New toys

A few days ago, I went to fetch the hardware that I'd ordered.

I don't think I've ever ordered as much in one go ever before. Well -- at least not when it wasn't for a customer.

My brother's girlfriend needed a new hard disk for her laptop, since her old one had broken (and of course she didn't have no backups, so now I'll have to find my 2,5" ATA -> desktop ATA converter and try to rescue what's there to rescue). Now since I had been planning to buy me some hardware before, and since my supplier implements an ordering fee for every order (no, they're not an end-user store), I decided to batch them up together in an effort to share the ordering fee over slightly more hardware.

I am now the proud owner of:

  • A Linksys SPA921 VoIP deskphone.
  • A Linksys something router with two builtin ATA ports (one FXS and one FXO). Since they didn't have an affordable ATA without the router stuff (the only ones they had without router were some 24-ish port €2000+ corporate boxes, but I don't need those), I had to pick this one. Not that I'll ever use the router bits.
  • A 3Com 8port 1000BASE-T switch. As a result, I just retired my aging and flaky 5port 10BASE-T/10BASE-2 hub, and with it the single last 10BASE-2 segment in my network. After that, I moved the 100BASE-T switch to where the 10BASE-T one stood previously, and now the network is 100BASE-T at least everywhere. Not that I have the hardware to match on the other end of the connection everywhere (I don't have any Gbit NICs, and only a few 100BASE-T NICs; most of my NICs are 10BASE-T, though), but that doesn't matter.
  • A Belkin 802.11g access point to replace the old and unsafe 802.11b one. Funny bit about that is that the old access point could talk 802.11x (aka the WPA variant that requires to set up a Radius server), but no WPA-PSK, whereas the new box supports WPA-PSK, but not 802.11x. Oh well.
  • Two 500G SATA disks.

I also ordered a Thecus N2100, aka a "Yes box", to put the two 500G disks in — but those haven't arrived yet (still a few more days). Not that I'm even remotely interested in such an "external hard disk" type of thing, but there is some interesting stuff to be done with that hardware. Stay tuned.

Apart from the computer hardware, today I also went to Lemca in Deurne, and bought me a YFL 311 as an early birthday present to myself. I'd been in doubt between the 311 and the YFL 411, so tried both at the shop before deciding to go with the 311. While there is a difference in sound between the two (most notable in the lower octave), I didn't think the result was stunning enough to justify the €700+ extra for the 411. YMMV, of course.

I think I'll be playing a lot of music tomorrow.