First update of 2010 – New PC, Solid State Hard Drive, and more

oakwhiz — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:59:32 +0000

Wow, has it been a long time or what? I haven’t updated since last year. I’ve been working on many non-software-related things in the meantime and haven’t had the time to fix and update the site lately. Here’s a list of what’s been going on lately:

Going to m.minousoft.com now serves as a shortcut to the condensed mobile version of the site. However, you don’t necessarily need to use the “m” subdomain - this is simply for convenience. Going to minousoft.com from most mobile devices will trigger the mobile site automatically.
Unused files, scripts, and databases have been purged from the server, which could possibly provide a speed boost.
Everything has been updated to the latest version and the spam filters have been cleared.
Over the holidays, I built a brand new PC from scratch. The good news is that I will be able to work more effectively now that all of my performance-related gaming issues are gone. This allows me to develop using multithreading, x64 architecture, pixel shaders, HDR lighting, and all that good stuff… Unfortunately, this means I will have to purchase a new hard disk and move all of my old files over, so everything I was working on before is on hold for now.
…which brings me to the next point. I remixed quite a few new tracks, but can’t upload them because they are stuck on my old hard drive.
I made a cheap solid state hard drive out of two components. The first is a 4GB 133x CompactFlash (CF) card, usually used for professional digital photography, which I picked up for $20. The second is a Chinese-manufactured CF-IDE adapter which serves as a breakout board to adapt the CF card’s pins to the IDE interface’s pins. CF cards are electrically compatible with the IDE (PATA) bus, but the pins are in different sizes and locations. The adapter I used had 2.5mm pitch pins (instead of 3.5mm) on the IDE side so that I could insert it into a laptop with a dead hard drive. Laptop IDE connectors have built-in power pins, so for 3.5mm, you would need to plug in a Molex connector for power.. The laptop recognized the CF card and I was able to load Windows XP Pro onto the CF card leaving around 2.5GB left for programs and data. It boots up very quickly, but suffers from constant paging due to the low amount of RAM present (256MB). However, it works well, and is a cheaper solution than buying a normal laptop hard drive. One very important thing to note, however, is that operating systems like Windows use the hard drive as a paging file. Flash memory can easily wear out from all the writes, so it’s better to use an OS like Linux configured not to use swap space.
I’m still looking for tabbing wire, ring terminals, and a charge controller for my 10W solar panel. I don’t want to drop too much cash on my solar project as I have a few other projects to work on as well. For the most part, my solar panel is about 80% finished. I have a complete frame made of aluminum, polycarbonate, and cardboard backing, and I have my battery, inverter, and cables pretty much ready. If you know where to get any of these for cheap, feel free to contact me.

Minousoft Software » ssd

First update of 2010 – New PC, Solid State Hard Drive, and more