H1DD3N.R350URC3 » Hardware

The Challenges of new Keyboards

sascha — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:49:34 +0000

I must have been temporally mind absent when I strolled through Akihabara some days ago and went into a Computer Shop to buy this cute little – but ridiculously overpriced – Happy Hacking Keyboard!

Not only doesn’t it have Letters, it also has no cursor keys and no function keys! Well ok mine is dark gray and has black letters on it that can only be seen with enough light in the back. It”s a 66 keys Keyboard and all special keys can be accessed with the Fn key. It means you have to press two keys to use Cursor keys or Function Keys and if you want to press Shift+F1 you have to hold three keys at once. Quite a finger acrobatic trainer isn’t it? Not to mention that I also have to get used to the American layout.

I somehow feel back at the C64 where double and triple layered keys were the daily thing. This little black devil meanwhile went into my shelf to be replaced with my ten year old trusty Cherry Keyboard … three times by now! Finally I accepted to give it a longer try! Sure, Its masochism but the quality and feeling of the keys is so irresistible! Plus I got a lot more space free on my desk suddenly (you should know … space is the most expensive thing around here!)

Time for a new Rig!

sascha — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:30:21 +0000

Being that old hardware DIY’er that I am (it started long ago with changing the kernel of my C64) I’ve so far always bought parts and built my PCs up by myself. This time I was pondering with buying the new Dell XPS 700 just because it’s case design is so ultra slick (around 100.000 times more slick than a Mac G5 Park Waste Bin ever could be if you ask me) but I’ve changed my mind after realizing once more that Dell’s sale policy sucks. That is because here in Japan the XPS is not available as customizable as in the US! While in the US the minimum parts required are the CPU and memory, here at Dell Japan you have to buy an almost fully rigged machine.

So instead of buying an XPS 700 with a flatscreen, DVD, keyboard, mouse and Windows XP Home, all stuff that I don’t need I’ve decided to go again and choose all required parts from the ground up by myself. Here is how my next PC will look like …

Antec P180B Case (looks like a mini frigde but is very quiet and cool inside)
Antec Neo HE 550 PSU
Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard
Pentium D 945 CPU (3.4 GHz)
Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU Cooler (have to double check if it fits on the mobo without probs!)
2x Corsair XMS2 2GB (2x 1GB) 800 (PC2 6400) (4GB)
Leadtek Winfast PX7900 GTX TDH (more silent and cooler than comparable Radeon cards)
2x HITACHI Deskstar T7K250 250GB 7200RPM SATA

… Not only is it cheaper (though still quite steep) but it also means more memory and quite a bit more silence in our room than with the XPS. My last mainboard was an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe and I’m totally satisfied with it since it is running stable for about two years now. I think I’ll turn the old water-cooled Pentium4 into our Linux Server after this.

The Crappiest Corporate Site of the Week

sascha — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:06:23 +0000

The “Crappiest Corporate Site of the Week” Award goes to Dell Japan for not being able to have a Shop website that runs on current Browsers! When I try to get onto their XPS 700 Customization page I get a simple Access Denied, telling me that I need to use Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape 4.6! The site doesn’t work on FireFox and not on MSIE 6 and neither on Netscape 8! Congratulations Dell! You suck immensely!
I’m actually wondering how do you sell your PCs in Japan!

Review: iPod Shuffle

drcolossus — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 03:25:10 +0000

I’ve bought myself an iPod Shuffle finally after pondering about a couple of mobile players. This device is the second best thing after sliced bread.
I don’t wanna dig to deep in details here so I make it short, here are the pro’s of the iPod Shuffle …

>> Continue reading "Review: iPod Shuffle"

Thing on a spring

drcolossus — Tue, 04 May 2004 02:39:23 +0000

… or things in the spring! I got my new rig set up finally! Almost done with installing all the stuff that I need for a convenient usage. This is what came out finally…

CPU: Pentium4 3GHz 800MHz FSB

Motherboard: P4C800-E Deluxe (excellent board!)

>> Continue reading "Thing on a spring"

European Vintage Computer Festival

drcolossus — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 11:22:30 +0000

“Let us return to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when geeks were geeks and floppies were really floppy.”

European Vintage Computer Festival

Transpacific Hardwares

drcolossus — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 21:42:05 +0000

It’s about time! We’ve finished a rather big job by now and it’s time for some coddling! I’m still loitering around with my outdated AMD 1.2GHz with yesterdays hardware so I prepared to buy components for assembling a new system. I will go with a Pentium this time, hoping to have not so many hardware probs, freezes and incompatibilities.
After some investigations and review study on several hardware testing sites, I’ve compiled my raw list of selections which includes a new CPU, motherboard, RAM, harddisk and additional stuff like PC case, power supply and CPU cooler. Maybe a new graphics card but that’s not primarily important for now. I came up with these …

>> Continue reading "Transpacific Hardwares"

640 Kilobyte ought to be enough for anybody

sascha — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 19:33:20 +0000

… was a quote from Bill Gates from 1981 according to the book Computers – An Illustrated History from Christian Wurster which I had a sneak look into some days ago in a well sorted book shop and which her majesty now surprisingly presented me as a birthday gift.

This book covers the whole history of computers from the very beginning when they filled a whole hall and were based on relay’s to current computer high tech while leading though the chapters for scientific and military computers, mainframe computers, minicomputers, then microcomputers and to desktop computers.

>> Continue reading "640 Kilobyte ought to be enough for anybody"

DreamTopCast

drcolossus — Sun, 22 Jun 2003 00:05:00 +0000

engaged console modders in HK tinkered together the first Dreamcast(tm) with LCD display! Looks quite funny the bumpy DC with a LCD on top! It doesn’t make it more portable however as you still need to connect to a power outlet.

there is still no decent Dreamcast emulator to this day that i know of. only some that can frankly emulate some demos or 8bit style games. i found one emu named ‘nightmare‘ with that came a screenshot…. uh wait…. they updated …… several screenshots. according to them the only dc emu that can play commercial games yet. unfortunately it seems only to eat .GRE format ROM’s.