Andrew Huey | pointlessly blogging since 2001
Here are some links related to LCD monitors:
I have to admit that I’m still trying to decide if I like mine or not. Certain things look great on it, but some things are a little hard on the ol’ eyes, compared to the CRT. (It might just be that I’ve got the thing set too bright.)
Just hooked up the monitor I bought from a guy at work. It’s an 18″ LCD. Trying to get used to 1280×1024. Not easy.
I’ve just about finished upgrading my PC now. The new 100 GB hard drive is in and working. (The old one is still in too, unfortunately. I can’t get it out. Long story.) The PCI modem is in too, as is the new video card. The video card is an MSI Ti 4200. It seems to be working well, although I haven’t tried anything that would really stress it yet.
Also, I’m getting used to having a CPU temp of 53 C or so. Apparently, that’s well within the margin of safety, even it is a lot hotter that my old setup.
I installed a new motherboard in my machine today, and it actually worked! (Not on the first try, mind you, but eventually.) It’s an ASUS A7V333, with an Athlon XP 2200+ processor, a Vantec fan/heatsink, and a 512 MB memory module from Corsair. It’s working fine so far, except that the processor is running at 53 C, which seems a little hot. Next week, I should be getting a new hard drive and video card.
I now have both my Dell laptop and my iBook hooked up to my Airport Base Station, using WEP. I had originally disabled it, because I thought the USR card on the Dell wasn’t compatible with the 40-bit WEP implementation on the Airport Base Station. The USR config software only had options for 64-bit and 128-bit WEP. Little did I know that 40-bit and 64-bit are the same thing. And little did I know that the Airport Admin utility has a menu option to convert the text password used by Airport into the hex key required by the USR software. This nice little article explained it all: Flying into Other AirPorts. Yay for TidBITS! They rule!
My efforts to get WEP running again were of course spurred by Sunday’s Doonesbury.
Okay, everything’s hooked up to the network now, and all three machines (XP desktop, Win2K laptop, and iBook) can see the Internet. Now I need to get them to see each other…
I just bought a USR 11Mbps wireless card for my laptop. I wanted to set things up so I could access my Airport Base Station from that laptop. It took a little doin’, but all is now well. If you need to do this, the important thing is to disable WEP on the base station, and set the PC card to “infrastructure” mode. Here are some links that might be helpful:
The Toshiba e310 showed up at work yesterday, while I was off watching Star Wars in NYC. I just got finished setting things up. First problem: electricity! I’m definitely pushing it at this point, with about 12 devices all plugged in to the same wall socket. Well, a lot of them aren’t really on very often, so I’m probably OK. Second problem: Getting the darn thing to play nice with my PC. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem, what with Microsoft being responsible for both sides of the connection. It appears somewhat stable at this point. I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed. Now, off to find some oddball freeware…
Ordered a Toshiba e310 Pocket PC from Amazon last night. Looks like it ought to be a good unit. I’m still happy with my Palm i705, but my company is starting a new handheld project, using Pocket PC devices instead of Palms, so I figured I should get myself one and figure out the OS. Maybe even do a little development myself. Of course, I’ve had NS Basic for the Palm since February, and I haven’t written anything useful with that yet, so I’m probably not going to find myself with enough time to do Pocket PC development either. Well, who knows. It could happen!
Haven’t blogged in a while. Sorry!
PalmSource was good. Learned a lot. I still haven’t actually written any useful Palm programs yet, but at least I’ve gotten past the “Hello World” stage. I picked up a new i705 while I was out there. It’s pretty neat.
Things I like: rechargeable battery, always-on email, 8MB RAM, SD card slot.
Things I’m not thrilled about: still the same old monochrome screen!