GP2X Preview

I just recently bought a Gamepark GP2X F-100 MKII Linux gaming handheld. The GP2X is from a South Korea and is designed with the purpose of running emulators, homebrew games, and some commercial games. Another unique feature is that it has S-Video out so it can be plugged into a TV to view what would be on the GP2X on the TV.

I am writing a review on the GP2X and might do a comparison to the Tapwave Zodiac. Please post questions/comments in the comment sections of this blog post. I’ll consider them for the review.

An added note, I do not have a Tapwave Zodiac anymore.  But I will be working with some people at Tapland on the more tecnical things.

“The GP2X is an open-source, Linux-based handheld video game console and media player created and sold by GamePark Holdings of South Korea.

The GP2X was designed for homebrew developers as well as commercial developers. It runs many popular emulators for game consoles such as Neo Geo, Sega Genesis, Master System, Game Gear, Commodore 64, NES, Pc-engine/TurboGrafx 16, and others.”

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X

Briefcase PC mod

I needed a new PC. None of my PCs would work. It seems as if I was cursed. All I had was my iBook and I was just breaking down wanting to use Linux and play some games for a change.

My friend Ryan C. upgraded his computer and sold me his old parts for $80.

• ASUS A8V motherboard; AMD socket 939 (ATX)
• AMD Athlon 64 3200+ at 2ghz socket 939
• AOpen Aeolus Nvidia 6600 GT AGP card

Parts I already had.

• 420w PSU (ATX)
• 80gb 3.5″ HDD
• Laptop DVD/CDRW optical drive
• 512mb DDR memory at 400mhz
• Arctic Silver 5 CPU paste
• PC case
• 3 Pentium 2 processor fans for cooling
• MS Windows XP Pro SP2

And the rest I had to buy.

• 1gb DDR memory at 400mhz
• CoolerMaster CPU cooler

So I built the PC in an average “beige box.” Well there was a lan-party coming up and I wanted something special for it. Well I noticed my brother wasn’t using his old electronics briefcase. I asked if I can have it and he said I can… well actually he said use it, not destroy it but how would I know that. So I thought about it for about 3 days and made sure it all would fit. So the day before the lan I started with removing all the padding and glue. Then I altered the design to get everything right. I took my trusty Dremel tool and started cutting away trying to get it done ASAP. I worked all day till 9pm. Then started the day of the lan around 9:30am and worked on it as fast as I can to get it done by 8pm for the overnight lan-party. Made some more design changes and continued. My 10 year old Dremel was dying since I started the project but thats all I was able to use except for a handsaw that I used for the optical drive. I finally finished around 8:10pm and ran up to my room to test it. It worked! Turned it off and packed up to leave.

I arrived at the church where the lan-party was held at. My friends and the others there were amazed. Thought it was cool. I just can’t believe I did the whole thing in just 2 days. Well a power button was missing but that wasn’t the priority at the moment. Screw driver shorting the pins on the motherboard was good enough.

Flickr photosets: “Briefcase PC mod“, “New PC“, and “Lan Party 4/2-3/2007.”

And at the lan-party.

The guts.

Back.

Side.

(Installing Halo CE for the PC.)

Palm support is still incompetent!

From this thread at PalmInfocenter the longtime Palm enthusiast m130fullbutcontent just can’t seem to get Palm to replace his defective digitizer on his Palm T|X. For those who don’t know a digitizer on a Palm is the touch screen. Palm’s tech support just ignores all of his emails as if they don’t care. The 1 year warranty that comes with every Palm is suppose to cover defects. This is a defective digitizer! This has been going on for at least a month.

If Palm keeps this up, they will loose more and more customers as they already are.

If anyone at Palm is reading this, feel free to forward this to the appropriate people.  My contact at Palm hasn’t said anything yet.

Upgraded hard drive in my iBook

I upgraded the hard drive in my 14″ iBook G4 1.42ghz. I need some more room, a lot more room! I’ve always had my drive crammed to about 4gb free. I removed the 4200rpm 60gb stock HDD with a new 5200rpm 160gb HDD. Threw the old 60gb in a firewire enclosure. Once I had all the parts, it began…

The plan was to take out the 60gb and place it in the firewire enclosure and install the new 160gb HDD and then do a system migration once I install Mac OS X. So I began with opening the iBook thinking this was gonna be easy. Went good for a while then it started getting more and more complicated. The only guide I had was some outdated one with a 12″ G4 iBook. Well I continued. Removed the screws on the bottom panel and pried it off. Then I removed the shielding on the logicboard. Removed some more srews. Took off keyboard and removed a few screws. Then I popped off the entire panel where the keyboard and mouse was. I had to make sure I unplugged the 3 wires that were beneath the panel before taking it all off. Well I unplugged 2 wires, the 3rd refused to come off. The plug and the connector came off the circuit board. “f*ck.” So I continued knowing I can just solder it back on. Now I had to take off more screws and shielding and then finally I made it to the hard drive. Removed it, placed in new one. Soldered back on the connector just fine. It was for the power button. Now I had to put it back together trying really hard to remember where all the screws went. First try, it didn’t come out right, so I had to remove a few screws and place them elsewhere. So I was nearly done and then noticed that the center screw I put in was too long, it went through the area where the keyboard was and went out a 1/4″ going through the metal. So that wasn’t right and I changed the screw. I was very relieved once I was done, this took me a few hours.

To make a long story short, I got it done and it works great! Had some screws leftover but that doesn’t matter. The OS X Migration wizard worked perfectly. Oh yeah, the magnesium frame on the iBook breaks easily, there is no frame in the area where the battery is now. But it doesn’t make a difference there.

I recommend that no one does this procedure themself. It was hell. I should have gotten a quote from the Apple Store first but oh well.

See the Flickr photoset here.

And this should be interesting, an AMD chip in an Apple computer!

Update

Sorry for not posting. I’ve been really busy lately. Upgraded my iBook, started work full time, and now I got the flu. I got a few things to blog about so hold!

This talk about Palm buyout rumors

It’s a load of crap. Sorry for the course language but it is. Not gonna happen. Palm doesn’t want to be bought out. Palm doesn’t like being ruled by another company. Palm as a company doesn’t need to be bought out.

This isn’t the first time rumors like this popped up. I don’t like big investors. Do they seriously know what they are saying at all? I doubt that understand the technology and the companies.

Links-

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8NK99201.htm

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9278/takeover-rumors-continue-to-inflate-palms-stock/