Tape Resources - Frequently Asked Questions. At last a pretty good source for what is a good miniDV tape. The answer seems to be the Panasonic Master MQ which is 1db better than PQ. Then there is Sony EX which is 2db better than their PR. Seems like using professional tapes is the ticket.

Blank Mini DV Tapes at Discount Prices. Wow, a site that specializes in media. Good prices on minidv tapes.

FAQ: DV Format Technology. Strange details about what is really going on in digital video

Game Z, Inc. - BatteryMegasource - Product Catalog. Another third party source of batteries at lower prices, but not clear how reliable they are.

battery, batteries ,Canon BP-511, bp-522, BP-535 canon camcorder battery,lithium ion battery. Cheap batteries for the Canon Optura MC. This is the BP-522 or equivalents.

cameraworld.com. Thisplace usually has the best prices and biggest selection. NOt sure how it compares with b&h or adorama in terms of quality though.

Current Digital Video News - consumerDVreviews.com. Antoher great site for digital video reviews, etc.

Using the Sony TRV900. This is probably the most popular prosumer camcorder. Has 3 CCDs but is in a small form factor.

dvspot review: Canon Optura 100MC. Another good review of the 100M. Less gushing. He didn't like the small form factor much.

Pro-Am SPS - Traffic Safety : Safety Vests. Didn't get these, but here is a good site if I think I need even more visibility stuff.

OEM Computer Gear. They seem to have every IDE Raid card in the sun. I finally got a Promise.

Home Cinema Choice Online Reviews. Lookes at this in reviews to see what to get Dad. Finally got him an Outlaw

Progressive Scan & Progressive Shutter Video. A good piece explaining how current camcorders are at 60 frames interlaced, but some can do 30 frames progressive.

Canon Optura 100MC Camcorder Review. They sure seemed to like this camcorder. It competes with the Sony DCR-PC100 and seems like a good choice plus it has progressive scan.

Electronics Reviews - CNET.com. The best place to see reviews, but it looks like they've stopped doing reviews since August 2001.

A complete guide to digital cameras, digital photography, and digital video. A good education site digital cameras.

Sony DCR-TRV900 Camcorder Review. This camera seems like the top end, sine it has 3 CCDs and is therefore professional. About to be replaces by the DCR-TRV950 apparently.

Camcorderinfo.com - camcorder reviews, digital video, video production. Top of the list for Camcorder reviews.

Mud Sweat & Gears - Accessories - Pumps $29 Silca Black from Mud Sweat and Gears

Silca Pista Foot Pump. Need to get a floor pump for work

PBS Kids: Arthur: The World's Most Famous Aardvark. The most favorite online games for the kids.

Interactive, educational activities for children 5 -14.. A site for grace

Puzzles at All-Star Puzzles

CRpuzzles Picture Scramble Puzzles Index. MOre fun PUzzles. Makes a great way to create a priize

Directory: On this site : Games. Alex loves Harry Potter and so does Calvin. Here are some online games

Brain Teasers. A greatplace for math puzzles.

The Home Theater SPot!: Dish or DirecTV A good update on the Dish vs. DirecTV HD wars. The net is that nothing much has changed. With Dish, get a 6000 and you see HD HBO and SHO. With DirecTV get a Zenith and you see HD HBO and this new HDNet. Personally I think I'd get HDNet and go with DirecTV, but I'll see.

The Home Theater SPot!: D-VHS in 1080i reviewed at widescreen review For those Mits owners out there. Your Mitsubishi HDTV is upgradable with the Promise Module. The Promise Module will add an internal HDTV OTA turner, IEEE1394(i.Link, DTVLink) ports and digital audio output. The release data for the Promise Module will be made during Mits new line dealer show ocurring the first two weeks of April. Any Mits HDTV set with the Promise Module can connect to the firewire ports of the JVC and Mits D-VHS VCRs. You can count on the Mits being totally compatible with the Promise Module. Currently I have no data on the compatablity of the JVC with the Promise Module. So if there any Mits Intergrated HDTV ouwners out there, one of you could do us all a favor and test the compatablity of the Mits Firewire with the JVC.

The Home Theater SPot!: HD DirecTV OTA HD = can this be done? Zenith DTV1080 seems like the best choice plus you need a three LNB antenna. THey say $1000 should take care of it. So, this looks like what I'll be getting. NOw if only I can find that phased array antenna :-)

HDNet Home Page. Another new site.

HDNut. Wow a whole site for high definition power users

AltaVista - World / Translate. Babelfish seems like the best translator around. Great for reading those Italian bicycle sites!

Quantex Zone - Vortex Control Panel XP. Someone who is writing drivers for a dead sound card. I love him!

Vortex of Sound. When Aureal went bankrupt, there was no place to get drivers, or so I thought. Here is a place!

Rage Underground -=- ATI Graphics Drivers and Support, from Rage 128 to Radeon. My server has an old Rage 128 GL card. Amazing that there is actually an entire website just on that chipset!

ASUS Software | Motherboard Sofeware download menu. For downloading the latest ASUS motherboard BIOS

FastTrak100 TX2 Downloads. Been having trouble losing stuff on my mirrored system. Upgrading now to the latest BIOS to see if this helps.

Sputnik, Inc.. Wow a cool starutp building software for WLANs that turns every client into a router.

Sale Clothing List. Good place to look for bike clothes. I'm on a screaming yellow high-visibility kick.

ITPRC - Wireless. wireless specific information also includes a good set of links on WLAN security. told me about netstumbler which is free unlike airopeek or nai sniffer

NetStumbler - Proudly Stumbling a Street Near You - EtherealA cool site that talks about how to have wireless LAN card specific sniffer. airopeek is one.

Windows Packet Capture LibraryA Packet Capture tools lives under it all.

Index of /distribution/win32 This is a packet sniffer. It is pretty clear, you need intrusion detection which is a rules based thing. Ethereal is just a sniffer without rules. Then there is LANguard which looks at your machines.

.:[packet storm]:. - http://packetstormsecurity.org/. Another site with an even great name for security. Also checkout www.whitehats.com

SecurityFocus Corporate Site. Another great site. Has tools as well.

Snort - The Open Source Network IDS : News. From seattlewireless.com, they recommend this tool for intrusion detection. Will try it now.

Disable Windows NT/W2K/XP Hidden Administrative Shares. It is amazing that NT/W2K and XP ship with these administrative shares. Fortunately, this page tells you how to close it off

AirPort Base Station Configurator. When you have WEP enabled on the Airport, for some reason the Freebase tool can't see the access point via wired or unwired connection. However, this tool can see it for some reason and then you can reset the WEP off and everything works fine. Next problem I face is that now I'm transmitting my home LAN over wireless. I really need a firewall of some sort!

Windows XP Shutdown Troubleshooter A great list of why XP won't power down correctly.

Apple AirPort Base Station HardwareOK I screwed up when I put a WEP key on, so this shows where the reset button is on the AirPort. Amazingly the manual doesn't appear to cover that.

FreeBase - Free Windows software to configure the Apple AirPort Base Station. Hey a VB applications to configure the AirPort

KarlNet Incorporated : Bridges, Routers, BRouters, Wireless LANs/WANs. An interesting company for Steve Bush. This company does the firmware for Orinoco and Apple Airport. They have a 486 processor in them.

Using Apple's Airport Base Station with Windows. Got one from the Airwave guys and now am setting this up on aWindows network.

Nessus. Supposedly one of thge best port scanners. I just love Languard and how easy it is to use. Particularly for SMB vulnerabilities.

scanner comparison

Network Computing | Feature | Security | Vulnerability Assessment Scanners | Page 1 | January 8, 2001

GIAC: Global Information Assurance Certification - Home Page Seems to be a good site to look at for how certification works on security.

eEye Digital Security. Best scanning tool is now on Windows

Sysinternals Freeware - Utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000. A very nice set of utilities for Windows

Security Tools : ScannerAn easy place to fine the scanner stuff. Watch out for viruses in them though!

NetworkEval.COM Home PageAnother site with something that identifies all shares

SC Magazine. Of course there is a security trade publication!

Nmap -- Free Stealth Port Scanner For Network Exploration & Security Audits. Runs on Linux/Windows/UNIX/Solaris/FreeBSD/OpenBSD. This appears to be the port scanner of choice.

Auditing Inside the Enterprise via Port Scanning & Related Tools. Here is a good list of software tools to get to do intranet scanning

Netcat – The TCP/IP Swiss Army Knife. Starting to go through Internet security tools. Here's a good place to start. Referred to it in the latest issue of www.pcmag.com on hacking.

Windows File Protection and Windows. After I deleted ATM 3.0 from an old Adobe Photo Deluxe 3.1 install (BTW, XP should probably prevent installs of old stuff like this). I got a file protection problem and then my CD-ROM disappeared. Fortunately, google found the windows utility called SFC for system file checker that will save me.

PCHelpLIVE.com on CD-ROM Disappearing. Another Microsoft Knowledgebase failure like the others, nothing there about CD-ROM disappearing, but a google search for CDrom Disappear XP yields this. It is an UpperFilters/LowerFilters problem from the install of Musicmatch.

Gateway Keyboard Driver Prevents Suspend. thanks to Google, I found the problem. There was an old Adobe type Manager that attaches to the keyboard driver and this caused the suspend not to work. It hooks the driver.

Wayne's Windows XP User Tips. A great tip page. I'm trying to figure out why the keyboard driver is preventing standby and this is one place to look. Seems like it might be the Music Locker program.

Upcomingmovies.com:. One of my favorite sites to figure out what is coming up next at the movies. Check it out!

R-Studio for disk recovery. This is the other recovery routine that is less listed at www.download.com

GetDataBack - Data Recovery Software I blew out my NTFS partition because there was a buggy CD-ROM driver from Musicmatch of all things. Chkdsk for an hour eventually destroyed the main table and every thing is gone. Using GetDataBack and R-Studio to try to get it back. Good thing I have the a full backup from the Promise mirror that I bought.

XP-erience.org Forums - XP Applications. Another forum for those trying to make XP work. Some notes on Musicmatch bugs.

MusicMatch's CD Driver. A good note about a drive that Musicmatch adds...

Computing.Net - Nero INCD problem - Solution. The bug I've been running into. There is another suggestion about problems on Liteon.

NT Compatible. Seems like a good site for NT and XP related stuff..

Broadband FAQs Very useful notes on problems you have split by the type of hardware and the ISP you have.

broadband » AT&T Broadband FAQ» How do I fix DNS problems with windows XP/2000? (From AT&T Tech Support). At last, now I know why I have to ipconfig /renew all the time from my xp machines at home. Thak you dslreports.com!

Internet Protocol (IP) Basics. IP MTU Each Network Interface Layer technology imposes a maximum-sized frame that can be sent. The maximum-sized frame consists of the framing header and trailer, and a payload. The maximum size of a frame for a given Network Interface Layer technology is called the maximum transmission unit (MTU). For an IP packet, the Network Interface Layer payload is an IP datagram. Therefore, the maximum-sized payload becomes the maximum-sized IP datagram. This is known as the IP MTU. Table 4-1 lists the IP MTUs for the various Network Interface Layer technologies that Chapters 1 and 2 discuss. Table 4-1 IP MTUs for Common Network Interface Layer Technologies Network Interface Layer Technology IP MTU Ethernet (Ethernet II encapsulation) 1500 Ethernet (IEEE 802.3 SNAP encapsulation) 1492 Token Ring (4 and 16 Mbps) varies based on token holding time FDDI 4352 X.25 1600 Frame Relay 1600 ATM (Classical IP over ATM) 9180 Minimum MTU 576 In an environment with mixed Network Interface Layer Protocols, fragmentation can occur when crossing a router from a link with a higher IP MTU to a link with a lower IP MTU. IP fragmentation is discussed in more detail in the "Fragmentation" section of this chapter.

Linksys cable/DSL Router Help - Port Forwarding. Another great site for helping

WINS SERVER. The new Linksys Routing software can point clients to a WINS server, here's a description. Now I just have to find such a service for an XP Professional machine

broadband » Linksys. Google's top choice for finding out about Linksys routers. Interesting and very active.

WallWatcher. This is a Linksys Etherfast Router log viewer if you can believe that there are special utilities to connect to Linksys. How cool!

Micrtosoft VPs and recent speeches. A good site that is hard to find for keeping track of recent presentations and who is a VP over at Redmond

SitePlayer - Embedded Internet Server. Wow, Adrian found the smallest web server in the world for embedded applications.

MajorGeeks.com - Mother Board Monitor 5.1.0.7. A cool monitoring tool.

SourceForge: Project Info - PopUp Killer. Probably the best opoup killer out there. It has been a little buggy but worth living through because it is smart about which popups to kill.

bn.com Music - Stankonia. This from Outkast

bn.com Music - Acoustic Soul. This from India.Arie

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Trying out this album from Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams at Lone Star Webstation: 2002 From a Newsweek piece, I'm tracking down some more interesting music from O'Brother Where Art Thou to Outkast rappers to india.arie for soul to Lucinda Williams for country. Wish me luck!

Metacritic. Ana interesting idea, Metacritic aggregates different site reviews into its own score across films, video, music and games

ExtremeTech File Server Benchmarks. Popular site for getting netbench and other file server benchmarks

DVD Review - The Fifth Element: Superbit. This dvdreview is a great review site and the Superbit edition of the Fifth Element looks like the new reference standard. Sign me up. I'm looking now on www.dvdpricesearch.com and www.half.com to get mine!

AddALL book search and price comparison. A quick note on the best way to find lost cost books. This seems like the best engine I've found so far.

Sharing an Internet Connection To use the command net use t: \\somehost\someshare The client must be able to resolve, using standard NetBIOS name resolution techniques, \\somehost into an IP address. This means that either \\somehost is on the same subnet as the client, or that \\somehost is resolveable from a WINS server, or that \\somehost has an entry in the client's LMHOSTS file. This means that for VPNs, you'll only be able to see the local network not the rest unless you point to the right WINS server.

VPN Networking Over the Internet with DSL Connections Oftentimes, once a VPN connection is successfully made, there are problems browsing or addressing resources on the remote network using NetBIOS name resolution. One mechanism for debugging name resolution problems is to use IP address directly to skip the name resolution issue: for example, in the above diagram the client could use the following command to browse the Server PC without a name resolution: "net view \\192.168.1.2" The "Windows File Sharing" page has more details about this technique and NetBIOS name resolution.

VPN Networking Over the Internet with DSL Connections. Just changed to using a PPTP connection at work, but now network browsing doesn't work. Added the WINS server name directly into the VPN connectoid and also the .ignitionpartners.com into the DNS browsing list, so net use \\ignit2 for instance works, but still can't browse Ignition machines.

Camcorderinfo.com - camcorder reviews, digital video, video production Looking for a digital camcorder. This spot seems to have the best reviews and most complete.

Google Time Bomb - Will Weblogs blow up the world's favorite search engine? This is a great piece about how weblogs can affect what google is producing. Good to know. Also Corante seems like a great site for trensd like this.

Daypop - a current events/weblog/news search engine. This seems to be the most popular site for finding other weblog information.

PROVANTAGE.COM has Avery Afterburner. This seems like the best CD label and jewel case label kit.

cd covers search engine megasearch (psx audio pc vcd psx2 dvd dreamcast) Mega-Search.net the number 1 search engine for CD covers on the Internet. We have a database of more than 450 cover sites on the web allowing you to search through over 500,000 CD covers in one convenient search tool. This is how I'm going to create covers for my CDs

Power Adapters - 2CoolTek. The folks at the other store failed me, so here is another place with 3 pin fan connectors.

Tom's Hardware Guide Mainboard Guide: DDR333 For Athlon: VIA KT333 vs. KT266A - Conclusion: Many New Features With KT333, DDR333 Performs To Full Potential Only With CL2 - Fastest Chipset For AMD CPUs Asus A7V333, MSI KT3 Ultra, Gigabyte GA-7VRXP and the VIA reference board VT5615A are the ones to try for KT333

VIA KT333 Chipset is best. A total of 26 various benchmark tests clearly shows that the VIA KT333 chipset the best and most capable chipset for AMD CPUs. With only a few exceptions, not even the Nvidia nForce with its expensive dual-channel technology (DDR266) can put up a real fight against the newcomer KT333. With the launch of the KT333, the KT266A will become a thing of the past - you simply won't want to miss out on all the new features such as ATA/133, USB 2.0 or DDR333 support. So the thing is to get the KT333 with CL2 DDR333 memory for this board and make sure the CL2 really is CL2 DDR333

Amdmb.com - The #1 Source for AMD Reviews and Information. This looks like the place to figure out what the best Athlon hardware is.

Tom's Hardware Guide CPU Guide: Athlon XP 2100 : AMD Turns Up The Heat - Conclusion: The Athlon XP 2100 Outclasses the Pentium 4/2200 The unveiling of the Athlon XP 2100 propels the Palomino core to its penultimate level - according to unofficial comments, AMD will present the Athlon XP 2200 in a matter of only a few weeks. The presently fastest Athlon XP runs at 1733 MHz, while the Athlon XP 2200 runs at a clock speed of 1800 MHz. Interesting note as I build my next machine. I think I'll take my current server and make it a desktop and then get an Athlon XP 2200 with DDR 333 board. That should be about $500 or so to get roughly 4x the performance. What a change from 3 years ago!

HDTV-Digital Television News ForumA great way to find out about HDTV

DBSForums Discussion Forums. On my list is to get a high definition satellite system. I can't get HDTV over the air here nor does the cable system support it

Earthweb Hardware and Systems: Computers: Weekly Platform Trends: Intel Redesigns the Desktop Again The Tidewater platform is the big news in the form factor area, not only because it fills a market vacuum, but because it will reach the market soon: Intel estimates Tidewater reference designs will be made available in April, with systems in the retail channel later this year. This is news that will surely receive a warm welcome; I'll be counting the days till I can replace network or home server PCs with a smaller form factor, while gaining the inherent benefits of an industry-standard case and motherboard design. -- I personally can't wait to see this Tidewater design. Could be perfect for the small machines.

Earthweb Hardware and Systems: Peripherals: NEC MultiSync LCD1850E Review. A great review of an 18 inch LCD. I have a 17 inch and it is amazing. Never heard of Hardware Central, but seem slike a pretty good site.

AMD processor roadmap.. Trying to buy a new processor for Grace's new machine is hard. This is a useful site that covers the AMD processor roadmap. Best news is that you can buy a 266 or a 333 motherboard and put the new processor in it since they all use Slot A. That is great!

Building a CD Server

Now that I've got the basic server running, the next step is to make it a virtual Cd-ROM server. virtual cd is the one I've tried. There are a couple of others. I normally look at www.download.com and see who is doing the most downloads from the last week and then look at the number of folks who are saying it is good. If there are more than 30% thumbs down then I don't install it. Virtual CD seems like it fits there. I'm experimenting with doing exactly what you are doing. So let's learn together!

Google Directory - Games > Developers and Publishers > Online Games. Looking for online games for alex and calvin. Here is the Google directory. Compare with the Yahoo one.

Audiotron BBS. Audiotron is a great MP3 receiver. Just integrated into my living room hi-fi system and it is just great. Can see all my MP3s on our home server and the user interface is actually usable. Here is a discussion board for those who want to learn more. I got mine via www.buy.com for about $270 during one of their free shipping promotions.

Zeropaid.com. This seems to be the best site for figuring out what P2P product to use.

Classic Vest. Brightest vest I can find is Pearl Izumi's Screaming Yellow classic at $55 just about everywhere

Allstarshop Online Center. Just got an 8MB cache disk from here. They have a great bizrate.com rating for computer stuff. A good place to buy the parts for that new computer I have to build.

CheapHomeTheater.com - Your place for home theater.. They say the Denon 1802 at under $500 is better than the Outlaw. It does have Dolby Surround II, but not six channel.

Welcome to CheapHomeTheater.com - Your Guide to Budget Home Theater. A Good site for dad and the downstairs home theater

Outlaw Audio Receiver review - AUDIOPHILE AUDITION. Looking at this receiver for dad

Home Theater & Sound Equipment Review -- Outlaw Audio 1050 Audio/Video Receiver (3/2002). Looking for a decent receiver for dad. Here is one that is direct and looks good.

CDR-Info, The Recording Authority. This shows what media works well with Lite-on. Apparently, good 24x media is fine with it. Taiyo Yuden 24x 74 minutes is excellent and Richo 80 minute 24x is actually better than Maxell 80 minute 32x.

Liteonit. How to upgrade the Lite-on 32x CDR

CD-Recordable FAQ. Always good to look at the standard FAQ

CD Media World How many of these sites can there be?

CD Freaks. Yet another site specializing in this CDRW and others.

CDRLabs.com - Home. Another site just for CDR if you can believe it.

CD-RW Central. There is a special interest website for everything. This one is about CD-RW information.

Visioneer 7600 USB under Windows XP. More notes for how to get XP running on my machine. This time it's about the Visioneer scanner.

Building a poor man's Network Attached Storage

1. www.promise.com. You use the Promise Connectstor II box to is a great poor man's solution. Just $500 and you can put in any pair of IDE drives that you want. YOu can get this from ecost.com right now $526. 2. http://pub90.ezboard.com/fturtlebeachfrm14.showMessage?topicID=12.topic. This board appears to have lots of information on the Promise drive and they rave about it. Check there if you have a problem first and I learned a few things about the thing. For instance, there is a firmware upgrade to get it to support >48 bits addressing, so you can put the 160GB hard drives in. 3. www.storagereview.com. Buy the hard drives recommended. For the absolute biggest in size, the current state of the art is the Maxtor 160's. The WDC 120s or the IBM 120s are the next choice. Should be about $270 for the 160 and about $200 for the 120s. you can get the 160s at http://www.compuplus.com/insidepage.php3?refer=pricegrabber.com&id=63 and the 120s from http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/product.asp?ad=pg&pid=4344 4. http://support.promise.com/Support/All.asp?product=connectstor2Installation from the manual is pretty straightforward. With the 120's, you just plug them in. The new IDE cables autodetect everything. With the 160's, you have to install a small drive, load the firmware and then load a big one. This support.promise.com site btw is quite good.

Best Hard Drives

The current value leaders are the 120GB 7200 RPM EIDE drives. There is a big war going on now as to whether Western Digital or IBM has the best drive. Not surprising since WDC and IBM have a license deal so these are essentially the same drive. The WD model number is 1200AA while IBM is the Deskstor 120GXP. To find any generic hard disk... a) Storage Review To find the best hard drive, look at their leaderboard. These are the best drives around. b) Price Watch. To find the lowest hard drive prices since this service is dedicated to the small VAR and seems to have close to the lowest prices, but caveat emptor. c) www.pricegrabber.com. Go there if you care a little about reputation then use. The customer reviews appear to be a pretty good measure of reseller quality, so I only use ones that are 4 out of 5 stars. d) Bizrate For the highest quality, but highest prices go to this location. I use ones that are 8.5 out of 10 or above.

Chess Computers

Chess Genius for Palm. This is another alternative to a dedicated chess machines. A little cheaper at $25 than buying a separate $50 box like Excaliber Touch Chess Excalibur Touch Chess Review. Alex's friend Aaron's birthday is coming up. Connie thinks we should get him a electronic chess thing. Here was what google turned up in terms of reviews.

Best Film Camera Advice

Selecting the Right Photographic Equipment by Raymond W Yu. One of a good set of reviews. This is what got us to the Yashica t$ Sup[er. A great camera that is not super zoomer. Get a fixed length. Also good recommendataions on film as well that is Fuji Superia 400 or Kodak Royal Gold 400 from bhphoto.com or adorama.com. Only issue is where to develop it. We use photoworks.com but results lately have been bad. Now trying Mystic color labs. B&H Photo Video Pro Audio Home Page. This is the place to buy film. We had a digital camera, but Connie liked the convenience of film, so we got the highest quality camera, but the film really makes a difference. Buy Kodak Portura for head shots, Kodak Royal for general scenery and you'll be amazed at how good it looks Processing Laboratories. Reviews of photo processing laboratories.

Ad Aware. This is a great utility for snuffing out cookies and other junk. Need to load both ad aware and the registration update thing called refupdate

Jumper Setting Information. Vital jumper information when installing the Western Digital Drives into an array.

ahead homepagel Got a LIte-on 32x CDRW, but it needs new XP drivers too. Get them here.

Welcome to Visioneer's Driver and Software Updates page. The place to get Visioneer scanner drivers

Building a poor man's server

I've been trying for three years to build a poor man's server. Now I have a 120GB server built by myself. Here's how you can do it to...Here are some miscellaneous notes.. VIA Arena - Drivers. Need these to ensure that you have the 4-in-1 driver for the chipset for Windows XP. It is not clear if XP needs it since it installed OK. Configuration Using Cable Select. For those of us who have often wondered about cable select. The bottom line is that for most modern machines bought in the last two years, you just stick the drive in and then connect it to the last connector of the IDE cable (assuming it is 80-conductor and the drive is CS by default). ViewSonic VG171. In getting a new PC, this is the first step, a great new monitor. Got a great review in latest PC World and got it from newegg.com. Check pricegrabber.com first to see where the low prices are. Also buy.com is running a promotion right now on free shipping if over $99 and under 20 pounds. PC Fan Wiring. You will probably never need this in your life, but in my quest to have a completely silent PC, I needed an adaptor that connects the power supply fan to the motherboard. Can't believe that google found this in one search. But here is someone who sells the stange parts.