Since USB is still ‘all the rage’ I thought I might take the time to show you some of my USB devices, which are compatible with Linux and which I personally find useful.

USB - IDE/SATA

Konig Electronic USB 2.0 to IDE / S-ATA adapter (external, CMP-USBIDESAT2)

Just useful if you have some harddrives around which you need to test, format or fill and then want to put away again (or destroy). It ships with an external power supply, so you are all good to go.

swat@decius:~$ lsusb
 Bus 002 Device 008: ID 152d:2338 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. JM20337 Hi-Speed USB to SATA & PATA Combo Bridge

USB - RS-232

Belkin USB RS-232 (F5U103v)

RS-232 is still used when you configure switches or as a back-up interface for a server. Unfortunately netbooks do not tend to have a RS-232 port anymore, so this is the perfect solution.

swat@decius:~$ lsusb
 Bus 005 Device 043: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port

USB - Ethernet

Apple USB ethernet

If you need more than your standard (one) ethernet port on your laptop, this is a good solution. It is small and just works. The downside is that it is an Apple product and it’s only 100Mbit/s.

swat@decius:~$ lsusb
 Bus 002 Device 012: ID 05ac:1402 Apple, Inc.

FOSS, Hardware, Ubuntu-NL, Ubuntu.com

Last saturday I visited the cebit again. I go there almost every year (I try to). This year it was a bit smaller than the year before. Not all of the exhibition rooms were completely filled, but it was extremely crowded nevertheless. At the end of the day my feet hurt and I had a memory card full of nice memories. I will share some of them with you:

The good:

• New toys / previews
• IBM sphere (extremely cool)
• Open Source was also represented (even if it was not a huge part of CeBIT)
• Ubuntu-DE stand
• Free/clean toilets and the parking

The bad:

• The weather, it rained a lot and I missed the sunshine.
• Ugly toys like the Hummer housing
• I was only one day at the CeBIT

The ugly:

• Extremely crowded ( a lot of children )

Events, FOSS, Games, Hardware, Ubuntu, Ubuntu-NL, Ubuntu.com

A while ago I found myself in the need of a new keyboard and I heard about this special keyboard, which supposedly would totally rock. I am always careful when I hear that kind of marketing and advertisement talking. After a lot of consideration I eventually bought Das Keyboard (ultimate) and I never looked back since.

Pros:

• Typing comfort
• Black keys, so visually less noisy
• USB hub in keyboard (if you need to charge your media player)
• Huge geek factor
• Compatible with Linux (duh)

Cons:

• ‘Typing sound’ needs some time to get used to. You hear every single keystroke, but after a short while I did not find it disturbing at all.
• The price

What would a geek do without some sort of gadget to keep track of the time, which is so volatile. This is about as geeky as you can get, the binary clock. I got the silver version with the blue LED’s (which are _very_ bright, when it is dark inside a room).

Pros:

• 12 and 24 hour mode
• Binary horizontally or vertically
• 3 Brightness settings
• Looks great

Cons:

• If you need to know the time when it is very early (and your brain did not boot yet) or when you are drunk (and your brain is too lazy to function properly), it takes a while to ’see’ the time.
• Sometimes the LED’s feel too bright in a completely dark room, even on the lowest brightness setting.

Hardware, Personal, Ubuntu, Ubuntu-NL, Ubuntu.com

De dongel van KPN, wie kent hem nog niet van die ‘grappige’ reclame spot? Afgelopen week had ik even de gelegenheid om met het apparaatje te spelen en ja hoor, het werkt onder Intrepid, maar net niet helemaal out-of-the-box.

Ik sloot het apparaat aan en Ubuntu herkende het meteen.

Bus 004 Device 015: ID 12d1:1003 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E220 HSDPA Modem / E270 HSDPA/HSUPA Modem

Vervolgens probeer je via NetworkManager de 3G verbinding tot stand te brengen, maar het werkte gewoon niet. De oplossing was erg simpel. Men neme een simlock-vrije telefoon, stopt de UMTS SIM er in, zet de PIN beveiliging uit en het werkt. Blijkbaar heeft de NetworkManager in Intrepid dus last van een kleine bug (die al gefixed is in nieuwere versies van NetworkManager) waar gelukkig een erg makkelijke workaround voor is.

Hardware, Ubuntu-NL

Well, today my package arrived and it contained two Playstation2 games (DanceStage Fusion and DanceStage Max) and my Deluxe DDR Ignition Dance Pad (with a USB connector!) Now I can also play games like pydance and Stepmania on my own computer. Apparently Feisty automagically recognizes the pad: input: USB Gamepad as /class/input/input11 input: USB HID v1.10 Joystick [USB Gamepad ] on usb-0000:00:02.0-2 Got to go and lose some pounds (playing Fusion on my PS2) and have some fun.

Games, Hardware, Ubuntu-NL

A few minutes ago two packages arrived which contained precious cargo. I’m now a proud owner of an iPod nano (picture) and Sennheiser CX 300 in-ear headphones (picture). Now I can finally throw out my old MP3 player which had 256MB, a closed source file system (some weird borked up version of FAT) and was Windows only. By the way, the iPod nano looks really nice and slick, great work Apple!

Hardware, Ubuntu-NL

There are some items I wanted to purchase for my laptop for quite some time now, and last week I finally ordered them. “What are they?” might some of you think, well, here’s the very small list.

3Com 3CRXJK10075 PCMCIA WLAN NIC, which is just plug and play with Edgy. Because of the Atheros chipset inside, it uses Madwifi. Unfortunately, because of some problem with Madwifi, I can’t use this card to connect to any AP’s. (I already filed a bug report) But that was not the reason for me to buy this card. The reason was that this card supports hostapd and monitoring mode

My second new toy was a Haicom HI-204III-USB GPS mouse, which also works great with my Edgy laptop. I tested it very quickly with gpsd and it worked perfectly. So now I’ll be able to track my movements when I’m on the road in my car, but what if my laptop battery dies?

For that purpose I found a Belkin 300W (12V -> 230V converter) very useful. Since a laptop doesn’t use much power (especially mine), this would not put a strain on my car battery. Now I can use and recharge my laptop (and cellphone etc.) on the road, finally no more begging for power

These purchases were actually pretty overdue, so I am glad that I made them. Hopefully I will be well enough soon to use these items and put them to the test. I always wanted to map the AP’s in my village and see how secure they actually are.

Hardware, Personal, Ubuntu-NL