FDD Floppy Disk Drive Emulators Interfaces

Updated information on the floppy disk drives hardware interfaces and FDD emulators to replace 3.5 inch, 5.25 inch, and 8 inch floppy disk drive units. This is follow up information to my first article on the subject: The Floppy Disk Drive Engineering Design Challenge SSD to FDD

Readers have been asking for quite some time if I have found out any more information on the FDD SDD interfaces.

How is the FDD SDD interface shaping up?

I would like to see a device in a 3.5" form factor to fit in existing housings.
It should have a SD slot in the front with a LED or LCD display, up/down buttons and a soft eject/reinsert button, this way you can dial up the appropriate floppy image and then soft-insert it.

Because the FD drive interface uses control signals to physically step the motor and heads, the interface will need an MCU such as a Pic to act as a interpreter between the memory buffer (720k or 1.44k) and the interface. A second MCU should be used to interface the SD card to the memory buffer.

Disk images can be stored in individual folders on the SD card and accessed incrementally.

The unit will also need several hardware switches to emulate the various non-standard formats (i.e.: disk insert notification) adopted by early manufacturers.

Just a couple of thoughts. I think this device has potential to be a very popular eBay item.

Cheers,

Q

In response to those emails, and thank you for sending all those emails to me by-the-way; below is FDD information that I think many engineers and end users will find very useful and some possible solutions to the old legacy floppy disk drives.

Apparently there are a few FDD hardware replacement solutions from several companies called “floppy disk drive emulators” for the old floppy disk drives in legacy equipment.

A. I listed these FDD emulator manufacturers in no apparent order.

ipcas - USB Floppy Emulator 100 in 1 

The USB Floppy Emulator 100 in 1 is from ipcas GmbH, a company located in Germany. The USB Floppy Emulator 100 in 1 device is a direct replacement for the old legacy floppy diskette drives. The connections on the back of this FDD emulator are identical to that of the old floppy disk drives. On the back of this device is the 34-pin socket where the floppy disk drive cable gets plugged in, and the +5 volt DC standard power connection for the floppy drive also plugs in to the back side.

The front side of the device accepts a USB Stick, which acts like the floppy disk, but stores up to 100 virtual floppy disk drives on the USB Stick, with each number representing the virtual floppy disk drive being accessed. Simply select the desired virtual floppy (0-99) with the selection button to choose which virtual floppy you wish to access from the USB Stick front plug in.

According to the USB Floppy Disk Emulator User Manual, "The ipcas Floppy Disk Emulator can also replace other forms of disk drives and disk storage systems. Refer to the comparison with a 5¼ inch floppy disk drive with 1.2 MB floppies."

The beauty of this device is that no driver or configuration software is required to install and operate this floppy disk emulator with old legacy equipment. The manual states, "Many machines and devices are still using floppy disk drives as the only means of data input. CNC, milling, injection mold, or embroidery machines, laser cutting devices and integrated control systems, just to mention a few, are still being fed data with floppy disks several times a day."

B. The Next Floppy Disk Emulator Device

PLR Electronics - 3 ½ floppy drive to USB flash drive reader upgrade

PLR Electronics specializes in the embroidery machine circuit boards. They also have been involved in repairing other circuit board equipment too. PLR Electronics sells the 3½ floppy drive to USB flash drive reader upgrade device. PLR Electronics claims that the device will “work successfully on · CNC Machines · Embroidery Machines · Keyboards · Knitting Machines · Diagnostics Machines · Cutters · Routers · And most any machines with a Floppy Disk Drive.”

The backside of the emulator has the power connection plug and the floppy disk drive cable plug. Simply remove the old floppy drive cable and power connection, and plug it into the FDD emulator. The front side of the device has the USB Flash Drive Port, a File Chooser Connector Port, and even a Network port connection to another computer. The file chooser provides a means of selecting which files on the USB Flash Drive you wish to choose.

There are a number of modes of operation. SFDR-1, SFDR-II (SFDR-1 + File Chooser),  plus other modes of operation:

We request that you inform us on the original floppy drive type when placing an order to avoid mismatching the drive type. For example:

• SFDR-I-I--------------Universal IBM type
• SFDR-I-A-------------YD-6639D, TEAC235FG
• SFDR-I-B-------------NEC 1137C
• SFDR-I-C-------------YD-6037D

This is a plug and play device also. The 3½ floppy drive to USB flash drive reader manual provides some Frequently Asked Questions that are very informative.

Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs
- Q - Will this device work with a Windows NT operating system?
A – YES. This device should work with any OS assuming it is capable of working with IBM type floppies.
- Q - Will the 3 1/2 floppy to USB drive work in a XXXXXXXXX that can only read 720k 3 1/2 floppies?
A - Yes
- Q - We have XXXXXXX machines here and the floppy disk is 720K. IF we put a 1.44k in the machine the floppy drive does not work. Do you have a 720K mode on your device? T
A – Yes
- Q - Hi I am presently using a XXXXXXX keyboard which uses floppy disks on which I play my music files. Can this flash drive reader be used in my case?
A – Yes it will.
- Q – Hi, I currently have a floppy disk drive that is half the height of a standard drive. How can I modify this to work?
A – You do not need to modify anything. We offer a laptop height version. Please ask for this version when placing your order.
- Q – Is it USB 2.0?
A – No, its standard USB. However, USB 2.0 is used primarily for high speed data transfer. In this instance, the files you are using are very small so, there will be no noticeable difference.

 

C. On to the next storage systems emulators for replacing floppy disk drive units.

Data Storage DTX-200 Floppy Disk Drive Emulator

Datex, located in France, sells the Datastorage, storage systems emulators to replace legacy disk drives, such as Fujitsu MK2322, Control Data FSD515, Ampex, Maxtor XT1140, as well as tape drives. Datex manufactures  the DTX-200 Floppy Disk Drive Emulator. The DTX-200 is designed for directly replacing 3 1/2, 5 1/4, and 8 inch floppy disk drive units.

There are numerous options available for the Datastorage DTX200. Compact Flash cards or USB keys can be used to store data on. A floppy disk adapter card is designed specifically for the specific connection technology to directly replace each of the specific types and manufacturers model floppy disk drives.

The DTX-200 Floppy Disk Drive Emulator documentation states the following:

The DTX 200 can replace all the floppy disk drives, for example:

• 8'' DRIVES: SHUGART SA850, CDC BRB8A, YE DATA , ...
• 5 1/4'' DRIVES:
  • Full height: SHUGART SA400, MPI 92S, TANDON TM100, ...
  • Semi-height: TEAC : FD-05xx, FD-55xx, FD-235xx, EPSON : SD-681L, ...
• 3 1/2'' DRIVES: ALPS: AL FD 7xx, PANASONIC: JU-25xxx, SONY: MPF-520xx, MPF-920xx, ...
  And all other Floppy disk drives...

The Datastorage DTX200 is designed to fit in the space of a 3.5 inch floppy drive. Apparently it is pre-programmed to have the same features as the floppy drive being replaced. It is designed to hold information on a CF (Compact Flash Memory Card), or a USB key and is designed to be used in numerous applications such as: cash registers, robots, planes, boats, and submarines. A StorageNewsletter.com press release, Datex Designed a Floppy Disk Drive Emulator, dated January 5th, 2009, stated that “this DTX200 emulator has already been installed in Japan and Taiwan, as well as in the French RATP.”

What do these Floppy Disk Drive Emulators Cost?

The cost of these Floppy Disk Drive Emulators vary considerably. At this time, I am not going to post the prices, because they are probably changing as I write this. The FDD Emulators go from approximately 275 USD to 1,100 USD and the cost could be more expensive depending on the added options. The links are there to the companies and the emulators in this article to compare the costs yourself.

Which one is best for your application?

There are pros and cons to each of the above floppy disk drive emulators. Some have more options than others. Certainly some of them are significantly more expensive than others, but that is not the only criteria that should be used in the evaluation process. Since I have not tried any of these emulators out myself, I feel I can not give you an honest analysis of which FDD emulator I would recommend.

If anyone does decide to use any of these floppy disk drive replacement emulators, I would sure like to get your feedback on how well they worked for you.

Fell free to send me an email, and/or post your comments online here too.

Jim Warholic

Jim Warholic is an Internet marketer, with a background in electronics, engineering, printed circuit boards, technology, marketing, advertising, and sales. Jim is President of Professional Web Services, Inc., an Internet marketing company located in the San Francisco Bay Area; specializing in Internet marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing) online advertising, PPC (Pay Per Click advertising campaign management), SMM (Social Media Marketing) and SMM (Social Media Optimization), web branding, eCommerce solutions, and sales and marketing solutions for businesses in both the B2B and B2C market sectors.

Labels: Computers, FDD, Hardware, PC

posted by Jim Warholic @ Saturday, April 11, 2009

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The Floppy Disk Drive Engineering Design Challenge SSD to FDD

The challenge is to design a floppy disk drive interface to be a direct replacement for 3½-inch FDD or older 5¼-inch floppy disk drives on legacy industrial computer equipment. The FDD engineering hardware design requirements would be to build a new style FDD solid state disk drive, hooked up on the floppy disk connector (FDD). Keep in mind, the option to install is not available on legacy machines a solid state HD device — IDE to Compact Flash CF adapter on the parallel IDE HD connector since many industrial equipment machines do not support IDE; which by-the-way, these direct replacement hard drive adapters are currently available for PCs with IDE PATA ports (see images below). As part of the engineering guidelines, the direct replacement FDD device must also be able to read and write from FDD 1 to Solid State CF FDD 2 or vice versa. Additional followup information to this FDD article can be found at: FDD Floppy Disk Drive Emulators and Interfaces

View solid state hard drive adapters for compact flash memory cards displayed below.

FDD Engineering and Design Notes For Direct Replacement Floppy Drives

Many of the old industrial machines used in various product manufacturing industries, and continued to be serviced and supported throughout the manufacturing world today, especially that of the circuit board drilling equipment and PCB routing machines, along with legacy CNC metal fabrication and CNC plastic machining, mold cutting equipment, and die making machines still use either the 5¼ FDD or 3.5 inch FDD to load operating systems and store part programs on hybrid computers. These hybrid computers are not PC based and have no internal or external hard disk drives, nor are these industrial equipment machines capable of hooking up a hard disk drive through any type of IDE cable connector; since the computers do not have IDE HDD interface capabilities, nor do they have USB connector capabilities either. Other machine fields that are excellent candidates for a new style SDD FDD would include: commercial grade and high-end consumer models embroidery machine equipment, quilting machines, and programmable sewing machines used built-in floppy drives for storing patterns and job programs.

Other industrial machines were designed around the original IBM PC which preceded the “IBM XT” and included 5 ¼ inch floppy drives but no hard disk. There may not be very many of these types of machines still in existence or actively used in production today.

Machines that are still being used in production, but have their own hybrid computers, are typically using a proprietary floppy disk controller for reading and writing to the floppy disk drives. This makes disks written in the proprietary format, unable to be read with the standard PC format floppy drives.

New manufacturing equipment is very expensive. Many of these these older machines are still quite capable of producing products in a production environment, and their owners are not willing to throw them away to buy a brand new machine equipment that will produce the same amount of product, in the same amount of time.

History of the Floppy Disk Drive

Floppy drives have been around since 1971, when IBM was the first to introduce the 80 KB read-only 8-inch FD. Subsequently, IBM, Memorex, and Shugart introduced 8-inch RW SSSD and DSSD floppy drives that reached a storage capacity of 980 KB (CP/M) – 1.2 MB (MS-DOS FAT) in 1977. Then in 1978 the 5¼-inch DD was introduced which had a storage capacity of 360 KB or 800 KB. In 1982 the first 3½-inch HP single sided FDD came on the market with a capacity of 264 KB. 1984 marked the introduction of the Macintosh which used the 3½-inch (DD at release). It had a marked capacity of 1 MB, though it was more like 720 KB (400 KB SS, 800 KB DS on Macintosh, and 880 KB DS on the Amiga computer).

3½-inch and 5¼-inch floppy drives shared the market place from 1982 through the late 1990s and even some industrial equipment manufacturers continued to use 5¼-inch floppy drives just at the turn of the century, though most industrial equipment manufacturers switched to the 3½-inch FDD models long before. The floppy disk drives have now been largely superseded by USB flash drives, CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs.

R&D and Investment Capital by US Industrial Equipment Manufacturers

How did we get into this FDD mess. Part of the reluctance for US industrial equipment manufacturers to design new industrial equipment, with using new style PC based controllers had to do with the costs associated with R&D investments in both hardware and software engineering and design. Also, because of the sizeable R&D investments which many of these companies had made in the past, with specialized dedicated computers that had worked well up until this time in a manufacturing environment, top management was reluctant to spend any more investment capital into designing what was already perceived as a solid engineering design. While US companies sat on their laurels, their foreign manufacturing counterparts had leapfrogged over the controller designs, and started building controllers that were using standard, over the counter, PC based controllers, with software written to run under a Microsoft Windows environment. Now, many of the US manufacturers have been hit hard by the foreign competition and are struggling mightily to compete once again in the world markets.

What we need, is a Floppy Disk Drive Solid State Bridge or FDD SSD

What is happening for many of the end users of this legacy equipment is simply that the floppy drives are wearing out. They are getting old, and with the lack of replacement parts available, the equipment is becoming obsolete. These end users need a floppy disk drive bridge to get them over the hump, especially in these difficult economic times. They need something cheap and easy, that would quickly interface to these old floppy disk drives with a simple FDD plug and play device that requires no software drivers to be installed on the computer. Ideally speaking, it would be based on the solid state drive design similar to the SDD HDD — solid state drive hard disk drive, but for a SDD FDD — solid state drive floppy disk drive hookup.

The demise of the floppy disk drive is making it more difficult to keep aging computer systems operational. Floppies are still used for emergency boot disks on many of these aging systems that lack support for other boot media such as CD-ROMs and USB devices. Even some of the Windows Operating systems such as Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 relied on third party drivers, loaded on floppies. Many of the BIOS and firmware update and restore programs require they be executed from a bootable floppy disk. And if heaven forbid, during a BIOS update something goes wrong, even as of 2008, a floppy disk is required to perform a BIOS recovery after a failed BIOS update attempt.

The music industry still employs many types of electronic equipment that use standard floppy disks as a storage medium. Equipment that is quite functional, and was quite expensive to purchase, and would undoubtedly be prohibitively expensive to replace such items in the music industry as: synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and sequencers, all of which continue to use 3½-inch floppy disks. Other storage options, such as CD-R, CD-RW, network connections, and USB storage devices have taken much longer to mature in this industry. Source: Wikipedia — Floppy Disk Drive.

So, it makes sense to bridge the FDD storage technology gap between the old floppies and the newer storage device options of CDs, DVDs, external HDs, and USB storage devices.

SSD HDD — Solid State Disk Drives For Laptops, Notebooks, and PC & Apple Desktop Computers

Here are some examples of HDD solid state hard drive adapter devices that can be used on computers to replace the internal hard disk drives using an adapter plug and socket to install Compact Flash (CF). Besides the availability of hard drive adapters, a person can replace their internal hard drive with solid state drives. There are SSD HD IDE PATA for the older parallel ATA interface IDE internal hard drives and SSD HD SATA for the newer and faster serial ATA interfaces available too.

Floppy Disk Drive Bay Mounts and PCI Slot for IDE to Compact Flash Adapter

Addonics Technoloigies, located in the Silicon Valley, California, manufactures many types of adapters designed to be direct replacement devices for hard disk drives. Addonics offers a full range of storage devices based on various storage technologies - optical (CD, DVD, CDRW, DVD-R/RW), hard disk (3.5", 2.5", 1.8" and Micro Drive), floppy, small digital media reader/writer and stand alone storage appliances. Most of Addonics products are designed to connect to different interface technologies - USB, Firewire, Serial ATA, CardBus, SCSI, IDE and all Windows operating systems. Some devices also have been certified to work under Linux, Mac and Solaris 8. Together with a set of complementary accessories - power cables, host controllers and adapters, Addonics products have been selected to deploy in various vertical markets and applications, including in some mission critical environments. Read more about Addonics' storage solutions.

Many of their products are used to create your own storage size solid state HDD using Compact Flash card sizes of your choice and embed the devices in laptop and notebook computers’ HDD cavities. The item pictured above provides two slots to include both a master and slave HDD Solid State CF drive built into one compact unit. Single slot CF Hard Drive Adapters are available too. With the price of Compact Flash Memory dropping, it is very easy to see how this IDE HDD adapter to Solid State HDD could be utilized in both old and new notebook computers. To replace the internal laptop HDD drive requires simply removing the old 2.5” IDE hard drive from the 44 pin IDE connector and attach the CF adapter with the CF card inserted onto the 44 pin IDE connector with key pins matching. Then you simply tuck it away inside the old hard disk drive bay cavity with double faced tape. Read the details for this device, along with detailed illustration about replacing the hard drive with the Addonics CF HDD Adapter in a notebook or laptop computer. Adapters like this and others for the newer serial interfaces would be an excellent choice for both Apple laptops as well as any of the older PC laptops with either Microsoft Windows or Linux based operating systems.

A while back, I had the pleasure of speaking with a sales engineer at Addonics about the need for a FDD solid state replacement device. He was most helpful, but at that time, Addonics did not have anything available in the way of an adapter to go from floppy disk drives to compact flash or any other form of solid state storage. While he did mention that others had also contacted him over the years to design this type of device, he felt it would be expensive to develop the FDD solid state interface device for what was perceived as not having a very large demand for the product.

External Floppy using USB Interface

In recent years, because many of the computer manufacturers were not installing floppy disk drives into new computers, has brought about a need for an external floppy disk drive. Behold the USB plug and play Floppy Disk Drive.

Before we get to the USB Floppy Disk Drive product, there was however a plug-in module device available from Dell Computers in the UK that plugged directly into the IDE interface cable from a motherboard to a 1.4 MB Floppy Disk Drive. The manufacturer was Origin Storage, with the manufacturer’s part number being listed as: CSERIES/FDD, and the Dell part number listed as: A0769810. Not sure if this floppy disk drive adapter hookup to an IDE parallel hard drive port is still available, or who would really need or be interested in this FDD to IDE port device today, but I thought it might be interesting to note it in this article. Also note that I was not able to find that particular FDD IDE device on Dell’s US website. Maybe it is an old out-dated link on Dell’s UK website. Like I said, I’m not sure there really is a need for this device. I don’t think we need to place floppy disk drives at the end of IDE cables, but it sure would be nice to store old system software from a floppy disk on legacy, non PC based and no IDE based machines, and boot to a solid state CF adapter on the FDD cable. Let’s build a solid state floppy disk drive as a direct replacement for a FDD.

USB Floppy Disk Drives — External USB Floppy Disk Drives

Some have asked, “why not just install a USB floppy disk drive on this old equipment?” Well, the biggest hurdle with this solution idea, is old non-PC based computers do not have the option for USB interfaces. Yes, you could install an external USB FDD drive on any PC that provided for USB devices to be installed, though there are generally Microsoft Windows software requirements for hooking up most of these external USB 3.5 inch floppy disk drives.

Others have even come up with a brainstorm of a solution of having some sort of Floppy Disk Drive to USB interface. In essence, this would involve going from the FDD cable into some sort of USB storage device. That might be a possible solution, but one would have to engineer an interface to go from the floppy pin-outs and reading and writing electronic signals requirements of the floppy disk drives, to a USB interface device that was a stand-alone, no drivers required plug-in adapter unit.

Sony developed the Memory Stick/Floppy Disk Adapter MSAC-FD2M. The MSAC-FD2M adapter was specifically created for the Sony Mavica FD-95 camera. SanDisk, SmartDisk, and Dane manufactured the FlashPath Floppy Drive Card Adapter for Smartmedia memory cards. These floppy disk adapters provided a slot in the edge of a floppy disk looking unit that Smartmedia cards could be inserted and then insert the whole 3.5 inch adapter into the camera or into a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive in a PC. The application was for those computers that did not have a built-in USB port, to be able to read the Smartmedia memory cards into the PC. With the addition of USB support in newer computers, these floppy disk adapters quickly faded off the landscape though you can still find them available in some online locations.

So that gives an overview of what is available for floppy disk drives, adapters, memory cards, and solid state disk drives.

FDD to USB Emulator Engineering and Design Project

On April 2008, Google Groups sci.electronics.design section, Jim F. wrote about his venture into building a floppy drive interface and the information he is seeking.

I've decided on a new project (this is for fun only) where I will build my own USB thumb drive to floppy interface. My intention is to replace the single floppy drive that exists in a particular piece of legacy test equipment. This will need to be a complete hardware solution (cpld/ucontroller) interface which I can remove the floppy and replace it with my USB floppy emulator.

I've really never given floppy technology much thought, so I figured it would be fun to go back to the 80's and get acquainted with it...

I've been searching the web but haven't had any real luck finding *good* technical data on floppy drive electrical interface data. I've read a few floppy drive specification data sheets, but they seem a bit lacking. Does anyone know of a really good repository for this information?

Thanks for any help that you can offer...

Jim

This is quite an interesting thread into building the floppy interface by creating a USB thumb drive to a FDD interface. Read more at sci.electronics design. I’m not sure what the status of his engineering design is currently, but it sounded like others would certainly like to see a device like this too. In the thread you will find more technical information into the engineering and design of this FDD interface project. If anyone has any further information into this FDD adapter interface project, please post your comments here or at the Google Groups Science Electronics Design posting. Considering the reduction in the cost of USB Flash Drives, this might very well be a viable solution for the FDD adapter project.

Read the second segment FDD interface article titled: FDD Flopyy Disk Drive Emulators and Interfaces.

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Best regards,

Jim

Labels: Computers, FDD, Hardware, PC

posted by James @ Thursday, December 25, 2008

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The Swiss Army Knife King

Are you looking for that perfect present for the hard to get person? Well, here is the perfect all-in one present for the person that has everything. I bet he doesn’t have this though.

 

Wenger, manufacturer of the Giant Swiss Army Knife has packed everything but the kitchen sink into this puppy. You can be the first on the block to say you own a Wenger Swiss Army Knife collectors addition of the best name in knives, the king of all Swiss Army Knives. Item No: 16999, Weight: 2 Pounds, Size: 8.75 Inches,  Color: Red, and the price tag for that special person on your list is $1400.00. By-the-way, shipping is free.

This Swiss Army knife has 87 implements and 141 functions some of which include: Corkscrew, Official World Scout Knife 2.5” Blade, 2.5” 60% serrated locking blade, many other blades, Phillips screwdriver bit 0, 1, and 2, flat head screwdrivers bits 0.5mm, 0.6mm, and 1.0mm, patented locking screwdriver, fine metal file with precision screwdriver, golf club face cleaner, divot repair tool, double-cut wood saw with ruler, removable tool for adjusting spokes on a wheel, universal wrench, adjustable pliers with wire crimper and cutter, chisel-point reamer, spring-loaded locking flat nose needle-nose pliers, nail file, nail cleaner, 2.4” spring-less scissors with serrated self-sharpening design, compass, mineral crystal magnifier, straight edge, ruler (in./cm), telescopic pointer, fishing hook disgorger, line guide, fish scaler, metal file, metal saw, flashlight, micro scrapers straight and curved, pin punch, round needle file, special self-centering screwdriver for gun sights, awl, toothpick, cap lifter, can opener, fiber optic tool holder, and a laser pointer with 300 ft. range.

I’m sure I missed a few of the product specifications, but with 87 implements you would forget them too. Take a look at the picture and visit the original one and only Wenger Swiss Army Knife manufacturer today. By-the-way, I like Swiss Army Knives. Don’t leave home without your trusty Swiss Army Knife today.

Get your business found online with Professional Web Services, Internet marketing services to gain more sales from the Web today. Learn more, get results now, contact Professional Web Services.

Labels: Hardware, Miscellaneous

posted by James @ Monday, December 22, 2008

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Apple iMac G5 Power Supply Issues and DIY Apple Repairs

Please help bring my beautiful white box back to life.

Are you having problems with your Apple iMac G5 17 and 20 inch consumer, university, or student models? Does your iMac turn off by itself? Are you seeing strange graphics on the video screen? Is it to the point where it doesn't even turn on anymore? Is it running hot and the fans sound like a vacuum cleaner?

Well folks, here is one of the problems with many of the Apple power supplies manufactured for their iMac G5, 17 and 20 inch series computers. But fear not, I have put a "How to Fix Series" together on how to fix an iMac G5 power supply and mother board. Power supply information is located right here in this article.

Also, you can read and see how to fix the G5 mother board over here.

If your Apple iMac G5 power supply doesn't match up exactly to what you see pictured below, feel free to send me your pictures (inside and outside of the iMac MOBs and PSUs). I also have provided additional pictures for comparing which PSU capacitor kits are available for the various power supplies over at "Inside the Apple iMac". You can also click the buy now buttons to purchase the power supply kits.

As a side note, if you need to get the data quickly (pictures, files, and programs) off the HD for your old Mac, and place it on your HD on the new Mac, read about the ›Apple iMac G5 Hard Drive Data Recovery. It is designed for those that want to recover the information from their hard drives on a dead PC or Mac. This HD device works really great for Apple iMac backups too!

Just a brief update for those that have been out of the capacitor loop. About the time Apple was building their G5 line of personal computers, several Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturers began using a stolen electrolyte formula that was incomplete, and lacked key ingredients needed to produce a stable capacitor. The missing ingredients caused the electrolyte in the capacitors to break down, evaporate, leak out of the cap casings, caused overheating of the capacitors themselves under normal load conditions, and subsequently caused exploding poppers. Consequently the capacitors started bulging, overheating, and exploding in many of the power supplies and mother boards manufactured by Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and others which has been documented by numerous articles online. In fact, Dell took a "$300 million financial charge on its earnings to cover costs associated with the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of its Optiplex workstations" in late 2005 early 2006. For those of you that are interested, I have documented a do-it-yourself repair procedure and an educational information manual on the Apple iMac G5 motherboards along with students' user comments.

Note: Apple provided an iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Video and Power Issues: See the frequently asked questions section at Apple about which models and serial numbers are/were covered. However, in all likelihood ("As of December 15, 2008, this program is now closed."), the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program has run out its course for most, if not all iMac G5 PowerPC owners. See Apple information on the power supply and the video and power issues documents. You can read the actual repair extension program text in the Apple iMac Mother Board article, exactly as it was in the original Apple documents. The program was available for certain iMac G5 PowerPC models that were sold between approximately September 2004 and June 2005 featuring 17-inch and 20-inch displays with 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz G5 processors. You may also go to any Apple Retail Store with a Genus Bar and have the Apple folks take a look at your iMac for you. Find the nearest Apple Retail Store - Genius Bar in your area, and even make an Genius Bar appointment online too. Apple provides technical support for your Mac, iPod, Apple TV, and iPhone at the Genius Bar too.

Identifying the Apple iMac Power Supply Problem or iMac G5 Motherboard Problem

Apple provides a diagnostic guide for determining whether the problem is with the motherboard or the power supply. See the following link to the: iMac G5: Troubleshooting when your computer won't turn on. Included in that Apple document are instructions of how to turn on an iMac with the back cover off. There are two small buttons located under the fan cover as displayed in the document. One button is the internal power button, and the other button is for resetting the System Management Unit (SMU) which is located right next to the internal power button. “Note: If you're using an iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) computer, your SMU was already reset when you unplugged and replugged the computer. You won't see an SMU reset button to press, and that's OK, as this action has already been done. (If you aren't sure which iMac G5 model you have, click here for help.)” Source: Apple

Since, I feel that I have been somewhat of an online trailblazer on documenting the iMac issues and the Apple iMac G5 motherboard repairs project, I thought I would take the time to dive into another area that many of our readers have stated is also a big problem with the Apple G5 line of computers. That big issue has to do with the main power supply installed in the iMacs are dying and dropping like flies. From what I understand (though not confirmed) about the iMac PSUs, is there are at least several different power supplies used by Apple in their iMac G5 model lines. The part numbers are located on the back of the PSU case. This power supply is Apple P/N 614-0293 Rev. A 180W. The serial number has a barcode graph. The various models associated with this particular DIY repair document are for Apple: iMac G5 (20-Inch), iMac G5 (20-Inch iSight), iMac G5 (17-Inch), iMac G5 (17-Inch iSight), iMac G5 ALS (17-Inch), and iMac G5 ALS (20-Inch) consumer, university, and student models. See the Apple Power Supply, 17-inch Replacement Instructions for how to remove and install your power supply unit. If you have an Apple model with the ambient light sensor, pay particular attention to not breaking the wiring or the sensor that is mounted to the lower portion of the power supply when removing the PSU. Ok, that gets your power supply unit out. Now what?

There are several service repair or replacement options available for your iMac G5 power supply.

1. Order a new power supply from Apple Parts & Services.
2. Order a new PSU, rebuilt power supply, or have your PSU repaired from an outside source.
3. Repair the power supply unit yourself.

Before I talk about option number three, I would like to point out that when you buy a used or new power supply from Apple or another vendor, you have no idea whether the capacitors that are used in this new or used PS are any better than the ones that were installed in your particular iMac. In all likelihood, the new or rebuilt PSU might not last either. I have heard stories of Apple Service replacing a person's iMac power supply, and several months later having to do it again. With that being said, it seems obvious that you are taking a chance no matter what you do. By-the-way, the cost of a power supply for an iMac will likely set you back 150 to 200 buckaroos. To me, $150.00 or $200.00 seems like an awful lot of money to shell out for such a small power supply that might not last more than a few months. Capacitors actually get old just sitting on the shelf.


With many of my readers sharing their iMac G5 stories, both in the online comments section and sending emails to me documenting their problems they are having with their Apple iMacs, I thought it was prudent to take the next step and see if I could discover first hand what was going on in the field with these 17 inch iMacs. I already own an Apple iMac 20 inch model but I needed a 17 inch one for further investigative work. So, I went searching for a broken iMac G5 computer that I could get my hands on for a fair price. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on a broken Apple to do my research, but I needed to do some more engineering and technical failure analysis of the problems of iMacs not turning on because of mother board problems or a power supply situation. Many people kept telling me that they had an iMac G5 17 inch model computer with no physical signs of bad capacitors on the motherboard. I wanted to verify this for myself. I found an iMac G5 17 inch on Craigslist from a guy that felt he got ripped off by someone selling a supposedly good working iMac to him a short time back and then when he plugged it in, it didn't work. He took it to the local Apple Genius Bar folks and they said he needed a new motherboard. So, after talking with the seller and asking him some questions about this particular iMac, we settled on a fair price, I met him in San Ramon, CA, and purchased it from him. In my opinion he was a straight shooter, and was nice enough to allow me to open the back cover up before I purchased it in order to make sure all the hardware was inside, i.e., hard drive, motherboard, power supply, fans, memory, cd/dvd SuperDrive. However, he had given away the keyboard, mouse, and the software to some friends. Oh well, keyboards and mice are not very expensive, and if I need Mac OS X software, I can purchase that too.

So, I get my new, broken, what an oxymoron, iMac G5 back to the office and I plug it in, push the power button, and it just sits there staring at me with a blank screen. Nothing powers up. Dead in the water. Dead on arrival. DOA, just what I wanted. Really! Yes, it was time to go to start my engineering class work. I opened the back of the computer once again and took a much closer inspection of the motherboard and the capacitors. Believe it or not, all the capacitors look good on the MOB, just like some of my readers have documented with their own stories in written emails I received from them. This is a completely different issue than what I saw on my iMac G5 20 inch motherboard problem with the bad capacitors on the MOB, with some caps just about ready to pop. All the capacitors on this motherboard looked completely intact, with no signs of swelling, bulging, or electrolytic juice leaking out anywhere to be seen on this 17 inch model.

The next step in my troubleshooting analysis probe was to remove the power supply and do the smell test. Yes, use your other senses other than eyesight when troubleshooting electronics or checking out other industrial equipment. The smell of burnt electronic components can sometimes be detected months and years later, even after a burnt component has been replaced. I placed the power supply up to my nose, and I thought I got a slight whiff of that unforgettable smell of burnt electronic components. Now, it was time for the 20/20 vision eyesight test.

Danger High Voltage Electrical Shock Warning!

This information is provided as a safety precaution and to be careful. A warning at this next stage of the technical analysis is warranted. Electronics, and power supplies in general have high power electronic circuits which can cause a body harm if you touch the wrong thing, even if unplugged. First off, make sure your power supply is not plugged into the AC power outlet. Note also that power supplies typically have a primary high voltage input side and a secondary low voltage(s) output side. The high voltage input side can have large filtering capacitors which can store an electrical charge (DC voltage potential) for a long time, even after a power supply is unplugged from the AC power outlet. Take the precautionary step, and discharge these primary capacitors (after it is unplugged from the AC power) with a screwdriver or place jumper wires across the leads prior to working on the PSU printed circuit board. If you have a different type of supply than what is shown here, with large cylinder capacitors standing up on the primary side, you will not be able to get to the leads on the bottom of the circuit board in order to discharge them. However, if a power supply is left off, unplugged for a period of time; certainly if it has been off and unplugged for an hour or two, the majority of the charge will have dissipated from the capacitors due to in circuit resistance and time.

The iMac G5 PSU case design, is one by which Apple's engineers designed their power supply units with security torx fasteners (screws) attaching the metal cover housing to prevent unauthorized disassembly, and also I am sure to prevent anyone from getting hurt. I do not own one of these security torx drivers, as I suspect most people can say they don't have one in their tool box either. I was having an email conversation over the past week with a physics professor at a university. He mentioned he has ten 1.6GHz 17" G5 iMacs at the university, four of which have already collapsed completely. He was also the first to mention to me, about the security torx key being required to open the PS cases.

In this case no problem on the mother board, but big trouble in the power supply (lots of caps in trouble, one totally blown). One can see some of them through the power supply case, so you might want to take a look at yours.

Be careful of the two high capacity capacitors in the unit, they can be lethal. Ph.D., ARCS

I was able to unscrew the torx screws using a precision miniature screwdriver, and broke out the small internal security tabs within the head of the torx screws themselves. Once I did that, the torx screws were relatively easy to remove.






Here's a confirmed list of the secondary (low voltage) side PSU capacitors installed in the iMac G5 17 inch model. It maybe different on the iMac G5 20 inch, ALS, and iSight models. Please send me an email confirmation or comment on the iSight models, iMac G5 20 inch models, and ALS (Automatic Light Sensor) models, along with any capacitor sizes, quantities, and values would be much appreciated. Please include the Apple p/n and the last four digits of the Apple EEE Code (The last four digits on the serial number). See Cap Note:

• 3x- 1000uf 6.3V 8mm x 16mm
• 2x- 2200uf 10V 10mm x 24mm
• 1x- 1200uf 16V 10mm x 24mm
• 1x- 4700uf 6.3V 10mm x 30mm
• 1x- 1000uf 35V 12.5mm x 20mm
• 1x- 330uf 35V 10mm x 20mm

What you are looking at in figure #3, once you remove the cover of the PSU, are signs of bad capacitors all over the printed circuit board. The first image (Figure #1) above shows the blown capacitor, burnt on the top, and burnt residue on the cover too. If you look closely at Fig. #3 and Figure #4, you can see telltale signs of capacitors that are bulging and getting ready to blow their tops. Note the gray silicon rubber adhesive that has been squeezed into and between the electronic components on the circuit board. Some believe that this goop was used for anti-vibration and noise dampening as can be seen with the application of a small amount of goop on a potentiometer adjustment located in the top middle of the PCB, next to the transformers. I can understand the use of it to hold the large primary capacitors in place. However, in my opinion, I believe this was an attempt by the manufacturer (Apple) to make it more difficult to repair the PSUs when using it so liberally throughout the entire PSU. If however, I am wrong, and this is not the case, and the designer intended this goop to be used for anti-vibration noise dampening purposes, the assemblers seem to have gone overboard on their use of it, and it has had an unintended consequence of heat build up. If you look closely at the tall boy cap, I think this one ended up sandwiched in an oven, right next to the coil choke (see closeup picture on figure #4). In my opinion, it's not like the small capacitors are going to move once they are soldered in place. It's also likely that this silicon rubber filler was instrumental in the early failure of the other capacitors too. Excessive heat buildup likely resulted from the insulating characteristics of silicon rubber encapsulation which would result in a runaway thermal chain reaction and cooked the components. Cool air circulation was none existent in these encapsulated areas of the PSU. This silicon adhesive must be gingerly picked at and cut away, in order to get proper access to all the bad capacitors, and be able to remove them when they are unsoldered from the PCB.

Directly below in Figure #4 is a slightly angled picture view, with a closeup of the capacitors on the iMac G5 Power Supply printed circuit board in view and most of the silicon rubber goop removed.





The tools I used on the PCB for cutting and picking away at the silicon adhesive are on display in figure #4 too. I used by trusty precision miniature screwdriver (Husky model HD-74501 S "a gift") with multiple bits in the handle, which came in handy for removing the torx fasteners and picking away at the small sections of silicon adhesive, the small retractable utility knife box cutter was used to cut away the big gobs of silicon rubber, and the inch/metric 6 inch scale was used for measuring the capacitor physical sizes.

So, the bottom line is most of the secondary low voltage side capacitors must be replaced on this particular G5 PSU. I will probably replace them all. Some of the capacitors I am told are difficult to find. This is especially true of some of the smaller diameter capacitors. Spaces are limited on the PCB. Also, note the one 350 microfarad 35 volt 10mm x 20mm capacitor (Fig. #4 with close up view) that is located under the copper heat sink in the middle of the PCB. This is going to be most certainly problematic for capacitor replacement, since it is most likely that I will have to remove the 1000 microfarad cap in front of this 350uf capacitor in order to slide it out from underneath the heat sink assembly. The heat sink assembly is mounted to what appears to be voltage regulators that are impossible to remove without first removing other inductor choke coils, capacitors, and other components in front of the heat sink assembly.

A word of caution about the bottom surface of the PCB before you proceed with on-board capacitor replacements. Be careful not to damage any of the SMC, Surface Mount Components (Figure #5 pictured on the right) located on the bottom of the printed circuit board. These discrete SMT, Surface Mount Technology micro components are very small (some of the SMD, Surface Mount Devices, are hard to see with the naked eye) and consist of SMC diodes, SMC resistors, SMC capacitors, SMC transistors, and SMC IC chips in close proximity to where the large electrolytic capacitor leads protrude through the bottom and are soldered to the plated through holes of the PCB. Be extremely careful when soldering next to these SMDs. If you heat up a SMD by accident with the soldering iron, you will potentially dislodge it from its PCB pad. Figure #3 shows the PCB top side surface before picture, with all the silicon rubber adhesive stuck between the electronic components. Figure #4 picture is after the silicon rubber, for the most part, has been removed from the components on the secondary side of the PSU.

Now, the next step in the process is to purchase the nine electrolytic, radial leads, low ESR capacitors designed for tight spaces. For most folks out there in Internet land, I realize there probably is much technical information to digest here in one quick reading. I feel like I have written and photographed a technical documentary. I will most likely publish an updated technical article or add to this document when I locate new capacitors and proceed with the the installation of these new low ESR electrolytic capacitors. Cap Note: I suspect I will have some different suggested sizes to use for cap substitutes. You are free to print out this document using the "print button" for your personal use, but you are not granted permission to distribute or publish it anywhere else without my prior approval. That goes ditto for all the articles published on this website too.

All information provided here is for instructional purposes only. Please note that I cannot be held responsible for any damage that you might do to your computer or yourself. This website is for educational purposes only and you are responsible for everything you do with the given information. You are responsible for the health and welfare of your own body and computer.

I hope this iMac repair training course series of articles helps everyone that is facing a decision of possibly having to go to the precious and non-ferrous metal reclamation and computer electronics recycle center with their crippled or broken down Apple iMac now and in the future. After all, I believe that these Apple G5 iMacs are not an EWaste product, and are most precious and beautiful machines for their owners to use. I think there is a lot of life left in these very powerful iMac G5 computer machines for today and tomorrow. At least I have a documented road map and general circuit diagram schematic of the main power supply components, along with engineering failure analysis that I will be using myself for technical reference for now and in the future. By-the-way, I now have a large quantity of high quality, low ESR, electrolytic capacitors available for sale for the DIY Apple iMac G5 motherboard repairs. See motherboard repair posting for quantities required. Or, you can order directly from my online store at Out West Sales today.

Power Supply iMac 20 Inch Model Apple Part Number — Apple p/n: 614-0326 

Capacitor List and Diameter Sizes For Power Supply Apple iMac 20 Inch

Click this iMac 20” PSU Super Close-up View or Picture Above for Close-up View

• 330uf    35v    10mm
• 1200uf   16v    10mm
• 3300uf   10v    10mm
• 2200uf   10v    10mm
• 1000uf   25v    10mm
• 1000uf   10v    8mm
• 120uf    50v    8mm

This particular power supply is (Apple p/n: 614-0326)

Note: According to Alex, capacitors would not exceed 32mm length. But also note that the cable wiring comes over the top of some of those capacitors on the right front section of the PSU. If the capacitors are too high, the wiring will not clear the PSU cover.

Additionally, if anyone finds a source available for engineering prints, technical drawings, or electronic schematics for Apple iMacs, please send me an email notice or send attachments to James. James is my clickable email address located on the right side of the website, just above "Chat with Jim Warholic" when I'm available online. I and others would really appreciate the circuit board schematics if you have them. Thank you, Jim Warholic

There is another option worth exploring for the Apple iMac G5 Power Supply. The option is to possibly convert a standard PC ATX power supply and use it for the Apple iMac. Wiring changes on the P1 pin-outs have to be made first. See the following note and image.

Accelerate Your Macintosh! News Page

iMac G5 Power Supply Connector Pin-Out (Voltages)

"I haven't been able to find this anywhere using Google, so I took apart my iMac G5 (17-inch rev A) power supply and made a pin-out diagram.

-Chris N."

My 20" iMac Power Supply connector - P-1

1. +3.3 - BlackA3B	12. +3.3 - BlackA3B
2. +3.3 - BlackA3B	13. +12v - BrownA3B
3. GND - BlackB4B	14. GND - BlackC4B
4. +5v Gray/PurpleA4B	15. On/Off - Gray
5. GND - BlackB4B	16. GND - BlackC4B
6. +5v Gray/PurpleA4B	17. GND - BlackC4B
7. GND - BlackB4B	18. GND - BlackC4B
8. PG - Blue	19. +12v - BrownA3B
9. +5.1Vsb - Purple	20. +5v Gray/PurpleA4B
10. +12v - BrownA3B	21. +5v Gray/PurpleA4B
11. GND	22. +20v - Brown

 

Pin 22 supplies Panel voltage. Using a modified ATX Power supply (Need 12+ on pins 12 and 18), and the good 20 volts on the dead Apple Power Supply and a ground, I was able to boot my 20" iMac using the combination of both power supplies. Someone else posted the pin out elsewhere on the web. I replaced just the domed capacitors on my power supply and still no luck. Can some of the capacitors be bad and not be domed? Can you check capacitors on the board without removal? Some go to infinite and stay, other go to infinite and fall back to zero when using an ohm meter?

A few points to consider when checking capacitors in the circuit and on the circuit board. It doesn't always give the correct reading with a ohm meter whether using digital or analog  meters because of other components affecting the readings of what you might be trying to check in the circuit. Yes, capacitors can be bad without physically looking bad. The electrolytic juice can dry up on the inside. And one more point that I would like to make, it sure would be nice to have a circuit board schematic for the power supplies in my hands. Feel free to send me one if you have it. Thanks.

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3/18/2009 Update: Installed new power supply in this iMac 17 inch G5 computer. Success! Installed keyboard and mouse too. Now I need new software for the white house.

A important note here is that I recommend only using "new" low ESR, long life, computer motherboard grade and switching power supply grade capacitors for all repairs. Do not use unknown surplus caps, or even new or surplus caps that have been sitting on the shelf for ages. My power supply was too far gone. It had something else blown in it.

I have the extra long life capacitors (rated at 10,000 hrs. on the large uf rated capacitors) and all are low ESR ratings for the power supplies, in stock now. Please take a look and compare these Apple iMac power supplies to your power supply before purchasing.

If your iMac power supply doesn't look exactly as above, or would like to have a free consultation, and provide a visual evaluation for me to take a look at please send in your Apple iMac G5 pictures, to compare.

 

Labels: Apple, Computers, Hardware, iMac_G5, Repairs

posted by James @ Monday, November 24, 2008

Post your thoughts. 59 Comments Go to the Links to this post. www.pwebs.net

Two Monitors on iMac With Free Screen Spanning Software

It is possible to install an extra monitor on an iMac G5 computer and have what is known as "screen spanning" which is an extended desktop mode of operation.


Screen spanning is where your screen desktop area is extended to include the extra monitor (not a duplicate of your existing display). There is a small Apple mini VGA to regular VGA plug short adapter cable that is required to go from the small VGA port on the back side of the iMac computer and plug the other end into the monitor cable.

The original Apple OS X software for the iMac G5s did not provide screen spanning capabilities. The hardware can handle it, but Apple chose not to enable it in the software. Not sure the reason behind Apple's decision on that. Apple only supported dual monitors with both monitors displaying the same information on the screens at the same time. However, there is a free software modification that can make use of the hardware capabilities of the internal video card on the motherboard in the iMac G5 computers. The video card on the iMac G5 20 is a built-in nVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 directly mounted on the motherboard. The iMac motherboard essentially provides the means to have two monitors using the Apple Mini-VGA to VGA Display Adapter for a Mac. The mini-VGA adapter will cost you somewhere around $20.00, including shipping charges, to purchase from Amazon. You might be able to buy one for a little bit less.

You can download the latest version of the Screen Spanning Doctor (v0.3.3) software. Screen Spanning Doctor (0.3.3) supports Tiger. Click on the link to be sure your Apple computer is compatible and able to make use of this software mod. The software patch was for the iBook, eMac, and iMac computers. You can view which models are supported. Please note, the site has the following disclaimer that I would also have to echo too:

"Please note that I cannot be responsible for any damage that you might do to your computer. This site is for educational purposes only and you are responsible for everything you do with the given information. ..."

The cool part about this addon monitor screen spanning mode of operation, is it can have its own separate monitor configurations for screen resolutions, and even the background picture for the desktop can be different too. The screen saver program can display different designs on each monitor. It doesn't mean you can have different screen savers running at the same time, it just means that a Screen Saver like Cosmos, which has different images from the universe, each monitor will display a different image at the same time. I personally have installed the screen spanning software on my iMac G5 and it works terrific for me.

If you are thinking to use an extra monitor because your Apple iMac G5 20 or iMac G5 17 inch is having main display problems, your problem might actually be a bad motherboard. The capacitors for the video display unit located on the iMac G5 Mainboard go bad (burst open, leak electrolytic fluid, and dry up) along with additional filtering capacitors that blow up on other areas of the motherboard. Refer to the article I wrote about How to Repair Apple iMac G5 Motherboards and replace those bad capacitors. Or, the problem may be with your Apple Power Supply Unit.

When an extra monitor is plugged in to the port on the back of the iMac G5, the Apple software senses a new monitor is installed and provides the available screen resolutions for each, on each monitor. So, when you go to System Preferences, and click on Displays, the configuration settings appear on each of the monitors' screens with each specific configuration particular to each monitor. Arrangement of the monitors can be on the left, right, top, or bottom by simply dragging the monitor to the position you would like. If you decide to have your monitors stacked on a shelf, one above the other, you can place the monitors under one another on the setup screen. If you wish to have them on your desktop, side-by-side, then place the setup screen on the left or right. When your monitors are set up the way you want, the mouse will track accordingly. For example, if you have your monitors side-by-side, then when you move your mouse to the right, you will then go over to the other screen. This is handy if you regularly have lots of windows open and wish to expand your Mac desktop area. Or, you can have one application on display on one screen and have another running on the other. Just drag the open software application screen to the other monitor. Colors can also be calibrated between each of the screen monitors too.

With the price on large screen LCD monitors having dropped significantly over the years, now is the time to add more real estate graphic exposure to your desktop area today.

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Labels: Apple, Computers, Hardware, Software

posted by James @ Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Post your thoughts. 2 Comments Go to the Links to this post. www.pwebs.net

Universal Hard Drive Adapter IDE Laptop or Desktop SATA and PATA

Apricorn DriveWire - Universal Hard Drive Adapter

Have you ever wanted to get information off an old Windows PC internal hard drive or just a dead computer? Maybe you have a dead Apple iMac G5, G4, or G3 and need to recover the data off the hard drive. Have you ever wanted to be able to install a new larger hard drive in your notebook computer, MacBook, MacBook Pro, or other Intel-based iMacs, or a desktop PC and do it quickly, with all the drivers, and software intact? Well, I've got the answer for you.

Here is a cool device from Apricorn that makes it easy to plug in any new or used internal hard drive from a laptop or desktop (Mac or PC), to any external USB port on another Apple MAC or a Microsoft OS PC.

Apricorn includes both the DriveWire hard drive adapter hardware, with AC power adapter, cables, and USB cable, and software to be able to clone virtually any PATA/IDE or SATA, 2.5 or 3.5 inch, hard disk drives.

The DriveWire provides a hi-speed USB 2.0 interface to: SATA, 40 pin PATA/IDE, and 44 pin PATA/IDE.

DriveWire is bundled with Apricorn's "Upgrade Suite" which features the award winning "EZ Gig II" cloning software for Windows and "Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper!" for Mac

System Requirements

PC
Pentium CPU II or later, 64 MB RAM or more
Available USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 port
CD ROM or CD-RW drive
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows XP Home and Professional
Windows Vista

Mac
Apple G3 or later, 64 MB RAM or more
Available USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 port
CD ROM or CD-RW drive
Mac OS 9.2 or later, Mac OS X 10.2 or later

Five Star Recommendation ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I have used this universal hard drive plug-in adapter quite extensively myself for all types of applications. I have cloned Apple hard drives, tested old parallel IDE disk drives, used it to backup old computer systems, recovered files off a bad PC, and used it as an external connection for a spare hard drive for both PC and Mac computers. People have used it to quickly backup their system on an old hard drive and then placed that backup into a secure fire safe, not to be touched unless all else fails. The HD adapter has been a lifesaver for me. I don't like to touch a computer system unless I have a backup to begin with. You do not need to install any backup software or other special device drivers if you are just plugging in various hard drives.

Follow the simple instructions and make sure to set your IDE PATA hard drives only, to "Master mode" (not cable select) with the jumper setting on the hard drive, and you are set to go. Note, master mode is a jumper setting that only applies to 3.5" PATA hard drives and determines which hard drive is the main device on the ATA bus. Most newer PC Bios systems and motherboards utilized cable select mode jumper settings on the hard drives to automatically identify which drive is the primary and which drive is the secondary based on cable hookup. In “Cable Select” mode, the black cable connector plugs into the primary master drive, gray cable connector plugs into the secondary slave drive, and the blue connector attaches to the computer motherboard or host IDE controller.

Once you have confirmed this important “master” jumper setting on the HD, then simply plug in one hard drive at a time to the DriveWire adapter and plug the USB cable into your USB port, and it shows up on your "My Computer" on a PC, or your desktop on a Apple Mac. You can copy and retrieve information from an old HD drive. That is the beauty of this plug-in device. Fast, easy to use, reliable, and really really handy too.

Pictured below, from left to right is the Apricorn adapter, USB cable, AC cable which plugs into AC adapter, AC adapter with drive plug, and software disk with both PC and MAC software included.

This device is great for IT departments, techies, and even the ordinary person that simply wants to easily plug in a hard drive to see what is on it. Check out the video on how easy it is to use.



Apricorn DriveWire - Universal Hard Drive Adapter How To Use Video

How To Instructions For Cloning or Copying Old Laptop Hard Drives to Large Hard Drives - Article Addendum 12/15/08

Here is a question from a reader in Internet land about his laptop hard drive.

I have a question. I have a small laptop hard drive (dara-206000), 6GB ATA/IDE IBM Travelstar. I want to transfer all the data from this small hard drive to another hard drive with the same features. Does this universal hard drive adapter would work for me?

Here is the answer.

It depends on how you intend to use it. First off, if the hard drive is still in the laptop, then you need to have a USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 port available on your laptop to clone directly with the adapter to the computer's internal hard drive. Then once you've done that, simply pull out the internal HD and replace it with the new higher capacity laptop drive.

If you have the hard drive in your hands, then you can copy the entire drive onto another computer then copy the the contents back directly onto your new hard drive and then install the new hard drive into your old laptop with all the software intact. You will probably need to use the included backup software to get all the system files transfered. You can also use backup software such as Acronis. See: Upgrading Computer Hard Drive and Backup Software

It's important to note that the adapter is designed to only hook up one drive at a time to the output port of the adapter and then hook up the input to a USB port of a computer. The hard drive will show up as an external hard drive on the computer's "My Computer" page for a Microsoft Windows OS PC or display on the desktop for an Apple Mac OS computer.

The Adapter is for SATA 2.5" or 3.5" Hard Drives and Parallel HDs, IDE 44 Pin Adapter, or IDE 40 Pin Adapter for Laptop Drives & Desktop Drives to USB 1.1 and 2.0 Interface

Hope that helps explain the details of how to go about transferring the HD information from one HD to the other. By-the-way, you could even use the Apricorn DriveWire adapter to clone to a solid state hard drive - SSD HD too.

Best regards,

Jim

PS Learn more about quickly retrofitting to a SSD, Solid State Diskdrive in a laptop, notebook, and Apple & PC desktops too.

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Labels: Apple, Computers, Hardware, PC, Software

posted by James @ Saturday, November 08, 2008

Post your thoughts. 11 Comments Go to the Links to this post. www.pwebs.net

How To Build a Web 2.0 Internet Computer

Last week, my Internet marketing PC ABIT motherboard died.
Time for a new ASUS AMD Motherboard.

The prognosis was not good for the old PC computer system, but in the end I guess it means I am helping support the economy with some electronic equipment purchases. Check out what is involved in building a new computer at a bargain base price. The computer is build to higher end specs without going overboard in the price/performance ratio. The price was right, and considering that a number of hours was spent upfront, it saved time on the back end. Read more for the complete PC details.


I was in the middle of using my PC for doing some online copywriting and editing for a customer, when all of a sudden the screen went blank, all the computer LED lights on the DVD and CD drives, as well as the power LED started flashing, and the the system started beeping at the same beat as the LED flashings.


Why Get Serious About Building a Powerful PC Computer System?

This was a computer PC headache I did not need. At first I thought it was the power supply. I promptly tried a spare power supply, with no luck. It had the same symptoms. Then I unplugged all the peripheral devices while using the spare power supply, including the AGP video card, memory, DVD, CD, and floppy drive and even installed different memory; still the computer was beeping at me when turned on. Upon closer inspection, I found a small fan was frozen solid on the mother board's Northbridge chip. These small fans, throughout all the computer systems in the field, are in my opinion problems waiting to happen. I have come round circle in my thinking on having these small internal fans. While fans do help cool things down, they are never-the-less moving parts, and all moving parts are destined to failure. Bearings seize, dirt accumulates, and then the fan stops turning and actually adds more heat due to thermal fan motor overheating and reduced air flow to the particular area.

The Old AMD Motherboard

This old ABIT NF7 mother board with an AMD Athlon XP processor took a nose dive because of the frozen fan situation. The fan was hot. Now, I don't exactly have the time to trouble shoot this motherboard down to component level, and besides, this motherboard is over five years old, and that is considered computer old age in my book, especially when it comes to a PC. So, it was down to the local Frys store.

Software Compatibility Issues With New Computer Systems

In the back of my mind, I was thinking, while I have multiple backups for all the files, I was not looking forward to having to reload all the business programs from scratch. I had two options; either I buy a brand new computer, and spend countless hours getting the software just right, along with having to deal with Microsoft Vista OS interoperability with old software and driver compatibility issues, or spending the time building a new PC while still maintaining the same hard drives, same software, and the same Windows XP Professional operating system. Both choices had their pros and cons. Actually, there was a third option; buy a new Apple, but I was just down that road a few months ago.

Shopping for a New PC - Intel vs AMD Processors And Computers

I first stopped by the rows of desktop computer systems being showcased at Frys, taking a close look at the various pre-configured Intel and AMD PC options from HP, Sony, Gateway, Acer, Lenovo, Compaq, and eMachines. While there are many good quality Intel and AMD pre-configured Microsoft Vista desktop computer systems available for the high end models, they are not exactly what I was looking for. I had other desktop PC ideas in mind. Cost for performance was a factor. Additionally it is important to note that most of the mid to low end desktop computers are built all nice on the outside, but are severely lacking quality engineering and options on the inside. When shopping for a new PC, I'm the kind of guy that looks on the inside of every computer I see on display. I get out my trusty Leatherman, with the phillips screwdriver, and take off the covers. I want to know what the power supply ratings are, how many extra slots are available, what type of cooling fans are used, extra internal USB ports on the mother board, extra SATA connectors for more hard drives, front panel audio ports, and how many memory slots are left open for later expansion.

Selecting the New ASUS M3N78-VM Motherboard

After taking a trip down the computer display side of the store, I then ventured over to the motherboard, hardware, and components section. Frys typically has some good packaged deals on sale for motherboards and boxed processors (includes processor, heatsink, and fan) and that day was a good Frys sales day. The sales guy asked if I wanted Intel or an AMD microprocessor. I mentioned It really didn't matter to me which system, I was just looking for the best deal possible on the higher end computers and motherboards. He suggested the AMD processor based ASUS M3N78-VM Motherboard which includes a built in nVidia GeForce 8200-based chipset and also install the AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black, Quad Core 2.5GHZ processor for a solid performing computer. Additionally, the salesman mentioned that the AMD was really a "'true' quad-core processor" as compared to Intel's processors. By-the-way, click on any of the main graphic images throughout this article for more information related to each specific computer hardware component.

PC Memory System Requirements

Of course, I needed new memory for the new motherboard which takes DDR2 instead of the slower DDR, plus there are different pin configurations on the new motherboards vs the old ones. I picked up two 2GB PC2-6400 800MHz Dual PAT memory sticks for a total of 4GB memory (DDR2 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400). It was the Patriot brand, P/N PDC22G6400ELK. I could have gone to the 1066MHz memory modules, but I felt that would have been overkill for my PC system requirements.

Patriot Extreme Performance (EP) Enhanced Latency line is engineered to provide PC enthusiasts and gamers enhanced memory performance without breaking the bank. Capable of operating at 800MHz with a latency of 5-5-5-12, it is equipped with Patriot’s own bladed heat shields to ensure system stability while running under extreme overclocking conditions. Available in 1GB to 4GB kits, these memory modules are capable of performing with the latest AMD, NVIDIA and Intel DDR2 platforms allowing users to speed up their system instantly. Ref. Patriot Memory

OS note: If you are using Windows XP 32 bit and Vista 32 bit edition operating system software, the maximum physical memory limits that are able to be accessed are somewhere around 3.37GB, not the 4GB that Microsoft states. "XP and Vista can only truly manage ~3GB of Physical RAM." Reference: Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows). Windows XP 64-bit OS could theoretically address 128 GB of RAM. I should note, even though I have not tried this myself, there is a software switch setting for the Boot.ini file to increase the Physical Address Extension - PAE Memory and Windows. I think I would do more research into PAE before attempting it on an Intel computer. Microsoft states the following is required, "The PAE mode kernel requires an Intel Architecture processor, Pentium Pro or later, more than 4 GB of RAM, and Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003." One other point when deciding if you are going to go with Windows Vista 32 bit or Vista 64-bit OS, is that there might not be drivers available for certain hardware and software needs. Check closely for software and hardware compatibility issues before taking the 64-bit OS plunge.

The Power Supply is a Computer's Heart - Give it a Big Wattage One

One of the requirements that often gets overlooked in building a new computer or even buying a prefab one, is to have a good power supply installed. If the Motherboard is the soul of the computer, then the Power Supply is the heart of the PC. It keeps the current flowing and maintains the proper voltages throughout the motherboard, memory, and the peripheral devices. In my case, I also needed to update my 350 watt power supply. Since I tend to plug in a lot of items into my computer systems, I decided to go with a 700 watt power supply. By-the-way, there are a number of power supply calculators available online for calculating your particular power requirements. The model number of the power supply I bought is, ABS Tagan ITZ Series ITZ700 700W ATX12V / EPS12V. I don't think this power supply is available any more. I believe the new Tagan Tg700-U88 Bz Series 700W Pc Power Supply that has replaced this one.

Selecting a Quality Computer Case. What Are The Requirements?

In my opinion, the case of my old computer was just fine. It has good fans, good air flow, and extra slots for other devices. Let's be frank here; most people place their computers under their desk, out-of-sight and out-of-mind. It's not like the case is a showcase for most users. If you want to showcase yours then go for it. Get wild with your system. There are all types of see-through, or psychedelic LED fans, front panel temperature monitors, or any colored case to your taste. For me, I already had a good quality case. So out came the old MOB and the old 350 Watt PS. Everything else remained. I have two hard drives, one floppy drive, one CD recorder, one DVD recorder, and a number of cooling fans in the case. I installed the new MOB with the built in nVidea GeForce 8200 video, new memory, and new 700 Watt power supply. I plugged the computer system in, pushed the power on button, and it came to life in the BIOS setup mode. This was a good sign. It is also interesting to note at this point about what type of hard drives I am using. The two hard drives, CD, and DVD drives are all IDE parallel type connectors. The ASUS mother board had one location for an IDE cable for a total of two drives. Having an IDE connector plug was an important feature I liked about the ASUS MOB.

Comparing The Different Types of Hard Drives - IDE PATA vs SATA

A note about the hard drives. Most motherboard manufacturers are not installing the wider IDE PATA plugs anymore. I am sure this is a way of saving space and money for items that will not be used that much in the future. I selected Cable-Select mode for the two IDE hard drives I was using. There was also a MOB standard floppy disk drive (FDD) signal connector for the ribbon cable type floppy drives. Note, most pre-configured computers generally do not even have the FDD connectors on the MOB, nor do manufacturers even supply a floppy disk drive unit with the PC. If you want to have a floppy disk drive on new computers today, you would need to purchase an external or internal USB 2.0 Floppy Disk Drive unit. When was the last time you used a floppy disk? Now, with the old IDE hard drives attached to the new MOB, this allowed me to power up the new computer, but I was now missing a number of new software drivers that I needed to get installed from the DVD install disk for the ASUS motherboard. Additionally, because I was not sure what I was going to do about hooking up the old PATA CD and PATA DVD to the motherboard, I picked up a $32.00 DVD writer unit that had the new SATA, Serial ATA connectors. The majority of computers being sold today are using the faster speed SATA connectors. They are also much smaller. The ASUS mother board has 5 SATA connectors on the inside and also an external SATA connector. These internal SATAs can be configured for RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 0+1, and JBOD configurations through the onboard controller. RAID, Redundant Array of Independent Disks is a technology that employs the simultaneous use of two or more hard disk drives to achieve greater levels of performance, reliability, and/or larger data volume sizes. JBOD stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks (Just a Box Of Drives).

How to Install the Software Drivers Properly

It was now time to install the rest of the drivers. I plopped in the ASUS DVD driver and utility disk and started installing the drivers one at a time. I should point out that at this time, the computer kept telling me after each reboot required after every driver installation, because of the major changes that took place with the hardware, Microsoft Windows XP software was requiring activation again, and was informing me that I needed to re-register within the next three days or else. But, since I did not have the driver installed for the Ethernet controller yet, thus did not have Internet hookup, I had to ignore the Microsoft message at this time. Besides, I needed to install all the drivers and get a solid computer system before re-registering the Microsoft software. Talk about a real pain. Everything must be done in the proper order, even to the point of not allowing Windows XP software to automatically search and install the new hardware drivers itself. You need to close out the windows as they pop up. I finally got through all the drivers that needed to be installed but I still did not have my old CD and DVD recorders hooked up. I remembered that I had a few extra Maxtor IDE Ultra ATA133 PCI cards available. These cards provide extra IDE slots to install more hard drives or other IDE devices. I installed one of these cards in one of the PCI slots on the MOB and hooked up the CD and the DVD to it in cable-select mode. I used one IDE PATA cable attached to both the CD and DVD (primary and secondary). I needed to download Windows XP software drivers for this card. It took me awhile to find the driver source online for these addon IDE cards. If you need the software drivers, click the link to download the zip file for the WinXP, WIN2000, WIN2004, Win9x-Me, and NT4 operating systems for the Maxtor IDE Ultra ATA133 Drivers. To load the driver for this card I needed to allow Windows XP "Found New Hardware" wizard handle the assignment. I browsed to the correct location where the driver was located on the hard drive and the system automatically installed it. Once this was installed, I rebooted and now all my hard drives, CD, and DVD drives were displayed in My Computer.

Once I got everything installed, there really was no need to keep the new SATA DVD disk recorder unit. I returned it back to the store. I could have gotten around the need of having to use the SATA DVD recorder/player in the first place by using the existing parallel IDE DVD as a secondary hookup on the main IDE cable of the mother board.

Tying Up Computer Loose Ends

There were a few other items that needed to be taken care of. First off, I have a 24 inch Gateway Widescreen Monitor, model FPD2485W TFT LCD Monitor that I am using on this computer. The Gateway Widescreen Monitor comes with a driver and software to auto-rotate the screen when rotating the screen from Landscape mode to Portrait mode and back again. The software drivers appeared to be conflicting between the Gateway EzTune software and the nVidia software. It took some playing, trial-and-error, and downloading of the new EzTune software from www.gateway.com to get this functioning properly again. I had to completely remove the old EzTune software before installing the newest version of the EzTune software. I also stopped using the nVidia software within the preferences area from loading on boot up. By-the-way, the Gateway Monitor is a great monitor for all types of usage and applications for video, television hook ups (includes multiple types of video inputs), and computer high resolution activities. The native resolution is 1900 by 1200 pixels. You can have two full Web pages side by side. Having multiple programs open at the same time with this monitor, allows you to quickly go from one program to the other just by clicking the window behind or off to the side of the other ones. The Gateway Monitor has VGA input, DVI-D Digital input, S-Video input, composite video in jack, two component video jacks, and four USB 2.0 plugs are available; 2 USBs on the left side and 2 USBs are located on the back bottom surface of the monitor ("USB in" "B" type connector cable on one end is required from the PC to the monitor to use these extra USB 2.0 ports). There is an optional powered by the monitor, speaker bar with microphone and headphone plugs, and left and right auxiliary input jacks available too.

More High Definition Video Talk About the ASUS M3N78-VM Motherboard

The ASUS M3N78-VM also provides VGA, DVI-D Digital, and HDMI which is High-Definition Multimedia Interface output ports. The manual says that it can actually drive two monitors with dual-VGA output. "If you connect 2 monitors to both VGA and DVID / HDMI out ports, each controller can drive same or different display contents to different resolutions and refresh rates." However the manual also notes, "Due to the chipset limitation, simultaneous output for DVI and HDMI is not supported." And one more note for those interested in BLU-RAY Disc DVD players, the manual states, "To play HD DVD or BLU-Ray Disc, ensure to use an HDCP compliant monitor."

Re-activating Microsoft Windows XP Pro and Microsoft Office

Now was the time, after the majority of the work was completed on the new PC, I then allowed Microsoft Windows XP to automatically activate the XP Pro software which I had previously loaded on my old computer system, that is now on my new computer via the old hard drive. I also had to re-activate Microsoft Office 2003 software too. The re-activation process took place through the online Internet connection. It's important to note that technically and legally speaking, each Microsoft Operating System license and Microsoft Office software license is tied to one PC only. That is why, when a major change takes place to a computer, such as a new motherboard, the software automatically senses this major system change and requires re-activation. Minor system changes to a PC, such as adding a new USB device, does not typically trigger the automatic Microsoft Windows OS re-activation process.

Here are the PC technical specifications on what I installed.

M3N78-VM Work Smartly! AMD® AM2+ Quad-Core CPU/AM2 CPU Support NVIDIA GeForce 8200 Chipset Hybrid SLI Support HyperTransport 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 Ready HDMI/Full HD Support Smooth Blu-ray / HD DVD Playback Multi Displays Support DX10 Support Instant Internet Access with Express Gate™ Supports AMD Socket AM2+/AM2 for Phenom/ Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron / AM2+ This motherboard supports AMD AMD® Socket AM2+ multi-core processors with unique L3 cache and delivers better overclocking capabilities with less power consumption. It features dual-channel DDR2 1066 memory support and accelerates data transfer rate up to 5200MT/s via HyperTransport™ 3.0 based system bus. AMD Socket AM2 Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64/ Sempron Support This motherboard supports AMD® Socket AM2 single-core Athlon™ 64 / Sempron™ and dual-core Athlon™ 64 X2 / Athlon™ 64 FX processors with 2MB / 1MB / 512KB L2 cache based on 64-bit architecture. It features 2000 / 1600 MT/s HyperTransport™-based system bus, dual-channel un-buffered DDR2 800 memory support, and AMD® Cool ‘n’ Quiet™ Technology. HyperTransport 3.0 Support Provides 2.6 times more bandwidth than HT1.0 that radically improves system efficiency for a smoother, faster computing environment. Dual channel DDR2 1066 Support DDR2 1066 memory provides great performance for 3D graphics and other memory demanding applications on next generation memory technology. AMD Cool ´n´ Quiet! Technology M3N78-EMH HDMI supports AMD Cool ´n´ Quiet! Technology, which monitors system operation and automatically adjusts CPU voltage and frequency for a cool and quiet environment. NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8200 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 offers the latest support of Hybrid SLI Technology, DirectX10 graphics features, HD video playback with HDMI/DVI output. It also supports HyperTransport™ 3.0 interface, PCI Express™ 2.0 bus architecture, Serial ATA 3 Gb/s devices and is optimized with AMD’s latest AM2+ and multi-core CPUs to provide excellent system performance. ASUS Express Gate Surf the Internet in 5-second-boot time without entering Windows With a fast bootup speed of only 5 seconds, the ASUS Express Gate offers an optional Linux OS bootup that allows you to enjoy instant access to commonly used functions like accessing the Internet, VoIP, and Web emailing without entering the OS. * File downloading and uploading on USB drives only ** The actual boot time is subject to hardware configurations and product models Hybrid SLI Support Hybrid SLI™ technology is a unique hybrid multi-GPU technology. It includes two primary features: GeForce Boost and HybridPower™. GeForce Boost turbo-charges performance of discrete graphics cards when combined with the motherboard GPUs. HybridPower™ unleashes graphics performance for demanding 3D applications and enables low-power operation for everyday computing needs. * GeForce®(R) Boost and HybridPower™ are on select GeForce®(R) GPUs. Visit www.nvidia.com/hybridsli for more information. NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD Technology PureVideo HD technology is the core of a complete Blu-ray or HD DVD movie solution, featuring hardware acceleration, post-processing, HDCP circuitry, and integration with leading HD movie software players. HDMI Support Enjoy Full HD 1080p Multimedia Home-Theater Entertainment High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a set of digital video standards that delivers multi-channel audio and uncompressed digital video for full HD 1080p visuals through a single cable. Supporting HDCP copy protection such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs, HDMI provides you with the highest-quality home theater experience. Serial ATA 3Gb/s This motherboard supports next-generation SATA hard drives based on the new SATA 3Gb/s storage specification, allowing RAID 0, RAID 1,RAID 0+1,RAID 5 and JBOD configurations for five SATA connectors. PCIe 2.0 support This motherboard supports the latest PCIe 2.0 devices for double speed and bandwidth which enhances system performance. Dual VGA output This motherboard supports Dual-VGA output (RGB & HDMI/DVI). HDMI/DVI interface is compliant with HDCP. ASUS EZ Flash2 With ASUS EZ Flash, you can update BIOS before entering operating system. No more DOS-based flash utility and bootable diskette required. ASUS CrashFree BIOS3 The ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 allows users to restore corrupted BIOS data from a USB flash disk containing the BIOS file. This utility saves users the cost and hassle of buying a replacement BIOS chip. ASUS Q-Fan ASUS Q-Fan technology intelligently adjusts CPU fan speeds according to system loading to ensure quiet, cool and efficient operation. AI NET2 Diagnose LAN connection before entering OS! AI NET2 remotely detects cable connection the second you turn on the system, and any faulty connections are reported back up to 100 meters at 1 meter accuracy. MyLogo2 Personalize your system with customizable boot logo You can convert your favorite photo into a 256-color boot logo for a more colorful and vivid image on your screen. GreenASUS The motherboard and its packaging comply with the European Union´s Restriction on the use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS). This is in line with the ASUS vision of creating environment-friendly and recyclable products and packaging to safeguard consumers´ health while minimizing the impact on the environment. The product (electrical , electronic equipment, Mercury-containing button cell battery) should not be placed in municipal waste. Check local regulations for disposal of electronic products. * All specifications are subject to change without notice. Please check with your supplier for exact offers. Products may not be available in all markets. * PCB color and bundled software versions are subject to change without notice. * Brand and product names mentioned are trademarks of their respective companies.

Key Architectural Features of AMD Phenom™ X4 Quad-Core Processors

The industry's first true Quad core x86 processor True quad-core designed from the ground up for better communication between cores. BENEFIT : Cores can communicate on die rather than on package for better performance AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture Helps improve system performance and efficiency by directly connecting the memory controller and I/O to the CPU. Designed to enable simultaneous 32- and 64-bit computing Integrated DDR2 Memory Controller BENEFITS : Increases application performance by reducing memory latency Scales memory bandwidth and performance to match compute needs HyperTransport™ Technology provides up to 16.0GB/s peak bandwidth per processor—reducing I/O bottlenecks Up to 33.1GB/s total delivered processor-to-system bandwidth (HyperTransport bus + memory bus) AMD Balanced Smart Cache Shared L3 cache In addition to the 512K L2 cache per core, up to 2MB of L3 cache shared by up to 4 cores. BENEFIT : Shortened access times to highly accessed data for better performance. AMD Wide Floating Point Accelerator 128-bit floating point unit (FPU) High performance (128bit internal data path) floating point unit per core. BENEFIT : Larger data paths for quicker floating point calculations and better performance. HyperTransport™ technology One 16-bit link up to 4000MT/s Up to 8.0 GB/s HyperTransport™ I/O bandwidth; Up to 16.0GB/s in HyperTransport Generation 3.0 mode Up to 33.1GB/s total delivered processor-to-system bandwidth (HyperTransport bus + memory bus) BENEFIT : Quick access times to system resources for better performance. Integrated DDR2 DRAM Controller with AMD Memory Optimizer Technology A high-bandwidth, low-latency integrated DDR2 memory controller Supports PC2-8500 (DDR2-1066); PC2-6400 (DDR2-800), PC2-5300 (DDR2-667), PC2-4200 (DDR2-533) or PC2-3200 (DDR2-400) SDRAM unbuffered DIMMs Support for 64-bit DDR2 SDRAM memory Up to 17.1GB/s memory bandwidth BENEFIT : Quick access to system memory for better performance. AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™) With Rapid Virtualization Indexing Silicon feature-set enhancements designed to improve the performance, reliability, and security of existing and future virtualization environments by allowing virtualized applications with direct and rapid access to their allocated memory. BENEFIT : Helps virtualization software to run more securely and efficiently enabling a better experience when dealing with virtual systems AMD Cool'n'Quiet™ 2.0 technology Enhanced power management features which automatically and instantaneously adjusts performance states and features based on processor performance requirements For quieter operation and reduced power requirements BENEFIT : Enables platform designs providing less heat and noise efficient performance and energy usage. AMD CoolCore™ Technology Reduces processor energy consumption by turning off unused parts of the processor. For example, the memory controller can turn off the write logic when reading from memory, helping reduce system power. Works automatically without the need for drivers or BIOS enablement. Power can be switched on or off within a single clock cycle, saving energy without comprimised performance. BENEFIT: Helps users get more efficient performance by dynamically activating or turning off parts of the processor. Dual Dynamic Power Management™ Enables more granular power management capabilities to reduce processor energy consumption. Separate power planes for cores and memory controller, for optimum power consumption and performance, creating more opportunities for power savings within the cores and memory controller. BENEFIT Helps improve platform efficiency by providing on demand memory performance while still allowing for decreased system power consumption Learn more about AMD Phenom™ processors

Custom Built PC - Summary, Cost, and Conclusions

I am very impressed with this PC setup. There are many good things to say about this computer, the motherboard, and the AMD Phenom Processor. I will tell you that when I have multiple windows open, multiple programs running, online video playing, a USB television tuner playing and even a backup program running in the background, I never experience jumpy sound, or video that doesn't sync with the audio. It is very smooth and a seemingly fast PC machine. I know there are overclockers out there that might be interested in maximizing the speed, especially the online gamers. But for me, the speeds are fine right out of the box. Believe it or not, I built this thing for $400.00. That included one rebate of $25.00 for the memory.

Another point is the fact that this AMD computer operates at much lower temperatures compared to that of the Intel processors. After doing some research online, I discovered that AMD processors typically operate at a lower temperature than their Intel counterparts. The ASUS utility disk provided a cool software monitoring program for temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds. The CPU typically is at 42°C (110°F) and the Motherboard operates at 34°C (94°F). That's even cooler than my Apple iMac G5.

Now I can get back to my Internet marketing work. This was a little bit more of an Internet detour than I was planning. I knew at some point in time that I was going to have to upgrade my computer system. It's just that it came sooner than expected.

Always expect the unexpected when doing work online. Get your business discovered today with Internet marketing services from Professional Web Services.

Labels: AMD, Computers, Hardware, Microsoft, Software

posted by James @ Monday, October 27, 2008

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Apple iMac G5 Motherboards DIY Repairs How to Guide

Help please, my beautiful Apple Computer white box is broken.
The first in a series of how to fix an iMac G5 PowerPC mother board.

This procedure is for repairing the iMac G5 Logic Board and video problems. For Apple iMac G5 PSU, see how to fix an iMac G5 power supply.

The success rate for these do-it-yourself repairs are quite high, at greater than 95% when following the instructions. *** See note at the end of the article.

I had to get the lead out when it comes to repairing the Apple iMac G5 PPC motherboard problems. Beware; please read these MOB iMac G5 repair instructions carefully before attempting this procedure for replacing of the capacitors on an iMac yourself. This Apple iMac G5 logic board repair is not as difficult as it sounds. If you wish to save a substantial amount of money on iMac repairs and mother board replacement, possibly have a buddy that can help, or even have some experience yourself with a few handy tools at your disposal, or have a local computer repair technician that might be willing to do the job, or willing to take on a challenge yourself and have a dead mac you wish to revive, then this is the best Apple iMac G5 repair procedure for you. Also, beware of the time commitment involved with this Apple computer repair. "Be prepared," is the old Boy Scout motto, and that is no lie when it comes to tackling this Apple product repair yourself. iMac serial numbers are listed below to see if your Apple serial number was covered in the original problem.

Additionally you may also go to any Apple Retail Store with a Genus Bar, and have the Apple folks take a look inside the G5 and look at the caps on the iMac logic board for you. Find the nearest Apple Retail Store - Genius Bar in your area, and take your Mac and get in the queue, or better yet, make an appointment online for the Genius Bar. Apple provides technical support for Mac, iPod, Apple TV, and iPhones at the Genius Bar too.

›Apple iMac G5 Hard Drive Data Recovery for those that want to recover the information from their hard drives on a dead Mac.


This is a close up view of the Apple iMac G5 Motherboard (20 inch model) with the bulging, leaking, and exploding capacitors problem. This is a first generation model pictured above. Go to the bottom for second generation iMac G5 comparison picture. This Apple G5 PPC motherboard is three years and two months old. The symptoms of the problem were: video shaking, video disappearing, video lockup, system lockup, intermittently could not power down, intermittently powering up problems, and strange program lockups. Here is a YouTube Video from someone else that shows a very similar Apple iMac G5 startup problem with the video display. Note the vertical lines in the video display.

Apple iMac G5 Motherboard PowerPC capacitors replaced. The iMac mother board pictured above shows the locations of the new capacitors installed. Note: The heights and diameters of the new capacitors are slightly bigger in this picture, than the original caps. Upgraded to 1,800 uf 10 volts from the original 1,800 uf 6.3 volts. Please note these were larger diameters and taller than the original ones. They were a very tight squeeze between each of the caps. Back cover still clears (barely clears) all components. This information is for documentation sake. I don't really recommend going up in the heights and diameters here. That is why I am selling the proper size caps for the mother board. If higher voltage caps, with the correct capacitance, good maximum current ratings, low ESR ratings, and temperature ratings were available, in the same exact physical case sizes, it would be OK to install those. Important notes are as follows. It appears as though lead free solder was used and a polymer was coated on the assembled motherboard on the bottom. A very hot soldering iron is required. Doing it yourself is not for the faint at heart. But fear not, you can do it if you follow this procedure.

It's pretty easy to open the iMac case and visually look at the caps. Simply lay it face down on a soft cloth. Loosen completely, the three screws on the bottom edge (Note: the screws will stay in), then just lift the back cover off from the bottom up. Visually inspect the capacitors for signs of expansion or tops that are rounded even slightly are an indication of bad caps.

Once you determine the status of the caps, then everything has to be disassembled, beginning with the removal of the power supply, which also can be a victim of bad caps and/or poor engineering, (see: DIY G5 power supply repair) in order to get to the bottom of the motherboard. Refer to the various Apple iMac G5 user and do-it-yourself part replacement manuals for details and visual instructions on how to remove various items. The cover is easy to take off by simply turning the three screws completely counter clockwise on the bottom of the computer's lower edge and then lifting up the rear cover. The power supply (see: Apple Power Supply Removal and Replacement Instructions) then can be removed by unscrewing the mounting screws and disconnecting the main plug and the ambient light sensor cable (if you have an ambient light sensor model) to the motherboard, and partially turn the middle screw (about 5 turns clockwise) on the bottom of the case, which releases the back cover clamp, and the PSU will then lift out. Be careful not to damage the automatic ambient light sensor mounted on the bottom edge of the power supply unit. See this YouTube Video for what is inside the iMac G5 Computer. However once the cover is removed, the rest of the computer disassembly is quite a delicate task for most non technical people and requires special tools. Apple never intended for the end user to remove everything that I removed in order to get to the root of the matter.

A Torx screwdriver is not necessarily needed, though it would be helpful to use one. Check out the very handy magic screwdriver with the telescopic shaft with various size TORX bits for the mother board and other items. I had some precision screwdrivers that fit somewhat precisely in the fasteners, but it certainly would have been easier if I had the Torx screwdriver to begin with.

Here are some additional service notes and soldering tips. In addition to requiring a super hot soldering iron, one with good heat transfer and quick heat recovery, (a 60 watt soldering iron minimum is recommended) you may also need to grind off some of the polymer resin that is on the bottom of the circuit board, covering the capacitors' leads, in order to get access to the lead free solder in the first place. I suggest ordering wider soldering tips, for use with a good quality soldering iron for a hotter and faster concentration of heat transfer. If you don't use a hot enough soldering iron, the solder will never melt; you will just barely heat up the circuit board, and the capacitors will not come out. Also, if you have too small a tip, the heat will not transfer to the mother board very well, and the tip will cool down too fast when trying to melt the lead-free solder. If anyone would like to make a suggestion for a good quality soldering iron, at a reasonable price, with quick heat recovery, that can melt the lead free solder on this Apple motherboard, let us know here.

While removing the 20 capacitors on the G5 logic board, I experienced broken leads from capacitors that were falling apart, and leads that pulled out of the capacitors themselves, because of the extra heat that is required to melt the lead free solder in the first place. Note the following section is included for information purposes only. Some folks have recommended I remove this reference to drilling the circuit board holes out. While this is not a recommendation of circuit board drilling, I have included it here only as to what I had to do to fix the problem. Others may have a much better "hole" cleaning solution. To begin with, I had to use a Dremel power tool in various ways. Prior to removal of the G5 caps, it was first necessary to grind off the polymer resin and some of the excessive lead lengths from the old capacitors with a small grinder tool attached to the Dremel, and then drilling out some circuit board holes with a number 72 solid carbide drill was what I did when the old cap leads broke off in the holes of the printed circuit board. Beware of, drilling the holes out could damage the circuit board and break carbide bits inside the holes. That would not be good and making it most difficult to fix. Also note that drilling the holes can damage the through platting which is designed for connecting the top and bottom hole surfaces of the PCB, and might also be used for connecting to other traces and layers of the multilayer PC board. This would also make for a really bad through solder hole connection on the new capacitors being installed.

When replacing the capacitors it is important to note which are the positive and which are the negative leads when installing in the board. New capacitors generally have a long and short lead (short lead is usually the negative lead) along with a negative indicator written on the side of the cap itself. Warning: Do not install capacitors in backwards, or you will blow up the new caps and possibly damage the circuit board. The circuit board has the positive hole marked on the printed circuit board itself. Here is a how-to demonstration of how to replace capacitors. Also, keep in mind when soldering your new capacitors to the motherboard, if you just have a round blob of solder on the bottom of the board, without it fully flowing through the holes, you can have cold solder joints. If you place heat on the legs of the caps for too long, you can also damage the new capacitors. A very hot soldering iron with quick heat recovery, and a wide tip is the best solution. See notes above about the recommended soldering iron.

Special Attention to Details Area. At this point in the iMac repair process, after the new caps are completely installed, and properly soldered in the holes on the motherboard, you must trim off the excess new caps' lead lengths on the bottom surface of the motherboard. Take a pair of diagonal cutters, and snip the leads to the proper lengths, making sure you do not get any metal fragments lodged in the motherboard or inside the chassis area of the iMac computer. Failure to cut the leads to the proper lengths could result in short-circuits, damaged capacitors, blown electronic components, and a blown iMac motherboard or power supply unit.

Once the capacitors are replaced on the motherboard, then it is time to reinstall the motherboard back into the chassis. I suggest going out and getting a small quantity of good quality thermal paste heatsink compound from a local Radio Shack or Frys Electronics Store, or order Thermal Paste Online. Arctic Silver Inc. manufactures a good quality thermally conductive grease for CPU heatsinks. Radio Shack, Frys Electronics, and Amazon carry Arctic Silver, Silver 5 Thermal Compound. One word of caution when applying the thermal paste compound, less is better, paper thin is best. The thermal paste fills the minor imperfections in the metal surfaces and removes the air spaces between the two joining metal surfaces and helps improve the heat transfer between the CPU and the heatsink. See image above for the the small square area right location, for the thin application of the thermal grease. Check out this Thermal Paste Comparison from Techware Labs review of the pros and cons of using the most popular thermal pastes available at the time the article was written. The article provides good insights into the differences between Silver Grease and Silicone Paste, and which is better for a computer CPU heatsink application. I would stay away from the silicon paste compound, because quite frankly, silicon paste or silicon grease does a poor job of keeping the CPU cool under load conditions based on the test results at that time.

Believe it or not, I have to say the finished project has worked like a champ. As a matter of fact, I have used the same iMac G5 here to do the pictures with a program called Skitch, and posting this article using Firefox running on the iMac too.

At this point in time, I'm not sure I would use any of those Rubycon Caps again. As the old saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Rubycon, why did you use an improper electrolytic recipe? Was it cheaper to make those caps with the cheap electrolyte with the missing ingredient?

Note: I inspected my work a couple of weeks later, and decided to replace the five other capacitors also. I found some evidence online that these other capacitors go bad too. The 20 capacitors that I first replaced all looked good. Upgraded these five additional caps from the original factory installed 1,000 ufd, 16 vdc caps, to 1,000 ufd, 25 volts DC, operating temperature range: -55º to 105ºC. I should point out here that these were a larger diameter and taller than the original ones. They were a tight squeeze. I picked up both sets of capacitors at Halted Electronics a surplus store in Santa Clara, CA. They also have some new electronic components available at the store too. Generally speaking, it is usually OK, and advisable, to increase the DC voltage rating of the capacitors while maintaining the same MFD, microfarad rating. Don't cut corners. As a suggestion, if you see any of the capacitors that have problems, it is highly advisable to replace the entire group of caps at the same time. If one or two of the caps are in the failure mode now, they would more than likely all be destined to fail in a very short time.

As an aside note, I included the previous paragraph information in as a historical troubleshooting and engineering evaluation note. I would suggest not installing surplus caps as a general fix for this problem. With surplus caps, you have no idea how old and long the capacitors have been sitting on the shelf with potential "shelf life rot". I actually witnessed this capacitor shelf life rot on some of the first capacitors I looked at in the surplus bins before they got more from the back room. Many of the surplus caps are generic brands, or do not have proper low ESR ratings, or are general purpose capacitors that should not be used in mother board applications. Don't shortchange yourself in your repair efforts here; order proper low ESR motherboard and power supply grade capacitors.

Another interesting bit of information regarding noisy iMac G5 fans and internal temperatures that I discovered after the G5 motherboard repair, it became apparent, the computer fans were running a lot quieter. No more Hoover Vacuum cleaner sounds. Also, the overall temperature of the computer is operating at lower temperatures in my opinion. I found this free Temperature Monitor program for keeping track both instantaneously and in a graph chart form, of what the CPU, Hard Drive, and Smart Disk drive temperatures are operating at. I did not have the program installed prior to the problem, but after I repaired the printed circuit board, I installed the temperature recorder and discovered that the CPU temperature does not get much above 65 degrees C, even with a warm ambient room temperature. The average temperature of the CPU is somewhere in the 58 degree C range (136 degrees Fahrenheit). Note: I keep my computer running for days and weeks on end.

I am still a bit ticked off that I had to go and do this myself. I had the Apple extended care warranty, but I missed out on the free repair by two months. If I had the problem occur two months earlier, Apple would have covered it free of charge. Apple never sent a message concerning the problem. It took some investigative work to find out that they had issues with the capacitors leaking, but they downplayed the severity of the problem.

This should not happen with a product three years old. In Apple's defense I can tell you that I found evidence that many other computer manufacturers also had the capacitor problems from buying low cost capacitors from a stolen electrolytic capacitor recipe from Taiwan. See this video showing computer circuit boards with bulging, leaking, and exploded capacitors on board from a variety of computer manufacturers. While I am a fan of Apple products, I just have to say this is not one of their stellar computer products moments. I'm sure it was a business decision to not have a product recall, but I think they should have had one. Of course, I guess you could say, I'm a little biased on this issue.

Yes, the Apple Store folks were nice enough to take a look inside the iMac at the local Mac Genius Bar, and give me a heads up on what the problem was, though it only took a five second look inside for the Apple guy to tell me that I need a new motherboard, and oh by the way, the total cost (approximately $750.00) was going to be two thirds the cost of a brand new computer. The Apple Store guys suggested I buy a new Apple desktop computer, one that is faster and better.

I said, "not today."

Here's what you get (pictured above) inside the Apple iMac G5 Desktop computer. CD/DVD in the upper left, two fans in the top center, hard drive top right, two memory slots available for up to 2 GB of two 1 GB DDR PC 3200 memory sticks, power supply in the lower section, and the mother board in the middle. Look closely, and you can see the on board battery for the motherboard.

Apple Second Generation iMac G5 Computer

Compare your Apple iMac with the picture above. Is yours an early model first generation or late model second generation Apple iMac G5?

Printout this PDF file of the Apple iMac G5 Motherboard Repair article for reference before you take a bite of your Apple apart. O pun the back door.

As one last thought before the night is over, lead free solder is a pain in the rear. Repairing all types of electronics is going to become increasingly difficult with these high temperatures required to remove and install new components in their place. We are becoming more and more, a disposable society.

Also, I think it is quite comical reading the Apple repair extension program especially the section about not fixing the desktop computer yourself, now that I have fixed it myself. And, the one that says if you don't have any of these problems there is no need to do anything, "just wait for it to break after warranty," my two cents added.



Read it for yourself. I guess I am breaking all the rules here.

And for those that want to check out their iMac G5 for the extended service, here is the quoted information from Apple support.

iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Video and Power Issues

The iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Video and Power Issues applies to first generation iMac G5 computers that have video or power-related issues as a result of a specific component failure. If your iMac G5 is exhibiting any of the symptoms listed below and your computer's serial number is within the noted ranges, your computer may be eligible for repair, free of charge. If Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) determines that your iMac G5 computer is eligible as part of the program, the repair will be covered by Apple for up to three years from the original date of purchase even if your iMac G5 is out of warranty.

This is a worldwide Apple program.
Affected systems will exhibit one of the following video- or power-related symptoms:

• Scrambled or distorted video
  
• No video
  
• No power
  

Note: If your iMac G5 is not experiencing any of these symptoms, you do not have to contact Apple or any Apple Authorized Service Provider.
The program is available for certain first generation iMac G5 models that were sold between approximately September 2004 and June 2005 featuring 17- and 20-inch displays with 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz G5 processors.

The affected iMac G5 computers have serial numbers where the first 5 digits fall into the ranges noted below.

Serial Number ranges:

• W8435xxxxxx - W8522xxxxxx
  
• QP435xxxxxx - QP522xxxxxx
  
• CK435xxxxxx - CK522xxxxxx
  
• YD435xxxxxx - YD522xxxxxx
  

Some second generation iMac G5 computers have serial numbers that fall within the upper band of the ranges listed below. Only first generation iMac G5 computers are affected by this program.
Where do I find the serial number of my iMac G5?
The 11-digit serial number is located on a label under the foot of the iMac G5. There is a bar code underneath the serial number.
To view the label, hold the sides of the iMac and gently lay the computer face down on a soft, clean towel or cloth.


Is the iMac G5 Repair Extension program available for other Apple computers?


This program applies only to the systems noted in this FAQ. Other versions of the iMac G5 line are not part of this program. Click here for more information on how to identify iMac G5 models.

How can I tell if my computer is affected by the component failure identified for the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program?


An Apple technical support representative or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will need to physically examine your computer to determine if the component failure identified for the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program affects your computer and, if so, arrange for the repair.

How can I participate in the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program?

To participate in the program, please bring your iMac G5 to the Mac Genius Bar at your local Apple Retail store or Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP), or call your local Apple Contact Center.

Apple Retail Store

Apple Authorized Service Provider

Apple Support Contact information

What if my computer exhibits symptoms not caused by the component Apple has identified for the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program?

It is possible that your iMac G5 may exhibit video or power issues that are unrelated to the component failure identified by Apple as part of this program and are not covered under this program. Apple or an AASP can help you troubleshoot these issues. If your iMac G5 is not covered under warranty or an extended service agreement, such as the AppleCare Protection Plan, repairs for other issues will be made at your expense if you request that they be made.

I have a remanufactured iMac G5 that fits the description noted. How can I determine whether my iMac G5 qualifies for the program?
If your iMac G5 is one of the models listed and exhibits one or more of the symptoms above, please bring your iMac G5 to the Mac Genius Bar at your local Apple Retail store or Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP), or call your local Apple Contact Center. An Apple technical support representative or an AASP will examine your computer to determine if the component failure identified for the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program affects your computer and, if so, arrange for the repair.

Is there a cost for participating in the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Video and Power Issues?

If Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) determines that your iMac G5 computer is eligible as part of the program, the repair will be covered by Apple even if your iMac G5 is out of warranty. Customers are responsible for transportation costs to eligible ASPs/retail stores.

How long is the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program available?

The program covers affected iMac G5 computers for up to three years from the original date of purchase. Apple will continue to evaluate the repair data and will provide further repair extensions as needed.

Does the iMac G5 Repair Extension Program extend the warranty coverage on my iMac G5?
No. This program does not extend the standard warranty coverage.

Are there any known safety issues caused by this component failure?
No.

Can I determine if my iMac G5 has the component failure and fix it myself?
No. Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) must evaluate whether your iMac G5 computer is eligible as part of the program and then conduct the repair.

If my iMac G5 is still under warranty, how does this program affect me?
If your iMac G5 is eligible for the program and within its warranty period, you will have your system repaired at no cost to you. If your iMac G5 experiences the symptoms described above and is determined to be eligible under this program by Apple or an AASP after your Standard One Year Warranty expires, the program covers affected iMac G5 computers for up to three years from the original date of purchase.


*** Just as a reminder, it is also a good idea to check your iMac G5 power supply. A bad power supply, will produce excessive ripple on the output voltages because of bad internal PSU capacitors, and can cause your new capacitors on the MOB to quickly fail. It is not hard to check the PSU caps. Go to the article on the Apple iMac G5 Power Supply for more detailed information and what you should be aware of. I have the complete PSU cap kits in stock now. For a list of the capacitors required on the PSU, take a look at the Inside the Apple iMac information articles.




Comments may be turned off for this posting because the world is strange.

Labels: Apple, Computers, Hardware, iMac_G5, Repairs

posted by James @ Wednesday, July 09, 2008

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Ubuntu and Xubuntu Installation Requirements

For those of us that have older Intel Pentium I, Intel Pentium II, Apple PowerPC, and AMD microprocessor computers just lying around, collecting dust, wouldn't it be nice to be able to put those computers to good use using new easy to use graphical interface desktops with free Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu and Xubuntu, especially for Internet browsing and free online word processing and spread sheet use or even as a business server application?

The following question was asked by a reader.

Would it be alright to install Ubuntu on a 3 GB Intel Pentium II 333 MHz processor?

Installation of Ubuntu Linux Software all depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want it for desktop use with graphical installation, or as a server (non-graphical installation)?

www.ubuntu.com

Minimum System Requirement

Though, the minimum system requirement is: 256 MB of Ram and 3 GB of available hard drive space for Ubuntu, my gut feeling is you are tight on your available hard drive space. Here are some more system requirements information on the bare minimum requirements and the recommended minimum requirements for installation in order to be able to run well.

Note: The minimum requirements are only likely to allow a server (non-graphical) installation to run well. The recommended minimum requirements should allow you to run a graphical installation of Ubuntu well.

FYI, I have Ubuntu installed on an AMD Athlon 40 GB machine for testing purposes. This is actually a dual boot machine between Windows 2000 Professional and Ubuntu; with an 80GB hard drive partitioned down the middle.

I have a number of Open Source programs like Open Office, and even powerful graphics, photo organization, and picture editing programs such as Google Picasa installed on the Linux Ubuntu system and am using a little over 6 GB of storage on the Ubuntu installed side.

However, with that being said, you could install Xubutu, which is designed for installation on older computers with less disk storage and slower processors. Xubutu is designed to use less system resources.

www.xubuntu.org

For Xubuntu: To run the Desktop CD (LiveCD + Install CD), you need 128 MB RAM to run or 192 MB RAM to install. The Alternate Install CD only required you to have 64 MB RAM. To install Xubuntu, you need 1.5 GB of free space on your hard disk.

Once installed, Xubuntu can run with 64 MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to use at least 128 MB RAM.

Xubuntu on Wikipedia

For those with an Apple PowerPC you can download version Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon or Xubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. Turn your old Apple laptop into a new useful word processor and Internet browser.

Best regards, Jim Warholic

PS - Installation of Ubuntu is easy.

Labels: Hardware, Linux, Software

posted by James @ Saturday, March 15, 2008

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Networking Windows XP, 95/98, and Network Printer

Wow, What a Way to bring in the New Year!



Needed to help a buddy hookup a network between two Windows XP computers (one a Toshiba laptop, and the other a new Dell Vostro desktop), two old Dell Windows 95 computers, a System 2000 computer, and a networked Brother MFC FAX/Printer/Scanner/Copier. Well, he had a network working with NetBeui, using a network HUB, and a strange Bridge setting on the Toshiba laptop XP system, but when the new Dell Vostro desktop was installed, the network stopped working.

After my buddy had spent four hours on the phone with Dell Tech Support, they decided to send out a repair guy to try a new motherboard. This was after Tech Support tried everything under the sun software wise to get the system to function. My friend is still in the stone-ages for Internet connectivity. He is on a Dial-Up Modem. No high speed service is available where he is located. To far away for DSL from the phone company, and no high speed cable service in his area. Satellite communications is still questionable as far as he is concerned. So, can you image when the Dell Tech support person got online and tried to control his new computer? Slow as molasses for the mouse movement. Got to hand it to Dell, the person went none stop for four hours straight, even though the problem was not fixed.

The Network Problem

Sometimes the Dell Vostro would show up on the network and sometimes it would not. This was the case with even looking at itself on the network. Sometimes it was there and sometimes it was not. Dell tried turning off Windows firewall protection and Norton Internet Firewall Security but that did not seem to change anything. So, that is when they decided to go to the next level, and try the hardware. Because of the holiday season, it was going to take a couple of days to get the motherboard. So, we put our heads together and tried tackling the network issue ourselves.

Since the network was on an old network HUB (read about: The difference between Hubs, Switches, and Routers), I decided to try a couple of spare routers, using DHCP to supply IP addresses to the computers and the network printer. Low and behold, we thought the problem was fixed, but such was not the case. The network still bombed out. Back to the original problem after trying it for some time. The problem was still the disappearing computers on the network. Funny though, the old Windows 95 computers could talk to the Dell Vostro with Windows XP operating system, but not the other way around. Also tried swapping network cables with no change in the problem. FYI, my buddy ordered the Dell Vostro with Windows XP operating system instead of Windows Vista by choice just before the holidays. It arrived a couple of days after Christmas.

I decided to call it a night. My buddy however, started digging through the documentation. Apparently when he turned off Norton Internet Security it started working much more reliably. The network was stable for a couple of hours and he thought that was it. However, after leaving it on overnight, it was discovered that the network was nonoperational again in the morning. So, the service call was still scheduled. Dell contracts out to independents in the local areas for service. The guy came out with a new motherboard and swapped it out a day latter.

Finally, everything seemed to stabilize, but we also tried a different router and setting Norton Internet Security Zones for trusted sources (the other computers' IP addresses) and everything was talking with each other.

Microsoft I figured probably had Windows Updates available for the XP system, even though it was a week old. This was indeed the case. On a dial-up modem it only took four hours to download and install!

Computer Lessons Learned

Technology is changing so fast, that even the customer service techs have trouble keeping up with the new software. The support people are not fully aware of the full spectrum of protection that Norton Internet Security software was doing on the computer from a network standpoint.

Computers are supposed to save time. Ha Ha. Think about all the problems you have had with your computers over the years. Do they really save time? I think not, but in some ways the computers have filled our times with other activities. Internet browsing, searching for products and services, comparing prices, shopping for the new car, and even to the point of replacing TV for online videos.

Just like anything purchased anymore, the customer needs to become more of an expert and pay particular close attention to details.

By-the-way: Networking Mac OS X and Windows XP and Windows 2000

I decided that I would hook up a Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Mac OS X computers that I had together. Took a bit of research online about sharing between the software platforms, but after finding out how to do the settings, everything seemed to function. For advice on how to: Networking Mac and PC, do a Google Search. Good information is available online.

Welcome to the New Internet World

Internet marketing by Professional Web Services

Labels: Dell, Hardware, Networking, Software

posted by James @ Wednesday, January 02, 2008

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Two Comcast Modems or More at the Same Location?

How To Install Two Comcast Modems

Can I install more than one Comcast modem at one location?

The simple answer is yes, but it is going to cost you for a second connection.

The following was a submitted question to me.

Message: My wife and I have two rooms with our respective offices. Our house is new and installed with cable TV/Internet cable connections in the walls of each room. My wife's computer is connected to Comcast through a cable modem with a router. Right now I have set up a wireless connection to her computer through a wireless router in her office but the speed is diminished on my computer. The only other way to connect to Comcast through her modem would be to run an ethernet cable through the attic from her router to my office which could be dangerous.

It seems that every Comcast modem has its own unique MAC address. I do have a another Comcast modem the same as my wife's modem which I purchased on EBAY. Is it possible to clone the MAC address on my wife's Comcast Modem into a router in my office and connect the purchased Comcast modem into the cable connection in my office and be able to get on the internet? Thanks

Regards

H.

Answer: Hello H,

What I think you're asking is,

Can I hook up another Comcast modem using the front end of a router, with the cloned address of the other Comcast modem?

First off, you are right, every Comcast modem does have its own unique MAC address.

The router is meant to be on the output of the Comcast modem, not the input of the Comcast modem. Routers make the Comcast modem think that there is just one unique IP address on the output of the modem. But, in actuality, the router routs the information to each computer on the Local Area Network (LAN). The input from Comcast Central goes into the modem from the coax cable, and not the other ethernet cable for the LAN network.

I too have an extra Comcast modem. When I upgraded to digital voice with Comcast, they installed another modem with phone built-in. My original modem was purchased by me at a local store. When the service guys did the install, they had to call in the new modem to Comcast Central.

My understanding is that only one modem of that address can be installed at a time. If you think about it, this makes sense, otherwise the system would not know which modem is handling the information. However, if you want to pay for another Comcast account, I think you can get two Comcast modems hooked up at the same time but with unique MAC addresses. Gamers, who like lots of speed have done this. Comcast then splits the coax cable and runs it into both modems. Then you have two outputs (one from each modem). Note: just as your router assigns a unique IP address to each computer, the Comcast DHCP system assigns an IP address to each modem.

As far as speed is concerned with your current wireless setup, what is your cable Internet speed with the current setup?

Compare your speed at both computers.

How far is your wireless computer from the office router?

Certainly the best connection is to have a cable going to both computers from the router. Many times the problem with wireless is the location of the router or the location of the antennas on both the computer and the wireless router, and that they are behind shielded walls or just long distances.

So, as it is, I think you have a spare second modem that can only be used if you pay for another hook up.

Read other posting with a conversation with Comcast for additional modem, router, switch, and hub information for a Comcast home networking system.

Jim Warholic

Marketing Solutions

Labels: Comcast, Hardware, Networking

posted by James @ Saturday, October 27, 2007

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Upgrading a Computer Hard Drive And Back Up Software

Important: Backup Your Computer Now, Before It is Too Late!

Is your computer hard drive running out of capacity? Are you wondering what you are going to do when it maxes out? Are you worried about loosing all your pictures and files when your hard drive crashes? Have you ever performed a computer HD backup? Well, I've got the solution for you.

No one really wants to go through and delete information from the past. Installing a second add on drive is a possibility. Another option is to install a brand new C drive, with all your existing programs and data intact.

There are a couple of programs that I am aware of that make it easy to clone a hard drive completely. The program that I have used for backing up information and cloning a hard drive is Acronis True Image. Acronis True Image is a program that once installed on your existing hard drive can be used for daily backups to another hard drive or to install a brand new C drive with all the existing files intact.

For example: I had a computer with a 180 Gbyte disk drive that was getting to the point, with pictures, videos, files, and programs installed, that the days were numbered until I was going to be forced into doing something about it. I decided to take the initiative and replace the disk drive with a new 400 GB disk drive. Using Acronis True Image, the new one is Acronis True Image Home 2009 backup and disk image recover software, I first did a fresh backup on the second disk drive I have installed in the computer. Once that was complete, I disconnected the second drive and hooked up the brand new Seagate 400 GB disk drive that I picked up from Fry's Electronics for $89.00. I can't believe these prices on hard drives keep dropping as much as they have over the years.

Once the second drive was hooked up, I ran the True Image software again, and cloned the primary drive, but expanded it to include the total available space to be used on the new drive. Once the cloning process was done, I then removed the first drive, and made the new drive the C drive, then re-attached the other backup drive, and the computer was up and running on the new hard drive.

It is interesting to note that even though most drive manufactures state a certain size hard drive, they usually overstate what the drive actually holds. It seems as though there is a 5 to 10% fudge factor. The Seagate 400 Gbyte drive turned out to be 367 Gbytes formated. But still, it is hard to pass up a deal when you need it.

My recommendation for anyone looking for a new hard drive, try to estimate what you will be using it for. If it is going to be used for pictures and video storage, then by all means up the storage capacity. However, if a standard 500 GB hard drive is substantially more than enough room for what you are currently doing, save your money for the future. As the price on these hard drives has dropped over the years, it is likely that the price of hard drives will continue to plummet, and the capacities will continue to increase. Then, the price per gigabyte will be less in the future, when you really need the storage. As of this update date: 2/20/08 - there are external 1 Terabyte hard drives available for sale around 100 dollars. See: 1 TB External Hard Drives

Jim Warholic is President of Professional Web Services, Inc., an Internet marketing and SEO company.

Labels: Computers, Hardware, Software

posted by James @ Sunday, July 15, 2007

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Fans, Power Supplies, Computers, and Power Outages

Talk about a confluence of power events...

Having a battery UPS backup system only works so long. San Ramon, California experienced a power outage that took out quite a large number of blocks. While talking on the cordless phone, the power went out, but I was still talking. How was that possible? OH yeah, I had the cordless phone plugged into the UPS. But, I was on Comcast Digital Phone Service, and yet it was still working. The Internet was down because the Comcast modem had no power, yet the Comcast Digital Phone Service was running strong. Sure enough when I went to a phone that was hard wired into the wall, and found the system was working just fine.

The alarm from the UPS was beeping continually. It was time to shut the computers down. Well, they shut down just fine, and an hour or so latter the power came back on, and everything started powering up no problem. However, a short while later, I smelt that familiar burnt odor, that says Ought Oh, there's a problem, throughout the office. Looking over at the computer monitor, it was blank. The computer power supply light was out, and the smell was coming out from below the desk. Sure enough, the computer was dead. The power supply was red hot. Down to the bone yard to see if I had another power supply from one of the old hulks. Sure enough, I had a 300 watt supply in one of those stacks of computers awaiting reclamation. Actually, I'm somewhat of a pack rat, thinking that I'll need something from all those old items. And, it usually works out that I end up using something that gets me through another predicament.

After installing the power supply, everything seemed to power up just fine.

This whole set of events started earlier with one of my small circulating fans going out for the office. The fan shaft and bushings were quite dirty and the fan had great difficulty turning on it's own accord. After pulling that apart, and cleaning it up, I gave it a couple drops of my trusty Tri-Flow, teflon based lubricant (don't leave home without it) and reassembled it. Sure enough the fan starting turning again. We'll see how long it lasts.

Now back to the computer. Hopefully this 300 watt supply will last for a little while. I think it would be a good idea to check out a 400 or 500 watt power supply though. I have too many internal items running on this computer. Wow, just did a search online for power supplies and there are 550 and 600 watt supplies available too. Or, I could go for the Thermaltake Toughpower 1200w Power Supply. Now, that's a lot of power!

An interesting thing happened when I came back online. Mozilla Firefox had upgraded itself, and some things changed on the configuration. Actually, I don't think it actually upgraded, but something changed in the settings on the computer. My All-in-One Sidebar Toolbar had moved over from the right side to the left side. However, it added a new feature of automatically minimizing on the side when the mouse is moved off of it. This is actually a good feature, in that you don't have to click anything to extend your browser window size. Also, my bookmarks were missing. Had to download them again from Foxmarks Bookmark Sync, which is a program for Firefox that allows you to synchronize your bookmarks across all your computer machines no matter where the computers are located.

Anyways, I'll have to play with Firefox a little more to see what else has changed.

For now, it's back to the Internet for some important items that I need to get done for some customers. I think some customers think things automatically happen with just a quick click of a button, and it's done. But, that's another story.

Remember, keep your fans blowing, and your supplies running cool, and power up your business online with Professional Web Services, and experience what professional Internet marketing services can do for you.

By Jim Warholic

Labels: Computers, Hardware, PC

posted by James @ Monday, June 25, 2007

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A Wise Wize Service Tip

The Wize Rank

When doing research online for a new product such as a computer, printer, TVs, or PDAs, it is nice to be able to read a "trusted source" with information from the consumer and or business user's feedback about the products and features.

Wize is an online central location where large numbers of people evaluate the products. The trademarked Wize Rank is according to their website, "is completely impartial, and cannot be manipulated."

The essence of the Wize Rank is an algorithm designed to evaluate the following factors:

1. Differences in scale and type of reviewer
2. Statistical uncertainty of user ratings (margin of error)
3. Reliability of expert reviewers
4. Statistical confidence in expert and user ratings

As a product has been in the market place for some time, the product develops a larger number of reviews and ratings from various sources online. By taking those reviews and ratings, and processing the statistical information through an automated algorithm, Wize can generate a Wize Rank number. In addition to that, Wize also measures and takes into account what the early buzz of a new product is, and gives more emphasis to a product that has more reviews, so that, as a product that might have a great early buzz to it may in fact turn out to be a poor performer later.

This measure is intended to protect consumers from buying a product whose early buzz is strong, but is later proven to be a poor performer.

Here is an example of a multifunction copier, printer, FAX, and scanner machine from Wize. These types of printers are known as Multifunction Copiers, MFC.



I have personally owned a Brother MFC-9600 for years, and can personally vouch for what these types of devices can do for a business or in personal use, such as: automatic document feeds for scanning and faxing, and optical character recognition, OCR software for transforming a text image to a true text document. So, as I was doing some research online for someone interested in a new printer, scanner, copier, and FAX machine; it was interesting seeing how all the Brother All-In-One printers rank in the Wize Ranking.

So, enjoy your wise Wize service tip of the day.

Jim the Internet marketing: corporate web builder.

Labels: Consumer, Hardware

posted by James @ Wednesday, June 13, 2007

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Forcing Comcast ISP To New IP Address With Router And PC

Slow Speed Broadband Connections With Comcast Are Not The Norm

If you are experiencing slow speed broadband internet problems, or you are a WoW gamer, and your World of Warcraft connection has excessive lag, then you may have the following IP problem with Comcast ISP or your Cable or DSL Internet Service Provider.

There does seem to be a situation that occurs from time to time with Comcast high speed Internet service that is very peculiar. It seems as though some of the IP addresses provided by the automatic DHCP configuration at Comcast produce a very slow Internet connection. Getting a new dynamically generated IP address from the Comcast system can help improve your connection upload and download speeds issue. Learn how you can do this easily with a wired or wireless router and your computer.

Test your Internet speed using any one of the modem speed tests online. Then check your IP address using the check my IP address websites. Write both of these down to use later for comparison purposes. Note: The source website server is also a factor for upload and download speeds to your computer. So, it’s also a good idea to note this source website server from the modem speed test, for checking your online upload/download speeds in later comparisons.

Understanding the technical terms
IP address Types (Dynamic and Static)

There are two types of IP address that can be assigned. Dynamic and Static. When a computer is configured to use the same IP address each time it powers up, this is known as a Static IP address. In contrast, in situations when the computer's IP address is assigned automatically, it is known as a Dynamic IP address.

Sticky Dynamic IP Addresses

A sticky dynamic IP address or sticky IP is a term created by cable and DSL users to describe a dynamically assigned IP address that does not change often. This is however an informal term, as a sticky IP does not differ in any way from other dynamic IP address. Most cable and DSL ISPs assign dynamic IP addresses. However, if you have Comcast Business Internet Service Class with a static IP address or have requested and pay for a static IP address with your home Internet service provider, the only way to change this is for Comcast, other cable companies, or DSL service providers to do it on their end.

Even though IP addresses may not change often for cable or DSL users, the addresses are still controlled by the standard DHCP process. Since the modems are often online for extended periods of time, the leases on the IP addresses are commonly renewed, and therefore may not change.

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) automates the assignment of IP addresses, subnet masks, default gateway, and other IP parameters. There are four modes of operation: dynamic allocation, automatic allocation, static allocation, and manual allocation.

• Dynamic allocation: A network administrator assigns a range of IP addresses to DHCP, and each client computer on the LAN has its IP software configured to request an IP address from the DHCP server during network initialization. The request-and-grant process uses a lease concept with a controllable time periods, allowing the DHCP server to reclaim (and then reallocate) IP addresses that are not renewed (dynamic re-use of IP addresses).
• Automatic allocation: The DHCP server permanently assigns a free IP address to a requesting client from the range defined by the administrator. This is like dynamic allocation, but the DHCP server keeps a table of past IP address assignments, so that it can preferentially assign to a client the same IP address that the client previously had.
• Static allocation: The DHCP server allocates an IP address based on a table with MAC address/IP address pairs, which are manually filled in (perhaps by a network administrator). Only requesting clients with a MAC address listed in this table will be allocated an IP address. This feature (which is not supported by all routers) is variously called "Static DHCP Assignment" (by DD-WRT), "fixed-address" (by the dhcpd documentation), "DHCP reservation" or "Static DHCP" (by Cisco/Linksys), and "IP reservation" or "MAC/IP binding" (by various other router manufacturers).
• Manual allocation: The DHCP server does not assign the IP address; instead, the client is configured with a user-specified static IP address.

Many DHCP servers can manage hosts by more than one of the above methods. For example, the known hosts on the network can be assigned an IP address based on their MAC address (static allocation) whereas "guest" computers (such as laptops via WiFi) are allocated a temporary IP address out of a pool compatible with the network to which they're attached (dynamic allocation).

How do I get a New Comcast Dynamic IP Address

The following Comcast IP address change process is for dynamic addresses. If you have a router installed after your Comcast modem, then this next procedure is very easy to get the Comcast system to dynamically generate a new IP address. If you do not have a router, I strongly suggest you get one to have an extra firewall between your computer and the Internet. Most IP addresses given out by the Comcast DHCP system are in a leased mode. This means that if your modem is turned off for several days or more, the IP address goes back to a group of IP addresses to be automatically reassigned to other users. Turning off the modem for short periods of time will not reset the leased IP address because the modem is assigned the IP address based on the original computer's MAC address. Every type of networking hardware has a unique code that is the Media Access Control address or MAC address for short.


Router's also have a MAC address. Once this MAC address is synced up with the cable modem, the Comcast DHCP system assigns the IP address to the online outlet. However, if the MAC address is changed, the Comcast DHCP system assigns a new IP address to the online outlet, because it thinks it is a different location. Each computer, with a network card, also has unique MAC addresses. If a person were to hook up a different computer directly to the cable modem, it is likely that a new IP address would be assigned by powering down and then up again the cable modem. However, with a router it is much easier to assign a new MAC address to the router itself. Most routers today have what is referred to as clone the MAC address. This feature allows the user to make the router look like any one of the computers that reside on the premises. Simply logging into the router through a web browser by typing http://192.168.1.1 for Linksys or Cisco, or do a search for Router IP Address to find your particular brand.

Routers Login IP Addresses - Use The Following Format 192.168.x.x

• http://192.168.1.0 (Linksys [older] wireless and wired routers)
• http://192.168.1.1 (Linksys [newer], Cisco, 3 Com wireless and wired routers)
• http://192.168.0.1 (D- Link and Netgear routers)
• http://192.168.2.1 (SMC and Belkin wireless and wired routers)
• http://192.168.123.254 (Some US Robotics routers)
• http://10.0.1.1 (Apple AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Stations. Note: Apple AirPort base station may require software configuration program for Setup & Admin - Internet, Network, and Port Mapping. See: Configuring the Apple AirPort Extreme)
  

Click on those links above to try logging into your router. Those specific router links will open in a new window or tab, or right click from your browser to open in a new window or tab so you can follow the instructions at the same time you log-in to your router. Here is a PDF document link to brand and model specific default router information list of Manufacturers, Models, User Names, Passwords, and Default IP addresses. Note, before attempting this procedure on your router, I suggest you print this information out for reference. Use the print button from the permanent link to this how to get a new IP address article. Also note that a router's IP address can also be changed too. If you can't get a log-in screen on your browser, then you aren't getting to the router's proper IP address for your local area network. Also try logging in to your router with a different browser like Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, Camino, SeaMonkey, Flock, and others. If that doesn't work, then do a Google Search for your particular router brand and model number IP address. If after finding the correct IP address for your router, but still can not get a login screen prompt, you might have to do a hard reset of the router's firmware settings (usually a recessed button). However, if and when you do this, the router will revert to the defaults, and you will loose all your custom user name, password, wireless settings such as SSID and encryption codes, along with other TCP and UDP port settings that might be assigned for online game hosting like WOW - World of Warcraft private servers, if those online gaming TCP and UDP port settings were customized by you or someone else to begin with. After doing a hard router reset, you would then have to re-enter all the information again.

After you get to your router's IP address and you have a user name and password prompt, then type in the login name and password. Hopefully you have changed the user name and password for security purposes (and wrote them down) when you first set up the router and changed them from the default settings. The browser is your window into the router's operating system and allows you to login and set up the router using the internal configuration program. Find the area of the configuration program (usually a tab or hyper-link) where you can clone your MAC address and perform a clone to a new MAC address. Before you clone the MAC address, write the current MAC address down. This is so you can put it back to the original if you need to. Once the cloning of the MAC address is done, then you can try a release IP address and renew IP address in the router's programming structure. This sends a release the lease to the Comcast DHCP and then renews with a new IP address. Suggest powering down the cable modem, router, and computer at this time. Then re-power everything back up and you should have a new IP address.

Now go back and check to see what your current IP address is and the speed at which you can upload and download from the Internet using the online modem speed test. Hopefully you are now running at light speed and no more WoW lag for the active gamer.

Good luck.

Jim at online business solutions. The Internet marketing solution for your business today.

PS This particular problem I have personally seen, and have been able to rectify Internet connection speed issues using this technique. This may not be your particular problem, but it's worth a try. This new IP address solution might also work for other high speed broadband ISP providers. Give it a try with your Internet Service Provider and let our readers know if it works for your DSL or Cable ISP company.

Labels: Comcast, Hardware, Internet, ISP

posted by James @ Thursday, May 17, 2007

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The New SuperBoomBox Boom Box

Now Here Is Some Creativity In Marketing A Super Box

The New SuperBoomBox

The SuperBoomBox Was Born In The USA

SuperBoomBox™ outperforms traditional portable music boxes:

• Out blasts them with pure unadulterated loud great sounding tunes through the marine grade three way speakers. Great base as well as the higher ranges of sound.
• Out lasts them with power to spare. Long lasting commercial grade gel cell battery.
• Out lives them through rugged construction. Built like a tank.
• Out performs them when they have to run from the rain showers. Water resistant radio face cover and Marine grade speakers.
• Out tunes them with over a 1000 song capacity USB Flash Drive (see benchmark test results)

See them on the Web at SuperBoomBox.com

The use of music, video, and audio on the Web makes an impact on your customers. Start making a marketing and advertising impact today with Professional Web Services, Inc. as your Internet Marketing Service provider.

Labels: Hardware

posted by James @ Wednesday, November 29, 2006

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