technabob » ram

usb flash memory looks like ram card: why? why not?

technabob — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:40:26 +0000

The last time I tried to jam a DDR RAM card into the side of my laptop, not only did it completely fail to work, I shorted out all of the chips and electrocuted the cat. Thankfully, the guys over at Brando have come up with a solution that should prevent such horrible catastrophes from happening again.

The Segon RAM Card USB Flash Drive ($12 to $20 USD) doesn’t do anything particularly special, but it sure looks goofy sticking out of the side of your computer. And as you loyal Technabob readers know. goofy-looking is good enough for enough for me.

Next time you’re feeling mischievous, cram one of these into the USB port on your computer, call up the corporate help desk, and wait for the befuddled tech support guy who comes to your cube and chastises you for your idiotic misstep. And then share in the sitcom-end-like belly laugh when he realizes that it’s really just a flash drive. Hardy, har, har. And never expect any help from the help desk again.

cakes just like your motherboard used to make

karen m. — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:30:43 +0000

We have seen a lot of geeky treats, but these motherboard cakes can’t be beat! Who would think to combine butter, eggs, flour, and sugar into something resembling a motherboard? It turns out there are multiple people who have done just that, with varying results.

You can bust out the full court press with green icing, Rolos, After Five mints, and so forth, or go for a more subdued, monochrome chocolatey mobo. In either case, one thing is certain: you’ll need wafer cookies on hand for the RAM slots.

Sure, they’re a little cartoony, but nonetheless I’d say that geekdom is getting to be so very delicious these days!

[via Geekcake]

ps3 system uses 3x more memory than xbox 360

technabob — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:39:39 +0000

Even though the Xbox 360 has an arguably much faster and easier to use operating environment than the PlayStation 3, it apparently uses significantly less memory than Sony’s big black box.

According to this post by Ozymandias (who happens to work for Microsoft,) the Xbox 360 reserves approximately 32MB of it’s RAM for the System, including the kernel, device drivers, Xbox Guide, friends lists, voice/text messages, achievement lists, gamercards, Live Marketplace, 1-1 chat, virtual keyboard, and the music player. That leaves about 480MB of RAM for game developers use any way they want.

In contrast, the PlayStation 3 is estimated to use about 96MB for System overhead, plus an additional 9MB for friends list functionality. So right out of the gate, PlayStation 3 developers end up with 73MB less available RAM than an Xbox 360 title with the same basic features enabled. Plus, it’s reported that in-game e-commerce capability wastes another 60MB of RAM. On top of all this, Sony’s memory architecture says that 50% of all RAM is for graphics, and the other 50% is for application use, further limiting developer freedom.

These memory architecture decisions, along with the reduction in available memory could be part of why cross-platform titles are looking better on the Xbox 360 than on the PS3, especially for games that started on the 360 and were ported to the PS3.