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.

I_redwolf asks: "I recently acquired a brand new PCV-L640 (Sony Vaio Slim Line Desktop) computer in my office; which comes with a 15.1 TFT LCD screen which I don't care for too much but what the hell you know? One of the first things I did was pop my favorite distribution of Linux into my CDROM and was on my way. I'm trying Red Hat 7 so I give Xconfigurator a spin to cut down or some time. Everything is detected fine except when I try to run X it says it can't find any screens. No biggie, probably my modelines or something. I then spend the rest of the day trying to get my LCD monitor to work with XFree86 v4.0.1a. I've tried every configuration possible but the closest I have gotten is a 320x200 screen with the VGA server and that only shows on half the screen. Where can I find information on setting up an LCD screen. Are there any tutorials/mini-howto's, inside tips, voodoo magic or sacrifices that I must make before getting this LCD to work?"

ResQuad writes: "Handspring realeased a new palm top in their Visor collection, the Prism. It is $450 and have 65k colors, compared to the 3c's 256 colors. It also has an internal Li-Ion battery. Handspring also came out with another new palm, the Platinum. It is still gray-scale, but it is suposed to be 50% faster that the Visor Deluxe. This makes four palms out from Handspring." These are the same models discussed a few weeks ago, but now Handspring claims that they're shipping. Personally, I'm still pretty happy with my Deluxe, but the Platinum one looks very nice.

prplhaze writes "Casio has done it again. Not only do they have a wristwatch that plays MP3's, they also have a watch that has an intergrated camera. It retails for around $200USD. It features a 120x120 dot monochrome display, and can store about 100 black and white images. "

rentaghost sent us a sharky bit about a mouse feedback device that actually connects your audio output to the mouse to add vibrations. It's OS independent, too. If you're not interested in the cheaper stuff, check out Vision Station: a domend screen and 3d sound projection? Of course, the scariest version is a whole room. You thought quake gives you motion sickness now.

doggo asks: "Having just won a brand new Handspring Visor from one of those new .com startups, I find myself happily perusing the various Palm software sites looking for good applications & documents, so I wonder what /. readers find to be the most useful things? For me so far, it's CSpotRun, so I can have copies of various *nix faqs & mini-manuals with me, and a couple of SF stories in case I get caught in line or waiting for a plane or whatever. There's a plethora of stuff out there, and rather than waste my time installing and un-installing various apps, I thought I'd poll other readers on their choices. What are yours?"

ShadowRayven wrote to us about a cool service called freeboxen: "Freeboxen is an online community for sharing computer hardware. Many of us have old, unused PC hardware sitting around. Why not give it to someone who wants it? Freeboxen makes it easy to post your hardware and give it to a thankful recipient. You can also use Freeboxen to claim the hardware that people are giving away."

Jafa writes "Following the article on space laptops, here's an article on a computer built for underwater. Not as in a typical dive computer, or for higher pressure air environments, but wet and under pressure. The article is fairly short on technical details, but it sounds like it uses key chords in place of a typical keyboard. We've got space, underwater, and nano. What other frontiers or environments are left for computers to work in?"

Verteiron writes: "Saw this over at ComputerWorld. Looks like Logitech, among others, is starting to take the field of force-feedback out of the gaming world and onto the desktop. Apparently this new kind of mouse has a motor in it that can simulate various textures as you move it across your screen, letting you "feel" icons and windows. This is more than a gimmick: "people complete basic cursor-targeting tasks faster with tactile feedback". Another device featured is the Phantom, a nifty creation of SensAble Technologies. It goes one step further, allowing you to trace a fingertip across the surface of a virtual object, feeling its contours, tracing edges and even allowing you to sculpt and deform what's on the screen." Can we see support in Linux 2.6, please?

caprio asks: "I work for a software company in Illinois. We want to port our current application, which is a EMS Data Collection tool, to the PDA scene. It is a Visual Basic program (COM, ADO, the works..) It would involve collecting data at the scene of the accident, then uploading it to the server back at the station. A complete re-write is not out of the question. So my question is this, can anyone give me a good, technical comparison between Windows CE and the PalmOS? We are leaning towards Windows CE becasue the machines are beefer. But I also hear that cable connection is better on the Palm. Anyone with some tips or suggestions?"

Mr. Sketch asks: "With all the multiple pipelines, prefetching, caching, etc., that goes on in modern the (Bogo?)MIPS be a more accurate measure of a processors speed? If this is the case why don't chip manufacturers rate and advertise their chips with the MIPS value speed, but it seems like nowadays the MHz value is pretty much meaningless and we (as well as chip manufacturers) need to be using something else to get an accurate measure of the speed of a processor." I agree that clock frequency is next to meaningless when it comes to discussing the real speed of today's processors, but would MIPS really be a better replacement?

Saberwind asks: "Fed up with flicker problems when viewing 1600x1200 and 1920x1440 resolutions on even some high-end CRTs, and wanting a perfect image that I can hang on my wall, I'm ready to switch to LCD. I almost plunked down nearly $3000 for a 18.1-inch Viewsonic VP181. The ideal LCD would have a digital input, be at least 20" diagonal, be wall-mountable, have an orthagonal shape, and of course square pixels (regardless of the aspect ratio). Does anyone know where such holy grails might be procured?"

phungus asks: "I'm looking for manufacturers of rack-mounted 'case-less' system trays for a project I'm researching. I'd like to rack-mount all of our dedicated servers without using cases. Ideally, you could put all of the components on one tray. I'd also like to find out if anyone knows of manufacturers who make big multiple-machine power supplies (ATX) so that I can eliminate individuals from the picture. I seem to recall an advertisement in a Linux magazine that did exactly this but can't seem to find it anymore. It would be nice if it supported standard relay racks, but full-enclosures would be okay too."

timothy asks: "I finally have a company laptop (woo-hoo!) but now I'm trying to be a good guy by treating it nicely, with a padded bag, nice accessories, keeping the keyboard free of detritus, whispering gently, etc. But there is one aspect of notebook operation that has bugged me since I first acquired one in 1993 or so ... really and truly, how ought I treat the battery?" Speaking from the opposite spectrum of battery care (my battery is lucky to get any form of pampering, I just slap 'em in and use 'em), are there any special things that you need to do to ensure good long life out of laptop batteries?

barbaBob asks: "Where to get parts for discontinued hardware when the vendor itself is not an option? I myself am currently looking for parts for an Apple Network Server 500/700 which are harder to find than most, especially in Europe. It amazes me that there seems to be no sites dedicated to this kind of stuff, and no ways of finding it except for keeping an eye on the hardware section at eBay or calling/e-mailing used hardware dealers. Anyone got any pointers/suggestions? (For Sun/Alpha equipment, this Slashdot thread might help)."

mclock writes "I've just been to a website claiming that the British Colossus was the first computer :
"As 1996 was the 50th anniversary of the switch-on of ENIAC I made sure that Colossus was rebuilt and working in Bletchley Park, just as it was in 1944. There has been a stunned silence from across the water!" See the excellent site for the full story on the rebuild of Colossus in 1996." We've done a couple pieces on ENIAC before, and recently had the declassfication of Colossus 2 info. Like I said in the earlier ENIAC piece, there's a lot of debate as to the first machine: The German's had Zuse, US with ENIAC, Britain with Colossus. Me, I'm going with the abacus.

BonThomme writes: "/.'s post on Mobility is missing the cool story. The real news is a company called 2cComputing that has licensed SplitBridge and LongView technology from Mobility and Avocent (formerly Cybex + Apex) respectively to create this. Their C-Link product will run at 1.3 Gbps over Cat5, bridging up to 100 meters between the CPU chassis and the Cstation which houses a bunch of USB ports and connections for I/O devices on the user's desktop. Meaning, all the CPU's are co-located for admin via KVM, and are much cheaper to wire together for gEthernet or FibreChannel. Best of all, you don't have to pull cable through the whole building (again)."

Sloppy asks: "Hard disk capacity (and usage, thanks to multimedia) has blossemed in the last few years, and my DDS2 tape drive is no longer adequate for the job of backing up. What concerns me is that I don't see anything on the market that I can replace it with, except for autoloaders that cost thousands of dollars and will likewise fall into obsolesence very quickly. Does anyone have any suggestions for backing up dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of gigabytes?" and JQuazar asks: "There's a nice thread here on software, how about tape drive hardware? I'm looking for opinions and recommendations for a hefty (10 gigs or better) tape drives that will work well with Linux. Onstream's ADR50 has some nice press, anyone used it? I'm willing to shell out for a good drive but must hold costs under $1000. For the record I want to make frequent backups and not archives, else perhaps a strong case could be made to just use CD-R. For discussions sake, the smallest partition is 5 gigs and I don't want to swap media more than once."

Insane Hardware writes: "If you thought the olympic show the Aussie's put on was pretty tops, then this will blow your socks off. Insane Hardware sends in word about a group of people in the country's capital, Canberra (just south of Sydney), who are setting up a wireless air network for game play amoungst many other things (pr0n trading???). So how are these guys doing it and doing it cheaply? Well they are using satellite dishes from an old defunct Pay-TV system Australia had some years back called Galaxy, and are using some standard old full-length WaveLAN ISA cards which operate in the 2.4GHz range to hook up to these ol dishes. " (More below.)

vbrtrmn writes: "A company called Mobility, has recently introduced a cross between a docking station and a desktop PC. It's called the EasiDock 5000. It looks like a normal Desktop PC, though the EasiDock plugs into a laptop's PCMCIA card slot, using it as a highbandwidth bus (1,250Mbps). The EasiDock comes with: 5 drive bays, 3 PCI slots, 2 IDE controllers, a 2-port USB hub; get the PDF datasheet. Unfortunatly, it currently only supports Windows 98/98SE and Windows NT 4.0, though they boast, 'Coming soon... Win 2000 & Millennium, Apple, Linux.'"