aimed at bringing cheap laptops to schoolkids in the developing world and in some cases even here in the US. They d…

I've said it before and mentioned DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) as my favorite tool for this, but Sunbeltblog is mentioning this and it's worth reminding you. When you replace a PC, you might keep the…

This is, in fact something I've been getting ready to do an article on soon. I had a system that had very strange and random problems that I've visited and tried many of the typical fixes for, in fac…

About a week ago, when I was in the midst of several crises, I had a Dell Inspiron 5150 left with me to look at. I had seen it once before to replace the keyboard (I remembered that it had a nice des…