Asus 1005P disassembly

The Seashell series look a little bit intimidating since they hide most of the hardware under a very streamlined exterior which seems to be fairly fragile. To upgrade the hard drive you need to remove all four screws from underneath. Then you need to remove a screw from underneath the RAM cover. Then using a business card push in the notches at the top of the keyboard (to avoid scratching the keyboard) inwards and lever upwards and towards you the keyboard. Then remove all screws underneath. You may need to remove the ZIF connector for the keyboard. Then use the business card around the edge of the laptop to separate the top from the middle panel. Remove the ZIF connector from the top of the hard drive by levering the notch upwards and towards the side of the laptop. Then remove relevant screws and pull the hard drive out. Reassembly should be the opposite.

Mobile 3G Router

Of late, I've discovered like others that having gadgets can have benefits as well as downsides. For instance, I have a phone that is just has a prepaid SIM card in it but I would like to upgrade to 3G connectivity but I can't be bothered upgrading my SIM card. As such, I'm reliant on free Internet WiFi hotspots for my connectivity and sometimes even swapping the 3G SIM card from my wireless dongle into my phone when I'm especially desperate. The time was nigh though when a series of devices were produced which had possessed certain things I had in mind though. One of them was the Netcomm 3GT1WN, while another was the Edimax 3G-6200n. Both are similar in that they allow you to insert a wireless USB 3G modem in order to establish a connection, both have a wireless hotspot capability, but most of all they both have the ability to be able to utilise an existing Ethernet based technology in order to use for WAN connectivity or to otherwise use as a LAN port for connection via 3G for when your primary connection goes down (which I have recently been having problems with during the last two weeks. Hence, my interest in these gadgets.). They differ though in the total number of devices they support as well as the battery life. Battery life on the Netcomm device is almost double that of the Edimax (4 vs 1.5) based on reviews on other websites. Moreover, while the Edimax supports about several dozen odd modems the Netcomm seems to support most modems on the market today making it a possible permanent solution for your routing problems. My only real gripes with it may be the occasional stall due to multiple concurrent connections sharing the same bandwidth, the slightly bulkier size, occasional stalls (that may be network related), and a sluggish web interface. I would also like the ability to have both separate WAN/LAN ports. Apart from that it is sensible price effective backup solution for your networking needs.

Mac OS X G4 on a PC via PearPC

Old technology but I wanted to take a look at MacOSX without having to fork out the dollars for the technology. First step is acquiring a copy of MacOSX. Best place is via technology classifieds. Next step, is getting a copy of PearPC and PearPCSetup (to ease setup of the configuration file as well as virtual hard drives). Then extract PearPC (jitc version) to a directory of your choice. Run PearPCSetup. Then create a VM as you would in VirtualBox and/or VMWare. Depending on your version of OSX you may need to setup a network adapter as well and/or setup a TAP device. After this boot from a relevant boot image and install as any other MacOSX installation would go. Note that depending on the size of the hard drive you have setup you may have a very long wait. Moreover, you may need to reboot in order to have the installation recognize this as something that you can install the operating system to. Note that it may also be easier if you decide to rip all CD's to ISO files first and use this as your installation media. This can be both quicker as well as quieter. You'll also note the CD's have a tendency to be smaller in size (about the 350 mark for my G4 cd's).

- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
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