Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Creating a bootable Windows XP SP1a CD (Nero) (Windows XP) – TACKtech Corp. _Shamelessly cribbed from TACKtech because instructions like this tend to evaporate on the web_ You will need the following items: # A copy of the original Windows XP CD or ISO # “Network Installation”:http://microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/servicepacks/sp1/network.asp of SP1a for Windows XP ~125MB # The…

Well, it’s time for my six month review of how to do DVD backups. Super useful to have a backup and also to have a smaller copy for watching ont he airplane. Here’s the latest: * DVD-copying extravaganza – CNET reviews. In the last six months, there have been a ton of commercial products. I’ve…

Net2Phone – Broadband Products – Max PVN. We were on a conference call today. Man are these complicated from a hotel room. The hotel speakerphone didn’t work, so I cranked up my old Net2phone account so we could all at least hear the call. Also trolled their site. They have some nice solutions for small…

DC-120 Toshiba Portege 300, 600, 2000, 7000, T3400, T3600, and R100 Series Laptop DC Car Adapter. Here’s the equivalent adapter for Car sockets that is $45. BEcause toshiba has a proprietary connector, you need this for the many older flavors that used their little mini connector.

Bart’s Network Boot Disk. The second technique is to boot off the network. In the old days, I had a trusty PCMCIA Ethernet card with DOS drivers so I could put a floppy in and then get the network up and then connect to a machine. Alas, I’ve lost that card and floppy. So to…

Bootdisk.Com. I’ve had two machine crash on me now while running Windows XP. The bad news is that we normally buy machines without integrated CD-ROMs, so recover is a real problem. Thank goodness for this site which has MS-DOS and other boot recover things along with pretty universal CD-ROM drivers. This is a real problem…

Ok, I foutn Laptop for Less and this seems to ahve a good selection of old Compaq accessories: * Battery for Compaq Evo. $115 for an internal Compaq Evo 400c battery sure isn’t bad. * “Universal DC/DC Stepup Convertor”:http://web1.applelaptopbattery.com/ccp5/cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi?usr=50X5437793&rnd=6841936&rrc=N&cip=64.3.228.130&pg=prod&ref=DC%2FDC+ADAPTER&cat=&catstr=&catstr=. This is a mouth full, but basically, this lets you charge the Compaq battery in your…

HP | CONFIGURATION. We have an old Compaq Evo 400c that I use quite a bit. One the quandaries is that when we got it, we didn’t get every accessory to save money, but now it would be nice to have a CD drive for instance when it crashes. Of course these are expensive as…

“Shuttle Launches”:http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2003/11/6/prodit/6631568&sec=prodit and “Optorite DD0401”:http://www.optorite.com/newproducts.htm. Just when I thought it was safe to make Christmas recommendations, now come two Shuttle boxes that could change the recommendations so that the SK43G becomes the new low-end machine of choice and the ST61G4 has the ATI graphics chipset so maybe the last barrier for Shuttle (slow onboard graphics…

For those who like to overclock their systems and squeeze performance, the type of RAM you use does make a difference. Here’s a quick review of various websites and what the gamer geeks think are great modules. Its interesting to see that folks are charging more for overclock oriented modules now. I’m not sure if…

Desert Combat. A very cool mod for Battlefield 1942. Just released their 0.5 version. I haven’t had time to play games in a long, long while, but good to remember.

[H]ard|OCP – Shuttle SN85G4 and “Pentium vs. Athlon”:http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTI0LDM= This comparison was done between Athlon 64 3200+ and a host of machines including a fast Pentium 3200 system. On the charts, the top is the Shuttle and the bottom is the Pentium. Shows it to be about 20% faster. That’s pretty amazing considering that the Pentium…

MBReview.com – The #1 Authority For Motherboard News And Reviews!. A good introduction to Serial ATA. Right now these new drives with this new interface are just shipping. Its a faster interface (150Mbps vs. 100Mbps), but does that make a difference?

EE Times – DOCSIS 2.0: Upping Upstream Performance in Cable Modem Designs

Outpost.com. One site not indexed by pricegrabber is the Fry’s site. They currently have the Western Digital WD2000JB, last quarters performance winner on sale for $120 net of a $70 rebate. Wow, that’s an incredible price.

Athlon 64 3200 Review — Forgotten CPU? – Amdmb.com. The Athlon 64 3200 basically is one fast machine. In this review, it was about 15% faster than a Pentium 3.2 GHz and 20% faster than an Athlon XP 3200+ in gaming. And, 25% faster than the Athlon XP 3200+ On synthetic benchmarks, the Pentium is…

a little ludwig goes a long way: Rich’s PC buying guide. No problem helping you figure out the Shuttle product line. I agree, it is incredibly confusing what to buy. Turns out they encode most of the important information into the product name (like most geeks), so you can figure it out if you understand…

Well, it had to happen, folks are asking me what to buy for this fall season. Here are recommendations by category (assuming you are building up your own box). Here’s a summary: h4. For Power Users The Athlon 64 3200+ in a Shuttle SN85G4 barebones system with ATI Radeon 9600 XT or nVidia FX 5700…

Adrian’s Rojak Pot Bios Optimization Guide. I’ve never understood all the BIOS settings. Here’s a guide to the over 200 different things you can now tune in your PC. Wow.