Category: hardware

bugs and dust balls

Bugs and Dust Balls: A ‘Clean’ Installation

Mildly amusing article at the New York Times, describing a typical person’s experience performing some simple upgrades on her PC. I got a big laugh comparing her experience with my own recent upgrades. I replaced almost every part in my PC, and I think I had less trouble than she did, and she was just trying to upgrade to Windows XP and add some RAM. (Also, I didn’t have to make a single tech support call. She must have made twenty.) I guess there’s some advantage to being a total geek after all. Also interesting to see the way she uses jargon. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the phrase “debugging the hard drive” before.

LCD monitors

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.)

PC upgrade

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.

new motherboard

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’m an idiot.

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.

Hooking up a Windows laptop to an Airport Base Station

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:

Cross-platform AirPort Wireless Networks

USR Support for the USR2410 card

Toshiba e310

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…