Hardware :: Tech-Weblog.biz - Cool Tech Gadgets, Gizmos and more funky geek stuff

IBM/PowerPC Dual Core CPU

2005-07-11T17:50:57+01:00

Almost 2 years after first rumours on PowerPC 970 MP IBM today announced it at the Power Everywhere Forum in Tokyo .

With two CPU cores, just as the recent AMD Athlon and Intel processors have, it is practically a dual cpu sytem on one chip. CPU frequency is from 1,4 Ghz to 2,5 Ghz. Each core has 1 MB L2 Cache, and contrary to AMD and Intel dual cores, one of them can even be deactivated during operation... I suggest this is only interesting for power-saving modes in notebooks, but notable anyway.

The notebook design is supported by low-power variants of the PowerPC 970 FX, running at 1,4 Ghz with only 13 Watts, 16 at 1,6 Ghz.

Altough with recent news of Apple using Intel CPUs, it's still unsure if this advantage will find a way into the power/ibooks design.

800GB DVD Technology Patented

2005-05-25T16:37:13+01:00

The US Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Iomega a patent relating to nano-technology-based optical storage that could allow the development of DVD media with storage capacities up to 40-100 times more than today's DVDs.

800GB DVD Technology Patented

Cheap and reliable SATA RAID5 - Promise FastTrak S150 SX4

2005-04-09T17:44:48+01:00

After having my 3 months young Samung SATA disk crash, and spending (WASTING!) considerable time recovering from old backups, old disks etc.etc. I came to the conclusion that my workstation needs a pro-like storage sub system.

Of course I have TWO RAID1 controllers on my ASUS P4e800 board - but both of them simply suck. Windows setup simply blue screens when accessing such a device via the one controller (Promise SATA controller with SATA RAID option)... the second controller (INTEL ICH5 RAID!) does not even have a "clone" function to make a good RAID1 array from a single "good" system disk... cheap add-ons for people that never intend to use it... altough it's an INTEL brand hardware, I would never recommend anyone relying on that built in crap... if you already hassle around that much for setup - can you imagine a recovery scenario?

I need to setup a RAID5 array which should enable me to have safe functionality as long as only 1 disk fails at the cost of only 1/3 ... and a third of 200 GB x 3 is still a 200 GB disk :-)

My hardware dealer suggested the controller FastTrak S150 SX4 a pretty low-cost, but full features RAID5 SATA controller...

Important features per homepage

Four-port Serial ATA RAID controller with 1.5Gbps per channel
32-Bit/66MHz PCI 2.2 interface
Support for RAID level 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD
Online array expansion and RAID level migration to add capacity on the fly
Supports hot swap of failed drives
Automatic/manual rebuild of hot spare drive
Variable stripe block size support enables optimization for diverse application requirements
Promise RAID Processor with XOR engine for RAID parity calculations
Supports up to 256MB of SDRAM memory in a 168-pin DIMM slot supports up to 256MB of ECC
Seamless upgrade to Promise's external storage solutions (have to look at those as well...
FRAM for RAID5 transaction log to avoid data corruption in the event of application hang ... FRAM is Ferroelectric RAM - said to be 20,000 times faster than flash memory and costs 25% less than battery-backed SRAM... means this should keep everything consistent

Continued reading Cheap and reliable SATA RAID5 - Promise FastTrak S150 SX4...

T-Mobile UMTS communcation center 2.0.1.44 from 2.0.1.40 upgraded

2005-02-21T17:30:28+01:00

my T-Mobile UMTS/GPRS card just gave me an updated version 2.0.1.44 to download - claiming performance enhancements... (that's what I need..

I'll check it out in a minute... I hope those guys tested their stuff before providing me a crippled driver... and... no public detail on this update at or availalable... I wish I would find a kind of driver site.

Continued reading T-Mobile UMTS communcation center 2.0.1.44 from 2.0.1.40 upgraded...

Onboard aC97 , ALC850 Soundchip on P4P800 stops suddenly... onboard LAN squeezing out HF sounds at high load

2004-12-26T16:54:19+01:00

another ASUS story today...

My new Asus P4P800 that I bought 3 weeks ago stops playing sound via the onboard Realtek ALC850 Soundchip without notice...

and "Asus doesn't know about it" as my supplier says.
other freaks around the world messed with mostly lack of success with this...

Checking heat, driver revisions, etc. and even finding the IDE cabeling being responsible for the chip bug...

Comparing Boardrevisions ... some issues about a power drop were in there as well... OMG!

Most of those bought a PCI sound card to disable their onboard-sound feature they paid for... it's a real mess... I didn't believe I would waste my precious time on something trivial as a 10 EUR sound component... I tought those issues were gone with the 386 aera and 8bit IRQ config...

and guess what else: the onboard GigaBit LAN component start to sing around in HF range of 10-12 kHz like a little bird when loaded at 100Mbit max (massive gigabyte transfer from peer PC)

oh well - the last 4 mainboard generations didn't mess with sound, so this should do it once again... or?

I believe ASUS has a name to lose and these strange issues don't look like a very famous engineering excellence... (did I tell you that my last 2 board generations were MSI without any hassles ? maybe I know why know... )

Config:

ASUS P4P800 - bios 1004 beta 1
P4@3000/Prescott 1MB
2xKingston DDR400 512MB
2x Samsung 1614c 160GB
3 other IDEs on 2 other aTA controller

My debugging steps so far:

checking the heat issues some people described - 4 fans and 31 celsius board temperature are fine!
disable Hypertheading - no effect - still stopping
installing RealTek drivers 3.67 - still testing

Possible Options:

Bios Upgrade to ?
wait for new, stronger super-silent power-supply
...
replace whole mainboard - oh - and I got a replacement mainboard from my supplier - and might test that as well...
last resort: build an ANTI ASUS page, disable onboard sound and buy a PCI sound card...

Logitech MX-1000 Laser Mouse

2004-09-04T23:21:00+01:00

Logitech has a new mouse out that utilizes a LASER instead of a typical LED for even more improved performance - targetted at graphicans, gamers - and well - geeks like us :-)

There's an early user review on 3DGPU and you can read about it at ExtremeTech

streetprice should be somewhere between $75 and 95 - amazon has a sale currently for $69

Continued reading Logitech MX-1000 Laser Mouse...

Canon MultiPass MP730 Photo

2004-08-09T21:20:26+01:00

Finally a new printer/scanner combo in the house - with (they say) 22 pages per minute... well - I would be happy with half of them

Canon's MultiPass MP730 straddles the line between a photo printer and a do-everything multifunction device for your home office. Drawing on its fast color ink-jet print engine, the MP730 copies in color or black and white, scans to and prints from your PC, and faxes both paper and digital documents. The MP730 includes an automatic document feeder and a built-in digital camera flash card reader--rare extras for a multifunction.

Canon MultiPass MP730 - CNET Reviews

The automatic feeder (ADF) is a killer-feature as it cannot only be used for multi-page faxing, but multipage scanning... yo...

And the dust-protection for the prining paper feed is what I love most... there some weeks a year where I don't print a single page... those 50 cents for the extra item in the box make one feel just a little bit like "extra-icecream". :-)

I have a Canon Lide Scanner and HP Deskjet 880C to give away... anyone? that's the best - just plenty of space more here... :-)

Google Search Appliance

2004-07-16T19:10:19+01:00

Just came across the Google Search Appliance ... a Google-Box to deliver the same results you expect from Google web search - it can be yours on your intranet or public website with this nifty Google Search Appliance.

The combined hardware and software solution shall be easy to use and simple to deploy to begin providing enterprise search results in just a few short hours. I just wonder if this could help re-engineering the Google algo's for some SEO companies ?!?

Pentium M 2.0 Ghz in Dell Inspiron 8600 and Latitude D800

2004-05-10T23:18:22+01:00

Dell has Incoporated Intel's Latest M Processor and announced that the latest version of the Intel Pentium M processor are now available in its corporate and consumer wireless notebooks, the the Latitude D800, Dell Precision M60 mobile workstation and the Inspiron 8600 can be configured with the fastest version of the new processors, the Intel Pentium M processor 755, featuring 2.0GHz processor speed, 2MB Level 2 cache and 400MHz front side bus.

A broad range of Dell notebooks can be configured with a variety of the new processors, including the Intel Pentium M processor 745, Intel Pentium M processor 735 and the Intel Celeron M processor 330.

"Businesses and individual consumers are choosing notebooks over desktop computer systems with increasing frequency. NBs allow users the flexibility to work outside traditional office environments on self-determined schedules and can actually extend the typical work week by a couple of hours," said Leslie Fiering, lead mobile analyst, Gartner.

Well, I am still very satisfied with my Dell 8600 1.5 Ghz / 1 GB from last september... did hardware innovations slow down a bit or was it just a bleeding edge order almost 9 months ago???

Linux Duracell CPU load monitor

2004-02-15T11:49:32+01:00

The amazing Linux Duracell CPU load monitor is sort of the weirdes hardware hack I came across in the last months...

You probably know those onboard testers found on Energizer and Duracell batteries : press the two white dots printed on the wrapper, and magically the battery's state appears on a yellow bar. They build a CPU load monitor with this little thing... :-)

NEC ND-2500A (DVD +/- RW) - Introduction

2004-02-13T23:26:19+01:00

CDFreaks has an introduction on the NEC ND-2500A (DVD±RW) [1/10] which is the successor to the famous ND-1300a - an 8x DVD writer.

It seems to be capable of writing 4x DVDs in 6x speed and more... nice... and cheap again...

We have to admit that it?s the first drive to support 8x DVD-R and 4x DVD-RW, this in itself makes the drive stand stronger than most competitors. We did get impressed by the writing quality of this drive, for CD-R discs it?s only beaten by the Lite-On LDW-411S that we reviewed a while ago. But for DVD-R and DVD+R discs it simply outclasses all the other drives we have reviewed. Yes writing quality is important for you, in our opinion this is the most important thing to consider when getting a new drive as you do want your discs to work and last after you have written them, don?t you? The drive is also very quiet in operation and the build quality seems good

NEC ND-2500A (DVD±RW) - Introduction

DVD Player region code and macrovision hack list

2004-02-07T16:05:03+01:00

3633 DVD Players in the list. 2351 DVD Players hacks based on 8577 user reported hacks to be found in the DVD Player Hack List

This list is based from user reports and were not verified or tested any hacks. Remember also that some DVD Players, like many Pioneer and Sony DVD Players, require some extra hardware to be able to be region hacked like a special remote control or similiar.

and please: don't bother me with questions about hacks you didn't find there... I didn't create that list...

WinLIRC for remote controlling your PC

2004-02-06T21:22:11+01:00

WinLIRC allows you to transmit and receive standard infrared remote control signals. This allows you to control your computer using almost any standard infrared remote control. It also allows your computer to control other equipment which uses these signals (stereo equipment).

WinLIRC is the windows port of LIRC

Unfortunately I haven't yet found out how to utilize my USB IRDA receiver with WinLIRC. They have nice blueprints for self-made serial port IR-receivers but no support for the IRDA device.

On another location I read that the IRDA receivers don't support the consumer IR... hmmm - maybe I'll have to create some receiver by myself?

KC180 USB-Infrared Xp Driver IRXpress 2.0

2004-02-06T21:17:19+01:00

Just found that version 2.0 of the IRDA USB receiver KC-180 is available at Belkins homepage...

get it

Tech Predictions for 2004

2004-01-01T20:10:27+01:00

Happy New Year 2004

I saw my weblog top 40000 unique visitors (wow! more that 50% direct visitors consuming RSS feeds or visiting via Bookmark are even more amazing I think)
which continues the trend I already found and which motivates me to go ahead, even if there's pretty less time between family, work and university.

Following a common trend to predict stuff that will (or shall? self-fulfilling prophecyl?)
happen in 2004 I though I'd compile some stuff together according to my last findings to be closed with some dumb predictions by myself:

IDC Enterprise

some of the nine trends listed by IDC are

* IT companies will go niche. To demonstrate the value of their products, large IT suppliers will tailor their offerings to better fit the needs of specific industries. IBM is already doing this. { well - SAP for sure and longer aswell dude! }
* Wi-Fi will continue to grow. { oh well - no wonder, it's free with every new PC and Notebook :-}
* Spending in China and Eastern Europe will accelerate. Chinese IT spending will hit US$30 billion and grow at four times the rate of that of the rest of the world.
* Offshore outsourcing will grow. The value of IT goods and services coming to the United States that are produced by offshore labour will hit US$16 billion, doubling 2003's total. Not only will large US companies continue to outsource, Indian service providers will gain market share as well.

CNN

* OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING BECOMES AN ELECTION ISSUE. - The United States is entering uncharted territory, with white-collar technology jobs disappearing from our shores at a rapid clip and reappearing in India, China, and Southeast Asia. Remember the cries lamenting the educational disparity between our schools and those in other countries? It seems that those concerns are finally coming home to roost. Look for offshore outsourcing to become as big an issue in November as the relocation of manufacturing jobs was in the 1970s and '80s. ... see the 235.000 less jobs I posted already
* NASDAQ: 2,500 - yes please
* VOIP TAKES OFF

AirDrop

100% Lossless music encoding scheme that is the size of 128 kbps mp3 files will be introduced.
In an Ironic twist, Red Hat Linux and SCO will BOTH file for bankruptcy. IBM will grab all their IP for pennies. Mere Pennies, I say!
A cellphone with no buttons and only voice recognition will be introduced by Nokia.

VirtuelVis

* believes that Google and other Search Engines will
not be able to index RSS, while they already do that - as you can see in this Google Query
- sorry Arve, it's ok if you blacklist my site for being questionable, but your posts could be checked aswell :-)

PreGaming

Doom 3 is released. No-one really pays much attention to anything else.
Grand Theft Auto 4 is released, and it manages to somehow offend every single person on the entire planet. Rockstar rake it in.

ComputerWorld Security

Spam operators are getting more creative in their efforts to get around spam filters. R.a..n,d,o.,m p,u,,n,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n makes it nearly impossible to block spam messages by filtering keywords. Operators are changing to graphics interchange format images with no searchable text. Some spammers send in encoded formats, like Base64, to circumvent keyword filters altogether, and relay through IP addresses that have no Domain Name System domains associated with them. These recent developments are challenging spam-filter vendors and frustrating users.
Personal firewalls - Thanks to Blaster, Nachi and perhaps another worm in the final weeks of 2003, personal firewall software on end-user systems will finally get traction. Many companies found that these worms got into their networks via infected laptops that didn't have firewall software. { CCC: I would demand from Microsoft and DELL to deliver new Windows XP SP1 CDs instead of the old and buggy original ISO }
USB flash drives - One or more major companies will attempt to ban the use of Universal Serial Bus flash drives on the grounds that unscrupulous employees are using them to leak proprietary information. The result will be embarrassing, negative publicity for a policy that's ineffective in the first place. Seriously, though, this is a problem for organizations. Many will begin to understand that the problem isn't with the technology, it's with the people! { I agree 150% }
Wi-Fi break-in - There will be at least one well-publicized break-in to a corporate Wi-Fi network. The cause of this attack will either be because the network was supported by IT but poorly protected, or a rogue access point was installed by an unauthorized employee. Regardless, the incident will shed light on this still-neglected vulnerability and spur companies into action.
Bluetooth - The same people who hack computers, send spam, make Pringle-can antennas, and drive funny cars will discover Bluetooth and begin to experiment with its uses and abuses. Negative publicity may cause Bluetooth to go back to the drawing board.
Mobile phone hacking - Mobile phones are acting a lot more like wireless data terminals with very lightweight operating systems. We're building another monoculture, this time on almost-free devices that may outnumber PCs in a couple of years. Perhaps in 2004, we'll see more malicious code attacks than in years past.
Organized crime - We're already seeing this in Eastern Europe, South America and Southeast Asia: Gangs of hackers extort money from Web site operators and Internet service providers that are unable to defend themselves from denial-of-service attacks. Sadly, we're sure to see an increase in this sort of activity. Hacking for "protection money" and other sources of revenue will become a big business synonymous with drug and credit card trafficking. { DOS Mafia - interesting }

Skeptic Fortune :-)

The camera phone fad of 2003 is quickly forgotten when Nokia buys Norelco and develops a lotion phone
The low-level buzz that iPods can mysteriously stop working becomes a major scandal. Turns out that a number of iPod design samples (traditionally filled with a block of wood instead of circuitry) mistakenly shipped to retailers.
Contact-freshening services Plaxo and GoodContacts experience explosive growth as folks realize that signing up is the only way to stop those annoying e-mails from people they cannot remember who are asking them to update their contact info. Once other tech companies see their success, this particular brand of "annoyance abeyance marketing" sweeps the Internet and soon Amazon and Google and all the rest are devising ways for us to pay them to stop bothering us. LOL
The CAN-SPAM law amazingly works and in-boxes everywhere are now filled only with relevant messages. But unanticipated side effects rock the country. The U.S. falls into a deep depression, as economists realize too late that low mortgage rate offers, printer ink cartridge sales, and porn are the real drivers of the GDP.

*big LOL*

FastForward Fortune

Oracle acquires PeopleSoft.
HP starts to seem exciting.
Google?s IPO falls flat.
China, China, China?and India

PMN Mobile Stuff

3G services in Western Europe will not see significant subscriber growth during 2004 as the availability of handsets and poorly targeted operator marketing fails to capture consumers' imagination.
An integrated digital camera will become standard on the majority of mobile devices in Western European markets. Photo messaging will see exponential growth. { are you sure??? }
One of the 5 largest handset manufacturers will consolidate its handset business with that of a competitor. { nokia and Norelco? }
Gaming will dominate the application downloads business, leading to significant growth for all players in this space. However, it will continue to be outstripped in revenue and unit sales terms by ringtone and graphic downloads.

Jeremy

PageRank is Dead.
Vertical Search Markets - Search often leads to transactions. The search engine companies want a cut of those transactions--just like Amazon or eBay get. Think of them as search services for a minute.
Web Reputation Systems like the one of eBay will grow ... { well good idea - even if there are a hell lot of Abusers on eBay }
RSS Boom - Forget Atom/Pie/Echo/whatever. It will be RSS. RSS may not be perfect, but it's good enough. That train left the station quite a while ago.

Now my own predictions:

my Chello cable modem will get upgraded by 50% from 1mbit to 1.5mbit for FREE :-)
UT2004 and Unreal Tournament 2005 are released only a few months inbetween... underground hacks will make an UT2003 playable with UT2004 mods, maps and features
I will find the bugging reason why my provider DR2 all of the sudden disabled the URL-Rewriting feature
the Plasma TVs will reach the 2000 EUR spot and Elli and I will get one then :-)

and some more important ones:

Economy will improve as much as it needs for the job market to improve (remember, it still sucks), Stocks will rise even more, Interest rates will go up starting in summer for US, while Europe will keep or even drop them more to get away from the too strong EURO - we shall not see 1.5 EUR/USD spot or so
Microsoft Longhorn Technology publications will grow and more and more Non-Microsofties will begin to understand that Microsoft is probably the only company in the world spending unbelievable amounts of money on real innovations for their own software - that includes real and expensive usability labs that again set new UI trends or standards...
Microsoft will release a new game console that will blast away all competitors because they now know how the game console probably works (or they simply buy a large competitior to get hold of that know-how :-)
Google IPO will happen and trigger the stock-markets positively
Google PageRank will keep it's name but will be modified and improved as it was for the year 2003 already - remember Florida-Google Dance's drops

Well, and I am expecting some R.a..n,d,ô.,m p,u,,ñ,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n mails in the next hours :-)

Tech Predictions for 2004

2004-01-01T20:10:27+01:00

100% Lossless music encoding scheme that is the size of 128 kbps mp3 files will be introduced.
In an Ironic twist, Red Hat Linux and SCO will BOTH file for bankruptcy. IBM will grab all their IP for pennies. Mere Pennies, I say!
A cellphone with no buttons and only voice recognition will be introduced by Nokia.

PreGaming

Doom 3 is released. No-one really pays much attention to anything else.
Grand Theft Auto 4 is released, and it manages to somehow offend every single person on the entire planet. Rockstar rake it in.

ComputerWorld Security

Spam operators are getting more creative in their efforts to get around spam filters. R.a..n,d,o.,m p,u,,n,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n makes it nearly impossible to block spam messages by filtering keywords. Operators are changing to graphics interchange format images with no searchable text. Some spammers send in encoded formats, like Base64, to circumvent keyword filters altogether, and relay through IP addresses that have no Domain Name System domains associated with them. These recent developments are challenging spam-filter vendors and frustrating users.
Personal firewalls - Thanks to Blaster, Nachi and perhaps another worm in the final weeks of 2003, personal firewall software on end-user systems will finally get traction. Many companies found that these worms got into their networks via infected laptops that didn't have firewall software. { CCC: I would demand from Microsoft and DELL to deliver new Windows XP SP1 CDs instead of the old and buggy original ISO }
USB flash drives - One or more major companies will attempt to ban the use of Universal Serial Bus flash drives on the grounds that unscrupulous employees are using them to leak proprietary information. The result will be embarrassing, negative publicity for a policy that's ineffective in the first place. Seriously, though, this is a problem for organizations. Many will begin to understand that the problem isn't with the technology, it's with the people! { I agree 150% }
Wi-Fi break-in - There will be at least one well-publicized break-in to a corporate Wi-Fi network. The cause of this attack will either be because the network was supported by IT but poorly protected, or a rogue access point was installed by an unauthorized employee. Regardless, the incident will shed light on this still-neglected vulnerability and spur companies into action.
Bluetooth - The same people who hack computers, send spam, make Pringle-can antennas, and drive funny cars will discover Bluetooth and begin to experiment with its uses and abuses. Negative publicity may cause Bluetooth to go back to the drawing board.
Mobile phone hacking - Mobile phones are acting a lot more like wireless data terminals with very lightweight operating systems. We're building another monoculture, this time on almost-free devices that may outnumber PCs in a couple of years. Perhaps in 2004, we'll see more malicious code attacks than in years past.
Organized crime - We're already seeing this in Eastern Europe, South America and Southeast Asia: Gangs of hackers extort money from Web site operators and Internet service providers that are unable to defend themselves from denial-of-service attacks. Sadly, we're sure to see an increase in this sort of activity. Hacking for "protection money" and other sources of revenue will become a big business synonymous with drug and credit card trafficking. { DOS Mafia - interesting }

Skeptic Fortune :-)

The camera phone fad of 2003 is quickly forgotten when Nokia buys Norelco and develops a lotion phone
The low-level buzz that iPods can mysteriously stop working becomes a major scandal. Turns out that a number of iPod design samples (traditionally filled with a block of wood instead of circuitry) mistakenly shipped to retailers.
Contact-freshening services Plaxo and GoodContacts experience explosive growth as folks realize that signing up is the only way to stop those annoying e-mails from people they cannot remember who are asking them to update their contact info. Once other tech companies see their success, this particular brand of "annoyance abeyance marketing" sweeps the Internet and soon Amazon and Google and all the rest are devising ways for us to pay them to stop bothering us. LOL
The CAN-SPAM law amazingly works and in-boxes everywhere are now filled only with relevant messages. But unanticipated side effects rock the country. The U.S. falls into a deep depression, as economists realize too late that low mortgage rate offers, printer ink cartridge sales, and porn are the real drivers of the GDP.

*big LOL*

FastForward Fortune

Oracle acquires PeopleSoft.
HP starts to seem exciting.
Google?s IPO falls flat.
China, China, China?and India

PMN Mobile Stuff

3G services in Western Europe will not see significant subscriber growth during 2004 as the availability of handsets and poorly targeted operator marketing fails to capture consumers' imagination.
An integrated digital camera will become standard on the majority of mobile devices in Western European markets. Photo messaging will see exponential growth. { are you sure??? }
One of the 5 largest handset manufacturers will consolidate its handset business with that of a competitor. { nokia and Norelco? }
Gaming will dominate the application downloads business, leading to significant growth for all players in this space. However, it will continue to be outstripped in revenue and unit sales terms by ringtone and graphic downloads.

Jeremy

PageRank is Dead.
Vertical Search Markets - Search often leads to transactions. The search engine companies want a cut of those transactions--just like Amazon or eBay get. Think of them as search services for a minute.
Web Reputation Systems like the one of eBay will grow ... { well good idea - even if there are a hell lot of Abusers on eBay }
RSS Boom - Forget Atom/Pie/Echo/whatever. It will be RSS. RSS may not be perfect, but it's good enough. That train left the station quite a while ago.

Now my own predictions:

my Chello cable modem will get upgraded by 50% from 1mbit to 1.5mbit for FREE :-)
UT2004 and Unreal Tournament 2005 are released only a few months inbetween... underground hacks will make an UT2003 playable with UT2004 mods, maps and features
I will find the bugging reason why my provider DR2 all of the sudden disabled the URL-Rewriting feature
the Plasma TVs will reach the 2000 EUR spot and Elli and I will get one then :-)

and some more important ones:

Economy will improve as much as it needs for the job market to improve (remember, it still sucks), Stocks will rise even more, Interest rates will go up starting in summer for US, while Europe will keep or even drop them more to get away from the too strong EURO - we shall not see 1.5 EUR/USD spot or so
Microsoft Longhorn Technology publications will grow and more and more Non-Microsofties will begin to understand that Microsoft is probably the only company in the world spending unbelievable amounts of money on real innovations for their own software - that includes real and expensive usability labs that again set new UI trends or standards...
Microsoft will release a new game console that will blast away all competitors because they now know how the game console probably works (or they simply buy a large competitior to get hold of that know-how :-)
Google IPO will happen and trigger the stock-markets positively
Google PageRank will keep it's name but will be modified and improved as it was for the year 2003 already - remember Florida-Google Dance's drops

Well, and I am expecting some R.a..n,d,ô.,m p,u,,ñ,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n mails in the next hours :-)

NEC 1300a Firmware Hack 108v2 Special (Booktype) Holiday Edition Released

2003-12-30T16:50:00+01:00

Herrie released a new NEC hacked firmware, the NEC 108v2 Special (Booktype) Holiday Edition.

FEATURES:

- DYNAMIC BITSETTING:
Now your NEC can burn DVD R(W)s with different book types
DVD R, -R, RW, -RW and -ROM are possible.

- NEW AUTO RESET ROUTINE:

Region code - no problem. If you ever have set a
regio code to your drive this firmware will reset your
drive to factory settings once. Don't worry about the
flash memory. After this reset the firmware will
not(!) write in flash anymore.

Any temporary regio code setting will disappear after
changing the DVD.

- 2X RIP LIMIT:
removed for sure

Continued reading NEC 1300a Firmware Hack 108v2 Special (Booktype) Holiday Edition Released...

Sony DW-U10A to DRU500A firmware hack and 4x speed hack roundup

2003-12-30T16:34:53+01:00

The Sony DW-U10A to DRU500A and 4x firmware hack roundup I found is a nice summary of firmware hackers making their DVD a real DRU500A an capable of buring PRINCO 4x media at 4x speed.

Continued reading Sony DW-U10A to DRU500A firmware hack and 4x speed hack roundup...

Can't get SAA7134 to work in XP

2003-12-13T19:02:48+01:00

Medion 9170/MD 5044/SAA 7134 tv watching is fun again - actually... it was...

My upgrade to Windows XP and DirectX9.0b including the hotfix DirectX9b-KB825116-x86-DEU.exe could get my TV card to work again... it really sucks... and you know what? it's only a Windows problem - when I boot the Windows 2000 partition with the same drivers the whole thing works...

AND: after rebooting into XP without powering off the card even works in XP - it's just an initialization problem after a cold boot... oh my god - I see DOS/Win3.11 times being back again... some things never change... :-(

Update: another trick with TunerFix.Exe also didnt work...

ELTA8882 upgrade to DivX3.11 and PCM audio

2003-10-25T17:49:51+01:00

Oh yeah, thanks to an flash upgrade via CD my ELTA8882 now plays DivX 3.11, PCM audio in AVI files and the BIVX (dual sound channel DIVx5) format works without flickering and hangups... cool even the DVD with 4 Gigs of digi-pics loads - well - quite slow and without folder support - but hey - in 1 or 2 yrs everything will be fixed...

I am happy that they at last implemented some missing things and provided a flash upgrade (can YOU upgrade your consumer hardware????) --- on the other hand: I would have expected them to deliver a seamless working device - which might not be possible for vendors delivering Linux/PC based hardware... according to trade journals all other DIVX capable players including KISS had some troubles with initials releases...

now go and get that 1.0.0.6 upgrade ...

Samsonsite 700 X-Pansion - the Inspiron 8600 backpack

2003-10-11T23:49:44+01:00

Samsonite has a really huge, sort of cubic backpack that enalbes you to travel with your Inspiron 8600...

Actually the FH folks thought I bring my trolly, travel-case, with me, but this one fits quite well on my back... I just doubt that you have fun carrying it if your are less than 180 tall ...

Dell Inspiron 8600 hacks

2003-10-09T22:43:04+01:00

Bay Wolf's Downloads has some interesting downloads for DELL's Inspiron 8×00 series and others...

Medion 9170/MD 5044/SAA 7134 tv watching is fun again

2003-09-28T22:37:57+01:00

If you have one of those cheap Aldi/Hofer Tv cards utilizing the great Philips SAA 7134 MK2/MK3 chipset and stopped using it because of worse Windows WDM drivers, sucky applications for watching and horrible Videotext support, then get up and enable it again...

Thanks to the current CT I found :

DScaler great TV browser with native SAA 7134 decoding support - lightning fast channel scan
nexTView EPG Decoder" nexTView EPG Decoder Software to support you in selecting your channels...

Continued reading Medion 9170/MD 5044/SAA 7134 tv watching is fun again...

Oops - Gigabit < 20 EUR?

2003-09-25T23:22:44+01:00

Like waking up from a years sleep or so I noticed the LCS-8037TX at my favourites dealer DITECH for below 20 EUR! That rocks... well actually not... I am still missing the 802.11b/g-10/100/1000 Router I would actually like to buy to combine with that... hmmm - too bad.

supporting standard : IEEE802.3 10BaseT & 802.3u 100BaseTX & 802.3z/ad für 1000Base-TX
cable with RJ-45 for 10/100/1000 Mbps supporting Auto MDI/MDI-X , Tamarack Chipset

Hot Highperf Dell Inspiron 8600 Review

2003-08-28T19:36:45+01:00

Dell has the new Inspiron 8600 Ambassador / Moebius online and ready.

Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Prozessoren-M @ 400 MHz up to 1.7 Ghz
up to 2048 MB DDR-SDRAM @ 333 MHz in 2 Slots (needing hell expensive 1 gig modules)
15,4" UltraSharp? WUXGA Display (1920 x 1200)
128 MB nVidia GeForceFX Go 5650 - that's a higher frequency 5600 Modell DirectX9 chipset
DVD+RW or CDRW Combo
WLAN 802.11 b/g + built in antennas
2,99kg
highest value at best price

but - no back-pack for this wide profile notebook offered??? - I suppose that's a new formfactor or so... but I don't want to have the weight of this goodie on one shoulder everyday - still remember the old donkey-trip with my previous configuration.

and - where are the good reviews from the mags? all I found was a PCW review for the October issue ... to new or what? any hints or review-links are highly appreciated...

With this top-book@1gig you should get the top-performance for mobile development - especially Java + Database + Appserver on a notebook could kill other configurations soon.

btw: this is no marketing rave, I will get this notebook next and report about it.

Continued reading Hot Highperf Dell Inspiron 8600 Review...