Oldstone Place » Hardware http://www.dmortell.com Web, Mobile and Desktop Software Development Mon, 17 May 2010 03:20:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Optimus Keyboard http://www.dmortell.com/20060122/optimus-keyboard/ http://www.dmortell.com/20060122/optimus-keyboard/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2006 12:49:37 +0000 dmortell http://www.dmortell.com/?p=125 JP pointed out a very sexy keyboard. Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a display in itself and can change depending on the function it is assigned for. Very cool indeed.

]]> http://www.dmortell.com/20060122/optimus-keyboard/feed/ 0 Went a bit crazy in Akihabara today http://www.dmortell.com/20021103/went-a-bit-crazy-in-akihabara-today/ http://www.dmortell.com/20021103/went-a-bit-crazy-in-akihabara-today/#comments Sun, 03 Nov 2002 07:43:15 +0000 dmortell http://www.dmortell.com/?p=82 Trying to install Redhat 7.0 on a dodgy Pentium 133Mhz drove me crazy so I went to Akihabara and bought a new PC.

  • Intel P4 2.53GHz with fan 30,980
  • 512Mb DDR2100 RAM 18,500
  • Asus P4B-533E motherboard 21,800
  • Seagate 80GB hard disk 12,800
  • Windows XP Pro/J (OEM) 19,800
  • Gladiac Geforce Ti6400 39,800
  • Logitec DVD-R 24,799
  • ATX case 9,799

Total 178,278

The new Pentium4 motherboards are a little complicated to install and it helps to have a P4 compatible case or power supply. Make sure you plug the ATX12V power connector to the motherboard.

The IDE cable that came with the motherboard only had one connector. I tried putting the DVD-R on the Primary IDE and the hard disk to the Primary Extended IDE but the disk wasnt being detected. I’m not sure what the extended IDE connector is for. In the end I had to find a spare IDE cable and put the hard disk on the primary IDE and DVD-R on the secondary.

After installing WinXP a lot of system devices werent being recognized because the motherboard is newer than Microsofts standard XP drivers. Install the drivers from the motherboard CDROM. Dont let your computer restart between installing each driver. The order you install the USB related drivers is important:

  1. Install QFE fix for USB 2.0
  2. Install INF driver
  3. Install USB 2.0 driver (click Next on the Drivers screen)
  4. Restart your computer

I disabled RAID in BIOS to remove the “Scanning IDE drives…” during startup.

]]> http://www.dmortell.com/20021103/went-a-bit-crazy-in-akihabara-today/feed/ 0 CD-R http://www.dmortell.com/19990219/cd-r/ http://www.dmortell.com/19990219/cd-r/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 1999 09:17:26 +0000 dmortell http://www.dmortell.com/?p=114 Today I tried to get my recordable CD working again. I’m running out of room on my hard disks so I thought I’d copy them to CD. The recorder software which came with my drive was outdated so I downloaded the upgrades of DirectCD and EasyCD on the Adaptec pages. I also upgraded the firmware of my Caravelle CD-RW (it actually seems to be a Ricoh 6200A) from 2.03 to 2.40.

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