In my monthly blog post covering October, I’m blogging about topics that I currently don’t want to set aside an individual blog post for, else provide you with a minor update to something I’ve mentioned before.
In October I had quite a busy tech month as I attended a couple of car boot sales and I’m also continuing my clear out of old items I don’t want. My better half and I gave lots of items to charity this month.
This month’s blog post covers:
- 2x Coolboy USB gamepads
- 2x E010 drones
- £1 GBP 500GB SATA hard drive
- HP EliteBook 8440p notebook
- YouView TalkTalk DN370T freeview box
2x Coolboy USB gamepads
I purchased these years ago and it’s amazing how time moves on. These two devices had been sitting in a draw for years and before I gave them to charity I wanted to test them.
I plugged both into a Windows 10 Pro computer, but one wasn’t working correctly, until I plugged it into another USB port. I then tried to use the gamepads with some of my Steam games, but with mixed results.
As a single player I played 8bitBoy and Muffin Knight. As a multiplayer on the same PC, I was able to play BroForce and TowerFall Ascension.
The old Coolboy gamepads shown in the photo above are not Xbox compatible, which unfortunately means a lot of games don’t work with them.
2x E010 drones
I purchased these two drones at a car boot sale for £4 GBP each, which I think was a pretty good deal. I’m going to give both drones to relatives as presents. Before I do so, I thought I would test that they work.
I used to own a larger drone, which I wasn’t great at flying. I was hopeful that I would be better with these smaller drones, but it turns out I’m a bad drone flyer! I kept crashing the E010 drone in my lounge and gave up. Unless I buy a drone with better features to help me, I’m going to stick with my RC helicopter.
I liked the fact that the E010 drones have an easy to remove battery and the drone is small and light, making it easy to carry around.
£1 GBP 500GB SATA hard drive
Yet again I was at a car boot sale and purchasing an old Sky satellite receiver box, just to harvest its hard drive! I have been on the look out for the 2TB models, but unfortunately I’ve not seen any, but paying just £1 GBP for a 500GB hard drive seemed like a good bargain to me! I’ve also been collecting the fans from the Sky boxes and I might try and resell them.
I’ve installed the hard drive in a computer which is running both Linux and Windows operating systems. I might install an operating system on the drive, but I’m unsure.
HP EliteBook 8440p notebook
My fiancée used to use this notebook, but now uses a tower PC instead. The laptop had been sitting on a shelf for a while, but I’ve recently been using it. The laptop’s graphics are awful, which is a huge drawback to using the computer, but even though I’ve not installed a SSD, I’m happily using it with Windows 10 with some applications that don’t require a lot of resources.
I’ve place the notebook on a stand to help with heat removal. Whilst it has wireless capabilities, I’ve plugged the computer into a network switch using its inbuilt RJ45 network port. I’m not using a USB mouse with it as I don’t mind the pad. I quite like the keyboard on the 8440p.
YouView TalkTalk DN370T freeview box
Yet again I’ve purchased a DN370T box! I now own three TalkTalk boxes, which is a bit crazy. I could harvest its hard drive, but its more likely I will give the box to a relative shortly.
I purchased the box for £4 GBP at a car boot sale and whilst the box is now old, it was still a good deal. The box enables you to record Freeview content and watch HD channels. There are some streaming services, but I’m not sure if they work with this old box and I won’t bother testing.
What’s coming up?
I might be blogging about a mobile phone, the computers I use, cameras and other devices. Also I’m still having a clear out of items and there is some tech I want to revisit one last time.