I have yet to find a reliable source for learning whether a motherboard or other piece of hardware is going to work in Linux. There are some sites and forums out there that have bits and pieces, but I have not found a reliable, up-to-date, and complete source for the latest hardware. Especially since there are so many viable distros - each with their own level of compatibility.
If anyone knows of a site that I haven’t found yet, please shoot me an e-mail to my first name at nethub.org.
The Tech Report has a great article on Gigabyte’s new i-RAM SATA Storage Device. The PCI card uses regular DDR SDRAM paired with a battery to create up to a 4 GB hard drive that requires no special drivers. Simply hook the card up to your SATA port and your BIOS recognizes the card as a hard drive. The battery also will keep your data safe for around 10 hours if your power goes out, which is a good precaution. Needless to say, if you were putting this in a place where the power could fail, you should back up frequently, or buy a large battery backup for your PC. I’m looking forward to future revisions of this card that allow for more than 4 GB of RAM to be used, and perhaps an upgrade to the transfer rate to take full advantage of the RAM.
Samsung predicts the death of hard drives with their newest release of 16 GB Flash. I agree, and I can’t wait. Hard drives have gotten a lot more reliable in recent years, but things will be so much better - especially in the server world - when we all use flash memory for storage. If Samsung wants to send me a sample to play with, I’d be very happy to accept one!
Wireless USB Latest News about USB products will be in the shops by Christmas, and the widespread adoption of the technology will rapidly kill off Bluetooth Latest News about Bluetooth, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Latest News about Intel has claimed at its Developer Forum in San Francisco.
The wireless USB protocol will be completed by the end of March, and the access controller specification should be approved by the end of the year. Wireless USB is designed to be used at ranges of less than 10 meters and will allow peak data speeds of 480 mbps.
“In the next 12 months we will see wireless USB products in the retail sector,” said Kevin Kahn, senior fellow at Intel.
“Many companies are ready to adopt this stuff and start shipping it. Multiple silicon builders are around to provide a healthy competitive market as well.”
Kahn demonstrated a USB dongle that fits into a standard USB 2 port and would make any machine with a USB port capable of using the device. Over 200 companies are due to bring out wireless USB devices.
Key to the uptake of the new technology is ease of use. Bluetooth has turned off many users due to compatibility problems, but USB is well understood and some analysts rate it as the most successful interface in the world.
“The general consumer doesn’t have a clue,” said Jeff Ravencroft, technology strategist at Intel. “Thirty percent of returns to technology retailers are because of set-up problems. If it isn’t easy to set up this isn’t going to happen.”
This sounds interesting. I never played around with Bluetooth, but just about everything I use runs on USB. Wireless USB could potentially pose security risks, which I’m sure will be discussed as the technology becomes available in the stores.
Check out this site - it’s got some great stories of custom small boxes using the Mini-ITX standard. In addition, they have a picture of the new Mini Mac’s motherboard on their site right now. Very cool stuff.
Enjoy! –Jeff
Have you ever loaded a faulty CD into a high speed (30X or higher) CD-ROM player, heard it spin up to incredible speeds, rattling and whining, and thought to yourself: “this thing is going to explode”? When CDs came out they were heralded as the solution for the need for high storage-high speed information devices, transferring data at a whopping 150kb/s, but like all technologies, 1x CD players quickly became obsolete as the need for higher and higher transfer rates pushed for faster players, and, with them, higher rotational speeds. As we advance into the 21st century CD players are reaching the ultimate speed limit: we are getting to the point where the CD player simply can not spin the CD any faster or else the CD will literally fly apart.
On the interests of the advancement of high speed computing PowerLabs brings to you:
“THE ULTIMATE CD SPEED LIMIT!”
WARNING: This page is written for amusement only: These experiments are VERY hazardous!; A high speed rotating CD Rom is a bomb ready to explode and will send razor sharp plastic shrapnel in all directions when least expected. Do not attempt to replicate any of the experiments described below!
Saw this on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to. Needless to say, I want to try it some day with some spare AOL discs (kidding).
Enjoy! –Jeff
Here’s a great article about Serial ATA on Linux and the complications therein. Serial ATA is quickly replacing the antiquated Parallel ATA (PATA) on new motherboards. The great thing about Serial ATA is the increased throughput at 150 MB/s and faster drives. All Serial ATA drives I’ve seen so far have at least an 8 MB Cache on board.
Also, not all Serial ATA controllers are created equal. Most Serial ATA controllers claim to have RAID capabilities built in, but keep in mind that true hardware RAID capabilities are only available from a very few cards. I’ve seen many headaches related to the “fake” or “software-based” RAID that many of these cards cause.
If you’re looking to build a new system with Serial ATA, I would highly recommend checking out this article before buying anything to make sure you’ll be Linux compatible.
Enjoy,
Jeff
IBM, Lenovo Plan Joint PC Venture
Chinese Firm Would Pay
Up to $2 Billion for Stake
In Big Blue’s BusinessBy WILLIAM M. BULKELEY in Boston and EVAN RAMSTAD and KATE LINEBAUGH in Hong Kong
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 7, 2004; Page A3International Business Machines Corp. and Lenovo Group Ltd. plan to create a new U.S. personal-computer company that would own IBM’s PC business, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The new company would be majority owned by Lenovo, with IBM holding on to a minority stake small enough that its revenues and profit or loss would be excluded from operating results.
While the deal hasn’t been finalized, Lenovo is expected to pay as much as $2 billion for the majority share of IBM’s PC business, say people involved in the talks. The purchase price is only a fraction of the IBM unit’s estimated $10 billion in annual sales, but by dealing with Lenovo, which has little presence outside China, IBM holds on to the ancillary service and financing business, which can be lucrative.
Both companies will have incentive to make the new company successful. IBM wants to continue to get income from financing and servicing the millions of PCs its salespeople sell to big corporate buyers around the world. Lenovo wants the economies of scale it would get by buying the world’s No. 3 PC maker, and needs the valuable IBM brand and access to IBM’s accounts.
The discussions, which have been rumored for weeks, were confirmed by participants. The deal could be announced as soon as today.
A person familiar with the plan said Lenovo will move the new company’s headquarters to Raleigh, N.C., where the IBM PC unit’s design-and-development activities are based. It is expected that 2,500 IBM employees would join the new company. IBM’s PC headquarters are currently in Somers, N.Y., where many other IBM operations are based. IBM doesn’t make PCs, having outsourced those operations almost three years ago.
Although Lenovo is eager to expand beyond its home base of China, in purchasing IBM’s PC unit it risks taking ownership of a marginally profitable business in a commoditized industry. In a worst-case scenario, IBM customers who are unsettled by dealing with Lenovo could quickly switch to Dell Inc. or Hewlett-Packard Co., the industry’s leaders. “If they immediately change the brand from IBM to Lenovo PCs, there’d be customers running for the hills,” said Martin Gilliland, a Gartner Inc. analyst in Singapore.
As a result, the deal is being structured for IBM to continue providing sales, service and financing support for several years, a person involved in the talks said. Lenovo would use IBM’s name and the ThinkPad brand for the widely admired notebook line.
The structure appears similar to that used for the TV manufacturing operations of France’s Thomson SA, one of the biggest takeovers of a Western company’s operations to date by a Chinese manufacturer. The maker of Thomson and RCA brand TV sets, placed its set-manufacturing operations in a joint venture with China’s TCL Corp. earlier this year. While TCL controls the venture, Thomson continues to provide sales and service to its traditional customers and is positioned to convert its stake in the venture into TCL shares.
Shares in Lenovo were suspended from trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday and are unlikely to trade again until the companies either reach a deal or Lenovo makes a formal announcement to investors. A Lenovo spokesman said yesterday morning that the company was preparing an announcement, but the company ultimately made none. IBM said its policy is not to comment on rumors.
A deal would provide Lenovo with an international presence and size, but it will present the company with many execution challenges and is likely to dilute its profits. With only $400 million in cash, Lenovo would likely issue new stock to help pay for the purchase and the earnings from the IBM PC business wouldn’t be enough to offset the potential dilution, wrote Johnny Chan, a JPMorgan financial analyst in Hong Kong, in a research note.
Write to William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com, Evan Ramstad at evan.ramstad@wsj.com and Kate Linebaugh at kate.linebaugh@wsj.com
IBM In Talks to Sell PC Business
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 3, 2004 10:58 a.m.International Business Machines Corp. is in discussions with Lenovo Group Ltd., the Chinese computer company, and another interested party, about selling its personal computer business, a person familiar with the situation said.
The talks were reported in today’s New York Times. There had been reports in the Chinese press in recent months that Lenovo, formerly Legend, was talking to IBM about buying its PC manufacturing plants in China, one of the few remaining places that IBM makes PCs. Most of IBM’s PC production is done by Sanmina-SCI Corp., which bought its plants in the U.S. and elsewhere two years ago.
An IBM spokesman said it is against company policy to comment on rumors.
IBM’s PC business is a distant third world wide behind Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. In 2003 it had revenue of $11.56 billion, up 3.3% from the prior year. It had a pretax operating loss of $118 million. IBM’s total revenue last year was $89.1 billion.
In recent quarters, the PC business has generally made or lost relatively small amounts of money. In the late 1990’s the PC business was a huge drain, losing nearly $1 billion one year. However, IBM retreated from the retail market, where inventory on store shelves frequently had to be sold at a loss, and has focused exclusively on corporate and government business in recent years. It further limited its exposure to losses in the business by outsourcing most of its manufacturing.
IBM has frequently faced criticism from Wall Street for staying in the low-margin PC business, but executives have maintained that selling PC’s helps IBM be a full-service provider, which some customers want.
Write to William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com
Sony Puts MP3,
A Rival Format,
On a WalkmanBy PHRED DVORAK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 1, 2004TOKYO — Bowing to market pressures, Sony Corp. finally unveiled a hard-drive-equipped Walkman that handles the popular, but rival, music format, MP3.
The move is a hard step for Japan’s gadget king, since it puts a competing technology — MP3 — on a flagship product. Sony has a long track record of championing proprietary technology on its devices, and previous versions of that Walkman portable music player had supported only Sony’s native Atrac music format.
Sony is falling increasingly behind in the portable-music business it pioneered in 1979 with the Walkman. The move to support MP3 is a tacit acknowledgment that Sony won’t be able to catch up with the likes of Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod, which uses MP3, unless it compromises.
Until recently, most of Sony’s portable digital-music players supported only the company’s proprietary Atrac compression format, launched in the early 1990s for use with Sony’s MiniDisc, or MD, players and recorders. Sony later developed MD Walkmans that hooked up to personal computers and could pass digital music files back and forth.
But MDs, though popular in Asia, never took off in the rest of the world. Instead, the MP3 format became popular with music-download sites and a swarm of PC-linked digital-music players, most notably the iPod.
Sony’s first attempt to go head to head with the iPod, a hard-drive-equipped Walkman launched this year, has been pummeled by criticism it only played Atrac files. That meant that MP3 files had to be converted to Atrac, an acronym for adaptive transform acoustic coding, before they could be played — a clunky, time-consuming process.
A Sony spokesman said the company decided to make the new Walkman compatible with MP3 as well as Atrac because there are many people who already have MP3 music collections on their PCs.
The new Walkman will have a 20-gigabyte hard drive and go on sale this month in Japan and the United Kingdom and some time next year in the U.S., the rest of Europe and Asia. Sony said the Walkman will sell for around 42,000 yen, or $408, in Japan.
Sony also is launching in Japan a Walkman with one gigabyte of built-in flash memory that also supports MP3.
Sony has finally admitted defeat with ATRAC. With the recent announcement about HD-DVD beating out Blu-Ray for the favor of a few movie studios, it looks like Sony keeps getting spanked. They still make the best electronics IMO, but I really wonder why they can’t establish dominance on the standards they develop.