Video of the Week

Phoenix Wrong - Yeah I'm a little late with the video of the week but what can you do? :p Watch and enjoy this god dam funny video.

The 14 Buck Clean Up

Who here is tired of looking down at their feet while sitting at their desk only to be greeted by a tangled mess of cables? Well I know I am, it’s not a pretty site and things can get very messy once you start plugging in more components. Monitors, printers, speakers and the seemingly endless collection of USB devices all add to the tangled chaos. Just because you have a lot of devices don’t mean you have to put up with numerous cables dangling down the back of your desk and for few dollars you can sort this mess out. I know some people are thinking that a fist full of cable ties will do the trick and yes it will but what happens if you want to move or unplug something? You have to grab a set of scissors and start chopping away, then cable tie it all up again.

The above image is what I used to have to look at every time I looked under my desk. The following pointers are a quick, cheap and simple way of cable management while still having everything nice and accessible if you need to move or replace anything. It’s not going to be a work of art but it’s definitely an improvement.

Pictured above is selection of cable clamps and adhesive wire saddles, everything you see in that picture set me back $13.80 from my local Bunning Hardware. I’m sure there’s a place that sells it cheaper and if you can be bother shopping around for the best deal then go for it. To clean up my mess I used 5 x small cables clamps, 1 x large cable clamp and a six pack of wire saddles. That should take care of the average PC user’s desk.

These cable clamps are brilliant little devices and they’re adjustable as well as reusable. Just loop the clamp around the cables you wish to group together and close it up as tight as needed. When it comes time to access the clamped cable just press back on the release lever and pull apart the clamp, simple as that! No need for chopping up cable ties each time you have to access something.

The clean up process is pretty straight forward and you can go about it any way you see fit. I’m just sharing a few tips with everyone in case you need them.

• Before you start shifting wires around turn everything off at the mains power point. (obvious precaution but has to mentioned)


• Unplug items you don’t often use, I had an external hard drive that only got used once a month(if that) and a AV connecter harness plugged into the TV tuner card that barely got used at all. There’s no point in me having this stuff plugged in if wasn’t doing anything useful, besides it would only take a minute to plug it all back in.


• Group wires together that share the same travel path, ie the monitor power cable, monitor signal cable and the USB webcam cable all go to the same place so they can be grouped together.


• Unplug and redirect wires to get the neatest travel path.


• Clamp up the cables you have grouped using either the small cables clamps or the wire saddles depending on their location.


• When clamping up cables it’s best to leave a little play in them so you can still move things around, for example I left enough play in my cables for me to pull my case back far enough to access all sides of it without having to unplug anything.


• Some speaker wires can be prone to interference when placed to close to power cables, if you get speaker noise(a humming sound emits from the speaker) then you’ll have to run the speaker cables down another path.

I have a wired USB keyboard on a sliding tray there for I still wanted this cable to have free movement. So I ran the USB cable through some wire saddles which still allows the cable to move back and forth while looking much neater at the same time.

My computer case sits in close proximity to the power board so I used the larger clamp to tidy up some slack from the PSU’s power cable. This may be a situation for some of your other components.

There you have it that’s the end result. It only took me half an hour and some lose change. This is only an example and you can build on it further by using more clamps and other cable management accessories. Take a look in the “power and lighting” section of you local hardware store and you’ll find everything I used here and more. I hope ou got some use out of this article and thanks for reading.

Written by: Matthew Armitage

Video of the Week

Half way through the week and need some amusement? Well every Wednesday I'll throw up a random Youtube video to help ease the mid week blues. This weeks video.....I didn't know the Wii's motion sensing control was this accurate o_O
Enjoy

A New Look Blog

I'm the first to admit that my coding skills are a little limited so when starting this blog I had no choice but select a template from the bargain bin. Luckily for me my good buddy Hayden(Chambalam) took some time out of his busy schedule to smooth out the rough edges of my blog layout. A redesigned banner and some hot links to the MyMedia sites have also been added. All up I'm pretty dam wrapped about the new look, it's clean and simple and for those that have just stumbled upon my blog for the first time this is what it used to look like.

Some of My Stuff

As you can see the majority of content here has been posted on the MyMedia sites and I thought it was time I did something specific for my blog. So I went around the house with my piece of crap Olympus camera(hence the shit image quality) and took a few happy snaps of the gaming stuff I've collected over the years.
Gaming is a big part of my life but it isn't the most important or else I would have all the latest and greatest gear as well as everything interesting that has been released in the past. But you know how it is when bills and loved once come first your habit...sorry, hobby comes second which in my opinion is they way to go anyway. The stuff show in following pictures I have collected over time some of which has been with me since I was a kid, and yes that Atari 2600 slim was one of them.


On the top of the shelves there's an Atari Lynx, Game Boy Advance(I have an SP but it's not pictured), Neo Geo Pocked and a Wonder Swan. Top shelf is the Nintendo 64 which I bought not long ago because my original ones were stolen along with my games. The middle shelf is an Atari 2600 slim and the Atari VCS(woody). Bottom shelf is an NTSC SNES.



Top shelf is a Sega Dream Cast and a limited edition Street Fighter controller for a PS2. Sorry the next two shelves are pretty dark but you can still make it all out. The middle shelf is a Sega Saturn and next to it is Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2 and 3 for the Mega Drive. The bottom shelf is a Mega Drive with the Mega CD.


That's my lounge room set up, I've done what I can to integrate my nerdy hobby into an average lounge room setting lol. On the left of the TV there's a Wii which I've done a black case swap on. On the right is my 40gb PS3 that has had a 320gb hard drive installed, the keyboard and mouse on the coffee table are for the PS3. In the shelving compartment there's an original Playstation and a Game Cube. I want to get a bigger LCD TV at some point but this will do for now and my couch isn't too far away from the TV anyway and everything runs through the Pioneer 7.1 amplifier.

Here's some pics of other gaming stuff I haven't found a home for yet.

Atari games, NTSC SNES games PS1 accessories and what's left of my Commodore 64 collection.


My most recent addition is this PAL SNES with games, controllers and a Super Game Boy adapter. I still have to clean them up a little but I'll find a spot for it all soon.


I also don't mind a bit of PC gaming and here's my "multipurpose" rig. It's Q6600 2.4Ghz Intel Quad core with Zalman cooling core, 4gb DDR2 RAM, BD drive, Asus 9800GT GPU and some glowing case accessories thrown in there for good measure. It's good enough to run most games at full spec so I'm happy for now. I still plan to over clock the CPU and get a 24in monitor at some point. You can also see on the top shelf above the monitors there's a first gen PSP and normally there would be my DS Lite there but someone has wandered off with it -_-

Well that's it basically I hope this didn't come across as a "OMG look at all my shit" kinda post because that wasn't my intention. I like videogames and I wanted to share that plus I now I have something I can link back to an interesting discussion we're having over at MyWii.com.au check it out as there's lots of other cool pics of collections being posted there all the time.

Apple Pippin Retrospective

Some may have noticed that there has been an absence of these Retrospective articles for a while and I apologise to anyone who was been looking forward to them. Recently I have moved house and had to jump through hoops to get a half decent Internet connection, which made researching these articles a little difficult. Now I’m back on track and eager to take people down memory lane and or learn a little about the vast history in videogames.

CHECK OUT THE FULL ARTICLE HERE!

PS3 Hard Drive Change Over

After you have downloaded some demos, PSN games, installed a few installation data packs and added various media your PS3 hard drive starts to show its limits. It doesn’t matter what version of PS3 you have, extra storage space can always come in handy and upgrading to a larger capacity hard drive couldn’t be simpler. This is something I’ve wanted to do for sometime now and I only held back because opening your PS3 in anyway will void your warranty. Now my PS3’s warranty expired not long ago and my hard drive conveniently decided to kick the bucket so the timing couldn’t be better. Now as mention earlier the procedure will void your warranty and we will take no responsibility for any hardware failures or problems that you may encounter. Don’t let that scare you though, this guide will walk you though it step by step and once completed you’ll be shocked on how straight forward it is.

Choosing a Hard Drive

A Sata 2.5in hard drive

The PS3 uses a Seagate 2.5in Sata 5400RPM laptop hard drive. When it comes to selecting a new hard drive it’s all up to you on how large you want the capacity to be and it doesn’t matter what brand you use either as long as it’s an 2.5in Sata hard drive. 5200RPM is recommended although a 7200RPM will still work but some people have experienced overheating issues from the faster drive speed. It’s your call on the drive speed I personally recommend the 5200RPM drive just to be on the safe side. There’s a good selection of compatible drives on the market with a 320GB being around the $100AUD mark and 500GB costing around $160AUD, if you’re not in hurry it’s always best to shop around and as technology advances the prices of these hard drive will continue drop.

What you’ll Need

Equipment and tools required

• A replacement 2.5in Sata laptop hard drive.


• A external storage medium formatted to FAT32 for backing up data. Either an external hard drive or a large capacity USB flash drive will do the job.
• 
  
• Sixaxis controller, you’re not going to get very far with out one.


• The correct sized Phillips head screwdriver. It is very important that you have the correct sized screwdriver because the screws that hold the hard drive in place are securely fitted and it’s easy to thread the tops off. If this happens be prepared for a lot of extra work.


• A small flat head screwdriver or something with a small flat tip to pop open the hard drive dust cover


• A flat clean surface to work on


• Something to occupy your self while watching progress bars, some of these take upwards of 20 minutes

Backing Up your PS3 Data

If you have a brand new PS3 console and are game enough to pull it apart you can skip past this step. In the PS3’s menu select Settings> System Settings> Backup Utility> Backup and then follow the prompts to back up your system data. It is recommended to try and do a clean back up which means avoiding all unnecessary back ups. All media that’s on your PS3 that you can easily replace, demos and unused game data should be deleted. Not only will this reduce the risk of backup errors it will also speed up the process.

Removing the Original Hard Drive

The PS3 hard drive cradle exposed

With PS3 console disconnected from the power source and placed on a flat surface use your flathead screwdriver to pop open the hard drive dust cover located at the bottom on the console. With the dust cover removed the PS3 hard driver cradle will be exposed, in order to remove the cradle and hard drive you need to remove the blue anodised screw which you can see pictured above. This is the part when things can go sideways if you don’t be careful, make sure you have a Philips head screwdriver that fits the screw head perfectly or you can damage the screw quite easily. Hold the console with one hand (get someone to help here if you like) and using a sensible amount of force slowly remove the blue coloured screw. If you feel the screwdriver slipping out of the screw head then you need to apply more fore to the screwdriver.

At this point the hard drive is ready to be removed

Once the blue screw has been removed lift the wire latch located on the hard drive cradle and then slide the unit back. At this point the hard drive plus cradle is now ready to be extracted from the PS3 console.

Swapping over the Hard Drive

The original PS3 hard drive removed

Now that you have the PS3’s hard drive out of the console you do the swap over. There are four Phillips head screws holding the hard drive to the cradle, these screws are also tightly fitted so take the same precautions as you did when removing the blue screw. While doing this keep a mental note on which way the hard drive faces so you don’t have to do things twice.

The new hard drive fitted to the cradle

Place your new hard drive in the cradle and screw in the four screws. Pictured above is my 320GB Western Digital hard drive fitted to the PS3’s hard drive cradle. From here on you basically reverse the steps you took to remove the hard drive cradle. Place the new hard drive back into the PS3 console, slide it across until it locks into place, push down the wire latch and re fit the blue screw securely, clip the dust cover back on, plug everything back in and fire it all up.

System Restore

Once you turn your PS3 console on for the first time after installing a new hard drive you will automatically be asked to format the hard drive. If you just replaced a hard drive in a new PS3 console then you are ready to go from here, all you have to do configure the system settings to you likings.

To restore you PS3 to it’s original state prior to removing the internal hard drive first plug in the storage medium you used to back your system onto. Then via the menu go to Settings> System Settings> Backup Utility> Restore> and follow the prompts. (If you are interested in adding another operating system to the PS3 this would be a good time to explore that before you restore your PS3)

From here on you get the pleasure of watching a very uninteresting progress bar crawl its way across the screen and that’s it you’re done! See that wasn’t too hard was it? Once completed you can go back into the System Settings and under System Information you can see the amount of available hard dist space you now have and yes, just like every other system the PS3 will tax its fair share of space.
If you get stuck or are uncertain about anything there’s many knowledgeable members on this site that will be wiling to help you out.

Written by Matthew Armitage
Note:This guide is originally hosted on MyPS3.com.au anyone can use this information but please contact me first if you wish to host it on another site. Thank you.