Mike had a bunch of parts he was going to put in the trash, and decided to give them new life as a robotic sculpture. He gathered up discarded circuit boards and parts from friends and family too, and managed to build a robot with quite a personality.

He’s got body parts from Dell, AMD, IBM, Maxtor, Toshiba, Sharp, Gateway among others. Nice touch there with the CPUs and flash drives for his brains.

I especially like the eyes – which came from some old Canon and HP digital cameras. You know that thing they say about the eyes being the window to one’s soul, right?

All in all, it’s a loving tribute to technology that at one point was an integral part of someone’s livelihood, education or entertainment. I think we need to build an entire shrine to old technology filled with these guys.

[via Total Geekdom]

Apparently, the HD 6950 and the HD 6970 are identical, and the only thing that locks down some of the shaders on the 6950 is a BIOS setting. With a new BIOS hack that TechPowerUp has outlined you can unlock those cores and get yourself a 6970 for the price of a 6950.

It’s rare that you can unlock cores with a simple BIOS hack, normally there are parts soldered on the board that prevent BIOS hacks from working that the new AMD cards lack. I’d be so mad if I just bought a 6970 right now.

The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian says sources have confirmed to him that Intel paid to get a new chip, code-named Larrabee, into Sony’s next console. Also per Demerjian’s sources, AMD will be handling Nintendo and Microsoft’s next-next gen systems under the ATI label. We’re gonna have to start working on a name for this round, because next-next gen is going to get difficult after a while.

Seems sudden, doesn’t it? There’s a bright side, however, and it’s that all this is rumor as yet, with nothing confirmed and no official statements made. In fact, Sony has already issued a denial about their purported switch to Intel, so this particular story may be a complete bust.  But one thing is pretty likely: these decisions are being made, and the reliability (or lack thereof) of Demerjian’s intel doesn’t change that. The future of gaming is just around the corner.

[The Inquirer via VentureBeat]

The decTOP computer system was originally released by AMD as a thin personal web browsing appliance, but when DEC acquired this division of the company, they revamped it as an all-around compact server. The system comes with 128MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive (both of which are expandable), and runs a 333MHz AMD processor. It’s no powerhouse, but more than enough for running a web server or other lightweight applications. It’s got built-in VGA video, Ethernet, a modem, USB and even audio capabilities. The decTOP measures in at just 5.5″ x 8.5″ x 2.5″ and weighs just about three pounds, so you could easily throw one in your suitcase or backpack if you’re looking for portability.

There’s no OS provided for the computer, but JSCO offers this simple tutorial on installing Ubuntu. I’m sure installing other flavors of Unix wouldn’t be difficult either. You can pick up a decTOP from Data Evolution for just $99.

[via Lifehacker]