Recently in Hardware Category

There are some free-on-air HDTV channels in the big city, such as Vancouver and San Francisco.

Requirements:
1) HDTV with ATSC

An ATSC tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner, allows reception of ATSC digital television (DTV) signals broadcast over-the-air by TV stations in North America and South Korea. Such tuners may be integrated into the television, VCR, digital video recorder, and set-top box which provides audio/video output-connectors of various types.

2) HDTV Antennas
I prefer Indoor antennas.
It is a list of Indoor TV Antennas for HDTV

3) HDTV TV station/channel
Digital Television/HDTV Channel List in San Francisco Bay Area
(within 100 miles of San Francisco)

Now new HDTV set with HDTV programs.

I bought the HD 2600 AGP card last week.

I tried many time to install it on my old computer. All failed. I can not even make the PC boot.

Later, I found one six pin socket on the end of video card. I don't know what it is and I can not find any explaination on the user menaul.

I google it and knows that the 6 pin socket is a power socket to give more power to Video card.

The problem is my PSU is old style without 6 pin plug.

I have an desktop about two years old with ATI 9200 video card which is almost 4 years old. I replaced the fan of this video card in 2005.

Now I would like to buy a new video card with High-definition(HD) play capacity.
Because the computer is equipped by AGP slot, the products are limited. Most of the main stream graphic cards are PCIe.

I found one with the price I fell OK. I went to Bestbuy closer to my office in the lunch time.
Diamond Viper ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 AGP 256MB GDDR2 Video Card

I have not opened the box. I will take some pictures for reference.
Features at a glance

* 128-bit GDDR2 memory interface
* High-speed 128-bit-HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering
* Up to 24X Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing
* Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10 & Shader Model 4.0, OpenGL 2.0
* ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display architecture
* HDCP Support
* CATALYST Software Drivers
* Windows Vista™ 3D environment Support

Specifications

* GPU: ATI Radeon™ 2600PRO
* Bus Type: AGP
* Core Clock: 600 MHZ
* Memory Size: 256MB
* Memory Configuration: 8Mx32 GDDR2
* Memory Interface: 128-Bit
* Memory Speed: 800 MHz
* Peak Pixel Fill Rate: 14.4 Gpixels/sec
* Peak Memory Bandwidth: 16.0 GB/s
* API Support: DirectX® 9.0 and 10.0, OpenGL
* Display Formats: 2 x Dual Link DVI + HDTV-Out

I hope it can improve the HD video quality and game power. Sometimes I edit DV for my daughters.

The price is $119.99, plus Tax is 134.39

I replaced the fan of power supply unit(PSU) in PC. The fan was too noise to sit beside the PC.

I bought one PSU fan last friday in Crystal Mall. It's $9.
EverFlow F128025SM, 12V, 0.14AMP, 2400rpm, 26db.

To remove the failed fan and put the new one on is not difficult for me. I knon how to weld.

The only thing I want to keep is how to test the PSU without installing it into the PC.

This post tell you the simply way.

If you want to test the power supply before it's installed in your system, take a spare piece of wire about 2 inches long, strip the ends and bend it in a "U" shape. Find the 20-pin motherboard connector and connect the green wire to the black wire next to it as shown. Then plug the power cord in and the power supply will come on.

After testing the PSU, I installed it into the PC.

XBMC is the best media center on XBOX.
To upgrade the XBMC, doing the following steps.

1) FTP to XBOX by IP address. say 192.168.0.123

2) Backup the following files and delete them from the XBOX

e:\apps\xbmc
e:\udata\0face008\
e:\tdata\0face008\

3) Upload the latest XBMC you download.

The upgrade is very simple. Just uploading, then finished.

How to config it to Chinese interface?

Solid printing's ink type is solid blockes. It is a new type of printing technology.
It melt solid blocks of ink, spray the ink on a drum and then roll the drum against a piece of paper to transfer the ink like an offset printing press.

The speed has generally been same as the slow laser printer.

The funny Xerox Solid Ink Technology Dance

For more detail info about Solid ink, click here.

To update the Creative products' software or drivers. see below:

Creative Software AutoUpdate currently supports Windows® 98 or higher with Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher.

Windows Vista is currently not supported.

AutoUpdate

Creative is a brand name. It manufactures a lot of sound related products, such as MP3 player, audio/sound card, speaker system, etc.

Its Sound Blaster card is very strong brand and has an outstanding sound quality in the sound card market from 1987.
It is the No 1 in the world.

I used Sound Blaster 16 around 1995. Pic from Wiki.

It introduced 16-bit digital audio sampling to the Sound Blaster line. Natively supported FM synthesis through a Yamaha OPL-3 chip. The cards also featured a connector for add-on daughterboards with wavetable synthesis (actually, sample-based synthesis) capabilities complying to the General MIDI standard. This card made the computer game hears really at the first time.

Later I used Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Pic from Wiki.

The card I used is Live 5.1. It supported 5.1 channels. Included center speaker and subwoofer. This time it make the movie playback better than before. The movies begin to use Dolby Digital 5.1. The VCD is also starting popular.

I went to Costco this afternoon and bought a pack of Duracell Crank Light as below.

There are following items in this package.
Two lights,
Two cable with USB and AC end.
One owner's manual.

It is not just a emergency light. It can also function as a AM/FM radio and USB charger.
Ok, let me list the full features.
1) AM/FM operations.
2) Light Operation
3) Charging Internal Bateries
3.1 Charge by using Crank handle.
3.2 Charge by using external cable from computer USB port.
4) Charging External Devices, such as Cell phone.

Cranking at 120 rpm for about 1 minute will provide enough charging to operate the 3 LED light for 30 minutes, 2.5 hours of orange blinker, or 12 minutes of radio.

I do really want to have this kind of light. It is good for use when windstorm comes to power cut, or camp out of the town.

I paid it about $16.

I have a post about Philips Universal Remote Contrl with a detailed instruction of code search.

But still some people ask for the menu.

Ok, I have agreed to scan it and post it here.

It is a PDF file. You can download it here.
philips remote menu

It includes almost all brands in the market and all devices, such as TV, Plasma, LCD & Panel TVs, HDTV, VCR, CD, Cable, WebTV, LD, DVR, and some Combo devices.
If you like you can print it for your reference in future.

I use this one to control my old RCA TV set and Cable box from Shaw Cable.

Do you have the Shaw Digital box, DCT2000? If you say yes, you can use it to control almost all equipment with this controller.

Just program your remote controller and you can throw away your TV's, DVD's. VCR's, and Receivers's remote controllers.
Then you just use one universal controller. You may never ask your family members to look for some controller in your house.

After getting the proper codes from the list below

1. PRESS the button for the device you want to program,(TV,VCR,CABLE,etc.), then RELEASE.
2. PRESS and HOLD the SETUP button until the red LED flashes twice, then RELEASE.
3. ENTER the 4 digit code for your brand.
4. You should receive 2 quick flashes after entering your code.
5. PRESS the POWER button to test the code. (On VCR,LD,and CD players use PLAY)

The code used as below:

Can you imaging this server, which hosts about 5 sites, has only 512 MB?

I add one piece of memory in it. 512MB memory with Samsung chips.

I bought a Azenram 512MB PC3200 184-Pin DDR Memory last week. It cost me 79.99 - 10 instant rebate and 30.00 mail-in rebate. Sounds good.

The answer is no. I can not make it work together with existing 512MB memory, which is Samsung brand.

I have to return it at FutureShop

Then go to a small computer parts store in Crystal Mall. This time I am looking for the same brand or same chips memory. They have some.

Finally I choose this, $59.99 plus tax.
I installed it and it works well. Now this server has 1024MB memory. I fell the speed, respond time, increased about 50%. It is my personal feeling.