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Believe me, I wish CF were near universal right now. I hate spinning media, especially anything susceptible to magnetic fields. I just think the reason more people haven't bought into it is because after seeing all the so-called floppy replacements fail, they've become jaded and are not...

With compact flash selling for tens of dollars for 128 MB it doesn't seem like a viable replacement for floppies-yet. I'm sure at some future date solid state media will be dirt cheap like current CD-R disks but until that time I just don't see compact flash as a viable floppy replacement. One...

Actually, I consider backups and archiving to be two entirely different things. Generally, backups are of data that changes fairly frequently, and are therefore worthless if they are more than a few weeks old. Archival life of the media is just about irrelevant here. I make the backup, verify...

Maybe I've had more luck than most with UDF CD-RWs, or maybe I'm just more willing to put up with their limitations, but here's a point of view from the other side of the fence: I always assume that CD-RWs will only work in a CD-RW drive, and not in plain CD readers. Using this as my working...

This is the best news I've heard in a long time. The guy actually has the nerve to complain when he's getting a taste of his own medicine. The sooner SPAM is made illegal, the better. Anyway, this just goes to show what I've said all along, which is that 99.9% of all the SPAM we receive is...

A P4 system with onboard video?! Why? I didn't know such an aberration existed. Seriously, I don't use Autocad but I use GMax, which is a freeware version of 3DStudio Max, on my PII-450 with a Voodoo3 video card(16 MB RAM). Even with this system it seems reasonably fast, so I think any...

I just installed it and it does seem to be a reasonable replacement for MSOffice. There are some compatibility problems, at least with Excel. The graphs on a few of my spreadsheets were messed up, but other than that everything's OK so far. Maybe it's just a matter of getting rid of a few...

While the answer to this question was obvious when RAM was very expensive, I'm wondering why nowadays motherboard makers don't put a certain minimal amount of RAM(say 128 MB) on new motherboards. It would only add a few dollars to the cost and would definitely be a good selling point...

Another nod for the Promise controllers. I bought four Ultra100TX2 controllers on eBay a few weeks ago, and they come in very handy when you've filled all your M/B's IDE ports, as well as when your built-in controllers can only do ATA33 or less. About the only issue I've had with them is that...

The rate is 7.65%(6.3% retirement, 1.35% Medicare) for employees, and the employer pays a matching amount. For those who are self-employed the rate is 15.3%(12.6% retirement, 2.7% Medicare). :o The retirement portion is only taken out of the first $84,900 in earnings(in 2002), not that many...

I don't feel the current tax system is fair in the least. I hear of far too many rich individuals and corporations that get away paying hardly any tax while the average working person pays over 25% in income taxes alone-more if you add the the additional taxes the employer pays on their behalf...

I didn't know they even made anything that could do 1600x1200 8 years ago. I would have to guess it cost well over $1000. Nowadays, I've already seen a flat screen 19" monitor for about $200 after rebates. It's amazing how cheap computer parts have gotten. The $200 4 MB SIMMs price was...

I'm not surprised. It seems nowadays they would rather hire morons so that they can justify paying them $7/hour. I guess they figure anyone better qualified will either eventually want too much money, or will leave once something better comes along. Also, the part time market is by definition...

I figured as much, but it didn't hurt to ask. ;) I imagine it would be technically possible to make, but not at a price that would make sense since the SIMM stacker would cost more than the RAM I'd be using in it. Those probably made more sense in the days when a stick of 4 MB RAM went for...

As some of you may have read here, I recently tried to upgrade my PII computer to 1 GB but mistakingly purchased single-sided 256 MB sticks. The machine has 2 256 MB and 2 128 MB sticks in it currently. I also have 2 128 MB sticks that I removed to make room for the 256 MB ones. It would be...

It's definitely a hardware problem. My machine is flashed with the latest BIOS(April 2000). I think that was the final version for this board. In any case, I don't think a BIOS upgrade would help since it's a matter of the chipset being able to physically address the RAM. BX chipsets just...

Unfortunately, the thread you're referring to isn't among my saved threads but this is a topic which is rarely discussed, and it's a pity because any electronic equipment is only as good as the power supply going to it. I've personally never had any need for anything more expensive than $15...

I was once in a very similar situation to you. When I was a kid I used to live in a NYC housing project which was steam heated. Each room had it's own radiator and in addition there were two pipes running vertically from floor to floor. There were openings where the pipes went through the...

I didn't return them yet, so if you or someone you know are interested in buying them let me know. I'm probably going to CompUSA tomorrow but I'll check this thread and my PMs before I go. I imagine shipping to Sydney would be a bit pricey though.

I can only imagine the sight! I don't suppose you would have been able to ride a bike instead. I'm not sure if an ape your size would be too comfortable on a normal sized bicycle. Tannin made a good point, though, and I'll add another. Never, ever be economical if it affects your health in...

I actually love walking that far in the winter(I can do five miles in under an hour), just not twice in the span of three days. It was about 35°F when I went on Friday, and I was sweating a bit by the time I got there believe it not. Doing it in the summer is the real pain. Too bad they don't...

The lowest price on pricewatch for something compatible is $21 last I checked. The only reason I bought this RAM was because it was only $10. Remember that I need to remove 2 128 MB modules to make room for the 256 MB ones, so I'm really only gaining 256 MB by doing this, even though I'll wind...

Thanks for the feedback everyone. As best as I could tell from looking up things on various sites, the problem is that the single-sided memory uses 8 RAM chips configured as 32Mx8 versus the double-sided ones which have 16 chips of 16Mx8. The M/B chipset needs to be able to address 32Mbit RAM...

Here's one I found that might interest you: http://www.iguanalabs.com/maintut.htm It has beginning, intermediate, and advanced tutorials. Learning in detail about electronics is far from trivial, and I only really started understanding how things worked once I started making my own projects...

I purchased two sticks of 256 MB PC133 SDRAM at CompUSA today. Though the machine I plan to put them in needs more RAM like I need a hole in the head(it already has 768 MB), the price was right at $9.99 each after rebates, so I figured what the heck, even though it meant I'd need to remove two...

While there's a lot of research, it seems that most of the new technologies scheduled to be implemented in the not too distant future are either read only or write once. While these are good for archiving, they will hardly replace hard drives. Among technologies that are rewriteable it doesn't...

A bit off topic, but does anyone here know why PC clocks keep such lousy time that they need to be synched to an external time source on a regular basis? A simple thing like a TCO(temperature compensated oscillator) will cost less than $10 and would make the clocks accurate to within a minute...

There shouldn't be since it doesn't warm up very quickly. On the other hand, don't put a blow dryer to it the minute you bring it in since the sudden temperature change might make it crack. ;) There is a minimum temperature under which the LCD will actually sustain damage due to the liquid...

The problem is the condensation that occurs when you go from a cold climate to a warm one, and if the laptop has indeed gotten down to -20° F then I would give it overnight to warm up before I booted it. The instructions for installing a hard drive, for example, always say to wait something...

The idea of having a controller is a good one-if it's done properly. I've seen too many temperature control devices that control cooling by having the cooling element(usually a compressor) full on all the time and using a heating element to counteract the cooling effect and stabilize at the...

I'm not 100% sure that's true. Most of the steel in autos is recycled, not made from ore. That saves a tremendous amount of energy. Consider that an SUV getting 10 mpg burns 25,000 gallons of fuel if it lasts 250,000 miles. Even one getting 25 mpg that only lasts 100,000 miles burns 4,000...

With the technology available today there's no reason why any car should get less than 75 mpg, and for the typical short trips under 50 miles that most people do, an electric car is an even more sensible choice. Or better yet walk, bike, or take a subway. SUVs are the very personification of...

I thought it was interesting that Nassau County(i.e. Long Island) is included since I agree that for what it is(just another suburb) the price of houses on Long Island is outrageously expensive. In many areas the homes approach $300,000, which is only about $50,000 less than a home in Queens...

I should have had another choice-namely a new technology or interface will make the LBA-48 limit irrelevant. The consensus so far seems to be in 15 or so years. We'll probably be standardized on S-ATA within a few years. If that interface lasts as long as P-ATA, you could be looking at 25...

Any thoughts on this? It seems that every time we bump up against a capacity limit the new one only lasts a few more years. At least this time they had the foresight to make the new limit about 1 million times the old one. BTW, the maximum size of a drive with 48-bit LBA is 144 million GB, or...

The USB connector is a POS so it might be something that simple. USB connectors are known to come loose by themselves quite easily. Perhaps a small vibration causes a momentarily break in the signal line. Since replugging it in solves that problem, you might want to see if anything is...

Looking at that graph a little more closely it seems that besides the other problem the drive is also stuck in UltraDMA mode 2(33 MB/sec). The STR is flat up to the 13 or so GB mark. Most drives only reach their maximum STR during the first 10% or so of the platter, not for nearly half the...

BTW, LiamC, is that Kimba the White Lion in your avatar? I remember that show from when I was a kid but it's been so long(~30 years) that I pretty much forgot what he looked like. We even named our first pet cat after him.

I would say it's some kind of strange interaction between the drive and controller. Try the drive on another PC, or on a Promise controller(if you have one handy), and see if you get the same results. I've had drives that actually benchmark faster on the inside when running off the motherboard...

The jet airliner analogy is wrong. Consider that a hard drive head is moving at about 80 mph relative to the platter when on the outer rim of a 7200 RPM hard disk, and is "flying" at a height of perhaps 1 um. A more accurate analogy would be an airliner flying at 7 um, or 0.00028", since the...

Couldn't happen to a better person. What was his great accomplishment anyway? Cutting costs by firing people? Any moron can do that. A good CEO should focus on increasing revenue, not cutting costs. I'm thinking that perhap we should have a new national pastime. Let's stop hunting deer(why...

I agree that healthcare and retirement costs are two major employer expenses that cannot be eliminated except by laying off the employees. That being said, if I had a choice continuing my job with no health care coverage or losing it, I would certainly choose the former. I'm not that thrilled...

Glad to hear you were spared the axe-this time. :o I've often thought that layoffs are a silly way to cut costs. Short term you save but long term you often pay in customer dissatisfaction. This of course assumes that those laid off weren't dead wood to start with. Nothing wrong with...

It's not a good way to get rid of heat, either. The thermal conductivity of Peltier modules, even when short-circuited, is rather poor(as it must to achieve even their rather poor efficiency as refrigerators), so this increases the thermal gradient necessary to get rid of a given amount of...

I was thinking of how colors are displaying on the monitor, so you might be right. They probably get millions of colors by dithering the three basic colors and black at 2880 dpi so that the eye doesn't notice(plus the colors will always blend slightly before they dry, further hiding the "dot"...

Another remote possibility is that the device is using a heat pipe. A heat pipe is a vapor filled tube which has very high thermal conductivity. By using one you can remove heat from a cramped space where a large heatsink/fan won't fit, and move it somewhere else where you get rid of it. You...

Actually, it would be 3 bytes per dot, not bits, and for an 8" x 10" photo at 2880 dpi that would be 1,990,656,000 bytes that need to be sent to the printer in raw mode. Since USB maxes out at around 1 Mbyte/sec, in 3.5 minutes you can only send about 210 MBytes to the printer, so I would...

If they are using a conventional Peltier, then it is correct that you would need a 120W or so device to cool an 80W processor. To keep it at 26° C you would need to keep the hot side of the Peltier at around 50° C. The Peltier would be drawing about 110 to 120 watts(the wattage rating of a...

Putting aside the incident with the dog getting shot, this slob is not someone I would care to have for a neighbor, and there must be some legal means of forcing him to keep his property in order. Piles of dung and rotting animal carcasses are of no concern if your nearest neighbor is a mile...

Having just experienced the pain of losing a beloved pet myself, I'm glad to hear that Ida survived, but sad to hear that she'll likely be maimed for life due to this idiot's stupidity. It is beyond me how anyone can shoot at something(animal or human) unless their life is threatened, and that...