Recent content by felix666

A lot of Sony equipment in the 90s went bad because of bad smt electrolytics (including my costly semipro Hi-8 camcorder). Foiled components can be easily affected by manufacturing variances of their internals. The best examples nowadays are specific batches of lithium batteries that catch...

I just built a system using the A88X-Pro, and an A10-7850K. I wanted a full ATX board in order to install an enormous CPU heat sink ( a Zalman CNPS-14X) and have a silent system, as the box sits two feet away from my face. Mission accomplished! Funnily, under a heavy load the CPU temp has not...

The negative voltages are not always read correctly by the on-board hardware monitors, as they use a couple of resistors to fool an A/D that reads positive values only. Then the BIOS applies an equation to convert the reading to more or less the negative voltage. To really know if the -5V is...

If they have their youtube channel, and that their clip gets say a million views it will pay many times the smashed PS4. Who are the idiots?

Gee I remember tinkering an intercom using an MPA-40, some 30 years ago... it has no "mic out" connector. You can use the voltage-reducing resistor between the GND and the 4 ohm out signal, independently of which other connection the speaker uses. Also, TEAC says that the recorder only records...

Do you hear anything from headphones connected to the front panel of the Teac unit?

With consumer products, everything is about the surface finish and not on the core functionality. Think of Linux vs Windows or Apple. Think of the first Linux distis. Open source is open source, not saying at all that is isn't good, but there aren't millions and millions invested into the...

Is the power supply above the motherboard or at the bottom of the chassis? One of my systems (Phenom II X4 955) has its power supply above the motherboard, and some hotspot developed around the CPU and the mobo regulators. The CPU temp reached unbelievable highs, until I changed the power...

Déjà vu! Anyone remembers those micro laptops made in the late 90's? They were running Windows CE. It looked like you had Windows on a micro machine. The consumer version if this OS has been orphanized quickly, leaving the customers with machines that gathered dust because of no support. CE...

It would have been nice to describe what's different with the G510s from the previous G510, besides the color scheme. I don't see a thing to convince me to drop the MX-510 and 518 in favor of one of these new mice. When they misbehave, I open them up, clean them, and they're back to life.

Something easy to try too: It can also be dust accumulation, between the fins of the CPU heatsink, that blocks the airflow. If you have access to compressed air, or the exit of a vacuum cleaner, pushing air onto the heatsinks can cure many problems. If you do it make sure that you have a way...

Since Intel rules, don't worry there will be driver updates and many efforts to turn the bug into a feature. Or if it is serious they will just say tough luck and the next gen will correct that, as the asian board manufacturers say (motherboards don't get repaired they are trashed and replaced...

Just remember why DirectX was created. Each program had to provide its own suite of drivers for an array of hardware manufacturers for functions not covered by the original DOS environment. It was hamstringing the development of both the software and hardware developers and created unbreakable...

Hey Igor, you mix input and output protection. This PS223 chip is a good part, but it monitors the voltage and current outputs. Nothing to do with AC-line input protection or PFC. Nice articles besides that.

I would be surprised if a cardboard casing passes the UL approval.