An anonymous coward pleads: "HELP! I've got a 10BaseT 10Mb RPTI Network card that is a PNP card, unfortunatly my Older 586 Bios doesn't support PNP and therefor I can not access it. The only reason I know this card is an RPTI card is because I had to use the FCC ID tag to figure out who made it. Anybody have any english documentation or card bios configuration programs?" C :Actually, where does one go to lookup the FCC ID tag to figure out what a card is? That also would be useful to us geeks with anonymous NICs who like to put them to practical use!

An anonymous coward came forth and wished to query all on this issue: "Has anyone ever painted their computer? I know you can buy some really cool cases on the net; but I have a Toshiba Libretto (running Linux of course) so getting a new case is out of the question. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about changing my little toy's colour (while not accidentally painting the screen, keys or anything else that is important)?"

Deadric writes "Looking for a cheap way to cool your computer system? Really want to overclock that Celeron? Just want to make sure your processer keeps cool? Go check out this page and see if this home-made liquid cooled do it your self process is for you. "

Muad asks "I was looking into buying a SPARC or alpha box to run Linux on it.... I guess there should be some sites reselling older hardware on the net. Can you guys point me out some? I did not ask about SGIs because I think those are very likely to be overpriced anyways. Feel free to coreect me!"

seymour asks "I have recently been having various minor troubles with my motherboard and I am considering an upgrade. I am looking for suggestions of motherboards that will accept the K6/233 CPU (and the K6-2 or higher I guess), has an AGP slot, and takes DIMMs for memory. Also wanted is a chipset that Linux supports well for UDMA hard drives. Future upgradability to a K6-2 and a 100 MHz bus speed would be a plus, but not necessary. "

xopher found a site that actually has some pretty cool looking cases. Some of the models are pretty sweet. If you can't afford one of those new SGI boxes, join the club. But you could consider one of these, although they don't have prices listed.

David S. Miller was the first to write in to say that SGI has updated their web pages to announce the release of their new Visual Workstations. The page proudly proclaims "For Windows NT". The rumors are flying that these things will soon officially support Linux, so Cross your fingers and wait. Wonderful hardware. Seems like a shame to cripple it.

Joe Torre writes "The 4th commercial MP3 player I'm aware of was shown at CES. All the features of the Rio (except being available now!). Plus it has a magnesium metal case, and a fancy model with FM radio/Mic record. The encoder station apparently has analog stereo into an MP3 DSP encoder, into the YEPP player's memory, via the base station. Making the desktop optional."

Charles Bronson writes "Toshiba Corp. in Japan announced today that they've developed the world smallest DRAM chip, with help from Big Blue. '[Toshiba] had achieved a chip-zide reduction of 40 percent with 0.175 micron technology.' Mass production won't start until late '99. This actually sounds promising, because the article reports that the smaller DRAM chips will help to lower costs. The bottom half explains that Toshiba and Fujitsu have teamed up to make even smaller DRAM chips (0.13 micron) availed by March 2002. 'Sound like a lofty goal to me."

An anonymous reader sent us something taht is worth looking at- this is a tiny PPC motherboard. Looks like a nice start for that tiny wearable Linux box that I lust after in my sleep.

Polaris writes "Article in PCWorld about web tablets, which are wireless handheld PCs, about the size of a thick magazine with touchpad color LCDs. Cyrix and Anigma are said to be releasing soon. Although they both run WinCE, the Cyrix one is apparently capable of running other os's." One of those puppies running Linux would rule. Are tablets the future of computers? Maybe if laptops put the muscle in the screen half, used touch screen LCDs, and made the keyboard detachable we'd have something interesting.

Charles Bronson writes "This ZDNet article reports that Intel will be unveiling the new Pentium III chip, previously code-named "Katmai," on Monday. 'The Pentium III will begin 450MHz and 500MHz...' No mention of price, of course.. " My guess is you'll need to mortgage your home.

Josh Baugher writes "Big Monitors Go Flat Mitsubishi and Viewsonic offer big-screen monitors with truly flat CRTs. Finally vendors have truely flat screens. (and they mention a nifty 18" lcd display at bottom of article)." CRT won't be dead any time soon at this rate- the prices are reasonable for the 22" screen.

An Anonymous Coward submitted the following question: "Some one gave me a Packard Bell Legend 425 (486SX) and I wanted to put slackware 3.5 on it, which I did, then I bought an Intel Ethernet Express Pro 10+ ISA network card. If I ping the linux box from Windows it shows 100% packetloss and vice versa for the linux box. Could any one tell me what is wrong? I have tried using: route add -net 131.204.207.0 eth0. Any suggestions? And yes, I have read the net how-to." There are more details. Click in to the article if you can help!

CSD writes "As I was surfing for news bits this morning I noticed that the guys over at Ars Technica have an in-depth review of the new SGI NT box. Apparantly they got hold of a 320 model. I figured this was OK content for this site as well, since people are clammoring to know about Linux support, and from some of the hardware mentioned in this review, it leaves room for doubt about Linux working on it w/o some major tweaks. " If SGI is smart, they've got an army of hackers making sure these 'tweaks' are ready as soon after this bugger is announced. Update: 01/05 11:50 by CT : afniv writes "In an interview with SGI CEO Rick Belluzzo regarding the launch of the new "NT workstation", he discusses the new direction of SGI and the fact that he "can't go on a customer visit without somebody asking about Linux." "

devin writes "We've seen the Furby Autopsy but that was just the beginning. Now there's a project to hack Furby's internals, including the IR protocol. "

Anonymous Coward writes "It's a phone, it's a palmpilot, no its a Qualcomm pdQ Smartphone. Combining a palm-pilot with your phone, now there's a cool idea! The web site says that it will be available in the first half of 1999. " I'd like everyone at Qualcomm to know that Rob and I are still accepting Christmas presents. And we'll help beta test. Please.

An anonymous reader sent us this link where you can read a compliation of rumors about the awesome looking new SGI workstations (including a picture). You know, the machines with the sweet LCD screens? The coolest part is the buzz that I've now heard from several sources- this thing will run Linux. The question is, will SGI support Linux? How about Linux support for the killer video hardware? Yummy. And will they give me a demo unit? I've decided I want one of every type of machine that runs Linux. I think I need a better paying job. But If nothing less, SGI wins once again for Style- these are sweet looking machines. I'm curious o see how they perform.

bits writes "3Com has announced it is seeding 150 Palm Pilot VII for field testing and development. You can read more about the technology and apply online here. "

Zippy the Pinhead writes "Guess what I saw at my local Future Shop for $100. Yes, the fine folks at JVC have introduced a nifty checkbook-sized thing called Pocketmail. Put simply, it's a 40 x 8-line terminal with an accoustic modem and 128k RAM to store e-mail. You dial in and hold it up to a phone and it checks mail on your account at pocketmail.com. Service is $10/month. In the fine tradition of accoustic-coupled modems, you apparently have to dial the number yourself, and in the fine tradition of nifty little devices, it does little else. I still want one. "