2010

• Bought a Mingle freezer thermometer at HK$15.9 from Man Fung Household.

• Bought Antec EarthWatts EA-430D Green 430W power supply at HK$478 from Cnetralfield.
• Bought SATA-to-eSATA bracket at HK$30 from Tan Tat Computer.

• BIOS settings of m9088hk was lost again. Moved the Antec EA-380 power supply of Asus M2N-E to m9088hk. Now Asus M2N-E was using the old Antec TruePower II 550EPS12V.
• One interesting thing: the dogs barked at the Antec TruePower II 550EPS12V when I took it out. When I put it down on the floor, the dogs sniffed it!!! Guess why? Ghost? :)

• Bought 2pcs of Maxell CR2032 from a road-side stall of Ap Liu Street at HK$3. Replaced the battery of the HP Pavilion m9088hk again.
• Received a iPod Touch 64G from my sister as gift. She bought a Apple MacBook and got it as free gift.

• Bought Toshiba Micro-SD Card 1G at HK$35 from Hang Dat.

• Bought a 3-pin fan cable extension at HK$5 from Cache Computer.

• Bought Camelion Solar Flashlight keychain at HK$15 from Wonderfuland.

• Hitachi RA10KF delivered and installed within an hour by a 3-men team.

• Bought CoolerMaster 12cm fan (90 CBM, 19 dB, green LED) at HK$55 from Capital.

• The integrated IBM Trackpoint mouse of the Endura Pro keyboard was not functioning properly, moving the mouse cursor downward continusouly. Was it damaged by me playing too much 1st-person-shooter games? Tapping [F] & [G} seemed to fix it...

• Placed HK$500 deposit (total HK$2800 including installation fee) for a Hitachi RA10KF air-conditioner from Best Buy Co.

• General AK910FNR installed by 2-men team. Not as cold as I expected, but it did reduce the room temperature by a few degree Celsius. It's quiet, but there was some noise when the vertical louvres rub aginast the case. After a few hours of operation, quite an amount of water flowed out of the machine.

• General AK910FNR was deliverd, however, side up. The box had a sign "DO NOT LAY DOWN". I hope they didn't drop it when unloading. BTW, mother said keep the box untouched in case something inside broke... :)

• Bought General AK910FNR air-conditioner (including installation & removal of the old Hitachi RA-10BFD) at HK$3590 from Jusco. Took the free bus to go back home.
• Bought Meyer Circulon small frying pan at HK$279 from Jusco.

• The Mix USB HDTV tuner seemed to be dead.... further testing needed.
• Unable to find the Magic-Pro ProHDTV 3. Where was it?

• Bought a Daiso Japan camera blower-brush at HK$10 from Jusco.

• Saw Thrustmaster T. Flight Hotas X at about HK$550 in Radar Software. But the website was only offering a 64-bit Vi$ta driver....
• After setting the mode switch of the Rockfire gameport-to-USB adaptor to 3 (4-axis 4-button joystick), both the old Thrustmaster FCS & WCS Mark II now worked. But the buttons on the WCS could no longer work as its keyboard controller was no longer compatible with modern USB keyboards. The hat switch on the FCS was also unable to work. If there was a way to add the hat switch axis to the Rockfire...
• Even with the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick, it's still very hard to fly planes & helicopters in Battlefield 2... :)

• Updated the firmware of Nikon P80 to 1.1 after fully charging the battery!

• Installed the Hitachi 500G harddisk into my sister's HP Pavilion m9088hk PC. It now runs 64-bit Vi$ta Ultimate (rather than the 32-bit Vi$ta Home Premium OEM), using all 4G DDR2 RAM!
• Borrowed Nikon P80 from my sister.
• Borrowed a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick from my sister's husband.

• Bought Hitach Deskstar 7K1000.C HDS721050*CLA*362 3.5-inch 500G harddisk from Centralfield at HK$303.

• Bought a 17cm white Cornell dish from Jusco at HK$40.
• The DEF-299S webcam was broken after falling a few times into the floor. When trying to repair it, broke the red-white-green-black USB wire connections to the webcam.

• The SmartPower SP400 could not reliably power the old P3-1.4GHz system. Time to replace it and throw it away!
• HKBN spent about an hour and installed the 100M broadband connection!

• Placed order for HKBN 100M broadband services. Installation fee HK$380, monthly fee HK$99 and a 12-month contract. Expected installation date 12 Jun time 1630-1830. HKBN would test my VISA account with a HK$50 transaction, which would be refunded to me within 22 days. Prepaidment of HK$220 needed.
• Gifts from the plan: 2-year license NOD32, free trial (note: free trial only) IDD 0030.

• Bought 2 casters from a newsgroup user at HK$20. It's not an exact match to the original casters on my 602C office chair. Their main axles was about 3mm shorter.

• The replacement caster bought from Tai Yip had broken. And Tai Yip was no longer in business.

• The Antec SmartPower II 400W power supply was unable to power the P4i65G+Pentium 4+4 USB devices. When more than 3 USB devices were plugged, the USB mouse or the LAN chip might both lost power and got disconnected; sometimes the whole system got powered off instantly. Replaced it with the TruePower 550W.

• Bought a Aten UH275-A pocket-size 4-port USB hub with power adapter at HK$98 from G&O. The DC plug of the power adapter exactly matched the DC-in socket in the Hitachi X Mobile 250G USB hard disk.

• Hitachi GST replied that the X Mobile external harddisk could use a 5V 1A external power adapter ((Tip size: 3.4mm OD x1.3mm ID).

• It seemed that the X-Mobile external hard disk needed a lot of power. Both the M2N-E & the HP m9088hk could not power it up. Only click-click sound could be heard. Unlike the Neso, DO NOT move it when it's doing read-write!
• Installed the Antec EA-380D into the Gigabyte MA785GPM-UD2SH. Power consumption reduced from about 120W to about 80W.

• Bought activated charcoal (from bamboo) at HK$12.9 from Japan Home City. Going to use it to remove the strange smell in a wooden cabinet.
• Bought Hitachi X Mobile 250G hard disk at HK$390 from Comdex. 2.5-inch hard disk inside and required 2 USB connections for power. Oh no.. the disk was dated as old as 2005... :)
• Bought Hitachi Neso 320G hard disk at HK$475 from Comdex. 2.5-inch hard disk and required only 1 USB connection. Came with a ALevel hard disk coat. The disk was sealed in plastic, without any air inlet for cooling. Maybe the disk really wasn't hot....
• Both the X-Mobile & the Neso peaked at a write speed of about 25MB/second as reported by Win 7 for a typical drag-and-drop copying.
• The Neso coat was elastic, but it's very stretched after putting in the drive and the USB cable! Would it las long? :)

• Bought a Santus sharp tip forcep (HK$4), a Tombo Adhesive Stick (HK$3) and a Cox CL30 Correction Pen (HK$7) from Tak Li in Kwun Tong!

• Bought StarkTex Soldering Iron Stand at HK$17 from WECL.
• Saw Print-Rite C3906A toner for HP LaserJet 5L at HK$185.
• 1G DDR2-800 now priced at about HK$200!! As expensive as DDR3!

• Bought Antec EA-380D 380W power supply at HK$406 from Jumbo.
• A small pcs of plastic fell out of a USB port in the 4-port USB bracket! Why did the manufacturer use fragile plastic not molex? :)

• The cheap EnerPlus 380W could no longer power the HDTV server. Replaced it with the Antec SP400 power supply. The fans' noise sounded differently after doing it. So this explained what happened on 06 May & 19 Apr!
• Now all my DIY PCs were using Antec power supplies!

• Bought a female-to-female USB 2.0 plug from Cache Computer at HK$10.

• Bought a DIY F-connector at HK$6 from Yau Shing.
• Bought another DIY F-connector at HK$5 from WECL.
• Bought a Super 1023 1-in-3-out F-cable splitter at HK$21 from Tak Shing Electronic Metal Equipments Ltd. It's definitely better than using two 1-in-2-out cable TV splitter snapped together! Less noise!
• On the way home, bought a Scrabble card decks at HK$20 from a street-wise stall. It's 50% cheaper than the one I saw in big toy shops!

• The Radeon X1300 was back to normal. What's going on?
• Overclocking the P3 1.4GHz to 1.7GHz@1.6V. Total power consumption increased from 145W to 175W!! The system had: the CPU, 1 pcs of 512M SDRAM, Radeon X1300, 1 Intel Pro 100 network card, 1 USB 2.0 adaptor, 1 IBM Deskstar 120G hard disk, 2 DMB-TH HDTV USB tuner, 1 SoundBlaster Live sound card.
• Found that a household 10-inch fan was using about 40W.

• Bought XigmaTech XLF XF-1253 120mm case fan at HK$64 from Jumbo. It got 4 white LED, with a speed of 1500rpm & an air flow of 61 CFM.

• The Radeon 9000 was back to normal, after being powered on for about 30 minutes and had its DVI port connected to the 220WS monitor. Weird....

• Bought 1 pcs GP CR2032 lithium battery at HK$6 and 10 pcs Matsusho LR41 batteries at HK$10 from Japan Home City.
• Installed the new CR2032 into M3N78-PRO.

• That USB port was not properly installed. It's a little too deep, so I needed to use a bit of force to push a device to make contact...
• Replaced the battery of the M3N78-PRO motherboard with another used one as the motherboard was forgetting BIOS setup. :)

• Bought GTR G400 computer chassis at HK$315 from Comdex. The case put the power supply at the bottom, and two 120mm fans. It got more 3.5-inch bays than my old one. The front panel was fully meshed. Came with 2 USB and 1 eSATA port. The design was very much the same as CoolerMaster Centurion II. The inside of the chassis was also baked with a layer of shinny black paint.
• Oops... the power LED was broken. Needed to go back to Comdex's technical support center to replace it. BTW, the eSATA port was slightly damaged!
• Well, the right USB port didn't work. Further testing tomorrow!

• Bought Bandai MG 1/100 Gundam Exia Ignition Mode plastic model kit at HK$275 from WhamPao Wonderfuland. Its GN Drive was built from a 3mm LED & two LR-41 batteries.
• A 1-cm long row of defective pixesl appeared at the upper right corner of the Philips 220WS8 monitor.

• The old Radeon 9000 displayed blue squares when powered on, rendering it un-usable.

• Bought a JiaTong 10-feet male-to-male 3.5mm audio cable at HK$18, and a male-to-female 3.5mm right angle audio plug at HK$10. Replaced the damaged one from the HP m9088hk.

• The Grandmars X1300 died! It possibly killed the DVI port on the HP w1907 monitor as well!
• With the help of my father, re-sized the backpanel area of the old Patiot computer chasis.

• Bought a Titan (japanese) Magic Hook for shower head at HK$37 from Jusco.

• The HP m9088hk no longer reported correct time, causing certificate error when surfing GMail. Repalced the battery with a 100% new CR2032.

• Bought 10pcs TDK CD-RW at HK$39 from G&O.

• Taken the black A-Data C702 8G USB flash drive to A-Data's service center for a replacement. The technician said the warranty did not cover using NTFS in the drive. Anyway, he replaced my drive.

• Bought Philips SA2945/97 MP3 player (4G RAM) at HK$388 from Ask Super Outlet. The coupon said HK$368. Puzzling....
• The SA2945 would suddenly reconnected itself during bulk copying. Needed to tell Win 7 to retry. This was likely the result of SA2945 trying to re-generate the files at the root folder of its storage! Also, the USB port of the Unitek internal card reader of my Asus M3N78-PRO was possibly faulty (too loose...).

• Bought a 10x (loupe, 25mm) and a 3x+6x (racket style, 50mm) magnifying glass from Jusco at HK$10 each.

• The Celeron 430 Ubuntu server crashed. Reducd overclocking FSB speed from 255 to 240.
• Bought Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse at HK$549 from Manic.

• US Robotics replied that the 5610C had only 2 years of warrnty. So there would be no free replacement. US Robotics also refused to repair it even if I paid service charges.

• Spent an hour hiking from Hung Hom to Sham Shui Po, and bought LG GH24-NS50 DVD burner (bulk) at HK$170 from Comdex. Could go 24x when reading. Bundled software was LG Power Tools (licensed from Cyberlink I believe) rather than Nero 9!
• Replaced the erratic LG H62L (which seemed to stall when reading some discs).

• Changed the dial-up modem at the Linux server from USR5610C PCI modem to USR5637 USB modem. 5637 appeared as /dev/ttyACM0. Unbelievable! The random disconnection problem with Win 7 no longer happeneded! So the 5610C might have problem....

• Bought a set of hexagonal screw driver (3mm-5mm, 5 pcs) at HK$10 from Jusco $10 market.
• Bought 4 pcs of 2.1cm anti-slip furniture leg covers at HK$10 from Jusco $10 market. Oops.. it's about 1mm too big.
• The HP m1148hk plus the 15-inch Topcon LCD monitor were given to my mother's hometown in Hoi Ping of Canton. They were carried by a newly wed couple from the village.

• After upgrading the BIOS of 775i65G to 3.30, unable to run Celeron 430 at 260MHz. Reduced FSB to 255MHz. Also discovered that 775i65G could not underclock the RAM at 133Mhz.
• Sister reported that the HP m9088hk reported "System Fan Failure". Opened the case, cleaned all dust, all fans spinning properly. Also upgraded the driver for 8600GT to 196.21.

• Overclocking the Celeron 430 of the Ununtu server at FSB 260Mhz from 200MHz (RAM FSB at 207Mhz).

• Bought a BoomCity internal card reader at HK$40 from Comdex. Paired it wih the re-assembled HP m1148hk PC.
• Bought 2 cable TV male plugs at Hk$6x2 from Wing Sing.

• Bought Nippon cable TV 1-male-2-female splitter at HK$12 from

• Bought Mygica D689 mini DMB-TH USB tuner at HK$249 from Comdex. The Altobeam chip in D689 seemed to be better than ProHDTV 3 & Mix in terms of reception power....

• At about 13:30, the Antec TruePower New 650W "exploded" with smoke coming out of the power supply, with some light yellow fluid coming out and bad smell.
• Installed the old SmartPower 400W into the PC as interim solution.
• At 16:00, arrived at Altech (distributor for Antec). Waited about 10 minutes and the technician came back. He examined the unit and smelled it, then promptly gave me a new one (hopefully not RMA).
• I opened the new TPN-650 when I arrived hone via rail. Wait! Where was the "Warranty voided if seal opened" sticker which was present in the exploded one? Was this one tempered with by someone in Altec or ANtec?
• BTW, someone said at exactly 5:03pm, 2 persons (one woman & one baby) jumped off a tall building in Tusen Wan and died. Altech's office was in room 2503!!! Believe it or not!!!

• After re-attaching and re-aranging the cables to the H62L, and switched to another SATA port, everything was back to normal!

• The LG H62L SATA DVD-burner was not working properly. Interestingly, the LG 4167B IDE DVD-burner was still working fine. Is there something to do with the quality of LG's new products?
• At the same time, the Vi$ta startup was not as smooth as before. Might need a re-installation.

• Run 3DMark Vantage on AMD X2 245 + 4850: P6201, GPU score 7152, CPU score 4434.

• Bought 3 audio cables (male-female) and a USB extension cable at HK$26+12.

• Collected the Philips 170B5 from my sister's home as she bought a new Philips 220X1 and two Benq V2400 Eco monitors. Attached the 170B5 to the Ubuntu server.
• Also collected a HP w1907 19-inch monitor. It consumed about 31W when activate; 7W when sleeping.

• Bought 8 screw-rings of size M2 at HK$2 from Kin Cheong.
• Bought M2.5 bolt tightener at HK$8 from Yau Shing.

• Bought 8 screw-rings of size M2.6 at HK$2 from Kin Cheong. Too bad it's still too large for the DuOrb heatsink fan!
• Saw Sapphire Radeon 5770 at aroud HK$1300; Philips 244E1 24-inch LCD monitor, HK$1690.

2009

• Bought another Zenxin water cup at HK$5 from !
• Bought a Mingle freezer thermometer at HK$15.9 from Man Fung Household! Got a suction cup.

• Bought mini-vise from Jusco 10-dollar store at HK$10. Should be strong enough for making plastic models! Amazon was selling it as well: http://www.amazon.com/X-Acto-X73700-Mini-Vacu-Vise/dp/B00004Z2U6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1260788321&sr=8-3-spell !! Ouch... bad customer reviews!!!

• Bought a 200ml Zenxin water cup at HK$5 from ! It called itself "space glass" and claimed to support both hot and cold water.

30 Nov
• Bought Asus Xonar Essence STX at Hk$1200 from Comdex. It really did make a difference, compared to the old Audigy 4.... Is it time to consider upgrading the old Atec-Lansing speakers? Also, how could I borrow the cheaper version of Xonar for a comparison? :)

• Bought Green LED button light at HK$10 from Jusco.
• Bought a phosphrus light ball at HK$10 from Jusco.

• Bought Epoxy Fix Super Fast glue at HK$17.5 from Japan Home City.

• Bought some plastic rings and wire ears at HK$3+4 from Kin Cheong.

• Needed to use modem command "&14" to lock the dial-in ppp's maximum speed at 28800 baud!!! But Win7 still couldn't play nice, disconnecting randomly!
• Bought Toshiba 2G SD card at HK$69 from Hang Tak.

• Bought Philips SPC530NC Webcam at HK$238 from Fine-up. Not bad at close distance (could read text) and supported 3x digital zoom. Came with 32-bit as well as 64-bit driver!

• Bought DEF-299S webcam (built-in speaker and microphone) at HK$99 from G&O Limited. Claimed to support Linux. Used built-in driver under Vi$ta. Under Linux,it reported itself as "eMPIA Technology, Inc. EeePC 701 integrated Webcam". Ubuntu auto-loaded uvcvideo.ko for it.

• Upgraded from 32-bit Ubuntu-9.04 to 64-bit Ubuntu-9.10 after changing the server hardware from P3-700+Asus CUBX to Celeron 430+Asrock 775i65G! The whole process took about 4 hours.
• Price of Radeon 4850 has fallen to about HK$9xx! Radeon 5850 was priced at about HK$2200!

• Bought 3pcs of 8mmx100mm heat-melt glue stick from Kin Cheung at HK$1!!!

• The Unitek internal card reader failed to read a 32G memory stick. I guess the reader was really dead..... T.T

• Took the 2pcs of Kingston DDR2-667 RAM to Synnex in Kwai Fong by railway (HK$7.3). Waited 10 minutes and Synnex replaced them with 2 pcs of new Kingston DDR2-800 RAM. The new modules were half the height of the old DDR2-667.
• To praise the good, I bought a full verion Window$ Vi$ta Ultimate Retail Box (with blue label for upgrading to Win 7) at HK$2550 from Radar Software. Registered at Micro$oft HK shortly for Win 7.
• It seemed that Gigabyte had incorrectly colored the microphone output socket as orange rather than pink in MA785GPM-UD2H..

• Emptied the inside of the HP Pavilion hp1148hk PC and installed the MA785GPM-UD2H system into it. The clear plastic spring for its power button had been shattered. Unfortunately, the line-in at the front panel could not work as there was no such header in MA785GPM-UD2H.
• Further testing found that one of the 2 pcs of Kingston DDR-667 was damaged.for unknown reason. Let's see whether the life-time warranty was true.... :)

• Bought Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H at HK$718 from Jumbo.
• Bought a Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 32SLA360 320G SATA hard disk at HK$331 from Jumbo. Hey... why the disk was lighter than the ones I owned.... Interesting...
• Aseembled a new PC out of MA785GPM-UD2H, the new 320G hard disk, AMD X2 3800+ & spare DDR2 RAMs. 3dMark06 scored 1395 (SM2.0 464, HDR 541, CPU 1487). The whole PC was pulling about 115W when running 3DMark06; 75W, when not.
• Discovered that the Kingston DDR2-667 RAM could not work with the new 785G mothebroard!!! The motherboard long-beepded 3 times!

• Collected the TruePower New 650W from Jumbo, paying the outstanding (the salesperson made a mistake in EPS transaction and refunded me HK$100 of cash). The TP-650 is 80plus Bronze certified and came with cable management. It used a big 8-inch fan rather than 2 smaller fans as in TruePower 2.0. The product also had a 5-year warranty!!!
• After replacing the TruePower 2.0 550W in the M3N78-PRO PC, total power consuymption reduced by about 50W and inside the case temperature is about 4 degree Celsius cooler!!! Unbelievable... The stock permanent cables are sufficient for my PC (need an extra 4-pin molex to SATA power).

• Placed an order for Antec TruePower New TPN-650 from Jumbo with deposit HK$100 (price was HK$790).

• Bought 2 pairs of 3x metal-frame glasses from Optical Inn at HK$15x2.
• BOught a pair of 3x total plastic glasses from Wai Hing Telecom & Gifts at HK$48. The glasses have soft, flexible arms.

• Bought a set of handheld drills for plastic models from WonderLand Superstore at HK$50 (and a set of go chess at HK#32).

• Needed to disable "USB Legacy Support" in the BIOS of HP4088hk in order to enter WinXP with USB printer HP C4345 plugged in and powered on. Otherwise, the PC would freeze at the WinXP loader screen. The good thing is: the user could no longer accidentally boot into the recovery mode and format her own hard disk.
• Changed the 300W Bestec power supply in HP4088hk PC with the Antec SP400.

• Bought 5pc-a-set Matsusho CR2016 batteries from Japan Home City at HK$10.

• Bought Energizer X-Focus X113 flashlight that uses 1xAAA battery at HK$30 from Hung Wan Trading. Oops... it's not a LED bulb.

• Bought another Pal TV plugs at HK3.5 from a stall in Ap Liu Street.

• Bought two AMP RJ45 8-pin plug at HK$4 from WECL.
• Bought a female-to-PAL converter at HK$12 from WECL.
• Bought a dP boot RJ45 Snap-on grey at HK$1.5 from IntelliTech System.
• Bought two Pal TV plugs at HK3.5x2 from a stall in Ap Liu Street.

• Bought dP boot RJ45 Snap-on (2xgreen, 2xyellow) SR-V42GN/SR-V42/YL at HK$1.5x4 from IntelliTech System.
• Bought 15-feet TV cable male-to-male at HK$24x2 from Wah Luen Trading Co.

• Received a 4-layer wireframe shelf as gift from my nieces' home.

• Collected the spare Asus WL-530G wireless router from my nieces' home after they sort of upgraded their Netvigator account, which included Netvigator Everywhere.
• Bought a male TV plug from WECL at HK$5. Saw a cheaper one at HK$3.5... :)

• Someone stepped on the shorter TV cable plug AGAIN....
• Bought another Matsuho 2.7M (9 feet) TV cable from Japan City at HK$12.5!
• Discovered that MIX HDTV tuner is better than ProHDTV 3 when tuning to the 3 HD stations of ATV ... at least for the antennae network in my building.

• Celeron 430 + Asrock 775i65G + 512M DDR400 + WD 120G hard disk were pulling about 70W. I was hoping it could pull 30% less power than the P3-700+CUBX.... Anyway, Celeron 430 is a faster CPU.

• Bought Intel Celeron 430 from Comdex at HK$270.

• Bought 3M Scotch Heavy Duty Mounting Tapes at HK$20 from Wonderland Superstore.
• Bought 20 feet TV cable from Fei Wong Stationaries & Toys at HK$30.
• Upgraded the CPU of the Asus M2N-E PC from Athlon X2 3800+ to Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition. The PC now pulled about 136W (up from 101W).

• Bought Concord digital watch from Jusco at HK$10. No lamp. :)
• Bought another Daiso LED keyholder light at HK$10. It uses 2 CR2016 battery.

• Upgraded the CPU of M3N78-PRO from 7750BE to 245. Overclocking the CPU to 14.5*210 at Vcoer=1.525V (DDR2 RAM at 420MHz). Too bad M3N78-PRO had a max Vcore of 1.55V only!
• Reducing DDR2 starting clock to 667MHz, successfully overclocked 245 to 3.6GHz at Vcore=1.45V (DDR at 416MHz). Needed a better heatsink to reach 4GHz... later... :)

• Bought GELID GC-Extreme thermal compound at HK$80 from SunTek Computer.
• Bought AMD Athlon II X2 245 at HK$510 from Comdex.
• Changed the thermal compound in Radeon 4850 to GC-Extreme. It's indeed cooler by about 5 degree C.

Bouht following from Jusco $10 store
• Daiso LED keyholder light at HK$10. It uses 2 CR2016 battery.
• Daiso 5x high-degreed spectacle for reading discomfort at HK$10.

• Bought Siyoteam SY-330 HI-Speed SD/SDHC/MMC card reader at HK$19 from A Grade Technology.

• Bought Toshiba 2G MicroSD card at HK$44 from A Grade Technology Ltd. Ha ha ha.... it does not work at all. Nothing was detected by the card reader. The card also seemed to be an old one (package opened and sealed by a sticky tape). Time to go back ....

• Successfully run the 7750BE @ 2.0GHz (multiplier 10x) at a Vcore of 1.05V. Idle temperature was about 10 degree C cooler (room temperature 34 degree C).

• The Sony VAIO battery charger was pulling about 30W.

• Removing the 4850 display card from the case, temperature of CPU dropped about 5 degree Celsius at full load (about 10C idle). Power consumption reduced by about 120W. But GeForce 8200 is too slow to play SF4 at 1680x1050. -_-"

• Bought Nikko wasit bag at HK$45.

• Bought 3M Scotch Upholstery Cleaner from ParknShop at HK$50.3!

My elder sister gave away the following items to me:
• Nokia 6300 mobile phone. The phone can use a Flash SWF file as wallpaper!
• Oregon Scientific CU328 MP3 SD card player + FM radio + wireless indoor phone. Both the charger base and the transformer plug were hot!!!

• Bought a grass mat for my compuetr chair at HK$14.9.

• Sony 27-inch CRT TV consuming 13W idle, 130W full-load; Topcon 15-inch LCD monitor, 0/26W; P3-800MHz on Asus CUBX, 8W/80W; P3-1.4GHz on Asus TUSL2-C, 0W/100W; P4-3.0GHz on Asrock P4i65G, 0W/170W; eSATA hard disk (Hitachi 640G) started at 27W, then settled on 11W.

• Moved the 2G DDR-400 RAM from the P4i65G to HP 1148hk. Now the HP 1148HK had 3G RAM. The remaining 512x2 DDR-400 (one single-sided, one double-sided) went to P4i65G and operated as single channel.
• Price of AMD X2 7750BE fell to around HK$450!

• Bought a Sun-Star 4060-512 65mm magnifying glass with loupe stand at HK$66.5 from Popular Books.
• Bougut a Crecer TH873B desktop thermometer+humidity meter at Hk$30 from Popular Books.

• Bought A-Data C702 8G USB Flash Drive (Black) at HK$130 from Comdex.
• Bought 3M Precise Mousing Surface at HK$120 from Videocom.

• Took the Mix DM-TH USB stick to Shooting for repair. Luckily, only the "bridge" connector for the antenna port needed to be replaced, at only HK$20.

• Bought Magic-pro ProHDTV 3 USB DMB-TH adaptor at HK$340 from Comdex.

• Someone stepped on the Mix DMB-TH receiver and broke the antennae port!

• Bought a cheap water-resistant LED flashlight at HK$38 from Fai Wong Electronics & Toys (Hung Hom Commercial Square). Uses 1 AA battery.

• The price of Radeon 4850 (512M) had fallen to about HK$1000. The newer version was shorter and used a better heatsink fan. Radeon 4890 (1G GDDR5) was being sold at HK$2150. There was also low-powered 9800GT being sold at HK$900.

• Upgraded from Xubuntu-8.04.2 to Ubuntu-9.04 using clean install on the MaxTor 60G hard disk. Found that the Lite-on DVD combo drive could no longer work. The Deskstar 40G would become the backup disk.

• Bought a replacement wheel for the old computer chair at HK$20 from Tai Yip Furnitures. Needed to pull the pin off the chair first..... -_-"
• Incorrectly placed order for 2 copies of Office 2000 Professional at US$400 from RetroSoftware when I only wanted one.... Luckily the company agred to fix it for me after I emailed her.

• Used two plastic spoon bags to lock the broken wheel of the old computer chair.... That should prolong the use of the chair.

• 1/5 wheels of my old computer chair cracked.... still got 4 wheels.

• Swapped the P4 PC (P4i65G) of my sister's yougner daughter with the Asus M2N-E + AMD X2 3800+.

• Bought a foldable scissor (30-year-old design) from Wonderland at HK$4. Also a compact Transformer the new anime toy at Hk$34.5 (Optimus Prime).

• Bought HP card reader at HK$30 from Comdex.
• Taken my 20-year-old Leung So Kee umbrella to Leung So Kee retail outlet in SSP to repair. While waiting, bought a Giordano shirt at Hk$100 using HK$50 coupon.

• Modded the Patriot case by adding a push-to-make switch at the spot of old AT power button (using a small fragment of an unused CDROM disk, 4 screws and 2 wires). Needed my father to help me drill 3 holes on the CDROM fragment...

• Bought Hitachi HDT721064SLA360 640G hard disk from Centralfield at HK$464.
• Bought Antec EA-380 power supply from Hornington at HK$360.
• Bought SiyoTeam SY-680 43-in-1 card reader at HK$30 from Yat Tung Sing Computer Accessories.

• Inserted Radeon 4850 into M3N78-PRO. 3dMark06 scored 10333.

• On hearing the modem connection carefully, discovered that the Conexant modem's relay was not holding the connection . Lot of noise heard (not line noise, but noise created by the modem itself). Needed to go back twice to get a good replacement. Anyway, it seemed that the modem could not work reliably at V.92 mode even when there was little line noise. So I was locking the speed with AT command "+MS=V34".

• Not to waste any more money on buying another PCI modem, setup the TUSL2-C PC as a router via Micro$oft XP's ICS. The Agere modem worked fine on that old PC. The XP was remote-controlled by Remote Desktop from my Vi$ta workstation.

• Bought another PCI software modem at Hk$65 from Hang Tat in Hung Hom Square. This one worked out of the box (64-bit Vi$ta had its driver) and unlike the Agere chipset, this Conexant chipset DID NOT choke the system when going on/off hook!!! BUT, it disconnected every 2 minutes.... why? -_-"
• Flashed the BIOS of M3N78-PRO to 0701 (from 0203). The M3N78-PRO's is huge, compared to M2N-E.

• Swapped out the M2N-E from the case and set up M3N78-PRO. Surprisingly, the RAID from M2N-E was regconized by the RAID BIOS of M3N78-PRO. Anyway, still needed to re-install Vi$ta. Win7 beta stock installation could also work. Using the 8300 VGA, 3dMark06 scored only 1309 (SM2.0 464, HDR/SM3.0 461).

• Hiked from Hung Hom to Mong Kok to collect the Asus M3N78-PRO from Jumbo.

• Attached the 4 smaller+thinner heatsinks to the chip and heated their adhesive up by detaching the power to DuOrb's fans (reaching 94C). Hope the adhesive worked.... :)

• Changed the stock heatsink of Radeon 4850 to DuOrb. Idle temperature 43C; full-load, 55C. I only used 8 of the 13 RAM heasinks and I am a bit worried whether the heatsinks could stick to the RAM permanently (claimed to be heat-activated adhesives).
• BTW, I wonder about the temperature would be if I just removed the plastic cover from the stock heatsink. Someone did try to hack the stock heatsink and be able to lower the temperature by 10C...

• Bought Thermaltake CL-G0102 Duorb VGA cooler at Hk$450 from G2 Systems/Esonex Systems. Missing 2 plastic rings, needed to go back for a change. Also tested the fans on-site.
• Bought a 2.5"-to-3.5" IDE converter at HK$10 from Yat Tung Sing Computer Accessories.

• Placed an order for Asus M3N78-PRO from Jumbo (price HK$785, deposit HK$100). Needed to wait 2 weeks for the result....

• Changed the power LED in the other old Patriot case to another super-bright blue LED. Also fixed the same screw problem on the backplane.

• Changed the power LED in one of the old Patriot case to a super-bright blue LED. Also fixed a screw problem on the backplane.

• Bought Qesco Model A066 cord/cordless hair clipper at HK$118 from 7-Eleven.
• Bought two super-bright blue 3mm LED from WECL at HK$8. I could not find 3mm color-changing super-bright LED (5mm version being sold at HK$18/pc).
• Bought a Brennenstuhl MP-230 wattage and current meter at HK$228 from WECL. Too bad, it requires two LR44 button batteries.
• My M2N-E PC plus Philips 220WS8 and Altec Langsing 2100 were consuming about 310W (AMD X2 7750 default setting) when powered on. The 3Com 5-port switch was sucking about 3W; Philips 220WS plus Altec Lansing 2100, about 10W when switched off. The 27-inch CRT TV needed 100W. The 220WS8 needed 30W alone.

• Bought a Matsusho 2.7M (9 feet) TV cable from Japan City at HK$12.5 and replaced the one that has a poorly connected plug. Now I could see J2 back.

• Discovered a combination of booting up the PC with 2x2G+2x1G pink version DDR2-800, by not following the colors of the RAM slots. Wasted money buying the 4x2G black version DDR2-800. -_-"

• Bought a Goai TF10-15 stainless steel stamp tweezer from Wonderful Superstore at HK$8, and Macross Frontier 1/72 VF-25F full transmable plastic model at HK$248. The design of VF-25F was first seen when I was still in Form 1.

• Hiked from Hung Hom to Sham Shui Po, and bought another 2 pcs of 2G A-Data DDR2-800 Gaming Edition from Top Force at HK$370. I then walked back to home and ended the journey with a can of Coca-cola and 2 pcs of cakes.
• Asus M2N-E could boot with all 4 black DDR2-800 RAM, but 64-bit Vi$ta blue-screened (BAD_POOL_CALLER, PFN_LIST_CORRUPT)!!! -_-"
• After a bit of trial-and-error, settled with 2x1G pink version plus 2x2G black version.

• Bought 2 pcs of 2G A-Data DDR2-800 Gaming Edition from Top Force at HK$360. Unable to to make this black version to work with the pink version on Asus M2N-E.

• Bought AMD X2 7750 Black Edition from Jumbo at HK$610. Same Radeon 4850, 3DMark06 scored 9981 (CPU Score 1984, SM3.0 Score 5000). With a multiplier of 10x, it scored 8471, still higher than that of 3800+.
• Bought a golden 1-to-2 TV splitter from Lee Wah Engineers at HK$12.

• Discovered that linux kernel 2.6.28 renamed /dev/rtc to /dev/rtc0, and not setting it to world-readable by default.

• Bought a Philips 5W energy-saving white bulb at HK$40. Expected life 3 years.

• While rubbing the walls of the glass container of the coffee maker using a piece of cloth, the glass cracked!!! Luckily, no glass pieces fell out... and my wrist was NOT cut.... dam, it's dangerous! And too bad, the assasination attempt failed. :)

• The P3-700@933MHz was still not stable enough. Falling back to 868MHz.

2008

• Raised Vcore of P3-700 to 1.8V as the overclocked system was not stable enough.

• Replaced the SPI 300W power supply in the CUBX linux server with the Antec EA-380. The -5V became -6.17V, but firefox no longer froze during execution. Also the CD drivee no longer lost power and that the PC could be powered on 100% of the time.

• Collected the Antec EA-380 from Centralfield.

• Collected the Syba SIL3512 eSATA+SATA card from Jumbo. Worked after plugging it into the PCI slot carefully. I saw sparks when inserting the eSATA cable into the eSATA port.... -_-"

• Ordered an Antec EA-380 (100% deposit) power supply at HK$338 from Centralfield.

• Ordered (with full deposit) for a Syba eSATA PCI adapator at HK$130.

• Bought a Brima CM060 coffee (powder) and tea cooker at HK$88 from 7-Eleven. They gave me one with a broken glass jug the first time. Needed go back to get a replacment.

• Reduced Vcore of 3800+ to 1.425V, still running it at 2.4GHz. Not stable enough! Reverted back to 1.45V.

• Reduced the Vcore to 1.4375V needed to run 3800+ at 2.4GHz. PCIe frequency set to Auto.

• Successfully overclocked the 3800+ to 2.45GHz (CPU Vcore 1.5V, RAM at DDR2-667, PCIe at 100MHz, FSB set to 245MHz). 3dMark2006 reached 9124.

• Successfully overclocked my AMD X2 3800+ to 2.4GHz (CPU VCore 1.45V, RAM at DDR2-667, PCIe at 100MHz, FSB set to 240MHz). 3dMark2006 reached 8874.

• Bought a D-Sub to RCA(F) +S-Video cable at HK$20 from Cache Computer. Didn't quite work..... Also, only black-and-white.....

• Bought a DDR2700 512M notebook RAM at HK$110 from Comdex. It's not micro-DIMM! Wrong purchase.....

• Bought a 1:3 telephone splitter jack at HK$10 from Golden 32.
• Bought 10 pcs of TDK CDRW at HK$39 from MBA Computer.
• Bought a Mix Mini DMB_TH Gold Edition HDTV USB stick at HK$330 from Comdex. OH no... the 64-bit driver FAILED!!!!

• Bought a short 8-inch SATA cable (L-connector) at HK5 from Suntek Computer.

• Bought a short 8-inch SATA cable (L-connector) at HK5 from Suntek Computer.
• Bought one 3-feet eSATA cable from Tan Tat Computer (inside Golden) at HK$50.
• Bought one 4pin dingle at HK$4 from WECL Electronics at HK$4.
• Bought one 4-pin UK telephone plug at HK$1 from WECL.
• Bought three RJ12 modular plugs at HK$3 from WECL.

• Bought Brima FS138 7-inch steamer at HK$99 from 7-Eleven.

• Bought Philips SDE5170VC external hard disk (blue) enclosure at HK$200 from Comdex. It supports both USB 2.0 and eSATA. But for an unknown reason, the box does NOT list eSATA as an usable interface (it did mention Linux :). Also, there is NO eSATA cable inside the package. Passive cooling via blue aluminium case (no fan). Attactive front panel blue light that flashes when the data line is busy.
• Bought a TDK DVD+R Dual Layer DVD from MBA Computers at HK$15.
• Inserted the WD Caviar 500G hard disk into that SDE5170VC.
• The A-Data C702 8G USB flash drive now needed only HK$140.

• Extracted the 500G Western Digital Caviar SE16 (WD5000AAKS, S/N: WCAPW2696337) harddisk out of the HP Pavilion Elite m9088hk PC.

• Return the "broken" USB modem to Sunny via SpeedPost at HK$127.

• Bought a Pz 4-port USB 2.0 bracket from xxxx at HK$28.
• Bought a Pro'sKit Telecom Crimp Tool (8PK-CT012) at HK$250 from Intellitech Systems.
• Bought 5 pcs of RJ11 modular plugs from WellLand at HK$10.

• Bought a 4-line 6-pin to 4-pin telephone cable at HK$13.
• Bought a 6-pin to 4-pin telephone jack at HK$10.

• The US Robotics 5637 USB 56k Modem arrived from US. Bought with the help of Sunny at US$ 50 (excluding shipping from US to HK). Unable to connect it to HK's phone network... HELP!

• Bought 10 pcs of Philips DVD-RW 4x at HK$50 from MBA Computer.
• Bought 2 pcs of long SATA cable (with L-connector) at HK$20. Mistake again!
• Bought a small cutter at HK$1 from Cache Computer.

• Dr. Foo gave me his old Sony VAIO PCG-TR2 sub-notebook. I phoned Sony for the price of an additional battery (Sony PCGA-BP2T 11.1V 4300mAh) for the computer. It's nearly HK$2000!!!!!! ha ha ha ha ha ...... Found a "equivalent" battery at AMazon US: US$110 only. Another one with 6600mAh at US$91 plus shipping.

• Bought Matsusho alkaline battery (LR54 AG10) for the old Casio fx-510 calculator at HK$10 from Japan City (10 pcs). Its power switch is loose now.

• Bought Epson C41 color ink cartridge (T039) from TZ at HK$109.

• Donated the following to the government's Computer Recycling Program:
  • MAG 786FD 17-inch CRT monitor
  • P3-700MHz CPU
  • 2 pieces of PC-133 RAM (256M and 64M respectively)
  • a 300W power supply
  • a dead(?) Celeron 1.1GHz
  • eMage webcam

• Bought A-Data C702 USB Flash Drive 8G at HK$195 from Comdex. Blue LED, no cover design.

• Insatlled the WinTV HVR-1200 into my M2N-E PC. Unable to make MCE to work with it. Anyway, WinTV has its own TV watching tool, so ....

• Installed 8600GT into the HP m9088HK Pavilion PC (CPU Intel Q6600, 4G RAM, running 32-bit Vi$ta Home Premium). 3DMArks2006 scored 5012 (SM 2.0 score 1965, HDR/SM 3.0 1764, CPU score 3490). The PC kept reporting "Corrupt File/Memory (81159)" error when playing Battleifeidl 2. RAM problem? No... it's the NO-CD EXE. :)
• Extracted a WinTV HVR-1200 PCIe TV card from m9088hk and replaced it with the eSATA adapator I bought.

• Discovered that the Radeon 4850 could not run NFS:Most Wanted inside 64-bit Vi$ta without stuttering. No such problem when using 8600GT.....hope ATI released a good driver, and hopefully addressing this issue. Wait... after removing VMWare Player, there seems to have no more stuttering.... Really?

• With 6G RAM and 64-bit Vi$ta, started playing with NO pagefile. So far ok, including games like NFS:MW, Half Life 2 64-bit mode, .....

• Cut my finger by the sharp fins of a fan.... blood... blood....

• Bought Asus EAH4850-512M at HK$1630 from Comdex. Completed all tests of 3DMark2006. 3DMark2006 scored 7237 (default setting), SM2.0 score 3474, HDR/SM3.0 4337. Could run 3DMark06 for the whole night. 3DMark2003 scored 32174. Card is really hot and reaching 80 degrees Celsius when working, 65 idle.... Notice that the fan is not at 100% speed by default.
• Bought a PCIe 1x eSATA adaptor at HK$90 from Fine-up. Chipset Silicon Image 3531. Read that eSATA cable could reach 2 meters....
• Mistakenly bought a long SATA cable at HK$10 from Fine-up.

• Bought Century SATA HDD stand for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA hard disks at HK$380 from Welland. Support both USB 2.0 and eSATA connection.

• XFS errors reported after upgrading Xubuntu server to kernel 2.6.25.9. Nothing from xfs_check, badblocks and xfs_repair. Possibly a RAM error....

• Successfully added 128M more RAM into CUBX. But the CPU FSB had to be reduced from 133MHz to 124MHz, Otherwise, the system would not be stable.

• That $44 PATA-to-SATA adaptor doesn not work... well....

• Turned out that the broken pin of the IBM Deskstar 120G is pin 2, which is the ground. So the drive could basically work.... I did need to completely remove the connecting pin between pin 2 and the circuit board under the hard disk.

• Accidentally broke a pin on the data connector of the IBM DeskStar 120G. Wonder if the circuit broad could be replaced ....

• Further investigation found that it's possibly not RAM quality issue, but that the CUBX could not work reliably with more than 2 RAM slots filled.

• Re-installed linux server from scratch Xubuntu-8.04, owning to a failed cdromupgrade (possibly caused bythe additional RAM).

• Ruri's 128M RAM (from ruri) could not reliably work at 133MHz. Lower the FSB of CUBX to 124Mhz/31Mhz.
• CUBX resetted itself after the BIOS boot-up screen if I used all 4 RAM slots...
• One piece of 128M from VC finally worked. Finished memtest86 at 133MHz.

• Got 2 pcs of PC100 128M SDRAM from another internet friend named ruri. Both of them passed memtest86 at 133Mhz. One of them was added into the CUBX Linux server.

• Got 2 pcs of SDRAM from an internet friend named VC. Both of them failed testing at 100MHz.

• Bought 25pcs of Kodah 16x DVD-R at HK$75 from DC1NE.

• Discovered that the Genius PCI modem could not work with port speed higher than 57600.On further testing, seems that it's just PCI slot problem, and that I was not connecting the phone line to the LINE slot in the modem.

• The USR 5610 modem no longer responded to modem commmands. The modem works ok in another PC. Turned out that kernel 2.6.25.3 made some changes to the serial port handling.... also, a bad phone splitter caused problem.

• Flashed M2N-E BIOS to 1401.

• Bought VoiceAO VR-100M micrrophone from Welland at HK$25.

• Upgraded linux server to Xubuntu-7.10 using cdromupgrade script in the alternate CD image.

• Bought a Genius GM56PCI-LA 56K internal PCI soft modem (chipset Agere 1468C-TV5) at HK$130 from WellLand. Horrible performance! Everytime the modem went on or off hook, 64-bit Vi$ta coughed. There is no such problem under 32-bit XP. Driver issue?
• Installed the USR 5610C 56k modem into the Linux server. Successfully installed mgetty and ppp.
• Bought NIPPON DFPV02 privacy phone adaptor at HK$25.

• Moved the Linux server to old home.

• Replaced the power supply of the P4i65G PC with the Antec SP400. The Enerplus power supply would be used in the TUSL2-C.

• Netvigator engineer came and installed the broadband connection. Download rate reached could reach 800Kbps.

• Tried to order a 4M DRAM upgrade for the HP Laserjet 5L from MicroLab (HP distributor). NO stock.

• Requested a 8M Netvigator broadband connection at HK$228 for 24 months, including NowTV (2 free channels: Discovery, National Geography). The line would be installed at my old home.

• Re-located the Asus TUSL2-C desktop PC plus the 15-inch Topcon LCD monitor to my old home. It's for testing the broadband connection.

• Swapped the 15-inch Topcon LCD monitor of my sister's daughter with the Philips 170B5CS 17-inch monitor.

• Bought a Data-Pro cross-over ethernet plug at HK$30 from Intellitech System.
• Bought a Belkin MasterCube Surge Protector at HK$99 from Intellitech System. Got a protection plugs for one telephone line.

• The Memorex 8x DVD+RW could no longer be written data correctly!

• Accepted Nokia 2760 from my mother. My 2610 would be in the shelf for a while. Sell it? Give it away?

• Bought Alpha Bluetooth dongle from San Chau Computer Accessories at HK$105. Vi$ta has built-in driver for it.
• Bought a Australia power cord at HK$19 from a shop in Ap Liu Street.

• Received confirmation letter from I-Cable concerning my termination of service request. Letter also contained instructions for returning the cable modem.

• I-Cable confirmed that the service termination form has been received. It's mailed to them on 18 Jan 2007.

• Bought two pieces of A-Data DDR2-800 2G RAM modules at HK$620 from Centralfield.

• Donate the Sony CPD-110GS 15-inch CRT monitor and Artec AS6E scanner to 2008 Hong Kong WEEE Recycling Daysr.

• Following items ordered from USA with the help of Sunny arrived:
  • Inova X1 AA Powered LED Flashlight at US$19.99.
  • US Robotics Performance Pro 5610C PCI modem at US$79.99.

• Bought a 15-feet Choice green USB 2.0 printer cable from Fine Up at HK$35. It works with the HP Photosmart printer at my sister's home.
• Bought a 10-feet MaxLink blue USB 2.0 extension cable from MBA Computer at HK$20.
• 2G DDR2-800 reached about HK$315. A lot cheaper than the ones I bought....
• Unbelievable... the Polar PC2288 has a 64-bit Vi$ta driver from Micro$oft, and reported as a Lenovo Q350 USB PC Camera.

• Phone I-Cable to terminate the broadband service as I would be moving to an area that's not covered by its broadband network.
• Bought a Unitek Y-910 3.5" Internal Card Reader from Suntek Computer at HK$85. It has a eSATA-to-SATA port, a USB 2.0 port, and supports SD/MMC/SDHC/...

• The 7600GT came back from Hornington, but with a different serial number. No charge was leveraged. 3DMark 2003 scored 12155. 3DMark 2006 scored 3090 (SM 2.0: 1247, HDR/SM 3.0: 1156).

• Taken the 7600GT to Hornington for repairing. Might take 3-4 days if a full replacement was required.
• Bought Asus EN86GT2 8600GT 256M DDR3 RAM from Jumbo Computers at HK$770. Completed all tests of 3DMark2006 (default settings), and scored 4326 (SM 2.0 Score 1891, HDR/SM3.0 Score 1748). 3DMark2003 scored 13963.

• The Asus 7600GT was damaged while I was playing BF2 Special Forces. Vertical stripes were displayed when in graphics mode. Also no signal produced from DVI.

2007

• Successfully connected the HP LaserJet 5L to the Asus TUSL2-C PC via a parallel-port-to-USB connector. The connector reported itself as a "Virtual USB Port".

• Bought Sony ICF-C492 Dream Machine (AM/FM alarm clock radio) from Hong Kong Best Denki Co. in Plaza Hollywood at HK$248.

• Installed the Grandmars X1300 VGA into the Asrock P4I65G. Failed to run reliably at AGP 8x mode. The screen would become a mess after a while. Set the AGP mode at 4x.

• Upgraded sister PC's NIC from Realtek 8029AS 10Mbps to Intel 82557 100Mbps.

• Collected the 3Com 3C1670500B-UK from Jumbo. Installed without problem.
• Replaced the coaxial cable 10Base2 network at home with Cat 6 1000BaseT network.

• Bought a Memorex 8x DVD+RW from MBA Computer at HK$12.

• Bought PCI 10M Cat. 6 cable at HK$70 from IntelliTech Systems in SSP.

• Obtained the I/O shield for the P5GD1-VM motherboard from Hornington free of charge.
• Placed order for a 3Com 3C1670500B-UK OfficeConnect 5-port Gigabit Switch at HK$650 (HK$200 deposit) from Jumbo.
• Bought 2 CTI Cat. 6 UTP cables from WECL: 2M at HK$25, 5M at HK$35. Looking for a 10M one...
• There is a problem to install Vi$ta x64 into a motherboard with more than 3G RAM. Need to install Vi$ta x64 using less than 3G RAM, applies hotfix KB929777, then added back the extra RAM modules.

• Bought Asus P5GD1-VM at HK$350 from Hornington (Crazy Sales). Both this board and the Asrock 775I65G would be locked in a plastic box for future use.

• Took M2N-E to Hornington for repairing. The engineer said the BIOS was damaged. He re-programmed the chip and returned the board fixed. No charge leveraged.
• Micro$oft Hong Kong allowed the Thincentre A50's WinXP Home OEM be re-activated manually and be used in the Asrock P4I65G.

• Bought AMD Sempron E1100 at HK$275 from Centralfield at about 11:00. Inserted into the M2N-E, same problem. It's not the CPU... possibly a dead BIOS. I also tried another power supply, same problem.

• While trying to overclock the 3800+ on the M2N-E, the board no longer started normally. The CPU fan would be on for 2 seconds, and then the whole board was turned off. Powering up the board without a CPU, RAM and VGA card, the fan would be on for more time. Dead CPU?

• Upgraded the firmware of the Asus WL530G to latest beta firmware as of today.
• Unable to install Vi$ta Ultimate x64 into the P4I65G. Even the booting into the installation program of the x64 Vi$ta CD failed.

• Bought a Polar mouse pad with gel rest at HK$22 from MBA Computers.
• Bought Micro$oft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition at HK$1000 from Radar Software.

• Set up a 2-PC LAN using Asus WL530G wireless router and the 2 Cat 6 cables. The WAN port of the router dials to and login Netvigator automagically. If the line is down, the router will retry.

• Assembled a new PC using residue parts of ThinkCentre A50 8090 and Asrock P4I65G. Contacted Micro$oft Hong Kong to understand the requirement for a *valid* OEM Vi$ta license.

• Bought 3 CTI LAN cables: two Cat 6 patch cord (yellow 2M, green 5M) and one Cat 5e patch cord (blue 50 feet). Total HK$126 from WECL.

• Dis-integrated the A50 Thinkcentre case. Collected some useful parts (small fans, small leds on wires, notebook sized DVD CD burner combo). The case and the board would be sold as scrap parts.

• Bought Asrock P4I65G at HK$400 from Jumbo.
• Bought Sky socket 478 heaksink fan at HK$70 from Jumbo.
• Bought 099 H-526 ATX case plus EnerPlus 380W power supply at HK$200 from Comdex.
• The IBM Thinkcentre's WinXP requested an activation on boot-up. Seems that XP detected hardware change...

• Bought Asrock 775I65-G at HK$380 from Comdex.
• Bought LG H62L SATA DVD burner at HK$280 from Comdex.
• Bought CoolerMaster Vortex-752 CPU heatsink fan at HK$165 from Suntek.
• Bought two rechargeable 1000ma AAA batteries at HK$36 from WECL.
• Bought two rechargeable 900ma AAA batteries plus charger at HK$40 from WECL.

• Got the SA2312 back from Philips service centre.
• The IBM A50 had lost its warranty. They decided to build a ShamShuiPo PC from its leftover parts.

• The IBM ThinkCentre A50-8090 went down.

• The GoGear MP3 player no longer worked after firmware update. Taken to Philips Customer Service Center (at Shek Lei) to repair. Would take about a week.

• Installed the Hitachi 160G harddisk to HP Pavilion A1148HK. Used Linux to duplicate the recovery partition to the new harddisk. Of course, all data was backed up first. iTunes... a bit troublesome...

• Bought Hitachi 16PLA380 160G SATA II harddisk at HK$375 from Comdex.

• Bought two pieces of A-Data 1Gbytes DDR400 (PC3200) from Comdex at HK$680. Added to Dr. Foo's ThinkCentre PC. Now both PCs in my sister's home have 2G RAM and should be Vi$ta-ready. Serial no. R780639T and

• Moved the newly bought 512M from CUBX to my sister's TUSL-2. Now the CUBX server has the following: 256M double-sided, 256M single-sided (Ace), 128M double-sided (Siemens). BUT... CUBX reported 512M only. :)

• Bought 512M Hynix PC-133 SDRAM at HK$430 from Sunny Computer. To be added to the CUBX Linux server. Ha ha... each slot supports a max of 256M only... -_-"

• Turned out that the Nvidia 162.18 driver has bug for 7600GT to display 1680x1050x32.. I upgraded to beta driver 163.44. Falling back to 94.24 also worked.
• Purchased Philips GoGear SA2325 2GB MP3 Player/FM Radio/Voice Recorder at HK$480 from MBA Computer Co. Battery 1 x AAA.
• Re-try 3DMark 2006: 1680x1050x32, GF7600GT, AMD X2 3800+, 4G DDR2-800 RAM. Scored 27xx.

• Bought Philips 220WS8FB from Centralfield at HK$2590, 39 months warranty. Allow checking for defective pixels before payment. Got problem displaying 1680x1050 under WinXP. No problem under Vi$ta. Suspect driver problem... Settled for 1440x900 for time being. The quality looks OK.

• Bought 1-year maintenance for the Philips 170B5CS monitor at HK$390.

• Moved the Audigy 4 from my PC to my sister's Asus TUSL2-C. Enabled the SoundMax audio on my Asus M2N-E, setting all audio to HD. Now I have a spare but old SBLive card.

• Bought PQI Cool Drive U330 4G (170X) at HK$415 from WellLand. Come with a strape, to be used with my Nokia phone.

Bought these for my cousin in USA:
• 1 x Hitach 7200rpm 2.5 inch 80G harddisk at HK$710
• 2 x Green ink cartriges for Brother MFC-440 printer at HK$380.
• 2 x USB 2.0 hub (one of them powered) at HK$75.
• 2 x 1-meter USB extension cables at HK$36.
• 2 x 2.5" to 3.5" IDE converter at HK$18+10.
• 8 x Energizer AA rechargeable batteries at HK$140.
• 1 x GP 9V rechargeable battery at HK$55.
• 1 x Satrue BS-5000 electronic counting scale 1-5KG at HK$340.

• Bought Canon LIDE 70 scanner at HK$460 from Centralfield.

• Replace the power LED of an old case with the 2mm bright blue LED.

• Upgrade Linux server from Ubuntu-6.10 to Xubuntu-7.04. Found that the old Elsa GForce 2 MX400 VGA card could freeze the whole system. Replaced it with a cheap SiS AGP VGA card. Weaker card means less electricity requirement and cooler case.
• At HK$60 and with the help of my father, bought a transparent acrylic sheet (Rainbow) to be used as new top cover for an old ATX case.

• My father found me a white piece of plastic to replace the steel plate.

• My father made me a piece of smooth stainless plate (20cm x 16cm) for supporting the 3M mouse pad on the right of the computer table.
• Inserted the spare Radeon 9000 Pro into my work PC. Gonna try dual monitor tomorrow.

• Bought a 1mm and 2mm bright LED (color=blue) at HK$3 and HK$4 respectively. Changed the power LED of the case to this one. Bought a bigger one at HK$4.

• Bought two pieces of A-Data DDR2-800 1G at HK$ 880. Passed memtest86 3 times.

• Keyboard cable arrived and collected. Cable priced at US$7.25 with shipping cost at US$ 9.5.
• EnduraPro 104 arrived, with a spare point stick cap.

• With the help of my cousin, ordered a EnduraPro 104 from http://www.pckeyboard.com and a keyboard cover. Keyboard plus cover priced at US$114.78, shipping via USPS Air Parcel at US$41.30.

• Placed order for a keyboard cable from http://www.pckeyboard.com

• My IBM model M keyboard is behaving strangely. The N, B, Spacebar and "/" keys sometimes does not respond. I just found that by pressing the spacebar really hard and hammering the steel plate right under the spacebar, the 4 keys would respond again. Pressing ALT+[/] could help, too. Anyway, the 3 LEDs no longer work. Maybe time to buy another from http://www.pckeyboard.com (who took over the IBM/Lexmark keyboard business).

• Window$ Vi$ta Ultimate Upgrade arrived from SiS.

• Upgraded my sister's HP Pavilion PC to use my H10L DVD burner. It's original Lite-On SOHC-4836K would be sent to my current company as a gift.
• Bought LG GSA-H44L DVD burner at HK$ 310 from Comdex.

• Placed order for 2 copies of Micro$oft Vi$ta Ultimate upgrade at distributor price via my company iTech Consulting Services Limited.

• My sister gave me a digital camera: Casio Exilim EX-Z4 (4.0 mega-pixels). Also a 256M DigiFilm SD memory card.
• Bought Hynix 512M PC3200 DDR400 RAM at HK$270 from Jumbo. Added to the IBM Thinkcentre A50 8090-I3H (the PC of my sister's husband).

• Bought a Logitech V150 compact laser mouse at HK$198. Installed at the HP Pavilion PC of my sister's daughters.

• The IBM 120G was returned, missing 2 jumpers. Um....
• Upgraded the HP Pavilion PC (Model A1148 using Asus PTGD1-LA) of my sister's daughters with 2 pieces of Kingston 512M DDR400 PC3200 RAM (KVR400X64C3A/512) at HK$ 590 (Comdex). Not too sure whether that PC's board, using i915G chipset, could support dual channel or not.
• Removed the Samsung M368L3223ETM-CCC 256M PC3200 DDR RAM from that HP PC. Sell it? Give it away?

• Bought a PATA-to-SATA connector at HK$44.

• Bought a USB-to-Parallel port birectional at HK$85.
• Bought 50pcs of Mitsubishi CDR at HK$72.

• Fixed the radio alarm clock by opening it up and loosening the contacts in the front-panel. But the CD player function was broken, which is fortunately not important.... But closing the case reproduced the problem again... T%^%$*^*(^(*

2006

• My new AMD ADO3800 system scored 3892 in 3DMark2006 (No AA, 1024x768)
• The fan-only power connector from the Antec 550W seemed to have its voltage/current regulated. The fan was spinning slowly. Connecting the fan to the regular power connector. The case is a bit cooler now. Even the surface of the power supply feeled cooler.
• Bought a pier for cutting plastic models at HK$44.

• Overclocking the DDR2-667 at 415MHz, 1.85V. Seems to be OK.

• Lent the Hitachi 120G harddisk to save a colleague's linux server in a data center of New World Telecom.

• Printer testing: Epson C41UX (Samba+CUPS), OK; HP LaserJet 5L, OK.

• Discovered that my ST3250620AS was running at 1.5Gbps only. Removed jumpers from both drives. They are configured as RAID-0 array in M2N-E.
• The SATA connectors are really too loose, compared to old-style connectors.... Have to be careful when moving the wires inside the case.

• The new AM2 system could run memtest and 3DMark2003 for 8 hours without problem. It could also execute 3DMark2003 demo for hours.
• The old Micron PC-133 256M RAM could no longer work reliably at 133MHz. Replaced it with a PC-133 64M RAM (Total 320M). Overclocking the CUBX+P3-700 at 133Mhz now. The whole memory setup could pass memtest 4 times.
• Added the USB 2.0 card to CUBX.

• Bought Antec TruePower II 550EPS12V 550W at HK$810.
• Bought USB 2.0 card (NEC chip) at HK$65 from Sunny again.
• Bought Micro$oft Wireless Laser Mouse 5000 at HK$279. It has a 4-way scroll wheel.
• Bought a 2-USB-1-Gameport bracket for the M2N-E at HK$30 from Hornington. Doesn't seem to work (USB78)... wait.. Need to follow the sequence. Connected to USB56!
• Bought 10 screws+rings for installing fans at HK$5 from 5-metal shop. :)

• Change the WinXP Home to WinXP Pro at extra cost of HK$520.

Bought these from Jumbo Computer in Mongkok Computer Center:

• Asus M2N-E (nForce 570 Ultra) HK$750
• AMD AM2 ADO3800 X2 CPU HK$1208
• Kingston DDR2-667 1G RAM x 2 (KVR667D2N5) HK$1656
• Asus 7600GT 256M DDR3 PCIe x16 VGA card HK$990
• Seagate ST3250820AS 250G harddisk HK$680
• Windows XP Home Edition OEM (English) HK$680

3DMark 2003 score 12376 (1024x768, 2x AA).

• The Tekram S3Pro-Au+ board died. Clearing CMOS didn't help. Shifted CUBX to become the Linux server (Ubuntu booted wihtout problem). Shifted my TUSL2-C to my sister. Planning to buy a new AM2 PC next weekend.

• Cleaned the case of TUSL2-C and Linux server. The heat-sinks was covered with dust.
• Re-installed Linux server using Ubuntu-6.10 Edgy. The new UpStart process is faster than traditional init.

• Bought two Seagate Barracuda 250G SATA II harddisks (ST3250620AS, 7200.10, 16M cache, ATAII, NCQ) at HK$626x2. They are really hot. I guess they would cook themselves soon.... hopefully after warranty. :)
• Set up RAID 0 using 8006-2LP plus the 2 Seagates.

• Bought 3Ware 8006-2LP at HK$1120. Hope it could work on TUSL2-C...
• Logitech's mouse driver needs IE 6 to be installed. What the ... Same with Radeon driver, which requires DirectX first...

• Replaced the toner cartridge of HP Laserjet 5L. The old cartridge would be sent to recycling firms.

• Bought Nokia 2610 from Fortress (Whampoa) at HK$888.

• Inserted the GF2MX400 into the Linux server. Linux kernel upgraded to 2.6.17.13.

• Bought a Belkin SurgeStrip at HK$68. 4 sockets, 3m power cable, 6500A maximum surge current, 238 J. Lifetime warranty.
• Bought a 13Amp USB power plug HK$15.

• Printed contract of the I-Cable broadband service arrived.

Pythagorean: sqrt(162+92) = 18.36
Ratio of w:h:diag is thus: 16:9:18.36

So if the diagonal is 19":
width = (16/18.36)x19 = 16.6"
height = (9/18.36)x19 = 9.3"
area = 16.6*9.3 = 154 in2

A 4:3 19" monitor has 173 in2 of screen area, so you are losing about 13% 
desktop real estate. Better step up to a 21" or 24" if you want widescreen. 
 :-) 

• Renewed I-cable broadband service plan at HK$140*14, with 4 months (1,5,10,14) free. Used another credit card to pay for the plan. The new 18-month contract will expire on 11 Mar 2008. 6-week notice to renew this plan.

• Bought LG GSA-H10L DVD burner with LightScribe at HK$330. Spent an extra HK$20 to buy 3 DVD+R that could be light-scribed. The old GSA4167B would be shifted to my sister's PC.

• Bought 3M Gel Wrist Rest WR310 at HK$99. It's one inch too wide for my computer table.

• Bought a DVI-D male to DVI-D male cable at HK$49. The cable could connects the Radeon 9000pro with the Philips 170B5CS. I couldn't quite see the difference between DVI and VGA cable.

• Upgraded Ubuntu 5.10 to Ubuntu 6.06. Crashed in the middle, but 'apt-get -f dist-upgrade' could resume. IN the process, I found that I didn't compiled in the VIA IDE module. After compiling the VIA IDE module, /dev/hda could use DMA.

• Bought Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 4 at HK$499. 24-bit. Replaced the 6-year-old SBLive! DE in TUSL2-C.

• Bought a Rockfire RM-203 gameport-to-USB converter for the ThrustMaster FCS at US$50 with the help of Sunny. The converter couldn't work for the WCS, though. Also, the hat on the FCS couldn't work as well. http://www.usb-port.com/rm203.html

• Added 128M PC-100 RAM to the linux server (total=348M). Kernel now reached version 2.6.16.17.
• A 6-feet DVI dual-link cable needed HK$95.

• Bought a USB 2.0 4+1 port card (NEC Chipset) at HK$65. Inserted into CUBX.

• Got a piece of IBM PC-133 64M RAM as a reward for fixing a broken Window$ 98. Added to my sister's CUBX (now 448M).
• Seems that the RAM modules in CUBX is getting a bit old. NO longer able to work reliably at 133MHz. Settled at 124MHz.

• Abit BP6 returned from the repair shop. The shop claimed that the broad couldn't be repaired. No charge leveraged!

• Replace the GeForce MX400 card in the CUBX machine with the Radeon 9000 Pro adaptor. WinXP got a default driver for it. Considering to test the DVI to the 170B5CS ...

• Taken the Abit BP6 to SSP for repair at about HK$200. It could just be a capacitor problem.

• Bought Grandmars Radeon X1300 AGP 4x/8x 256M DDRRAM VGA adaptor at HK$730 from Top Force. 3DMark 2003 scored 3797 (2x anti-alias, 1024x768). All tests finished. Not too bad for an old P3-1.4GHz and 512M PC133 SDRAM.

• Found another 4-pin plug that could make another IBM Model M keyboard cable.

• Spent HK$120 to build a new IBM keyboard cable, but I carelessly broke one pin. Guess I need to find parts again. The cable diagram:

                 6pin MINIDIN
                 ------------
             (5) (6)        1 DATA
                |           2 
           (3)     (4)      3 GND
                            4 +5V
             (1) (2)        5 CLOCK
                            6
  1 -- yellow -------+
  3 -- white ------+ |      
  5 -- red ------+ | |
  4 -- black --+ | | | 
               | | | |
              4-pin small connector
  

• Got a free AT to PS/2 keyboard converter.

• Bought a 2-female-1-male 3.5mm stereo connector at HK$8. Combined two 2-female-1-male with a male-male wire, I created a 2-male-1-female connection. Now the radio and the PC could share the Altec Lansing 2100, without the need to turn on the PC.
• Found a part (costed me HK$5) that could help me build a new IBM Model M keyboard cable. Need one more copy of that part.... Haha... I found another one in my shelves for old/un-used parts.

• Bought a flexible full-size keyboard (black,usb,ps2) at HK$60
• Bought a male-to-male 3.5mm stereo cable from http://www.wecl.com.hk at HK$10
• Bought a Epson C41UX black ink cartridge (T038) at HK$40. The C41UX really needs to change both color and black cartridges at the same. Bad design...

• Bought another 7010 Mobile Harddisk Rack at HK$70 from Comdex in SSP.
• Bought a CD/DVD bag at HK$5.
• Bought a bag of CD/DVD paper wrap at HK$5.
• Bought a Polar PC2288 Web Camera (0.35 megapixels) at HK$135 from Welland.

• Bought a internal harddisk Model 7010 3-fan Rack (Data Bridge) at HK$70

• Bought Mendi mini-DVD at HK$68

• Bought a Casio KP-C10 PC Tag Writer at HK$99 from Fortress.

• Disposed of old hardware to http://www.chkci.org.hk/HK/ for re-use.
• Game-port to USB cable at HK$50
• Bought Hitachi ATA-133 160G at $HK560
• Mendi mini (3-inch?) DVD-R at HK$68
• Saw Unique's IP Camera product. Made in Hong Kong. hmm... considering it...

• Bought Logitech MX518 Laser Mouse at HK$398.

• Bought Altec Lansing 2100 2.1 Speaker System at HK$599 from Welland, Hung Hom. Frequency response: 40Hz to 20kHz. S-N Ratio 65dB. Stronger bass, more sharp voices, hope it's worth it.

2005

• Bought Maxell 8x DVD-R (50 pcs) + 1.2x DVD-RW (2pcs) at HK$140
• 3Com 3C16790 5-port dual-speed switch being sold at only HK$286.
• Philips 190X6 being sold at HK$2990 (free Philips shaver).
• Linksys WRT54GS+WMP54GS being sold at HK$970.
• 5x DVD-RAM was being sold at HK$38 a piece....

• Bought Micro$oft Laser Mouse 6000 at HK$319. 5 buttons with scroll wheel, 800/400 dpi switcheable via driver. The driver added a Mangnify function for this mouse.

• Bought Windows XP SP2 retail box version at HK$2189.

• Upgrade the linux server from Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary) to 5.10 (Breezy).
• A 17" CRT Monitor is now less than HK$1000.

• The SPI ATX-250GT was blown up. Possibly overloaded...Before its death, it's powering the Asus CUBX.

• Bought a HP 5L toner (C3906F) at HK$380.

• AMD 3000+, Foxconn NF4UK8AA, sumsung 512 x 2, sapphire x700 = HK$3500

• Bought LG 4167B DVD Recorder (16x DVDR,RW,DL,RAM) at HK$425 from Centralfield.
• Bought TDK 16x DVD-R disc (25 pcs) at HK$98.
• Carelessly short-circuited the Abit SE6 motherboard with the underlying metal plate... blame the loose plastic fixation at the RAM corner of the board.

• Replaced the Abit BP6 Celeron 300A server (Intel 440BX chipset) linux server with the Tekram S3Pro-Au+ P3-700Mhz (VIA 694X). Linux upfraded to Ubuntu 5.04, running 2.6.x kernel. It seemed that I fried the BP6 because I used some conductive heat-transfer compound... dam...
• The Abit SE6 could still boot though its capacitors are bulging.

• The CUBX could no longer work reliably at 133MHz. Now set to run at 124MHz FSB.

• The 20G Deskstar was reporting DriveSeek failure CRC error. Reconnecting the IDE cables seemed to fix the problem. But I think it would die soon.
• LG 4167B DVD recorder being sold at HK$ 460.
• Benq 1640 DVD recorder being sold at HK$ 400 only.

• The Terayon cable modem suddenly connected back to the main network. i-Cable's tech support called in the afternoon claiming a fix on a hub problem (affecting 5/F to 11/F) in the afternoon. So there would be no technician visit tomorrow.

• The blue Terayon cable modem's first LED flashed red while the 3rd and 4th LED flashed green. Customer services of i-Cable arranged technician to check my modem next Tuesday.

• Bought 400W Antec SP400 ATX 2.0 power supply at HK$412. 24-pin power connectorwith 4 pin detactheable. The latest version is 2.01.
• Abit AN8 at HK$1050
• ATHLON 64 3000+ (939) at HK$1230
• Gigabyte GV-NX66T128VP PCIe at HK$1485
• Hitachi 160G SATA at HK$710
• Kingston PC3200 512M at HK$370
• Creative Audigy 2 ZS bulk/OEM at HK$480

• Bought a FOP32 heatsink fan at HK$134 from Wai Fong.
• Bought a grey heat transfer compound ST360-W15 at Hk$8.

• Renewed i-cable broadband at HK$198 per month for a 15-month contract, with 3 months' fee waived, averaged to about HK$160 per month. Should have strived for a better deal. End of contact: 11 Sep 2006

• Bought a IRDA USB adaptor at HK$40.
• Bought a USB 1.1 4-port hub at HK$12.

• The Deskstar 75GXP 15G harddisk fainlly died. It produced "kee kee" sound when tryign to access drive C:. Luckily, the data partition could still be accssed. The drive was replacd with the DeskStar 60GXP 40G harddisk (warranty expired by now).
• Prices of DDR400 512M RAM was below HK$500 now.

2004

• Bought a retractable USB cable (male-female) at HK$20. Seat belt technology...

• Bought a USB hub at HK$40. It refused to work with the CUBX but the TUSL2... strange..... Further testing seemed to suggest that the hub needed to be unplugged and replugged in to make it detectable by the USB chipset....dam.. this stupid hub couldn't be detected after a power down... rubbish...

• Bought Legend 128M USB Pen Drive at HK$199 from Ocean World Technology of Mongkok Computer Center. When inserted into the USB port of TUSL-2, the USB mouse freezed. Needed to re-inserted the mouse.
• Bought a Philips 170B5CS 17" LCD from CentralField at HK$2950. It had a free keyboard and mouse as gift but I relinguished them.

• The fan on the pink heatsink of Radeon has been fried. But it seems that the video card can still function properly.

• Installed Novell SuSE 9.1 in Win2k PC. Compiled kernel 2.6.8.1 successfully using /proc/config.tgz of SuSe. Using FVWM2. Checkinstall-1.6.1 needed to be patched to work. Sendmail and Samba compiled successfully (the next big work would be promail+clamav+spamassassin) Should the COL 3.1 system die, this one would be the replacment.

• The IBM Deskstar 75GXP 15G harddisk reported SMART failure. It may die suddenly soon.

• Bought a 2nd-hand P3-700E at HK$200. Oops.. the VIA694X board couldn't work reliably at 133MHz... shame on VIA...

• Spent an hour to clean the IBM keyboard after so many years. It's desgined for easy cleaning..Need my father's custom-made screw-driver to unscrew it. :).

• Bought LiteOn DVD Combo drive at HK$330 (DVD-ROM + CDRW)
• Bought a conductivity pen at HK$138. The pen has dried up...
• While trying to short 2 pins on the Celeron 533A, I accidentally broke one pin on the CPU. Too bad...

• VideoCom replaced the broken harddisk with a new one after a simple check. Distributor on the warrancy card changed from DigiLand to CMS.

• Bought Hitachi (IBM) 120G 8M Cache harddisk at HK$715. First time in my life, the hard disk looked like a dead one. BIOS couldn't even see it. Serial: C4GRA32M
• prices of 256M PC133 SDRAM rose to HK$500
• prices of 512M DDR400 RAM are about HK$600

• Bought a 2nd-hand Tekram S3Pro-Au+ motherboard at HK$200. It could support 133Mhz FSB and uses VIA694X chipset.
• the Maxtor D740X 60G harddisk is becoming very noisy.

• CUBX's PS/2 ports got errors. Bought a cheap TEGA USB keyboard at HK$48. Worked in both BIOS screen and WinXP

• Prices of 512M DDR RAM rose to HK$860 per piece.

• Bought SPI 300W Power Supply at HK$280
• Bought Pentium III 1.4GHz at HK$1595. 3dmark2001 on P3-1400 scored 6542.

2003

2002

• Bought Micro$oft Intellipoint Optical Mouse at HK$159. 5 buttons with scroll wheel. Should last longer than the previous version.
• The M$ Blue Optical is being sold at HK$259.
• Bad luck! The CUBX got a bad printer port. I had to use an old 8-bit serial+parallel card to replace it. WindowsXP couldn't detect it. I had to manually enter the port number (378-37A). Thankfully, it worked!

• Bought Asus TUSL2-C from Comdex at HK$600.
• Touch wood! The Celeron 1.1GA couldn't work at 133Mhz at default voltage. I think I needed to remove the metal slug on the die, or get a better heat sink...

• Subscribed to the promotional plan from I-Cable. just HK$68 a month. one-year contract.

• Bought Celeron 1.1GA at HK$415.

• Bought a Logitech 800dpi Optiocal Mouse at HK$230.

• TEC replaced my dead 15G 75GXP with another 75GXP. 3-year warranty restarted. Pray.....

• The Deskstar 75GXP 15G harddisk died after formatting and copying. Sent to TransEurope Repair Centre who claimed to return it to me or offer a trade-in after 2 weeks.

• Bought Lite-On 241012B 24w CDRW drive at HK$435 from CentralField. Came with Nero 5.5.7.8 (OEM), 1 blank 12rw CDRW, 1 blank CDR, and a warranty card from CDS. It supports Zone-CLV only, not P-CAV during writing.
• 256M PC-133 SD-RAM is about HK$250 now.

• Bought GlobalWin WBK-68 heatsink at HK$120 from Fine-up Computing. A really big heat-sink, barelly fitted into the CUBX socket. luckily more capacitors around the CPU are small. The Abit SE6 1.0 got enough room to install it though.

• Bought SPI 250W power supply at HK$190, with warranty card from Crown Joy.
• The Enermax power supply not started up again... Finally, it died.

• Applied the pre-emptive patch to 2.4.18 linux kernel

• Squid 2.4-STABLE6 installed.
• e2fsprogs-1.27 installed.

• Bought a 602C computer chair at HK$520 from Tai Yip Furnitures. The shopkeepers were really horrifying...

• Squid 2.4-STABLE4 added to server.

• Maxtor D740X 60G hardidsk at HK$880

• kernel 2.4.18 installed
• 256M DDR RAM at about HK$500

• 256M PC-133 SDRAM has risen back to HK$500 level.

• Installed linux kernel 2.4.17.

2001

• Bought Micron PC-133 SD-RAM 256M (double-sided) at HK$253. It couldn't work at CL 222... dam.
• Bought the Patriot case again, at HK$170 only with power supply.

• Finally got Linux kernel 2.4.14 working..
• Also upgraded the Caldera e-Desktop 2.4 to Workstation 3.1

• Bought QuickCam Home at HK$280. Waste of money...
• Bought Micro PC-133 SD-RAM 256M (double-sided) at HK$195. It could work at CL 222.
• Bought Genius 10M LAN card at HK$75

• Bought Coppermine Celeron 800 at HK$384 from Centralfield
• Bought Asus CUBX from Hornington at HK$600 (should it be $450?)

• Received a free Powerleap adaptor for old socket370 boards. Not working reliably with SE6 and BX3.

• Bought Asus 8X DVD Drive at HK$380.

• ordered Caldera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1

• Bought ELSA Gladiac 511 at HK$ 645. It used a GeForce2 MX400 chip, with 32M SDRAM. It's not as smooth as Voodoo3 in Diablo2, though gave a better score in 3dMark2001. And I forgot to install the chipset driver for i815e on Abit SE6, causing a 40% loss in performance.

• Bought IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40Gbytes harddisk at HK$849.

• Bought Windows 2000 Professional retail box version at HK$2093 via HT HyperNet Limited (special offer from ACCA).

• Bought Buffalo 10/100M network card to replace the damage Intel 82556 card. HK$85. requires tulip driver for use with Linux.

• Bought Sound Blaster Live Value 2 at HK$335. It has no CD-SPDIF
• Bought ACE 256M PC-133 SDRAM (single side) at HK$250. Works well with SE6.
• Abit BH6 is really being sold at HK$250. What a joke! PC2100 are also cheap.
• Expect nForce chipset from Nvidia for AMD CPU.

• Bought Lite-On 12w10rw32r CDRW at HK$875. That Jumbo shop took away the free CD burning software.

• Bought old Intel 82557 LAN card at HK$195.

• Acquired Microsoft Wheeled Mouse (optical) again at HK$250 from Mongkok Computer City for personal use.

• Hyundai PC-133 128M RAM acquired from VideoComm at HK$270.

• Bought a 4-big-2-small tower case with 300W power supply at HK$220.
• Prices of 128M PC133 RAM has dropped to HK$300.
• PC-2100 128M RAM is at about HK$1300 (DDR RAM).

• Pentium III 700MHz CPU (stepping cc0) purcahsed at HK$1100 from VideoComm. Can work stably at 145MHz at 1.65V (could be higher) using FOP32.
• I could hardly feel the difference between 145MHz and 100MHz bus sspeed, though graphics and diska are moving at a bit fater pace.
• Prices of 128M RAM drops through the HK$300 barrier.
• Hyundai PC133 256M RAM is just HK$598! Seriously considering it...

• Switched to HK$238 IMS plan. Needed to wait till end of Feb to be effective. Greedy merchants...

2000

• Genius GF100TXR 10/100 Mbps LAN card acquired at HK$90. Price of Hyundai PC-133 128M RAM dropped to HK$400. T.T Panasonic 7586 CDRW is less than HK$900. Also, 3dfx was eaten by Nvidia.
• Subscribed to the low-usage plan of IMS SuperNetvigator. HK$198 monthly fee, with 20 hours free. Extra hourly charge is HK$2. No contract needed. Installation fee at HK$530.
  • My monthly usage on careful calculation:
  • Sat and Sun: 10 * 2 * 4 = 80 hours
  • Week day: 2 * 5 * 4 = 40 hours
  total 120 hours. Gotta limit my usage to keep the monthly bill at HK$300.

• Hyundai PC-133 128M RAM acquired at HK$560 from Centralfield. Seems to be 7.5ns. Booted up ok

• Panasonic SR-8585B DVD drive is just $545 in Transasia.

• After 2 months of waiting, the broken 6.4G harddisk was replaced by a 5400rpm, UDMA66 Deskstar 75GXP 20G IBM harddisk with the help of Videocom, at the cost of HK$200.
• Bought a unbranded mouse at HK$50.

• Hitachi PC-100 128M RAM is now HK$820. Quantum LM+ 20G is just HK$1095 now.

• Bought a Maxtor DiamondMax 10G 7200rpm harddisk for Stanley at HK$720.

• Bought PQI PC-133 64M RAM at HK$495 for the server machine.

• Salved a MicroLab 4:1 speakers from GlobalNet. Not bad. But too bass!

• Bought a Patriat ATX/AT Desktop/Mini-tower case at HK$170, added HK$80 to to get a 250W SPI power supply.

• Celeron 533A at HK$960 with Intel Fan. Overclockable to 800MHz at 1.65V. yeah!
• Abit SE6 at HK$1045 (with broken cdrom, dam)
• Yamaha 724 sound card at HK$100. Replaced with a new one by VideoCom a few days later. THis board should be water goods. :(

• IBM DTLA 15G Hard disk at HK$ 845. Manufacturered June 2000.
• Dr Foo's Deskstar 6G just died! It was used for only 2 years, manufactured Aug 1998!

• Bought a Globalwin FOP32 heatsink+fan (HK$140) and Star 360 grey thermal grease (HK$8). The heat is wellmade, with a 4200rpm fan.
• 64M PC-100 RAM is now HK$550; PC-133 needs about HK$600!
• 128M PC-100 RAM now needs nearly HK$1100!

• Bought 2theMax EP-MVP3C2 Socket 7 motherboard. Excellent board. Free Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Ghost. udma66 support, with AGP and USB. Also can use both AT and ATX power supplies. Just HK$650!
• Quantum FireBall+ LM relased. 20G being sold at just HK$1296

• Enermax 280W power supply broke donw. Probably killed by moisture or discharge of capacitors. (I turned off the switch the other night).
• Bought a HK$130 T&T 300W power supply instead. This one got a power source for monitor, but no on-off switch.

• Asus V3800 TNT2-Vanta 16M SDRAM 3D Card bought at HK$550. No major problemm but should have bought the SGRAM model. But its drviers couldn't live with Creative Banshee's. Wrong card... M64 is better and less than HK$500!
• Salvaged Lotus Smartsuite (Chinese) from Sunny's house. Also a voice mail module that doesn't need modems. What about the Windows NT Workstaion 3.51?
• Also, Maxtor Diamond Plus 40 20G 7200rpm/2M buffer/10G platter was being sold at HK$1320.

• MAG 786FD 17" monitor purchased at HK$ 2590! 1600x1200 at 75Hz Nice shuttle key, with a nice appearance. Shouldn't I have bought the Philips 107P?
• Prices of PC-133 128M RAM has dropped below HK$800 by now.

1999

• Prices of 128M RAM is staying at about HK$1300 now!
• Rumours claimed that Coppermine 500E could be overclocked to 750MHz!

• Sony CPD-110GS 15" monitor bought at HK$1690 from ANA Computer in Mongkok Computer Center. 1280x1024 at 60Hz. Aperture Grill monitor with micro-meter thick damper wires, but very sharp and bright. Can do 85MHz at 1024x768.
• The NEC 4FG just isn't working properly. But not quite dead, ...

• Pentium-60 USA motherboard acquired from Fiona's husband William Foo. It could use the 16M DIPP RAM from my old 486. Excellent!
• Prices of 128M RAM now soared to HK$1600 !!!

• New mini-tower Vertex (wai-dat) ATX case (HK$185) with smaller footprint, easier to dismantle, lots of room above CPU, back panel opened for two 3" fans, holes at left and right side, and weights less. Made in China!!
• Too bad the top is curved, not flat. Alos, the switch is NOT designed to avoid accidental touch, unlike the T5A case. And I forgot to ask the shopkeeper to remove the price of the power supply! lost probably HK$100!
• EnerMax 280W power supply acquired, HK$300. It got a on-off switch to turn it off, with dual fans. Still doesn't have a power source for the monitor.

• Bought Siemens PC-100 128M RAM at HK$560 only!
• Celeron 300A (Socket 370) purchased at HK$430 from P5 Computer, with Magic-Pro Slocket at HK$120, and 0.12A cooling fan (4500 rpm) with heat sink at HK$30.

• Caldera Openlinux 2.2 purchased.

• Unique MOT56sp modem acquired by trading in the Unqiue 28.8k! A tiny little black box, smallest and lightest of all Unique external modems. Costed HK 398!

• RedHat Linux Deluxe acquired. Included 4 books in Acrobat format!
• Price of Celeron CPU dropped nearly 30%! SO were RAM and hard-disks in just one month! haa...

1998

• Upgraded to Pentium II (HK$ 6600):
  • Asus P2B-F motherboard (ISAx2, PCIx4, AGPx1) (about HK$1300)
  • Pentium II Celeron 300A (about HK$1200)
  • 64 M Hitachi PC-100 SDRAM -6 (about HK$1100)
  • Quantum EX6400A UDMA33 Hard Disk (6.4G) (about HK$1200)
  • Creative 3D Blaster Banshee VGA (about HK$1200)
  • Elan-Vital ATX Power supply (240W)
  • Asus 36X UDMA-33 IDE CD-ROM (with analog/digital audio channel)
  • Elan-Vital T5-AB ATX Tower case (about HK$500)
• Dam! I forgot to take back all the screws and keylocks that came with the case!

• Sound Blaster 16 Installed.
• Found that Unique's 34F wasn't working reliably!

Someone bought this set of computer at HK$5280.
• Asus P5A motherboard
• AMD K6-2 300MHz CPU boxed
• HIT PC100 -6 64M RAM
• IBM 6.4G harddisk
• Panasonic 32x CDROM drive
• Winfast 3500 ZX display card
• Genius 56K external Modem

1997

1996

My younger sister bought this at HK$18400
• Asus TP4XE motherboard
• Intel Pentium P5-133MHz CPU
• 16M EDO RAM cache
• 1.2G harddisk
• 1.44M floppy diskette drive
• 6410 SVGA card with 1MB RAM
• Panasonic CR-581-J 4x CDROM drive
• SoundBlaster 16-bit sound card
• Mini tower case
• Sony CPD1425 14" Trinitron SVGA Monitor
• US Robotics 28800 modem
• Acer keyboard

1995

• Crosslink V.fc modem at HK$1150
• Unique AT-2400S is re-sold to a BBS user
• Acquire a cheap 386-20 motherboard for BBSing.

• Unique Communique 34F (28800 baud) at HK$1850!
• Tseng Lab ET-4000 W32p VL-bus VGA card at HK$900!

• IBM Model M 101-key keyboard (Part# 52G9658, Plt No: F2, Made in USA) at HK$850!
• ORIGINAL Wing Commander III at 270 only!!!
• ZyXEL U1496E+ sold to one of my best partners!
• Unique AT-2400S comes back!

• Great Simplification:
  • Call-back Verifier Removed
  • Menu number reduced
  • One file area
  • more meaningful message areas
• BBS name change: The Avatar BBS

1994

• Bought Canon BJ-20 inkjet Printer at HK$3480.
• Parallel printer cable at HK$20.

• OS/2 Warp 3.0 with Bonus Pack at HK$ 975, ordered via Toppan-Moore.
• ThrustMaster Weapon Control System - Mark II at US$149.95
• ThrustMaster ACM card for 2 joysticks at US$39.95.
• Order 4 games from USA (Doom II, Armored Fist, Tie Fighters, MechWarrior II) at US$181.00!

• CD-ROM Drive upgraded to NEC 3Xi at HK$2500 with Future Domain TMC-950 SCSI controller at HK$350.
• Panasonic 562B CD-ROM drive and the Sound Blaster Pro
• given to my first classmate finishing PhD!

• ThrustMaster FCS Pro at US$149.95
• ThrustMaster Rudder Control System HK$149.95

• Board change owning to OS/2 incompatibility problem.
• System upgrade: Costed me nearly HK$7700!
  • Leo AM486GVT-2 VL-bus motherboard
  • NEC 16M RAM 72-pin DIPP RAM
  • AMD DX2-66 CPU
• Original Asus 486 board returned to Wk Chan because it couldn't run OS/2!

• Lightcom 144F donated to Caritas Education
• Bought RS232 cable at HK$30
• New 16C552-based serial card from Wing Lee at HK$195
• Fidonet node application rejected
• There are fake i486DX2-66 floating around
• Major software purchase from Kenfil Distribution

• Hard disk upgrade. Conner CPS540A 540M at HK$2580.
• DOS upgrade: Novell DOS 7 at 700
• Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 at 980
• Modem upgrade to ZyXEL U1496E+ V.32bis with ZFAX at 1400

• Panasonic 562B 2x CD-ROM drive acquired at HK$ 1250
• 220W AT Power supply at HK$250
• Hard disk cable at HK$10.
• 2nd IDE Drive removed.

• A/C power switch at HK$25

• PC Upgrade to 80486:
• Asus motherboard with VL bus
• i486dx2-66

1993

• Installed uupc/2 under OS/2
• Harvard Graphics for Windows 2.0
• Frontdoor upgraded to v2.11.
• Second IDE drive installed: Microscience 7200-00
• MS-DOS 6.2 upgrade
• Video Card Test: Cirrus Logic 5426

• Installed GECHO 1.00.
• Connected more echomail area.
• BBS name change: Lancelot.
• First batch of echomail received and sent.

• Finished setting up FrontDoor 2.02.
• Successful trial as fidonet point 6:700/37.88

• Bought Canon BJ-02 ink cartridge at HK$165.

• Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 installed at HK$1200.
• Installed MS-DOS 6.0.

1992

• Printer upgrade: Cannon BJ-20 at HK$2480 from Raider (H.K.) Technology.
• Printer cable at HK$20

• Acquired and installed OS/2 2.0.
• Installed 386bsd 1.0.

• Converted to SuperBBS 1.16 from RemoteAccess 1.01.
• Maximus/2 appeared, followed by Binkleyterm/2.
• RemoteAccess became a commercial package.

• Upgrade to 80386 (bought from Wk Chan):
  • ASUS board with 64K cache
  • i386DX-33 (64K cache)
  • 4M NEC RAM

• Bought a Sony 1.44M 3.5" floppy drive at HK$370.

1991

• Took the Fujitech monitor for repairing at HK$400, with the help of Lap's Honda 2nd-hand Car. Well, I don't think the repair center did anything....

• Installed MS-DOS 5.0.
• Converted to RemoteAccess 1.0 from QuickBBS.
• Installed QUICKED as on-line message editor. a commercial package.

1990

• A4 Optical Mouse at HK$240
• Installed QuickBBS for private use. FrontDoor 0.99 released that rivaled the functionality of Binkleyterm.
• BBS Name: Donkeyware

• Bought Headland 286 20MHz motherboard at HK$897.

1989

• Video upgrade from Centralfield:
  • Tseng Lab ET3000 (512K) at HK$1400
  • Fujitech SVGA monitor at HK$2700

• Bought a 101-key keyboard KB-6251 at HK$300

1988

• Old XT sold to my F.7 classmate (Mr. Choi) at HK$2000! Needed to help take the PC to his home in Chai Wan.

• Upgrade to PC/AT compatible (HK$ 12000) with the help of my classmate ML Chan.
  • Headland 80286 CPU
  • ST-62B motherboard
  • Dual monochrome Monitor
  • Hercules monochrome graphics card
  • Seagate ST-251 (40M)
  • 1.2M floppy drive
  • 2M RAM

1987

• Epson LX-800 from Broadmind Computer. Free gift!

• My first computer: IBM PC/XT compatible (HK$3800)
  • 8088 CPU
  • Taxan CGA monochrome monitor
  • 360K Floppy Drive
  • 640K RAM