They get tinier…

Written by vidarlo on 20100103 in english and hardware with no comments.

One of the things I’m wondering about is what the two golden contacts at the opposite end of the USB is for. It seems strange to place ’em there, but who knows? In total, the active parts of this USB memory device 561mm3, and can contain 16GB of data. If we scale this up, we […]

OpenSuSE 11.2 – keyboard does not work in X.org

Written by vidarlo on 20091113 in english and hardware and Linux and rants and software with no comments.

OpenSuSE 11.2 is out.As usual, not everything works. This time? In for a real charm: keyboard and mouse does not work in Xorg. Even when removing the config and running SaX2 it does not work. After som help from

Olje, VG, og katastrofe. Gode ingredienser?

Written by vidarlo on 20090804 in hardware and Norsk and rants with no comments.

VG melder at “SpesialbÃ¥t for oljeoppssamling blir ikke brukt”. SpesialbÃ¥ten for oljeoppsamling er ein FPSO, altsÃ¥ eit skip for prossesering av olje, m.a. oljeutskilling frÃ¥ vatn. Det er ikkje eit oppsamlingsfartøy, slik VG ser ut til Ã¥ tru. SÃ¥ kva i helvete kan den bÃ¥ten bidra med no? Ingen verdens ting som ikkje en haug […]

Changing LCD panel on a laptop.

Written by vidarlo on 20090615 in hardware with no comments.

My laptop monitor got a crack, so I ordered a new one from ebay. After all, changing the panel should be quite straight forward. And so it was. Loosening 5 screws around the edge of my panel, loosening the signal cable and backlight power cable from the old panel, unscrewing a few more screws, dropping […]

My laptop is broken.

Written by vidarlo on 20090424 in english and hardware with no comments.

Let’s say one happends to step on ones laptop. And that the result is a minor crack. What does one do? Call IBM, get a quote at over 370$ for a LCD panel, or check out e-bay and find one for 30-50$? The support guy from IBM was nice and gave me the part number […]

Using OpenSolaris 2008.11 as desktop for one day

Written by vidarlo on 20090202 in english and hardware and Linux and software with no comments.

I’ve written about OpenSolaris earlier, and I’m impressed. It’s a promising OS, with a few quirks. I decided to use it as desktop OS for a day. First of, it’s Gnome. I prefer KDE, but hey, I take what’s available. It’s not that important really. The first thing I missed was OpenOffice, which should be […]

ExtGPS – godbit for telefoner med GPS.

Written by vidarlo on 20090123 in hardware and Norsk and software with no comments.

ExtGPS er eit genialt lite program for dei av oss som har en Symbian-telefon med GPS-mottaker pÃ¥. For kor nyttig hadde det vel ikkje vore Ã¥ kunne bruke GPSen i telefonen til software for pc, via f.eks. bluetooth? Vel, du kan det, med ExtGPS. Og det er gratis. For min del er dette rimelig fint […]

35mm Kodak Gold i engangskamera?

Written by vidarlo on 20080520 in hardware and Norsk with no comments.

Det ser ut til at vanleg, 35mm film er pÃ¥ veg ut. Kjøpte eit engangskamera pÃ¥ Biltema, for Ã¥ fÃ¥ blitzmodulen. Der var det jo sjølvsagt ein film ogsÃ¥. Det gule som stakk ut under den pÃ¥klistra etiketten ligna voldsomt pÃ¥ Kodak sine farger – sÃ¥ eg skrapte vekk litt. Og jaggu var det ikkje […]

Evil Mad Scientist Lab

Written by vidarlo on 20080418 in english and hardware and humor with 4 comments.

I wish I had the kind of creativity that one needs to come up with things like this, this or this. Sadly, I don’t so I’ll just have to copy his ideas and have fun with ’em… And dream of coming up with something.

Booting DEC PW500AU

Written by vidarlo on 20080311 in english and hardware and Linux with no comments.

I’ve got an ancient Digital Equipment Corporations Personal Workstation 500AU, containing an EV56 Alpha cpu. Quite nice. Got no CD or floppy station, so only option seems to be net-booting, which is quite straight forward on about any computer I’ve touched that’s not an X86… On most Alpha systems, you just enter boot -flags ‘a’ […]