Technically minded Weblog

Haven’t noticed that, but it seems that our email provider (hotmail) now has free SMTP and POP3 available.
Thanks to that, we can get emails quicker, without having to go to live mail website.
Now text-only mails work fine too, and no ads or links are added to them.
Along with free MX, Hotmail has become a great service, much better than the crappy webspace.de one we were using.

Ok, now the Update part. I bought a new DVD burner, to replace a DVD/CD-RW combo drive (which is already 5 years old), new drive works well.
The IDE-SATA HDD to USB cable (package with everything that was it it) was returned to the shop for a replacement. Haven’t got a reply yet, I hope it arrives in 1-2 days.
I don’t think I will use the included PSU much, because most of those cheap ass supplies bundled with connectors are crappy. They do work (for a while), but I want them not to only work, but to work reliably (eg. to not smoke or explode after just a few uses) and cause no damage do the drives they are powering.
I have an old (circa. 1996) 100W supply that works well powering the HDDs I used with this connector. But it’s too big to carry around just to power a single drive.
Ok, that’s all for today.

Bought a connector to convert internal harddrives to external. Tested it with 4 untested old hard disks (2x 1.2GB Quantums, 1x 6.48GB Fujitsu, 1×3.2GB Seagate Medalist).
Fujitsu drive was totally dead, Both Quantums worked but one was loud as hell and other had bad sectors. The only more or less useful drive was Seagate. Filled it with MP3 files and connected to a music player (which has USB port) to use as a storage for MP3 files.
The bad thing is that someone has opened the box where the IDE to USB connector was before I received it, because there was a cord to connect PSU to a wall socket, but the PSU itself was missing (I called the shop where I ordered the IDE2USB cable and they told me to return the box for a replacement). Had to power the harddrives using an old 100W Delta PSU.
The cable seems to work with CD/DVD drives too (at least my old LG DVD/CDRW drive worked with jumper set to Slave) although manual that came with the cable does not mention CD/DVD drive support.
I will probably buy a cheap internal DVD drive (I often have to reinstall OS for someone and it is burned onto a DVD and not all of PC I service have an DVD drive, but most newer PCs should be able to boot from USB, unless PC is a dinosaur or some laptop with no boot through USB) to use as external drive.
OK, I see that I’m making a long story out of this post, so that’s all for now.