TechBlog from Sewell

I put together a little flash movie to explain some basic computer slots. Click here to watch it.

I wanted to make a formal introduction to our new resident gamer at Sewell Direct. Feel free to post questions about gaming hardware on this blog and Tiki-Man, the legendary gamer who actually has an Alienware license plate holder on his car, will be happy to help you out.

Also keep your eye out for a lot of new products geared towards the gaming industry - we are currently working with suppliers on video cards, sound cards, cases, coolers, power supplies and more. I will let Tikiman do the rest of the introductions on these new products as they come out since (admittedly) I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to gaming.

We are excited about the prospect of entering new markets - feel free to let us know what you would like to see on Sewell Direct.

We just had a customer return a PS2 to USB mouse/keyboard adapter. When the return had been authorized, the part was thought to be defective. When we tested the adapter, it worked fine. Just to make sure it wasnt defective, we tested it with several mice in several different ps2 ports. We plugged it directly into the computer, and tried it in two different KVM switches.

We then found out that the customer had been using a Dell optical mouse. I scraped our barrel, and found a Dell mouse(non optical). Upon plugging the mouse into the adapter, I found that nothing happened. The mouse was definitely good, and so was the PS2 to USB adapter. I searched the web and found several other people with the same problem. It turns out that Dell mice are not always compatible with these adapters.

Maybe Dell has an adapter that does work. As for our adapter, it is not compatible with Dell mice. Our adapter was made specifically Logitech mice. Most generic mice use the Logitech setup. Microsoft Mice also use the same setup as Logitech mice.

PCMCIA card slots are the card slots that most laptops currently have. However, with laptops getting smaller and smaller, this seems likely to change. Many smaller laptops and pocket PCs have Compact Flash slots.

Compact Flash(CF) is derived from PCMCIA. With a Compact flash to PCMCIA converter, you can use many PCMCIA cards with the CF slot on your newer, smaller computer. Before you purchase the CF to PCMCIA adapter, you will want to check on a few things:

1. Make sure that your PCMCIA card operates at 3.3V.
2. Make sure your PCMCIA cards power consumption is 500mA. If it is higher, then your CF slot will not work with it.
3. Make sure that there is a driver available for your Pocket PC to use that PCMCIA card
4. CF slots use 11 address lines to communicate with CF cards, while PCMCIA slots use 26 address lines. Make sure that your PCMCIA card only uses 11 of its 26 for communication.

If you are unsure of any of these specs, then contact the manufacturer or vendor of the PCMCIA card, and ask them the same questions.

We are having our USB to Serial Adapter tested with NI’s Labview. To see the results click here.

PCMCIA to PCI adapters are used to connect a PCMCIA(cardbus) card to a desktop computer. Our card adapter uses the Ricoh chipset. The only compatibility problems that we have experienced have been with networking cards. I’ve only heard of a few people having this problem. It would be nice to have a list of cards that don’t work with this adapter. Maybe that’s a bit unrealistic, since there are so many cards out there. So, how about we post a card’s info if we find out that it works or doesnt work with PCMCIA to PCI adapters. We just had a customer use it with the Novatel V620 network card. So far it has worked great. If anyone has tested a similar scenario, let us know what you found.

Click here if you are trying to connect a PCI card to a laptop’s PCMCIA slot.

Here is a transcript of an IM conversation between two of our support technicians about WinInterlnk, a software program used to connect from Windows to a DOS machine running INTERSVR. WinInterlnk and WinIntersvr, as well as the original INTERLNK and INTERSVR were developed by Sewell Development Corporation. WinInterlnk and WinIntersvr are available for free download to owners of a licensed copy of FastLynx. The following transcript has been edited for readability.

steve says:
I have a customer on the phone trying to get WinInterlnk set up with FastLynx

pete says:
What is he trying to do?

steve says:
He is trying to connect a Win 2000 and a 6400 RF unit…?

pete says:
First, is he running INTERSVR on the 6400?

pete says:
(in DOS)

steve says:
Yes

steve says:
He has it connected and INTERSVR is running on the 6400

pete says:
If he has it connected, then the 6400 should show up as its own drive letter when he opens My Computer. Does it?

steve says:
It’s not. Does he need INTERLNK running?

steve says:
ok… maybe he is getting it figured it out.

pete says:
No, he just needs to open WinInterlnk and connect via the COM port that the serial cable is plugged into. He can close WinInterlnk when the connection has been made. The WinInterlnk program 1) sets up a drive letter by which you can access the remote machine and 2) tells you the connection status.

steve says:
I think he has a drive letter now, but it says it is inaccessable

pete says:
Is FastLynx saying it is inaccessible or Windows?

steve says:
I think it was Windows, but now it looks like it is working

steve says:
Did he just have to close the programs after the connection was made?

pete says:
Since the serial connection is a lot slower than accessing his local drive, he needs to remember to wait a few seconds for any interaction to complete everytime he does something that communicates with the 6400, e.g. copy, delete, DIR, etc.

steve says:
Oh, ok

pete says:
In other words, if tries to delete something, just because Windows might report that the file is deleted, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the file is actually finished being deleted on the remote machine.

steve says:
That seems to have done it for him. Thanks!

pete says:
Now he should be able to run FastLynx in Local Connection mode and access the 6400 as a locally mapped drive.

We recently had a customer that had ordered a 1.8 inch USB 2.0 Toshiba Hard Drive Enclosure. Their Hard Drive had a female connection, so we thought it had the same interface as all other 1.8 inch Toshiba drives. It turned that the interface was completely different. Rather than having a 50 pin female connection, it had a 68 pin female connection. It was a Hard Drive made for plugging into PCMCIA slots. We do not carry any enclosures for this type of drive. Because they are not as common as other drives, I imagine that there aren’t any enclosures out there for this product, but maybe I’m wrong. The one model of HD that we know has this setup is the MK2001MPL.

If you would like to hook up a Toshiba PC Card Hard Drive to your desktop computer, then try using a PCMCIA to PCI adapter.

If you’re like me, reaching behind your computer to unplug your speakers in order to plug your headset in is one of life’s greatest challenges. Almost everytime I do it, I end up plugging the microphone cable into the speaker port or vice versa and get frustrated in the process. Even when I moved our computer to the desktop, it was still a dreaded task. One day as I was hunched over my computer performing the switch, it occurred to me that someone out there needs to make a simple switch that plugs into the speaker and microphone ports that allows you to, with the touch of a button, switch between your pc speakers and your headset. When I discovered that one already exists, I felt like Cinderella when the Fairy Godmother appeared. As soon as we got them in stock, I immediately purchased one. We carry the Plantonics PC Speaker Headset Switch because it comes with built-in speaker and microphone cables (some use detachable cables which isn’t ideal from a consumer’s perspective because then you’d have to buy the cables separately).

This may not seem like such a cool product to every computer user, but to me and my wife this is the greatest thing that’s happened since sliced bread. My wife likes it because she constantly uses the headset calling and video conferencing her family and I like using the speakers to listen to music and watch movies. I too use the headset to listen to spoken word daily so you can imagine how frequently we switch between the two.

With laptops becoming more of a mainstream computer solution, more people are suffereing from lapburn. Lapburn is caused by overheated laptops resting too long on the laps of users. It can be very uncomfortible, and I’m sure that the sergeon general would strongly discourage anyone from purposefully getting it. Lapburn can be prevented by using laptop coolers. And as one of my old health professors always use to say, “prevention is the best medicine.”

We carry two varieties of laptop coolers. One is the XPad Laptop Heatshield. The other is the Nexus Computer Notebook Cooler.

Not only do these laptop coolers prevent lapburn, they also increase the life of your laptop. When your laptop stays cool, its fans arent on as long. Since the fans aren’t on as long, your battery life will last longer.