Reviews
Element14 and Freescale's XL-STAR- S08 Development Board.
cgantt — Mon, 08/29/2011 - 10:54
A few weeks ago we announced on our Facebook Fan Page that we were teaming up with Newark.com to review some of the new products that they carry. After browsing their new products section we noticed a development board branded with Newark's Element14 brand. For those of you who have been living under a rock lately, Element14 is Newark / Farnel's community for DIY electronics enthusiast as well as professional electronic engineers. Naturally after seeing this board we had to check it out first, so we requested the Element14 STAR-XL-S08 Development Board as our first review item.
Digilent Pmods invade our workbench and and bring their Cerebot overloards along for the ride!
cgantt — Thu, 08/11/2011 - 16:03
Back in May we were the first to formally introduce you to Digilent's chipKIT line of Arduino compatible PIC32 based development boards. Digilent liked our coverage so much that they sent an army of their Pmods led by their Cerebot masters to take over our workbench. We have a ton of stuff to cover from Digilent in the coming weeks and if they manufacture something you would like to see covered here on TheMakersWorkbench just let us know in the comments and we will do our best to give it a full write up... Keep reading after the jump.
Digilent Releases long awaited chipKIT Networking Shield and General I/O shield.
cgantt — Mon, 08/22/2011 - 13:11
A few months ago we covered Microchip and Digilent's first entry into the Arduino community: The chipKIT line of Arduino compatible PIC32 MCU boards. News spread fast and it seems like anyone who is serious about Arduino dev has picked up at least one of the chipKIT boards. Shortly after the launch of the UNO32 and Max32 board, Digilent announced the existance of 2 shields slated for release in June: The chipKIT Networking shield and chipKIT General I/O shield. June quickly passed and July came and went with no word on the release date for either shield. Well today Microchip and Digilent have officially released both the Networking shield and the General I/O shield. We received our evaluation samples about 3 weeks ago and are planning full writeups on both shields in the next few days. In the mean time we have some exciting photos as well as the full press release after the jump.
Review: Matrix Orbital GX Typhoon Graphic LCD
cgantt — Wed, 05/11/2011 - 14:00
Matrix Orbital GX Typhoon Graphic LCD
Matrix Orbital has been building LCD displays since 1995. Unknown for years in computer enthusiast circles, Matrix Orbital exploded into the community with their MX series of displays. The GX Typhoon series soon followed and became one of the defacto small LCD displays PC enthusiast thought of when planning a case mod or scratch build. I recently had the chance to take a few weeks and play around with their latest offering.
PC Hardware Review: Thermaltake Blac X 5G USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station.
cgantt — Sun, 05/08/2011 - 22:21
Thermaltake Blac X 5G USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station
How many of you have a spare HDD laying around because all of the SATA ports on your motherboard are full? I am betting that the majority of you raised your hand. There are many solutions that would allow you to put that HDD to use, and today we are going to take a look at one solution that is blazingly fast...More after the jump.
PC Hardware Review: Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H AMD AM3 Motherboard
cgantt — Mon, 03/07/2011 - 06:52
PC Hardware Review: Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H
I write a lot of hardware reviews for TheBestCaseScenario.com, a PC Modding site whichI serve as the Editor in Chief. I am going to begin linking to my reviews so all of my wonderful readers to check out. A couple months ago I reviewed Gigabytes GA-890FXA-UD5, and you might remember I could not say enough good things about it. Today I take a look at its younger sibling the 890GPA-UD3H, a full ATX board sporting USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, AMD Crossfire and an on-board ATI Radion 4290...More
ModRight Super Large Anti-Static Mod-Mat Work and Assembly Surface
cgantt — Fri, 10/15/2010 - 21:50
ModRight Super Large Anti-Static Mod-Mat
Electro Static Discharge (E.S.D.) is the number one leading cause of PC components “arriving” D.O.A. I am sure to get a lot of public outcry, but the simple fact is that it's the truth. How many of you have received that new motherboard, graphics card, or hard drive in the mail and immediately opened the package, and removed the device from its anti-static bag with your bare hands? By doing so you possibly have subjected that device to tens of thousands of volts of static electricity which may or may not have friend that expensive component's delicate circuitry. ModRight, a company dedicated to improving your PC modding experience has taken steps to solve the E.S.D. problem that haunts us all by manufacturing affordable anti-static mats for our bench tops. After the jump we will take a look at their largest model.
