An anonymous reader pointed us to a press release from SIS that proclaims that they will support Linux DVD soon as well as 3D stuff. It's a little sketchy, but looks positive on the 3D stuff, and aims to support LiViD. Here's hopin'

`Sean writes: "Sosik-Hamor Projects has posted an article entitled 'They Don't Make Them Like They Used To' that, with the help of some semiautomatic weapons, documents the durability of old school hardware versus the flimsy cases being used in newer peripherals. The Sun 3/50 came out victorious and was stolen from the trash the next day, probably to be turned into body armor!"

Jón Ragnarsson writes "Compaq Western Research Lab has put some movies of the Itsy running Doom, Java, X and other stuff... The ARM CPU still amazes me after all those years... " My love affair with the itsy goes way back to stories that we posted years ago. I even saw one at the 98 LinuxExpo. This is the box that we always wish would be mass produced, but just doesn't seem to ever get any closer. Its still cool tho.

homerj79 writes: "The good Dr. Thomas Pabst has posted his feelings towards Rambus, Inc. and why he, and his site, are so critical of the company. Here's a bit from the article I found interesting: 'When Intel 'decided' to go for Rambus technology some three years ago, it wasn't out of pure believe into technology and certainly not just 'for the good of its customers', but simply because they got an offer they couldn't refuse. Back then Rambus authorized a contingency warrant for 1 million shares of its stock to Intel, exercisable at only $10 a share, in case Chipzilla ships at least 20% of its chipsets with RDRAM-support in back-to-back quarters. As of today Intel could make some nifty 158 million dollars once it fulfills the goal.' It's a good read for people thinking about investing in RMBS. Something seemed fishy over at Rambus, and now I know what it is."

CitizenC writes: "ACK! According to this C|Net story, RAM prices are expected to go up again this week, due to the low supply and high demand. Buy your RAM now!"

Cédric Adjih asks: "I wanted to build my own small-and-cool RISC box (such as an Itsy), or even much smaller, in order to control self-made robots, or other simple homebrew electronic circuits. But the retail-price for individual electronic components is often way too high ($1000 for a RISC evaluation board, $150 for a RISC processor, $1000 for PC/104 with 486 card, ...). Since there is a trend towards more and more powerful and cheap electronic devices (calculators, PDA, agendas, Inet boxes,...), the only rational way is to buy one, and to hack it. But this require internal hardware information, and also a way to interface with circuits (such as via I2C). Does anyone have information about WWW pages describing such hardware or such hacking? An example candidate for the low-end would be the TI-89 (68000 at 10Mhz, 188K ram, 384 K Flash, easy interface with PC, LCD display ; at $150+. Hard to beat that by buying the individual components...), but there might be better, or more powerful... "

Lifewolf writes: "Sony's new DCM-M1 digital video camcorder stores up to 20 minutes of MPEG2 video, 4,500 still images, or 260 minutes of ATRAC encoded audio onto a MiniDisc. Even more interesting, the camcorder features a Java 2.0 GUI and an Ethernet port so you can download your files from the built-in web server." Now all you need is a hot chick or two, a lot of bandwidth, and a macro virus and you're in business!

datazone asks: "I know there are companies that provide data storage solutions, but they are very expensive. Has anyone built anything in the range of 1TB or more of storage? What sort of hardware & software configuration would be used and was it worth it in the long run after taking the time, money and support into consideration?"

tebubaga writes: "Now that jamming has been turned off and GPS has gotten that much more accurate, CNN posted this story describing how advertisers are drooling over the ability to deliver ads in real time to your cell phone, pager or PDA based on your location as reported by GPS."

codders writes: "An Australian startup company, Platypus Technology, has launched a range of RAM-based solid state drives. These QikDRIVEs can offer sustained data throughput rates in excess of 110MBps and can be up to 8GB in size."

pgrote writes "The New Scientist is reporting about a pretty cool device you can add to your DVD for digital output to a Serial Digital Interface. As someone who didn't know the ins and outs of DVD signals and how restricted they were, this article opened my eyes."

Ant writes: "Yahoo posted the press release that 3dfx Interactive® Inc. has temporarily delayed the release of its Voodoo5(TM) 5500 AGP. The press release states that the company is taking this action to ensure that it meets its own high standards for product quality."

BlueCalx- writes "Affinix has just recently released an interesting program called Wireless TI - a set of utilities that lets you access a UNIX shell, IRC, or chat with another computer: all from your Texas Instruments-brand graphing calculator. You can download the utilities from ticalc.org. "

A not-so-nameless Anonymous Coward asks: "Anyone knows of a specific instance where an AMD Athlon motherboard worked with PC100 ECC Memory? I have heard some rumors that they don't like ECC memory. I built a server, and foolish me decided to do the right thing and get the good memory: 256 Megs corsair registered, ECC PC100 strip. However, they didn't work in the Shuttle AMD K7 Athlon motherboard. Now, before you ask me why shuttle AI61, I was in a hurry and it was the only thing in hand. The 256Meg used 256Mbit chips, so I thought perhaps the BIOS didn't support 256 Mbits chips, 128 Meg PC100 ECC generic brand didn't help. Cheapo PC100 works just fine! An e-mail to shuttle went unanswered and their distributor didn't help much either."

Kanasta writes: "LG has a cell phone an MP3 decoder in one, but only in Korea. It has a slot of a MultiMediaCard, which apparently is used in various other mp3 players. Includes a built in remote, and there are speakers on the charging unit! It says 'You can download MP3 music to the phone,' but what exactly they mean isn't clear."

Harald Klein writes: "We are developing a cheap braille display for visually impaired people. A big problem is the power supply for the piezo elements. They need 265V DC, 0.5 mA max. The logic needs 5V DC, 15 mA. It is absolutely necessary to provide logic power before providing the high voltage. Even so the high voltage should be removed before logic power and signals. Any power supplies in mind that meet the specs?"

bio2 asks "For the past year I've been trying to connect my Palm Pilot IIIe to the Internet. I saw in a few programs that use RAS services in NT, and some that let you connect via linux ppp, but none of them work. I want to use the Palm Pilot base to send and receive data from my computer with the hotsync cable or base connection, and use icq, send and receive mails, and browse Internet pages. If I can do this, I can save money and not have to buy Palm modems. Is there a way to do that?"

Bool writes: "HP was wrong when they claimed that the Jornada 540 series has a 16-bit color display. It was Jason Cluts who pointed out that the supposed 16-bit display was actually a 12-bit display. HP has issued an erratum on the subject that you can read here. You can find more details at this Web site." Apparently, the USB is slower than it should be, too. Has anyone else played with one of these things?

got_lost asks: "I'm trying to work out a mobile (read sub-notebook) solution for field servicing Cisco kit. I looked at notebooks but the cost/weight/battery use just outweighs the features I need. The possibles are Psion Revo & Palm or Visor + Keyboard. I haven't really played enough with these before to know their capabilities. I've also heard about a serial card + TRGpro PDA combo. Anyone care to comment? I guess I need suggestions for a portable (Palm/Visor/Psion) solution that allows serial comms. Ideally the solution would not involve the FS staff lugging a HotSync cradle around . I hope this makes sense and welcome all advice on this topic."

jsinnema writes: "According to Andy Surber (CompanionLink) at PDA Buzz Royal, Royal is trying to put as much into the Linux powered Royal daVinci as possible and still reach the target price range of $199-249. As memory prices change on a regular basis, so does the final specs. As it sits now, they are heading towards a product with 16 ROM and 32RAM (subject to change). The device should also have a compact flash slot, which could also provide additional memory. The product will be based on the Tosiba MIPS processor." Looks very vaporous right now, but if its real, it looks sweet. Kurt the Pope just got WinCE based HP Jornada 548, and now I'm super impressed with PDAs again (although it is only 12-bit color and was until recently advertised as 16). Between this DaVinci or maybe the Yopy, hopefully we'll have a Linux PDA soon too.