Markgor writes "Just finished looking through some pictures from the recent Vintage Computer Festival in Marlboro, Massachussetts, the first time that it's been held on the East coast. The best pic has to be the one of the Sol-20. Here in Ottawa, we have a bunch of vintage computers sitting in one of our museums, including an Altair, but I haven't seen an intact Sol-20 in a long long time"

Deep Penguin writes: "Perhaps attempting to captitalize on the concept of data mining (mixed with turtles?), Serial Systems of Singapore has announced the Terapin Mine, a hand-held the size of a 35mm camera that looks to be a fusion of a double-fistful of geek toys: network storage (10-12Gb), audio record/playback, digital picture display (composite video out), PCMCIA reader and e-mail sender. It's attached to the world via 10BaseT, USB or whatever I/O card is in the PCMCIA socket (modem, LAN, wireless, etc.) Of course, all complex systems evolve until they can read Usenet news, leaving them an upgrade path to version 2. Price? $599. Delivery? End of August, they say. And it runs Linux, so no Microsoft tax." An anonymous reader points to this CNET article on the device as well. I was afraid this would live as vaporware on the Terapin site forever.

rbruels writes: "They first made their appearance as clunky high-tech note pads for Captain Kirk (embedded sound warning) and his crew, but back here in the 21st century, the proliferation of the PDA has become a real phenomenon. This story on Unstrung gives a good insight into the evolution of these portable devices, and the factors that will influence their growth in the years to come. A good read. (As a side note, I have yet to purchase a PDA. /me hangs his head in shame.)" More importantly than where they've been though, is what's next for PDAs. What features would you trade the baby for?

robvasquez writes "Dr. Tom has done a review of a great $16.95 hard disk swapper. This could be a great tool for those of use who dual boot, without bootloaders, or danger to other drives/partitions. Flip the key and power the system up to the OS of your choice. Sure beats popping IDE cables on and off drives and boards." Some things are so simple its amazing they aren't more common. Totally clever idea.

agdv ponders a cool sounding project: "I am interested in giving my desktop PC IrDA capabilities, as it has an IrDA header in its motherboard. While not very useful for my current needs, it would allow me to play some and have it ready should I ever need to transfer stuff to it from say a PDA. I know I can get one for about 25 bucks from eBay, but I was wondering if it could be reasonably easy to make one myself."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "My local ISP has put in a wireless network. It's great -- Except there's a $150 difference between the internal wireless card and the external box/hub. I'm in the process of installing Linux on a lot of the local computers and would rather find drivers for these cards than change the wireless equipment out... thus charging them a higher rate :( The cards they are using are the Maxtech XWL420 ISA cards and I've found references to the drivers, yet the links no longer work. Does anyone have any idea where I can find drivers for these cards? Anyone have any ideas for possible other cards that have Linux drivers that are being maintained? Please -- any help would be fantastic and would please a lot of folks in this town."

jfruhlinger writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle ran this story about the very first laptop, and the fact that it's still in use by non-hobbyists. It's biggest selling point is apparently its indestructable nature."

joescrooge writes: "IBM's got something new to give those LCDs a run for their money." That something new is CRT technology which removes the unsightly humps that take up most of the space of traditional monitors, and directing the electron beams through a magnetic panel about the size of the displayed image. Considering that 15" LCDs are now under $400 at Walmart, even cheaper ones sound like a pleasant fantasy for dual- and triple-headed flat-panel systems.

krugdm writes "According to this article, Palm is expected to announce that it will be modifying its OS to run on faster ARM processors instead of the current Motorola Dragonball processor."

TimeTrav writes "Check out this review of a PalmOS emulator for the PocketPC platform. At this point, it only runs V1 and V2 roms, but work is underway for V3 and V4 rom compatibility. If this works, I may just have to fork over the cash for an iPaq. This has pretty profound implications; its like carrying two handhelds in one, if it works." This helps answer an old Ask Slashdot question as well. Now, will it be able to run Linux on PalmOS on WinCE?

Foxxz writes: "I was looking for a wireless solution to link 2 PCs wirelessly at a short distance (less than 300 ft). I thought about wireless NICs but decided they would cost too much and provide more speed than needed. Alternatively, I began searching for wireless serial adapters thinking they may provide a cheaper solution but found surprisingly most were more expensive. Is there a cheaper way to go wireless?"

cyberassasin writes: "Yellow Dog Linux is selling PowerPC G3 and G4 computers called the 'briQ' with YDL pre-installed. I believe this may be one of the first non-Apple or -IBM machines to make the G-series of processors available. More info and specs are available at the Yellow Dog site." Terrasoft Solutions is actually the company, but they now sell both Yellow Dog Linux and these sweet-looking tiny yellow boxes built by Total Impact. Let's hope they're somewhat more succesful than the 1U servers Storm Linux announced before closing up shop.

SystemLogic writes " SystemLogic.net has posted an interview with Matrox. They cover many topics, especially based around the G550 which was recently announced. Other things include the reason for leaving the 3D performance market, Linux support, future technologies, company economics, Athlon MP support, and more."

pluto378 writes: "SDSC has a report on their attempt to build a Terabyte fileserver for less than $5,000."

BenTheDewpendent writes: "I am considering buying a Compaq iPaq IA-1 Internet Appliance if it is hackable. The IA-1 is relatively cheap and doesn't seem to be too bad in spec. I was wondering if anyone knows if they are hackable or usable beyond their intended semi-lame designed purpose?" There's a short (and lukewarm) review at TechTV about this machine which lists decent specs but objects to a highish price for what it contains. If you have a bargain, though, it sounds fun. Anyone have a succesful experiment with one of these cute boxes?

Tangential notes puzzledly: "At our company (software consulting) we equip our consultants with Toshiba notebooks. I received this message today from one of our consultants who was just upgraded to a new Satellite Pro 4300 ... 'My new Toshiba laptop appears to call home. While working on something else I opened port 1214 on my firewall and started monitoring it with a packet sniffer. To my amazement, I see my laptop communicating with a Toshiba server on that port. Are you guys aware of this?'... Has anybody else seen this behavior? Is this some new 'support' feature? Does anybody care?" Curious Toshiba notebooks owners, speak up!

toughguy asks: "I've got a single phone line with three numbers attached to it. The three numbers make three different rings when they are called ("Distinctive Ring Service"). I'm trying to get a Linux machine (RedHat) to answer only on one of the distinctive rings so that it can receive faxes on that line. So far I haven't had any luck. I'm wondering if anyone has been able to get a Linux machine answering distinctive rings. If so, what modem hardware were you using and what software package as well?"

baboonia asks: "I have a 10GB SnapServer appliance. I'm trying to upgrade it to a 40GB drive. Does anyone know what OS SnapServer uses? It looks like some kind of proprietary flavor of Linux but DriveImage 4.0 and Norton Ghost 6.5 don't seem to like it. (DriveImage supports LinuxSwap and Linux Ext2 but sees the drive as Unallocated.) Has anyone figured out how to move contents of a SnapServer to a larger physical drive? I'll buy you a donut if you can help me out ..."

Chanc_Gorkon writes "Check this new handheld being released by Toshiba: The Toshiba Genio e550 series will be powered by a 206MHz StrongARM processor, 32MB ROM, 32MB RAM, and a 3.5?? reflection TFT running at 240 x 320 x 16-bit color. The e550 will also support industry standard Compact Flash Type II cards as well as the newest expansion technology, a Secure Digital cards for SD Memory and SDIO cards. The e550 will be 77.5 x 125 x 17.5mm in size, weigh 180grams and run 8 hours on its Lithium-ion battery. And now to the major news about Toshiba's new Pocket PC ... one version of the Genio (the e550/MD) will have an integrated 1GB IBM Microdrive! " Presumably handhelds.org will have a port fairly soon since this is fairly similiar to the iPaq. Especially exciting news about the gigabyte microdrive capable version. Suddenly a handheld usable for more then just a PDA and terminal.

TrekCycling writes: "I want to get in on the portable Linux action and I was wondering if anyone knew of the availability of a distribution for the HP Jornada 720. As many may know, this is a CE device with a similar configuration (but it's an HPC instead of a Pocket PC) as the iPaq. I'd like to run Linux on it just to become more familiar with. I use it at home for Java development, but I'd like to be able to pack it around with me. I've also looked online and haven't turned up anything positive, but that doesn't mean that something isn't brewing."