Collecting computer junk

November 2, 2007

Some people collect stamps, some insects and butterflies, others vintage cars. Me as a computer freak I collect computer hardware. I get very close and personally involved with every motherboard, video card, controller or hard drive that comes through my hands, and if for any reason the time comes for the component to enter the Valley of the Dead, I mourn. My wifey could tell stories of cabinets full of 'junk' that seems to be completely useless, but I could do the same about her clothes and shoes

Some of the treasures that I keep and don't have the heart to throw away:

IBM DAQA-33240 - 3.2GB IDE HDD, 5400rpm, 96kB buffer, 9.4ms seek time

The top IDE hard drive of its time in capacity, performance and price - these days the capacity is barely enough for Windows XP installation, not mentioning the low rpm's, cache and pio-only mode. Still, it runs perfectly. My piece was manufactured in october 1997 - last month celebrated 10 years in service.

Purchase price in 11/1997 - $430

ASUS V3400TNT/TV with 16MB DRAM

The top graphics card of its time including the 3dfx VooDoo magic. I obtained it 2 weeks before the next generation (TNT2) arrived to the market and the price dropped. After only few months the small and annoyingly unreliable and noisy 40×40mm fan died and the card works happily without it ever since. Not powerful enough for current games of course, but perfect for regular use in older PC's.

Purchase price in 04/1998 - $390

Dead technology.. but still alive!

July 25, 2007

 The market these days is flooded with various portable MP3 players from many different manufactures. There is probably very few people that never heard about Apple iPod, Creative Zen, iRiver and many more. The players come in different colors, shapes, and more or less usable features and functions. Some manufacturers bet on design and marketing (Apple), others on size or price. But after all, they have one thing in common, and that is playing MP3 music. Although many can play other formats as well, still MP3 is the most common. And no matter how advanced and great your player is, it cannot do miracles if you feed it with 128kbps MP3s.

There is one almost forgotten technology developed by Sony that surpasses the MP3 format in any way. The player is not as small as the MP3 sisters, since it plays optical disks 2.7×2.2 inches, but the sound quality is excellent. One disc can hold up to 80 minutes of high quality music that beats even the highest MP3 quality (320kbps), or you can choose from two Long Play modes for twice or four times more playtime - LP2 equals to 192kbps MP3, LP4 is recommended only for voice since the compression is too high for music.

And the design is simply beautiful. Long live Sony MiniDisc!

 

 

Pentium M in desktop computers

January 31, 2007

 Couple of days ago I got my hands on a very nice piece of hardware - DFI's microATX mainboard 915GM-MIGF/G. It is based on Intel 915GM mobile chipset found usually in second generation Centrino notebooks (codename Sonoma) and is one of the few desktop mainboards capable of running mobile Celeron and Pentium M CPU's. Offers integrated GMA900 graphics chip and 8-channel audio that are good enough for office use and even some older games, has both analog and digital output for multi-monitor support, and one full speed PCIe 16x slot for powerful additional graphics card. And as most of DFI's products it offers great overclockability.

Although the retail prices of Pentium M CPU's are still ridiculously high, thanks to eBay I was able to buy two used pieces for fragment of the original cost. Model 730 (1.7GHz/2MB L2) for $60 (retail price $470), model 725 (1.6GHz/2MB L2) for $50 (retail $340). Both CPU's were pulled from dead laptops, are working perfectly and overclock like crazy. The more powerful model I used in my aging notebook to replace Celeron M CPU.

These are results  of my overclocking attempts:
Intel Celeron M 350 (1.3GHz/1MB L2) - at 1.73GHz (13x 133MHz FSB) on default 1.26V
Intel Pentium M 725 (1.6GHz/2MB L2) - at 2.4GHz (16x 150MHz FSB) on 1.504V (default 1.340V)

 

The only 'flaws' I found so far are the single channel memory controller (chipset supports single channel DDR and dual channel DDR2, but this mainboard has only two DDR slots), and lack of support for 64-bit applications - this is not really big issue, considering the target market of this board.

On the other hand, the power consumption of the whole system is much lower than today's high end graphic cards alone (especially the hyped and not yet released AMD/ATI's R600 with it's 240W). Even when overclocked by 50%, all the CPU needs is just passive heatsink similar to the ones found on northbridges and properly ventilated case (using two slow spining fans, 12cm intake and 8cm exhaust). The resulting computer is very quiet and powerful.

Thank you Intel for such nice piece of silicon!

HP nx6125 review - one year after

January 21, 2007

Where did the comrades from HP make a mistake?

Part of my job is supporting our company’s products at customer sites scattered all over the world. To help me carry all the needed stuff with me, my company decided it's time to go mobile and equip me with a notebook. I could choose between the following two models:

Dell Latitude D510 - Celeron M 350 with 512MB RAM, i855 chipset and 1024×768 15"
HP nx6125 - Turion ML-34 with 1024MB RAM, ATI Xpress 200 chipset and 1400×1050 15"

Although the D510 has much cheaper components than the HP, to my surprise the price was almost the same. So I chose the HP. I had no experience with AMD powered computers since I replaced my good old 386DX/40 so many years ago. Centrino technology rules the mobile market since its introduction, some people love it (including me), some people hate it, so I was obviously curious if there is finally some competition to Intel.

How well does the HP serve me and what are my opinions about it? Read on…

(more…)

Tags: hardware

Posted by cmoud at 4:11 am | permalink | comments[2]