13amp blog

The Asus Eee 901 is a tiny laptop running the latest Intel Atom processor. It has an 8.9″ screen, bluetooth, wi-fi and most of the things you’d find on a regular size laptop. The Linux version (the PC901) will be available in the next week or so with 20Gb of flash memory. The Windows XP version is now available, but with only 12Gb of flash memory.

I’ve pre-ordered the Linux one and can’t wait until it arrives. However, as you can see from this picture on the Asus website, most of them are being held back for models to use in Taiwanese railway stations.

Ever wondered just how popular wi-fi access points are in your area? I took a wardriving trip around Cambridge this morning to find out. I used this hardware:

• Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000
• Planex 802.11b CF card
• Bluetooth dongle
• Bluetooth GPS receiver

For software, my Zaurus runs pdaxrom. I use Kismet to passively scan for wi-fi access points. The device just listens, it doesn’t try to connect to the access points. For each access point, the GPS position is logged. Once back home, the data can be converted into Google Earth format with Kismet-Earth.

On this 30 minute journey I logged 1000 access points (one every two seconds!), about 80% of which were encrypted.

The Zaurus is a PDA made by Sharp and sold only in Japan. I bought mine a few years ago as it’s essentially a tiny Linux-based computer. Above is pictured my mate Dave’s SL-C3200 (with 6Gb Microdrive) and my SL-C1000.

So, why bother with a Zaurus instead of another PDA like the iPaq or Palm? Well, if you want to actually use it as a PDA, don’t bother with a Zaurus. The software supplied by Sharp is rubbish. The strength of the Zaurus is in installing new Operating Systems such as openZaurus, pdaxrom, and angstrom. I use pdaxrom and have an X desktop, and lots of standard unix tools.

I’ll post some of the cool things I’ve done with the Zaurus in a later post. But for now, here’s a video of Dave’s Zaurus with some software he wrote to change channels on his Sky box.

Here’s my PC. I built it last year and posted this silentpcreview link to describe the build process.

Amazingly, it ended up on the front page of Digg and I was getting upwards of 35,000 hits per day on my web page!

Monitors

• 3x Dell 2007fp (20.1″ 1600×1200 giving desktop resolution of 4800×1200)

Main PC

• Asus P5N-E SLI NF650i
• Core 2 Duo E4300
  
• Noctua NH-U9F heatsink
  
• 2Gb RAM
• 2x 256MB XFX 7600GT ‘Fatal1ty’ PCI-E(x16) SLI Passive
• 250Gb Samsung Spinpoint SP2504C in Scythe Quiet Drive enclosure
• Xilence Office Edition 460W Semi Fanless PSU
• Compucase 4u 19″ rackmountable case with sliding rails
• Nexus fans
  

Linux Server

• VIA EPIA EN12000E
• 1Gb RAM
• 500Gb HD
• running off 8Gb Compact Flash card
• 1u case from LinITX

Other Stuff

• 12u 19″ cabinet from Orion Biz
• Dell Powerconnect 2716 16-port Gigabit managed switch
• 24 port Cat-5e patch panel