No man should be without the ability to grill his food. No man should be limited to hot dogs and burgers.
Today, I learned how to grill Salmon. I learned the Cedar plank method and will be doing it again. It was easy. I soaked the plank for an hour, preheated the grill, brushed the fish with olive oil on both sides and coated both sides with Old Bay Seasoning. I had to use the training wheels of grill skill, aka: a meat thermometer, but the results spoke for themselves. Excellent.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Dumpster Diving? Not really...
So I dropped by the cardboard recycling dumpsters at the local walmart today on the way home from cleaning out the old apartment the rest of the way. After dumping the boxes and flipping a turn to get to the other side of walmart (needed Rockstar drinks), I saw something next to a randoms dumpster close to the recycle area.
I slowed down and looked to see what it was, thinking I was looking at a mini-fridge. On the front: "Haier"... Yup. I checked it out, noticing the box to a brand new mini fridge in the dumpster. There was a partial bottle of Lipton iced tea inside. Interesting. There was also condensation inside, making me think the fridge had recently been used. I loaded it in the car without giving it a second thought.
Upon arriving home, I plugged it in. Nothing. I felt the compressor and it was crazy hot from the sun. I decided to let it cool while looking at the hardware connected to it. It had two pieces of gear on it: A Klixon thermal protector and some strange module. I pulled the Klixon, thinking it was the problem. It clicked. Well, thermal protect was off now. Test again. Still no go.
What was the strange module? It had a number on it: p6r8mc. I looked it up and saw it was a starter. Compressor won't start without it. One datasheet later, I saw that I could disassemble it. I used a knife blade to pop the clip off. Inside, it was obvious what the problem was. One side of the PTC pill was fine, but the other was burned badly. The contact was also fried.
I scraped the oxidation off of the contact and put the starter back together with the contact on a small patch of still-functioning PTC plating. With the assembly back in place, I plugged the fridge back in to hear the compressor start back up. I had diagnosed the issue. Would the jerry rig hold? Nope.
I need to get a new starter. Not so easy, but if I can't find one, I will be able to build a circuit to perform the same function while using the original starter case as the connector for it.
Fragwell Manor needs a mini fridge for snacks. The thermo-electric one I had before the move died. It wasn't that great, anyway. This one will get cold under any ambient temperature condition and even has a freezer in it. And, it's bigger. This one will hold a lot more than 36 cans of soda.
To whomever left it behind (probably an RV traveler, from the look of things) , thank you.
I slowed down and looked to see what it was, thinking I was looking at a mini-fridge. On the front: "Haier"... Yup. I checked it out, noticing the box to a brand new mini fridge in the dumpster. There was a partial bottle of Lipton iced tea inside. Interesting. There was also condensation inside, making me think the fridge had recently been used. I loaded it in the car without giving it a second thought.
Upon arriving home, I plugged it in. Nothing. I felt the compressor and it was crazy hot from the sun. I decided to let it cool while looking at the hardware connected to it. It had two pieces of gear on it: A Klixon thermal protector and some strange module. I pulled the Klixon, thinking it was the problem. It clicked. Well, thermal protect was off now. Test again. Still no go.
What was the strange module? It had a number on it: p6r8mc. I looked it up and saw it was a starter. Compressor won't start without it. One datasheet later, I saw that I could disassemble it. I used a knife blade to pop the clip off. Inside, it was obvious what the problem was. One side of the PTC pill was fine, but the other was burned badly. The contact was also fried.
I scraped the oxidation off of the contact and put the starter back together with the contact on a small patch of still-functioning PTC plating. With the assembly back in place, I plugged the fridge back in to hear the compressor start back up. I had diagnosed the issue. Would the jerry rig hold? Nope.
I need to get a new starter. Not so easy, but if I can't find one, I will be able to build a circuit to perform the same function while using the original starter case as the connector for it.
Fragwell Manor needs a mini fridge for snacks. The thermo-electric one I had before the move died. It wasn't that great, anyway. This one will get cold under any ambient temperature condition and even has a freezer in it. And, it's bigger. This one will hold a lot more than 36 cans of soda.
To whomever left it behind (probably an RV traveler, from the look of things) , thank you.
Fragwell Manor Introduction
The original Fragwell Manor was a three-story house built in the early 1900s. The new Fragwell Manor is a 1996 Champion single-wide mobile home.
The idea with Fragwell Manor has always been ninja-stealth. The outside should look kind of plain, but nice. Inside, however, should look great. Choosing a trailer scored a lot of plainness points. What was interesting is the fact that it doesn't look like any trailer I've ever been in. It looks like a house inside.
Perfect project house, but it needs a lot of work outside. The grass isn't grass at all. It's a bunch of weeds and morning glory plants holding hands.
I have already done a bit of work. The cost so far:
a gallon of Roundup spot-killing the worst weeds and clearing the walkways
one cheapass Weed Eater trimmer. It died a horrible death with much smoke and arcing. IT didn't even last through the original trimmer line spool it came with. Piece of crap.
One can wasp and hornet killer to take out the nests on the back door and the wood frame that holds the swamp cooler up.
New swamp cooler pump. The original one was the cheap kind that you have to replace every season. The new one is a lot more robust and has a motor four times the size of the dead one.
A block of unknown... something... that you put in swamp cooler reservoirs to make them smell better and keep mineral scale off of the cooler pads.
Things to come soon:
new water line to the cooler since the one on it now is taped in five places and still leaks. At least I can recycle the copper for money. The new line will be plastic.
swamp cooler needs to be moved from the kitchen window to the living room window. It keeps blowing out the pilot lights on our gas range. Not much gas to speak of, but it's still dangerous. Other than that, the new position will allow the air to blow more evenly.
new gas range. Even with the pilot lights saved by relocation of the cooler, pilot lights still use fuel and are still an open flame. We want electric ignition.
Weeds must die. Short of taking a propane ditch torch to them all, they must be killed.
The idea with Fragwell Manor has always been ninja-stealth. The outside should look kind of plain, but nice. Inside, however, should look great. Choosing a trailer scored a lot of plainness points. What was interesting is the fact that it doesn't look like any trailer I've ever been in. It looks like a house inside.
Perfect project house, but it needs a lot of work outside. The grass isn't grass at all. It's a bunch of weeds and morning glory plants holding hands.
I have already done a bit of work. The cost so far:
a gallon of Roundup spot-killing the worst weeds and clearing the walkways
one cheapass Weed Eater trimmer. It died a horrible death with much smoke and arcing. IT didn't even last through the original trimmer line spool it came with. Piece of crap.
One can wasp and hornet killer to take out the nests on the back door and the wood frame that holds the swamp cooler up.
New swamp cooler pump. The original one was the cheap kind that you have to replace every season. The new one is a lot more robust and has a motor four times the size of the dead one.
A block of unknown... something... that you put in swamp cooler reservoirs to make them smell better and keep mineral scale off of the cooler pads.
Things to come soon:
new water line to the cooler since the one on it now is taped in five places and still leaks. At least I can recycle the copper for money. The new line will be plastic.
swamp cooler needs to be moved from the kitchen window to the living room window. It keeps blowing out the pilot lights on our gas range. Not much gas to speak of, but it's still dangerous. Other than that, the new position will allow the air to blow more evenly.
new gas range. Even with the pilot lights saved by relocation of the cooler, pilot lights still use fuel and are still an open flame. We want electric ignition.
Weeds must die. Short of taking a propane ditch torch to them all, they must be killed.
The Fragwell Project
Almost every guy has had a clubhouse of sorts when he was younger. You need a place to hang out with your friends. As you get older and grow, you need more space. Luckily, your resources grow with you.
In 1999, we had our new clubhouse. We called it Fragwell Manor. It was an investment property bought by my mother and adoptive dad. During renovation, my brother, our friends and I used this house as our clubhouse... with running water, a toilet and a big screen TV. We would cook pizzas elsewhere (no oven on-site) and haul them to the house for movie nights. The plan was to eventually host LAN Parties there, but when my half-brother, Rick, started living there, we no longer had the location available.
Flash forward to 2008.
Times have changed a lot. The original Fragwell group has spread out. Some have children of their own--myself included.
Fragwell Manor wasn't just a clubhouse. It was intended to be a place where, like Wonka, some of my dreams become realities and some of my realities become dreams. To spell it out, it was supposed to be a laboratory of sorts.
Now that my wife and I are homeowners, it can finally happen. And, in fact, needs to. My lifetime passion (addiction?) has become my career. I need to take my game to the next level.
Over the next year, Fragwell Manor will be reborn. And it's going to be an interesting journey.
I'll be starting a new blog dedicated to Fragwell progress.
In 1999, we had our new clubhouse. We called it Fragwell Manor. It was an investment property bought by my mother and adoptive dad. During renovation, my brother, our friends and I used this house as our clubhouse... with running water, a toilet and a big screen TV. We would cook pizzas elsewhere (no oven on-site) and haul them to the house for movie nights. The plan was to eventually host LAN Parties there, but when my half-brother, Rick, started living there, we no longer had the location available.
Flash forward to 2008.
Times have changed a lot. The original Fragwell group has spread out. Some have children of their own--myself included.
Fragwell Manor wasn't just a clubhouse. It was intended to be a place where, like Wonka, some of my dreams become realities and some of my realities become dreams. To spell it out, it was supposed to be a laboratory of sorts.
Now that my wife and I are homeowners, it can finally happen. And, in fact, needs to. My lifetime passion (addiction?) has become my career. I need to take my game to the next level.
Over the next year, Fragwell Manor will be reborn. And it's going to be an interesting journey.
I'll be starting a new blog dedicated to Fragwell progress.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Wow...
So I went to another sale the other day and, once again, didn't get exactly what I was after so I took my frustration out on the quintessential pile of broken laptops... by buying eight of them.
One that had caught my eye turned out to be a really good deal. It was $20 Inspiron 8200 and said the display didn't work, but would show an image on an external monitor. Cocky as I am (when I have a cache of Dell parts), I knew I'd be able to make it play nice so I snapped it up. Well, it and three other Dells ($1 each for a broken Latitude C840, Inspiron 4150 and Inspiron 5000).
As I was making my way through the line, I saw a docking station and power supply sitting on a cart. I checked the price and noticed they were $20. Checking the item number showed they were both included with my Inspiron 8200 purchase. Sweet bonus as the dock was the smaller one. I didn't have one of those.
Upon arriving home, I took the 8200 apart to find out what the deal was. The video board wasn't sitting straight so I suspected that to be the problem. With a reseat of that and the display connector (which looked more elegant than usual, I put a near-comatose battery in an started the system. I noticed that the display had a yellowish look to it while off, as well as a more glossy appearance. This was unique. I wondered what Setup would have to say about it.
Then the panel started up. I was outdoors when it happened so the difference wasn't as dramatic as it would later prove to be. In setup, I saw that the system had a 32MB Geforce4 440 Go GPU and the display was listed as UXGA Ultrasharp. Ultrasharp, eh? That's what my desktop LCD is. I thought it was some slight improvement that Dell played the marketing game with, but when I went inside and started the system again, I saw it was no ordinary notebook LCD. Additionally, UXGA isn't a common display resolution for a laptop.
When the panel was on and black, I had to look closely to see whether the backlight was even on. O RLY? Usually, I would see a horizontal band of darkness with grey at top and bottom when the screen was painted black and each eye would see a different image due to viewing angle problems. Not this time. What was going on here?
It turned out that this display was an expensive option on some of the systems which shared the same chassis, mostly because of the M50 workstation model. It was intended for the graphical design market. I will say this: It's the best laptop computer display I have ever seen. It's more bright than the display on my Alienware M9700, has the same apparent black level despite the extra brightness, and has colors that are way more rich. For a five year-old system, that's truly impressive.
My only wish is that this display was in a faster computer. The Pentium 4-M is not my favorite CPU by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd sooner have a Pentium 4 than a Pentium III. I'd rather, however, have a Pentium M.
I had to move the entire upper display assembly from the Inspiron 8200 to the $1 Latitude C840 since the 8200's fixed optical drive bay wasn't working. The casing doesn't match so I will have to change it over to the Latitude display casing. That will be where I will really have to be careful. Combining the two systems, I ended up with the following:
Dell Latitude C840:
Pentium 4 1.8GHz
1GB RAM (came with the $1 system)
30GB hard disk (came in the Inspiron)
Geforce4 440 Go 32MB
15" Ultrasharp UXGA LCD
24/24/10x CD-RW/DVD fixed bay drive
floppy drive module
Dell Inspiron 8200
Pentium 4 1.6GHz
256MB RAM
no hard disk
Geforce4 440 Go 32MB
15" UXGA LCD
24/10/10x CD-RW/DVD fixed bay drive
floppy drive module
While I was at the sale, I also picked up a stripped Dell desktop that still had the CPU in it. Yes, it was a Pentium 4, but it wasn't for me. It was for my wife. She was running a 2GHz Pentium 4 with the old 400MHz frontside bus. The chip from the stripped rig? 3GHz with an 800MHz frontside bus and Hyperthreading support. 50% better from the start, in addition to letting dual-channel RAM make a difference at long last and allowing her to play videos on her system while loading it down with other work due to Hyperthreading making the system think it has two CPUs. It really improved her World of Warcraft experience.
One that had caught my eye turned out to be a really good deal. It was $20 Inspiron 8200 and said the display didn't work, but would show an image on an external monitor. Cocky as I am (when I have a cache of Dell parts), I knew I'd be able to make it play nice so I snapped it up. Well, it and three other Dells ($1 each for a broken Latitude C840, Inspiron 4150 and Inspiron 5000).
As I was making my way through the line, I saw a docking station and power supply sitting on a cart. I checked the price and noticed they were $20. Checking the item number showed they were both included with my Inspiron 8200 purchase. Sweet bonus as the dock was the smaller one. I didn't have one of those.
Upon arriving home, I took the 8200 apart to find out what the deal was. The video board wasn't sitting straight so I suspected that to be the problem. With a reseat of that and the display connector (which looked more elegant than usual, I put a near-comatose battery in an started the system. I noticed that the display had a yellowish look to it while off, as well as a more glossy appearance. This was unique. I wondered what Setup would have to say about it.
Then the panel started up. I was outdoors when it happened so the difference wasn't as dramatic as it would later prove to be. In setup, I saw that the system had a 32MB Geforce4 440 Go GPU and the display was listed as UXGA Ultrasharp. Ultrasharp, eh? That's what my desktop LCD is. I thought it was some slight improvement that Dell played the marketing game with, but when I went inside and started the system again, I saw it was no ordinary notebook LCD. Additionally, UXGA isn't a common display resolution for a laptop.
When the panel was on and black, I had to look closely to see whether the backlight was even on. O RLY? Usually, I would see a horizontal band of darkness with grey at top and bottom when the screen was painted black and each eye would see a different image due to viewing angle problems. Not this time. What was going on here?
It turned out that this display was an expensive option on some of the systems which shared the same chassis, mostly because of the M50 workstation model. It was intended for the graphical design market. I will say this: It's the best laptop computer display I have ever seen. It's more bright than the display on my Alienware M9700, has the same apparent black level despite the extra brightness, and has colors that are way more rich. For a five year-old system, that's truly impressive.
My only wish is that this display was in a faster computer. The Pentium 4-M is not my favorite CPU by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd sooner have a Pentium 4 than a Pentium III. I'd rather, however, have a Pentium M.
I had to move the entire upper display assembly from the Inspiron 8200 to the $1 Latitude C840 since the 8200's fixed optical drive bay wasn't working. The casing doesn't match so I will have to change it over to the Latitude display casing. That will be where I will really have to be careful. Combining the two systems, I ended up with the following:
Dell Latitude C840:
Pentium 4 1.8GHz
1GB RAM (came with the $1 system)
30GB hard disk (came in the Inspiron)
Geforce4 440 Go 32MB
15" Ultrasharp UXGA LCD
24/24/10x CD-RW/DVD fixed bay drive
floppy drive module
Dell Inspiron 8200
Pentium 4 1.6GHz
256MB RAM
no hard disk
Geforce4 440 Go 32MB
15" UXGA LCD
24/10/10x CD-RW/DVD fixed bay drive
floppy drive module
While I was at the sale, I also picked up a stripped Dell desktop that still had the CPU in it. Yes, it was a Pentium 4, but it wasn't for me. It was for my wife. She was running a 2GHz Pentium 4 with the old 400MHz frontside bus. The chip from the stripped rig? 3GHz with an 800MHz frontside bus and Hyperthreading support. 50% better from the start, in addition to letting dual-channel RAM make a difference at long last and allowing her to play videos on her system while loading it down with other work due to Hyperthreading making the system think it has two CPUs. It really improved her World of Warcraft experience.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Some of the Best Things In Life Are Cheap
A few months back, I hit up a junk sale and bought a bunch of sick laptop computers. One of them was going to be my pet project as the price was right. You can't get much for $1 these days, but I did.
The victim (at first glance):
HP Omnibook 6100
Pentium III-M CPU @ 1GHz
512MB PC-133 SDRAM
no hard disk
16MB ATI Radeon Mobility M6 GPU
cracked 14.1" XGA LCD
Magnesium Alloy rear display casing
dead battery pack
Having experienced the joy of the Pentium M CPUs, I knew that the PIII-M was the missing link between it and the previous Pentium III chips. The Mobile Pentium III wasn't an ideal mobile CPU. Even though Intel added SpeedStep technology, allowing the CPU to decrease speed to save battery power, the voltage stayed the same. This isn't necessary. With the Pentium III-M, Intel changed their approach, dropping core voltage when speed is decreased. This was a huge help.
The cracked LCD was replaced with the display from an Omnibook 6000 with a bad trackstick I picked up (also for $1). Upon replacing this and starting the system, I was greeted with a password screen. Uh oh... Denied. I tried guessing the code and got nowhere so I went searching for a solution. There used to be a guy who would crack the codes using the hash code accessible through a key combination on startup, but this was back in 2006. After giving HP a call, intending to pay their $39 asking price for an unlock, I received a runaround with the usual confusion between a BIOS password and a hard disk password. No help (though the Canadian service rep lady was very nice), but HP/Compaq has stopped supporting Omnibooks, anyway, so I didn't expect much. They aren't IBM/Lenovo, after all.
Next! A trip to eBay later, I had my solution. A company there sells the chip that holds the password. They needed to know my display panel type, as the system keeps your LCD info in the same chip, but I was able to get the right one. The chip's not worth the immediate purchase asking price for such an old system, but it was well worth the $25 I paid for it to have a working computer.
I took the system apart using the service manual HP made available and came to find that the system had a secret that made it quite unique. In addition to having on-board LAN, it was also made with WiFi as an option. Mine didn't have the WiFi gear installed, but I would fix that soon. Having WiFi optional meant the mini-PCI card slot was open, but what I didn't expect was a second mini-PCI slot housing the modem underneath the hard drive slot. Bonus! The only other system I've ever seen with two mini-PCI slots is my Alienware M9700 and it's really no challenge to fit a second mini-PCI slot in such a large system. There is potential here.
I took the motherboard to work with me off-the-clock to solder the new chip in. Five minutes and a little lead-free solder later, the chip was installed. I drove home shortly after, antsy to see if I had resurrected yet another computer. An hour and a bunch of screws later, the system started without issue, but would shut off randomly because the battery pack was just _that_ bad. No matter. $45 and two days later, I had my new pack and could now go cordless.
Testing the battery life, I found that the system wasn't actively computing power consumption. It seemed to think that the constant load on the pack was 15W, working out to a 4hr battery life. Not true. Using some shareware I downloaded, I found that the actual discharge rate in dynamic mode worked out to a 6-7 hour battery life for the work I do. Fair enough. That's between 8 and 9 watts consumption. Not much heat there, which is easier on my lap than the 25-30W my Dell P4 laptop sucks down.
Having read up on the Radeon M6 GPU, I found that it wasn't really an all-out GPU at all. It doesn't have internal Transform and Lighting units, unlike most units today. Since my goal was to run a Nintendo64 emulator, I didn't really need this capability. I had run one on my Nvidia TNT2 card back in the day and it did fine. And that system was a 550MHz overclocked Celeron rig.
For fun, I attempted to run 3DMark2001SE on the system to see what would happen. With the driver Microsoft included with XP, it wouldn't run at default resolution. Updating to the HP-supplied driver allowed it to run. I scored 1948 3DMarks. That's a little over half the speed of the Radeon 7500 GPU and good enough for me. Project64 ran perfectly when I tested it with Mario Kart 64. And the colors... wow! I didn't expect them to be so bright.
I intend to use the computer for light 3D and CAD work since the display turned out looking better than I expected. While 16MB isn't much in the way of display RAM, it's enough to drive my display with XGA resolution while leaving a few megabytes for texture RAM.
I loaded my Proxim WiFi A/B/G card into the non-hidden mini-PCI slot and ran a spare cable/panel antenna combo I had from a Toshiba Tecra 8200 up to the top of the rear display casing where I attached the panel antenna to the portion of the case that wasn't metal. This was a far better location for the antenna than the one HP used. One small antenna hidden in the hinge portion of the system isn't going to get you far.
With drivers installed and the antenna hooked to the proper connector, I had succeeded in adding WiFi to my "new" laptop.
As for the second Mini-PCI slot, I took the modem out since I haven't needed a modem in six years. I could replace it with something and it looks like a USB 2.0 card is the most useful option. The cards are $50 and provide four USB 2.0 ports. I intend to find a way to convert the two USB ports on the rear of the system to 2.0 and feed the data lines of the original ports to internal accessories. I'm leaning toward Bluetooth and a wireless gamepad receiver. I'll keep an eye out for the card I want.
I wish the system wasn't so large, but I can't complain there. It was meant to replace my Toshiba Portege 3490CT, which I couldn't use as well as I'd have liked, owing to the cramped keyboard, 256MB RAM limit and problem with heat dissipation to locations other than my lap. The Omnibook weighs almost twice as much, but it's worth it.
Comparison:
CPU:
Omnibook: 1GHz PIII-M, 512K L2 cache, 133MHz frontside bus speed
Portege 3490CT: 700MHz Mobile PIII, 256K L2 cache, 100MHz frontside bus speed
CPU power save:
Omnibook: throttles back to 533MHz and drops core voltage
Portege 3490CT: throttles back to 500MHz with same voltage
CPU software power saving:
Omnibook: power-on-demand throttling
Portege 3490CT: duty-cycle throttling down to 133MHz speed equivalent (where I achieved 8W load)
RAM:
Omnibook: Two open slots, standard PC133 SODIMM, 1GB limit
The victim (at first glance):
HP Omnibook 6100
Pentium III-M CPU @ 1GHz
512MB PC-133 SDRAM
no hard disk
16MB ATI Radeon Mobility M6 GPU
cracked 14.1" XGA LCD
Magnesium Alloy rear display casing
dead battery pack
Having experienced the joy of the Pentium M CPUs, I knew that the PIII-M was the missing link between it and the previous Pentium III chips. The Mobile Pentium III wasn't an ideal mobile CPU. Even though Intel added SpeedStep technology, allowing the CPU to decrease speed to save battery power, the voltage stayed the same. This isn't necessary. With the Pentium III-M, Intel changed their approach, dropping core voltage when speed is decreased. This was a huge help.
The cracked LCD was replaced with the display from an Omnibook 6000 with a bad trackstick I picked up (also for $1). Upon replacing this and starting the system, I was greeted with a password screen. Uh oh... Denied. I tried guessing the code and got nowhere so I went searching for a solution. There used to be a guy who would crack the codes using the hash code accessible through a key combination on startup, but this was back in 2006. After giving HP a call, intending to pay their $39 asking price for an unlock, I received a runaround with the usual confusion between a BIOS password and a hard disk password. No help (though the Canadian service rep lady was very nice), but HP/Compaq has stopped supporting Omnibooks, anyway, so I didn't expect much. They aren't IBM/Lenovo, after all.
Next! A trip to eBay later, I had my solution. A company there sells the chip that holds the password. They needed to know my display panel type, as the system keeps your LCD info in the same chip, but I was able to get the right one. The chip's not worth the immediate purchase asking price for such an old system, but it was well worth the $25 I paid for it to have a working computer.
I took the system apart using the service manual HP made available and came to find that the system had a secret that made it quite unique. In addition to having on-board LAN, it was also made with WiFi as an option. Mine didn't have the WiFi gear installed, but I would fix that soon. Having WiFi optional meant the mini-PCI card slot was open, but what I didn't expect was a second mini-PCI slot housing the modem underneath the hard drive slot. Bonus! The only other system I've ever seen with two mini-PCI slots is my Alienware M9700 and it's really no challenge to fit a second mini-PCI slot in such a large system. There is potential here.
I took the motherboard to work with me off-the-clock to solder the new chip in. Five minutes and a little lead-free solder later, the chip was installed. I drove home shortly after, antsy to see if I had resurrected yet another computer. An hour and a bunch of screws later, the system started without issue, but would shut off randomly because the battery pack was just _that_ bad. No matter. $45 and two days later, I had my new pack and could now go cordless.
Testing the battery life, I found that the system wasn't actively computing power consumption. It seemed to think that the constant load on the pack was 15W, working out to a 4hr battery life. Not true. Using some shareware I downloaded, I found that the actual discharge rate in dynamic mode worked out to a 6-7 hour battery life for the work I do. Fair enough. That's between 8 and 9 watts consumption. Not much heat there, which is easier on my lap than the 25-30W my Dell P4 laptop sucks down.
Having read up on the Radeon M6 GPU, I found that it wasn't really an all-out GPU at all. It doesn't have internal Transform and Lighting units, unlike most units today. Since my goal was to run a Nintendo64 emulator, I didn't really need this capability. I had run one on my Nvidia TNT2 card back in the day and it did fine. And that system was a 550MHz overclocked Celeron rig.
For fun, I attempted to run 3DMark2001SE on the system to see what would happen. With the driver Microsoft included with XP, it wouldn't run at default resolution. Updating to the HP-supplied driver allowed it to run. I scored 1948 3DMarks. That's a little over half the speed of the Radeon 7500 GPU and good enough for me. Project64 ran perfectly when I tested it with Mario Kart 64. And the colors... wow! I didn't expect them to be so bright.
I intend to use the computer for light 3D and CAD work since the display turned out looking better than I expected. While 16MB isn't much in the way of display RAM, it's enough to drive my display with XGA resolution while leaving a few megabytes for texture RAM.
I loaded my Proxim WiFi A/B/G card into the non-hidden mini-PCI slot and ran a spare cable/panel antenna combo I had from a Toshiba Tecra 8200 up to the top of the rear display casing where I attached the panel antenna to the portion of the case that wasn't metal. This was a far better location for the antenna than the one HP used. One small antenna hidden in the hinge portion of the system isn't going to get you far.
With drivers installed and the antenna hooked to the proper connector, I had succeeded in adding WiFi to my "new" laptop.
As for the second Mini-PCI slot, I took the modem out since I haven't needed a modem in six years. I could replace it with something and it looks like a USB 2.0 card is the most useful option. The cards are $50 and provide four USB 2.0 ports. I intend to find a way to convert the two USB ports on the rear of the system to 2.0 and feed the data lines of the original ports to internal accessories. I'm leaning toward Bluetooth and a wireless gamepad receiver. I'll keep an eye out for the card I want.
I wish the system wasn't so large, but I can't complain there. It was meant to replace my Toshiba Portege 3490CT, which I couldn't use as well as I'd have liked, owing to the cramped keyboard, 256MB RAM limit and problem with heat dissipation to locations other than my lap. The Omnibook weighs almost twice as much, but it's worth it.
Comparison:
CPU:
Omnibook: 1GHz PIII-M, 512K L2 cache, 133MHz frontside bus speed
Portege 3490CT: 700MHz Mobile PIII, 256K L2 cache, 100MHz frontside bus speed
CPU power save:
Omnibook: throttles back to 533MHz and drops core voltage
Portege 3490CT: throttles back to 500MHz with same voltage
CPU software power saving:
Omnibook: power-on-demand throttling
Portege 3490CT: duty-cycle throttling down to 133MHz speed equivalent (where I achieved 8W load)
RAM:
Omnibook: Two open slots, standard PC133 SODIMM, 1GB limit
Portege 3490CT: 128MB on-board, one slot open, rare micro SODIMM socket, 256MB limit
Display Chipset:
Omnibook: ATI Radeon M6 with 16MB DDR RAM
Portege 3490CT: S3 Savage IX with 8MB RAM
LCD display:
Omnibook: 14.1" XGA TFT LCD
Portege 3490CT: 11.3" Polysilicon XGA TFT LCD (better technology)
Keyboard:
Omnibook: full-size with normal-size keys; Pg keys, home, end, ins and del set up and away
Portege 3490CT: smaller keyboard with rectangle layout. R-shift same size as regular key, Pg keys and others in that group are at the far right of the keyboard; arrow keys are not offset
pointing devices:
Omnibook: pointing stick and touchpad; buttons side-by-side
Portege 3490CT: pointing stick; buttons one-over-another
scroll buttons:
Omnibook: up/down scroll rocker between left and right pointing stick buttons
Portege 3490CT: small buttons placed, well-spaced, side-by-side above left-click button
battery:
Omnibook: 14.8VDC 4000mAh main pack; unavailable drive bay secondary pack
Portege 3490CT: 10.8VDC 3000mAh main pack; 2lb unavailable 10.8VDC 5600mAh secondary pack
speakers:
Omnibook: stereo speakers mounted in sealed plastic enclosure behind keyboard
Portege 3490CT: mono speaker mounted free-air below right-click button in palmrest
Friday, March 7, 2008
I Love Hunting
I don't hunt animals. I hunt silicon.
I went to a nearby sale, intending to get like three items, but when all of the ones I had specifically come for were snapped up, I went to Plan B--engulf and devour. As I watched the laptop I had intended to buy get carried away by someone who obviously overheard me talking about it, I knew it was time to just do what came naturally. I grabbed as many laptops as I could carry. Eight. Most were of the broken variety, but one was most surely not, judging by price.
I left behind two Omnibook 800 systems in favor of an Apple system when I realized the Omnibooks only had 16MB RAM and used custom modules.
What I ended up with:
Dell Latitude C840
Dell Latitude C640
Dell Latitude C600
HP Omnibook 6000
HP Omnibook 6100
IBM ThinkPad 560X
Apple iBook G3 Dual USB
The C840 was a killer deal. It was one of two computers that came with a hard disk. The other was the Apple. It also had a docking station with it. It was revamped at home with parts I had from a previous C840. I upgraded the CD-RW drive to a DVD/CD-RW drive, added another 256MB RAM module from the C640 to it, upgraded the CPU from the 1.6GHz P4-M that was in it to the P4 1.8GHz from the C640.
The C640 is on the sidelines for right now because it's a pretty base system, really.
The Omnibooks look pretty solid. I'm sure I'll be repairing them.
I went to a nearby sale, intending to get like three items, but when all of the ones I had specifically come for were snapped up, I went to Plan B--engulf and devour. As I watched the laptop I had intended to buy get carried away by someone who obviously overheard me talking about it, I knew it was time to just do what came naturally. I grabbed as many laptops as I could carry. Eight. Most were of the broken variety, but one was most surely not, judging by price.
I left behind two Omnibook 800 systems in favor of an Apple system when I realized the Omnibooks only had 16MB RAM and used custom modules.
What I ended up with:
Dell Latitude C840
Dell Latitude C640
Dell Latitude C600
HP Omnibook 6000
HP Omnibook 6100
IBM ThinkPad 560X
Apple iBook G3 Dual USB
The C840 was a killer deal. It was one of two computers that came with a hard disk. The other was the Apple. It also had a docking station with it. It was revamped at home with parts I had from a previous C840. I upgraded the CD-RW drive to a DVD/CD-RW drive, added another 256MB RAM module from the C640 to it, upgraded the CPU from the 1.6GHz P4-M that was in it to the P4 1.8GHz from the C640.
The C640 is on the sidelines for right now because it's a pretty base system, really.
The Omnibooks look pretty solid. I'm sure I'll be repairing them.
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