gte910h asks: "I am an embedded developer who is learning how to program programmable logic devices (CPLD's and FPGA's). I have looked at VHDL and other Hardware Description Languages, but they seem so obtuse compared to C or Java. Has anyone tried any of the tools based off of general purpose programming languages, like JHDL. Do they work as well as VHDL and other HDL's? These would make things this type of development acessable to more people if they work well enough." Are packages similar to JHDL available for other languages?

backlonthethird writes: "http://www.palminfocenter.com has the scoop on Handspring's triple announcements yesterday. CEO Donna Dubinsky says they're dropping "Organizers," (i.e. visors?), and most of their new Treos are going to Europe because of a parts shortage. At least their losses this past quarter aren't as bad as people were expecting--they claim profitability by this Summer. What the heck is going on over there?"

A Commentor writes: "Sony has release two new handhelds including a super slim high-res color model, which has 16M and "AV Remote Control feature". It is also covered at news.com." Looks like Sony will continue to hold the coolest Palm clone crown.

theGoodWitch writes "Since Egghead.com went bankrupt (that new 'powered by Amazon.com' site they have not is not the same thing), I'm having trouble finding good deals on used/refurbished/end-of-stock PCs, servers, hard drives, tape drives, and such. Ubid has some, but not nearly the selection. eBay has too much, and it's too hard to sort out who the sellers are. I don't want to buy from individuals, only from commercial suppliers with (at least limited) warranties and minimal guarantees. Egghead.com was perfect, but now they're gone. What happened to all the stuff they were getting? Who is selling it now?"

tekrat asks: "Here is a wacky question, and one I'm sure has frustrated millions of us hardware geeks. While we're moving towards jumperless motherboards, a good deal of them still require that we fiddle with jumpers to change things or when we upgrade. Or perhaps we're adding an internal SCSI drive and need to set it to a particular ID. Nevertheless, through the years, those little jumpers have come in a variety of sizes, all of them microscopic enough to easily get lost on the living room carpet. Without scavenging existing hardware, where does one go to obtain jumpers? I haven't been able to find anyone who sells them, and that makes me curious as to who even makes them for the motherboard or drive manufacturers. If anybody knows who sells a package of various-sized jumpers in a pack of 100 or 1000, please point 'em out and you will have my eternal gratitude."

R2.0 writes "Are there any external 5.25" FD's out there? My wife and I have a number of old 5.25" floppies with all sorts of interesting stuff from school - she had a Kaypro, and Lehigh had just gotten hundreds of Zenith PC's. In the interest of archival record keeping (Ok, I'm a packrat), I'd like to get this stuff off the old floppies and onto my HD, and then maybe onto CD-R. Problem: I'm out of 5.25" bays in my Dell, so I can't just put in one of those handy combo 3.5"/5.25" drives. And I can't just pop the CD player out, pop in an old drive, and do everything in one batch - I need to be able to do this a couple of disks at a time, between changing diapers, etc. Can anyone suggest an external solution to my problem? Parallel, serial, or USB; homebrewed or purchased." Ah, the endless problem of preserving data from old media. Due to the lack of use that 5.25" drives have had in the past 10 years, this might be a very hard-to-find item. Is anyone making 5.25" drives anymore?

An anonymous reader writes "I've noticed that Target PC posted their report on this year's Consumer Eletronics Show in Las Vegas. Looks like 2002 will be the year of wireless networking and recordable DVD. In the same article they cover Samsung's upcoming portable computer based on the StrongARM 206MHz processor that will be available in 2Q." Many wireless products (including 802.11a), huge LCD displays, and more -- I hope people who were at the show can comment on the things missed in this report, or in The Washington Posts's report.

Tsar writes: "MTV Networks is putting their imprimatur on a line of entertainment-oriented PC's to be available early this year. Targeting the college-age crowd, they'll have TV &amp radio tuners, DVD players, remote controls, and 'MTV-specific content.' CNN has this article on CNN's SCI-TECH page, but the original story was posted last Thursday on IDG.net. There's also news of MTV's impending digital music player, which uses DataPlay's 500MB matchbook-sized discs with built-in digital rights denial^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagement."

nihilist_1137 writes "GreenJifa.Com has gotten their hands on the new Intel P4 2.2GHz/Intel D845BG DDR Motherboard for review. This is the new P4 that has the 0.13m die and the new "Northwood" core. Check out the review." This setup might have a chance to run XP without it feeling like a 386/16 running Windows 3.0 on 4 megs of RAM. Allright, thats probably crazy talk ;)

red5 writes: "Newsforge has a report of a new "iMac-like" internet computer from the good people over at OEone. On an interesting note it uses Mozilla as its GUI. Read the article for all the details." Another submitter sent in an interview with the company.

Bored in Chattanooga writes: "Tom's is running an article reviewing a Shuttle mini-computer. Seems to have everything the average computer user would need, minus a nice 3D graphics card. Perhaps the standard large ATX-size computer cases will cease to exist and be replaced by these "mini-computers." I find these gems cuter than any iMac I've ever seen!"

ps asks: "A small club I belong to is looking to install an electronic phone tree. This is one of those boxes that you can call into, leave a message, and it will deliver that message to all the members of a group. There are ones commercially available for over $1000, but this seems like something that wouldn't be too difficult to build. I could imagine that either a sound card based system, or a specially designed microprocessor system would work. Has anyone built one of these before?"

benzdesignz asks: "I have been researching Linux PDAs and have enough to get pretty much any of them (Sharp Zaurus, iPaq, Yopy), but I am unsure of which one is the best. I am most likely going to get the Sharp unless otherwise advised. Links have not been included in this post since I am hoping to get answers from people already knowledgable about the Linux-PDA choices.". As an add-on to this question, Hellraisr would like a PDA for the developer: "I am in search of a PDA designed with the developer in mind. What I'm looking for (and I'm sure many others are as well) is a PDA that's probably running embedded linux, and allows simple compiles of not only Java, but maybe C/C++ and a few other languages. It would be great to have one of these in school where you could test out something real quick right in a lecture. Does anyone know of anything like this?"

A reader writes "Linuxwatch.org has posted their Budget System of 2001 in response to LinuxHardware's 2001 System of the year. Boasting their system is 13% of the price and plenty of power for "normal users". Running at 1.4Ghz with 256MB RAM, it doesn't seem to bad for "normal users"(whatever that means)IMHO."

destructor writes: "Linuxdevices has an interesting article on a High Speed Gated Intensified Camera that "combines a fast gated micro-channel plate (MCP) image intensifier, a CMOS image sensor, and an embedded computer based on an Axis Communications ETRAX RISC processor running Embedded Linux." The camera (Elphel Model 303) itself is network operable and can be used for capturing images of explosions, lightning bolts, etc. Link found via. megarad.com."

Bamfarooni asks: "Does anyone know of a device that will delay powering up your hard-drives (or other internal devices)? We're trying to put a pile of IDE disks into a big disk server but the spin-up power for these disks is about 3x the maximum operating current. Rather than put in something really big like an 800W power supply, if we could just put something in-line that delayed the power through specific connectors for ~1 second, then we could mange with the built-in power supplies we already have." An interesting thought, but wouldn't the BIOS need to be aware of whatever delay is introduced? Otherwise it may interpret the delay wrongly and think that the drives on the IDE chain have timed out and are faulty.

chasmosis asks: "My company's decision to go with a heterogeneous SAN setup has our DataCenter Engineers banging their head's against a wall. Interoperability nightmares include matching microcode for various components to achieve some level of stability. One of the biggest current problems is with SAN connected StorageTek tape libraries, anytime a server scans the SAN for devices (ie on NT system boot, an AIX machine running cfgmgr , etc...) it accesses the tape drives, interrupting any currently running backups. What have others done to make their SANs more dependable, especially for backups/tapes?"

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I have been searching for a thin client that accesses both Linux and Microsoft systems and am dismayed to find that most thin clients only support MS RDP or Citrix ICA. Yes, I know that any old PC can be made into a 'thin client' and that X-stations have existed for many years for Unix based systems, but I will be buying new hardware for a new office that needs mainly MS connectivity. Since I am also including a Linux server or two on the network and think that Linux has a chance on the desktop, I would like to purchase thin-clients that can connect to both instead of being locked in by design from the start. This way, I can eventually move users onto Linux desktops in the future without replacing anything on the desktop." How hard would it really be to add on X11 functionality to an existing Windows thin client? While the realities of the current market makes finding such products unlikely, maybe if we can drum up the interest now there may be hope to see something like this in the future.

DeadBugs writes: "With all the hype surrounding the new Athlon XP and P4 2.2 GHz, the more affordable processors have been ignored. Tech-Report has a great article comparing the new AMD Duron and Intel Celeron. Both are now running at 1.2 GHz and have upgraded cache. The new Duron contains XP technology, while the Celeron is a PIII Tulatin with a 100MHz bus and built on the .13 micron process."

TechnoLust asks: "Ok, we all know how popular case modding has become. Just visit Thinkgeek for proof. But what about laptops? I can't impress that hot geek-girl with my ultra-tricked-out PC if it is sitting at home. But pull out a modded laptop at the airport and she may delay her flight. So my question is this: What places have /.ers found to get modded laptop parts and options? I know we've covered building your own laptop here and here, but I'm not really concerned with building my own, just modding a "mass manufactured" laptop. Of course, this brings a new element into modding (i.e. you don't want to run your neons when on battery.) I am also interested in knowing what manufacturer's laptops you guys think would be easiest to mod. I've had very good luck out of Toshiba laptops. The perfect laptop for me would be a clear cased Toshiba with neons around the edges. I know it will be expensive, but it's something I use everyday, so I can justify treating myself."