ControllerCard
Latest
USB 3.0 and SATA 6G put to good use: benchmarks
The fine folks at both HotHardware and PC Perspective have run the new ASUS P7P55D-E Premium motherboard through its paces, which has the particular distinction of handling both USB 3.0 and the up-and-coming SATA 6G through controllers by NEC and Marvell, respectively. Lucky for us, both sites' tests came to similar conclusions. The Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6G drive has almost zero improvement over SATA 3G, other than in some burst speeds due to the fancy cache on the 6G -- the bottleneck here is the drive, not the controller. Meanwhile, USB 3.0 has speeds that are roughly 5 to 6 times faster than USB 2.0 with the same drive, a huge win for fans of external storage the world over. Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30, so this stuff is already basically within reach to the average desktop user. Read - HotHardware Read - PC Perspective
BlueFlash puts USB and Bluetooth on your Apple II
Do you keep revving up your Apple II to check your email, update your contacts and sync your mobile phone only to discover that you can't get Bluetooth up and running because the computer is actually from 1978? Well don't worry, because thanks to a very clever man who goes by the name Vinchysky, you can now utilize the a custom-designed disk controller card to interface with all your Bluetooth (and USB) capable devices. The ingenious design takes advantage of the card by bussing data from the single USB port (with attached Bluetooth dongle) to a CF card wired to the controller, thereby allowing information to be swapped on the card and disk images to be executed wirelessly. The card will be available in the near future for $160, plus an additional $10 for the dongle. If you really want to get a scope of what went into this hack, direct your browser and be awed by the results of three years' hard work.[Via TUAW]
Use a PlayStation controller on your lappy
For PC gaming on the go, you could always use the USB version of the superlative Xbox 360 controller (there's even a Mac OS X driver) but where's the fun in that? Instead, follow these simple (?) instructions to get your Dual Shock rocking on your laptop. You'll need: a spare parallel PCMCIA card; the "controller module" from a PS2; hacksaw; belt sander; lots of glue; a strong desire to have built-in Dual Shock support in your laptop.We feel obligated to remind readers there are USB adapters that deliver such functionality sans belt-sanding (like this one), but this was never about convenience. This gets us to wondering if Sony's Bluetooth HID-compatible DualShake will work with computers that support Bluetooth. Seems like a sure thing, right? Tell that to the Bluetooth Microsoft mouse that refuses to work on my Mac. C'mon Sony: computer-compatible DualShake FTW![Via hack a day]
