robags writes: "The people at Merilus have grabbed a PCI card, embedded Linux, added some Ethernet ports and come up with the FireCard. The OS on the host system can crash out, without affecting your firewall. 'Once installed, the FireCard provides firewalling, routing, bandwidth management, virtual private networking, redundant failover, intrusion detection and much more.'" This sounds like a smart product, especially for telecommuters; I sure hope it's not a pointless hoax or vaporware.

kupolu writes: "According to this article at Techweb, AMD announced last Friday that it is dropping its plans for the Mustang processor in favor of the new AMD-760 DDR-Enabled chipset. The Mustang was going to be AMD's entry into the server market, with it's amazing up-to 2MB L2 Cache." (Actually, from this article it's hard to tell if even AMD knows what's going on; tweezing apart the code names from the capabilities of particular products to be offered is complicated.) But on the coming-out instead of dropping-off front, proxima writes: "This story on Yahoo describes that Intel is releasing two new Celeron chips on Monday. One, a 733 Mhz model, will cost $112 per chip in bulk. A 766 Mhz model will cost $170 per chip."

Justin Davies writes: "TrollTech will be making the embedded Qt environment for PDA systems on Monday available under a commercial and GPL license on monday. The environment will contain an application launcher, window manager and input methods including a virtual keyboard. This provides the first common Linux enironment for PDA systems allowing an easy porting system from the desktop to the PDA."

marvinx asks: "I'm wondering what other Slashdotters do to hook up their cell phone (analog or digital) to their PDA (Palm or Handspring) to get wireless Internet access. What combinations of phones, wires, PDAs, and ISPs seem to be working? I've got a Visor Deluxe and a Samsumg 3500 PCS phone, and I just know that there is a way to get wireless e-mail. Any success stories?" The combinations are endless, but the results may vary greatly. What combinations have you tried with what varying degrees of success?

Brian Craft asks: "When I was in Pasadena all the nerds with an inclination toward building Electronic-Things-That-Move would go to this place called C&H, on Colorado Blvd. It was a wacky surplus store where you could buy everything from worm gears, to stepper motors, pulleys, power supplies, 20 turn pots, and used passenger jet windows (no joke!), for very, very little money. I'm now up north, a bit south of the Bay, and I haven't found anyplace as cool as C&H. There seem to be computer and electronic surplus stores on every corner. But where do you go when you need to browse piles of gears to find one that fits the worm gear on your stepper motor? When you need small bearings, or pulleys, or solenoids? Or just the sight of lots and lots of really cool mechanical stuff, to inspire your next project?" Are there any cool surplus stores in your area or online? If so, share them here!

Jesper asks: "OK, so I'm about to spend two years on a sailboat. The GUIs of all commercially available instrumentation electronics are ugly and outdated at best. But to develop my own I need a Linux based system that runs on 12V, uses very little power (preferably &lt 25W including monitor), has a sunlight readable waterproof SVGA display with min 16 colors and a waterproof input device (mouse, trackball or touchscreen. Keyboard not needed), and a rugged CPU with minimum footprint, preferably with a solid state harddrive. All this is perfectly possible to build, but I want to spend my energy developing the GUI, not building the hardware. I'm looking for tips on available H/W products."

computer_chacham writes: "Telemann has introduced the first available PCI card for $400 that shows full HDTV resolution on your computer. It also is able to directly take the MPEG-2 HDTV signal, and store it directly on your hard drive. (About 7.7 Gigs/hour, but still ...) It is also able to output to a TV. They have a press release, and a product page. And e-town has a description too." Ready-or-not, if you watch the boob tube, you'll soon be watching HDTV -- compared to buying a new TV set, a card like this seems like a smart idea, especially at the cost of storage today and tomorrow. What are the odds it'll ship with support for any Free OSes?

Nos. writes: "Keybowl has developed a keyless keyboard. Instead of using your fingers, as we're all used to, you use your hands and arms while reducing wrist motion. According to their research it suggests this is much better at reducing repetitive strain injuries as well as being easier to use for disabled persons. I'd be happy just knowing I couldn't drop any more crumbs between the keys!" As an official keyboard fanatic / inquisitor, I like to see unusual ideas like this. As it is, keyboards can mostly be pegged something from "horrible" to "terrible." Also, check out the comparison page at this site, which has a fairly non-judgmental rundown of many of the other ergonomic keyboards out there, from Kinesis to Bat.

RegardsSJ writes "I've documented my progress in hacking around with Larry E's $199 ThinkNIC box. It has great possibilities for use as various network appliances. My site describes what it is, what's inside, how to add a hard drive, and how to customize and burn a new system CD. "

SL33Z3 asks: "I've been toying with the idea of creating a Handspring Visor Springboard module. However, since I have no real formal training (and don't plan on it anytime soon), no hardware knowledge and am very new to C/C++ programming, I have no idea what to even search for when looking for documentation and technical publications for beginners. Where can I find the information I need with at least some very simple examples of how to handle simple I/O operations on a proprietary piece of hardware? I've pored over the technical documentation on Handspring's site and viewed the hardware specs and even got excited to find all the parts and accessories I needed were easily accessible and reasonably inexpensive. If I can get some help, I'll be glad to start developing and posting my experiences on a site for future beginners to view as well."

Matt asks: "I saw the Bush IBX100 set-top box the other day and have been searching the net for more information about it. At approximately £80 it would seem very hackable (i.e. upgrade to Ethernet and add in a larger hard drive). It would make an excellent 'consumer' device for those of us using PAL TV systems, perhaps, much like the devices from the previous Slashdot stories: 'Embedded Linux Box' and '50-Dollar Hackable Websurfer'. Has anybody seen inside an IBX100 yet? The fact that the built-in browser is Netscape strongly suggests it's already running Linux/BSD, but what else is inside?"

SP99 asks: "Anyone out there read or published any good benchmark tests to compare NIC's and their performance with Linux? I hear stories of Intel and 3Com both dropping packets. Are there any authoritive sources that allow hype-free buying decisions? We all see comparisons for high profile items like CPU's, chipsets, video cards, etc...why not network cards?"

risotto writes "There's always that dilemma of whether to upgrade your CPU or your video card first. There's a useful piece that shows some of today's fastest 3D accelerators but on lower end systems like an Intel Celeron 700 and a AMD Duron 700. There's some pretty big performance jumps to be had by throwing a T&L capable Geforce 2 GTS into a low end system in Quake III and the like."

trzeciak asks: "I have an old 8x8 ViaTV VC105II video phone at home, which I used in the past. I think it has a built-in 33k bps modem. Times are different and DSL, Cable and other broadband options are available. Can the ViaTV be adapted to those new options? The simplest idea is to plug it into a PC just as a camera, but the phone's hardware is driven with a plugged-in phone, so it's not so easy. Another idea would be to replace the modem with an Ethernet card and assign IP address to the phone to use it on the network as a standalone device. Any other ideas?"

Malkthulhu writes "Artist Tom Kemp has created a huge new work of art with a Palm Vx. It is a staggering 4 feet by 17 feet and consists of one thousand tiny paintings all made using the TealPaint application. As far as we know, this is the first serious, large-scale painting produced on a Palm."

Rob Manuel writes "Why not set up your old VIC20 as a WAP client? Who could have believed it possible? But it is, and the boys at geekhaus did it."

kenhhk asks: "Hi, I'm interested in getting one of the Cirque touchpads in the *Cat line. Cirque tech support said they don't support Linux, but they think someone has written a driver somewhere for Linux. Would you guys know where I could reach them?"

ortholattice writes "The current issue of EDN has an article Cunning circuits confound crooks that discusses methods that attempt to foil the viewing of software in embedded designs. Interesting is its view on reverse-engineering, which the article consistently calls theft: "As programmable logic increasingly encroaches on high-volume territory formerly dominated by ASICs, unscrupulous operators are licking their lips at the prospects of easily duplicated, or even reverse-engineered, designs." "...The other harder but possibly even more damaging form of theft is 'reverse-engineering'...""

Davy Mitchell writes "Interesting article on emulation on the BBC's site Good interview with Paul Burgin - author of several Dragon 32/64 emulators. This makes his views on copyright quite surprising!" It's a good article on emulation, and the revival of the old style computers. Good nostalgia.

Dave wrote to us with an article currently running on SystemLogic that delves into caching, with specific examples taken from the Athlon and PIII processors. It also talks about the different types of cache - fairly technical, but an all around good read.