Skating the Infosphere

* How do batteries work?

Batteries give life to all kinds of appliances. They work in cars, personal computers, MP3 players, video games, and cell phones. A battery is packed with chemicals that produce electrons. The chemical reactions generated by electrons are called electromechanical reactions.

Do you need Makita Cordless Drill Batteries?

The battery is a life-giving piece. Cars and other electronic gadgets and equipment will not run without batteries in place. The reaction produced by the battery gives equipment the power they need in order to perform.

* What are batteries made of?

A battery is certainly the pacemaker of the heart of a machine. Most of the machine depends on the voltage and its capacity. A battery is made of the container, cathode, separator, collector, and electrolyte.

The container is the housing case of a battery. It is where the electrochemical reactions take place.

The cathode is the layer where manganese dioxide and carbon mix, in order to increase the reaction occurring in the container.

A separator is a non-woven, fibrous fabric that separates electrolytes.

The collector is the part of the battery that has a brass pin in the middle of it.

An electrolyte has potassium hydroxide that gives a solution in water that carries ionic content to the inner part of the battery.

* How long does a rechargeable battery last?

The life of the rechargeable battery under regular use is about 500 to 900 charge and discharge processes. This will mean a couple of years of battery life for a regular use. As the rechargeable battery begins to stop working, the running rechargeable amount of time will start to go down.

The user must recharge the battery correctly to avoid explosion. When the charge supply of the battery only reaches a couple of minutes, it is time for a replacement.

* How do I know if a battery is good or not?

Sometimes, you can tell if a battery is good by simply looking at its packaging and checking for leaks. Below are some other things you can do to check the quality of the battery:

- Check the battery first for defects such as a broken circuit, a short, or a broken housing or container.

- Check the battery’s capacity using known measuring techniques to ascertain the problem.

- Check for a flexible plate covering. A battery will store more energy with a galvanic plate covering.

We check out different cordless drill batteries.

[Keywords: batteries, voltage, cathode, electrolyte, rechargeable, battery ]

If you are reading this article, you are probably wondernig, why and how do you build a computer. Building your own computer is more simple than you think and has many benefits.

Why Build A Computer?
Building a computer has many benefits over buying a premade. First of all, it is generally cheaper if you build your own than buying one. If you shop your components, your DIY(Do it yourself) computer will be cheaper than its premade equivalent. If you build your own computer, it will be faster than one that is premade, because most computer manufacturers use cheap components and try to cut corners to cut down costs. Additionally, your self built computer has more room to upgrade if you so decide to in the future. Prebuilt computers usually only have enough expansion slots for the components that are going to be in the computer. Because of this, your prebuilt computer will become obsolete sooner. Also, building a computer is a satisfying experience and you will learn more about how your computer works.

How do I go About Building a Computer?
Building a computer is probably much simpler than you think. Especially now, things have been simplified and standardized. First, you pick out components and make sure they are all compatible. Once you get the parts, you put them together! This guide was made to show you how to do everything and contains pictures and good information to make building a computer a fun and rewarding experience. For more information about building a computer, be sure to check out the next article in this guide!

Chris Silop, owner and admin of
SysChat.Com Computer Forum
Go there for more articles and forums on computer hardware!

When it comes to car maintenance I am no spring chicken - I understood my car 20 years ago but now there is so much technology under the bonnet that knowing your ESP unit from your spark box is not easy. A guide to salvage categories is helpful though if you are looking for a replacement motor for your motor - It has saved me a grand or so over this weekend - based on the garages charge against sourcing a replacement used car part from a local scrappy and paying a mechanic to fit the replacement engine.

[Keywords: used cars, parts, bonnet, esp, engine ]

Cell phone ringtones started off as mere beeps or rings, at the most, during the initial days. The story is entirely different. You have every sort of ringtone, with sounds ranging from the ridiculous crying of a baby, to a car horn speeding past you, enough to scare the wits out of you. The increasing number of young users of cell phones is a major reason for the increasing number of cell phone ringtones. People of the younger generation want to keep themselves ‘in’ with the ever-changing trends, when it comes to latest ringtones. Get the latest Britney Spears or J Lo chartbuster on your cell phone.

Adding to the increasing number of ringtones is the fact that most of these ringtones are available for free. They are available from online cell phone based web sites, offering you a host of ringtones, ranging from the downright outrageous to the really melodious. You have ringtones of every kind available. In fact most of the latest audio hits are converted overnight into popular ringtones.

One thing with ringtones though is that your handsets have to be compatible for downloading ringtones. Most of the latest cell phone handsets, though, are compatible. What is more, they are capable of storing several ringtones, all at a time. You can choose individual ringtones for incoming alerts on short messaging services, multimedia messaging services and voice calls. Needless to say, ringtones have almost become a fashion statement. The fancier they are, the more people tend to flaunt them. Moreover, most of them come free, so what’s stopping you from getting one? Check the leading online resources providing fabulous ringtones. Get in touch with your friends and contacts to find out which of the tones are ‘in’.

There are specific operating systems that can be run on a tablet PC. Even certain old programs can work on a new tablet PC. There is software that recognizes the handwriting of the user. They also “”teach”" the user how to use the pen. If needed, an on-screen keyboard is also available. If one is using an older version of an operating system or any other tablet PC-oriented software, that can be upgraded at regular intervals. The upgraded versions are made available for existing and new users.

The upgraded versions of the software are mostly aimed at widening the functional scope of tablet PCs and integrating their functions more comprehensively. Those who already have a tablet PC can buy software upgrades on the open market, or by downloading them from the official websites of the software companies. Many software upgrades are provided to existing users free of charge. The new tablet PCs coming on the market have already this software installed.

One of the most important software features loaded in a tablet PC is the handwriting-recognition software. It recognizes the writing of a user. The software is continuously upgraded, and it is advisable to upload the latest versions of this particular software. However it still has a limitation of not being able to recognize handwriting in all languages. Though the number of languages it can recognize has been increasing, this software does still not recognize a large number of languages. Hence, before buying a tablet PC, one must find out how many languages that tablet PC can recognize. If it doesn’t recognize the language in which you are going to write, it will not be of much use to you.

Tablet PC provides detailed information on Tablet PC, Tablet PC Reviews, Tablet PC Software, Best Tablet PC and more. Tablet PC is affiliated with PDA Pocket PCs.

SPI stands for “Serial to Peripheral Interface”, and it is a hardware and firmware communications protocol developed by Motorola and later adopted by everybody. The SPI Bus is used only on the PCB. I am certain some of you will ask: “Why is the SPI Bus used only on the PCB? What prevents us from using it outside the PCB area?” The SPI Bus was specially designed to exchange data between various IC chips, at very high speeds; say, at 180 MHz or even more. Due to this high-speed aspect, the Bus lines cannot be too long, because their reactance increases too much, and the Bus becomes unusable. However, if you want, you could use the SPI Bus outside the PCB at low speeds, but this is not quite practical–the SPI Bus requires 3 or 4 communications lines, which are a bit too many, when compared to 1 or 2 lines usually needed to communicate, efficiently, with field devices located outside the PCB.

Anyway, on the PCB the SPI Bus is very good, because we can practically attach to the Bus as many ICs (or devices) as we want. Please excuse me for not providing a picture of the SPI Bus, but rest assured you do not need one: the SPI Bus is so simple that you will understand everything in words.

The next question is: “Why is this SPI Bus particularly useful?” Besides from exchanging data between various IC chips, the SPI Bus is a method of multiplying microcontroller’s pins. In other words, if you have a tiny 8 pins microcontroller, you could control with that little monster few hundreds of digital Inputs and Outputs. This is impressive, and I am certain many doubt my words. Let’s explain this.

The SPI Bus contains three lines, and they can be on any general I/O controller pins. These Bus lines are: Clock, Data-In, and Data-Out. In addition, each IC connected to the SPI Bus needs an individual Enable line. Things work like this: suppose we have four devices, A, B, C, and D; all of them are wired to the SPI Bus lines, and the Bus itself is wired to seven controller pins–this is 3 Bus lines plus the 4 Enable ones. When we want to send a message to device C, we enable its Enable line first, then we send the message serially, one bit at a time. In the same time devices A, B, and D do exactly nothing, because they are not enabled.

The beauty with the SPI Bus is, it is Synchronous, meaning, when the controller sends the message to one IC, it is also able to receive data from that IC, in the same time. This particular aspect of the SPI protocol is particularly well suited for microcontroller-to-microcontroller communications.

Now, we have seen a small 8 pins microcontroller can control 4 devices (ICs) using 7 pins. Taking into account one device of type A, B, C, or D could have eight or even sixteen I/O ports, this is still far from the hundreds Inputs and Outputs I promised to you. The next beautiful thing about the SPI Bus is: one device IC can be serialized with many more of the same type! For example, we could have B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, and so on. All ICs of type B# are serialized together, and they require only 4 microcontroller pins to make them work; the Enable line is common to all of them. Next, we can use each device of type A, B, C, and D as a group of tens similar ICs.

The enabling speed of each I/O port on the SPI Bus it is slower, when multiplying microcontroller’s pins, but always take into account I/O field devices don’t necessarily need speeds of, say 1000 ON/OFF activations per second each, simply because most of them cannot handle that speed. However, there are few, very smart firmware techniques like the “barrel-shift” type of functions, which allows us to maintain high-speed messaging on the SPI Bus, even if we have hundreds of I/Os. In the same time, the “barrel-shift” functions allow for better time management inside microcontroller, so that it has more time to execute other tasks–makes sense to me! To conclude, I believe it is clear now we can, indeed, build hundreds of efficient I/O lines on a small 8 pins controller.

Further from this general presentation of the SPI Bus, you should be aware almost all ICs implement the SPI protocol in a particular way. For detailed and practical applications I suggest you visit my home site at Corollary Theorems. There you are going to discover a good tutorial book about working with hardware, firmware–including the “barrel-shift” type of functions–and software design, in general, and about few nice and practical implementations of the SPI Bus in particular.

Many microcontrollers have built-in SPI Bus hardware modules, but I was never interested too much about using them. What I do, I always design–on the PCB and for one microcontroller–one, two or more custom SPI Busses, because my custom implementations are far more flexible. Besides, practical implementation of a custom SPI Bus, both in hardware and in firmware, is really simple–trust me with this one!

O G POPA is Professional Engineer in BC, Canada. His home site is Corollary Theorems at http://www.corollarytheorems.com

Have you ever wanted to combine the benefits of commercial free satellite radio along with listening to your favorite MP3s, all while driving in your car? If so, Sirius Satellite Radio may offer the product that you’ve been looking for. While car receivers that allow you to listen to satellite radio and your favorite MP3 music have existed for some time now, a recent product released by Sirius Satellite Radio takes the satellite radio/MP3 combination to the next level.

The Sirius S50 is a satellite radio/MP3 player that you can listen to while you’re either riding in your car or sitting in the comfort of your home or office. The Sirius S50 comes with a car dock that connects the main unit to your vehicle. While the unit is connected to the car dock, you are able to listen to live Sirius Satellite Radio programming as well as any MP3s that you have stored on the 1GB flash memory unit. You can also pause and rewind the live satellite broadcasts as well as record up to 50 hours of your favorite Sirius Satellite Radio programming.

This unit also comes with a full color display which features channel logos and wallpaper so that you can easily identify the station that is currently playing. The neat My SIRIUS Channels feature automatically determines your three most listened to music channels and captures programming from each. Do you like to create playlists of your favorite MP3s? Well, you will find the Sirius S50 suitable to your needs as you can create playlists from your MP3s as well as from songs that you have recorded from your favorite Sirius broadcast channels. Additional features of the Sirius S50 include: game alerts that prompt you when your favorite teams are playing, a sports ticker with up to the minute scores, 30 channel presets, and a one touch channel jump button.

Along with the main unit itself, you also get a USB cable, earbuds, and PC software that allows you to download MP3s to the Sirius S50 from your PC. The software also supports streaming Sirius music channels over the Internet which is free with your Sirius Satellite Radio subscription. Currently the software is only available for Microsoft-based PCs, therefore all of you Mac users will have to go to your friend’s house to download your music if you decide to purchase the Sirius S50.

The really neat thing about this unit is that it also doubles as an IPOD-like MP3 player, as you are able to listen to your MP3s and pre-recorded Sirius channel programs with the earbuds that come with the unit. You can clip the Sirius S50 to your hip and listen to your favorite tunes on your way to school or work. The unit supplies up to 6 hours of playback on the rechargeable battery. If you’re in the market for an in-car satellite radio unit, you should definitely give the Sirius S50 a good hard look before you make your final purchase. While it may be a little pricier than your average satellite radio unit (Suggested Retail: $329.95), it really puts those extra dollars spent to good use.

Dwayne Wright is an automotive enthusiast with over 20 years of experience in the automotive industry. If you decide to upgrade your car audio system with a Sirius S50 satellite radio/MP3 player, visit his site at http://www.customautosearch.com to find a professional car audio installer in your area to install your new equipment.

Here we have the Brother TN-540 toner cartridge which has been around since May of 2004. This toner is designed to fit into the Brother HL-5150 printer which is based a 21 page per minute and 1200 dots per inch LaserJet engine.

This engine is actually and upscale to the HL-1240, using the TN-460 cartridge. The primary difference is that the toner from the TN-460 toner is not engineered to be used in the TN-540 neither the TN 570 cartridge. Yet, the print engines share similar foundations.

The TN-540 is the low yield cartridge and the TN-570 is the high yield cartridge for the following Brother LaserJet printer models:

•DCP-8040
•DCP-8045D
•HL-5130
•HL-5140
•HL-5150D
•HL-5150DLT
•HL-5170DNLT
•MFC-8220
•MFC-8440
•MFC-8840D
•MFC-8840DN

This TN-540 cartridge will yield up to 3,500 pages when printing at 5% coverage on A4 - Letter sized paper. The TN-570 toner cartridge will yield up to 6,700 pages when printing at 5% coverage on the same paper as the TN-540.

Let’s get straight to the point, no beating around the bush during this lecture.

First, you will need the necessary Tools & Supplies Required:

Tools & Supplies Required:

•#1 Phillips Head Screwdriver (tool)
•Phillips Head Jeweler’s Screwdriver (tool)
•Small Flat Blade Screwdriver (tool)
•Lint-free Cotton Cloths (supply)
•Toner Magnetic Cloths (supply)
•White Lithium Grease (supply)

Below are your 22 easy steps to know how to remanufacture your Brother TN 540 and TN 570 toner cartridges.

Here you will also be provided with the OEM information part numbers;

Part #’s:

•TN-540 (low yield)
•TN-570 (high yield)

Step-by-Step “How-to-Remanufacture the Brother TN-540/570” Instructions:

Step #1:

•First thing first, vacuum the outside part of the cartridge, removing any excess toner. Simply remove the fill plug which is located on the bottom left hand side of the cartridge itself. Deposit the excess toner and vacuum out the cartridge. Be sure that the gear area is spotless. If you leave any toner in the teeth of the gears, it may ruin it and could create a clicking noise. You are better of suing compressed air which will get the job done cleaner and faster. Just keep your hand over the gears so no dust particles get in there.

Step #2:

•The side with no gear, where the static roller is, take off the black spring loaded plastic axle.

Step #3:

•Find the three tabs on the static roller end plate and remove them gently.

Step #4:

•Back to the gear side, remove the two screws that are holding the cover plate and remove the cover plate at that point.

Step #5:

•Gently remove the plastic axle.

Step #6:

•Now take off the e-ring and small gear.

Step #7:

•As for the doctor blade side of the static roller, there will be another small plate. It’s located on the end of the roller and inside the plastic wall of the cartridge.

Step #8:

•From the outside wall, locate a small, round hole. With your pointer finger, press the round tab located inside the hole. As you’re pressing in, turn the plate up so that the plate and roller are absolutely free.

Step #9:

•You should now be able to remove the static roller assembly.

Step #10:

•Using your air compressed vacuum, clean the doctor blade and foam feed roller. It’s not recommended removing the doctor blade because you may disturb the static roller felt seals which are delicate. Once a new blade is on hand, your special care will be needed since you do not want to tear the seals. This would end up causing a leak in the cartridge. The doctor blade is easily cleaned, all you have to do is blow off the excess toner dust and wipe it down with your lint-free cloth. Please make sure you don’t leave any lint behind.

Step #11:

•Time for inspection! Carefully inspect the magnetic roller felts. If they are compressed (shiny), then use a small screwdriver to tighten them.

Step #12:

•Now you need to clean your gears, make sure that the fine-toothed gears have no toner on them. This is a good time to check that the gears have enough grease on them. If for some reason the shafts appear dry or the grease is contaminated with toner, you need to clean both the inside of the gear and the shaft.

Step #13:

•Again, clean the static roller with a lint-free cloth. Do not use the chemicals to clean the roller. A nice dry, clean, non-smelly cloth will work just fine.

Step #14:

•Re-install the static roller inside the end plate first. The inside plate needs to be rotated so that it locks in place.

Steps #15 and #16:

•You have to install the small outside end plate and both the spring-loaded white axle and non-spring axle.

Steps #17, #18, & #19:

•It’s about that time; you can now install the static roller gear, e-ring, and white axle. Make sure all the other gears are meshing properly.

Step #20:

•Then, install the gear cover plate and its two screws.

Step #21:

•Finally, you can fill the cartridge with Brother 5150 black toner – 140 grams for the TN-540 (TN-3030) and as for the TN-570 it uses 200 grams of toner (TN-3060).

Step #22:

•At last, you can replace the fill plug. I also recommend cleaning down the toner cartridges in case there is any left over toner dust.

Step #23:

•Test the cartridge. For this cartridge model, there are no reset fuses or procedures the Brother TN-540 or the TN-570.

Congratulations! You’ve now just completed your Brother TN540/570 cartridge put together project. This information is provided to you to both educate and improve your knowledge in the technical area within the remanufacturing industry.

In description of, Joseph Mercado is known as The Internet Marketing Tyrant. He specializes in the consumable market involving studies on your Brother toner cartridges;
http://www.BrotherTn540.com

There are two kinds of touch screen displays. The more conventional display is the CRT or the Cathode Ray Tube, whereas the LCD or the Liquid Crystal Display is the more modern display technology. Most people know about the Cathode Ray Tube from the good old television set but LCD is a newer, less common kind of display.

Despite its apparent newness, LCD is making big waves in display technology. LCD is gaining in popularity primarily because it saves both space and energy. Combined with a touch screen display and LCD, display is the hallmark of today’s age. An LCD touch screen is more compact, efficient, and like any other touch screen it is easy to use.

The touch screen LCD display is best understood when seen in comparison with its more established predecessor: the CRT touch screen. The absolutely divergent technologies make the CRT and the LCD display characteristics very different. Not only that, but LCD also has an edge when it comes to size. LCD monitors are compact and lightweight. Typically, an LCD touch screen will take up only a third of the space occupied by a CRT touch screen of the same size.

Newer LCD screens are available even in 15- and 17-inch sizes. Until recently, 17-inch touch screens used only CRT monitors. As LCD screens are flat, the viewing area is also larger in comparison to a CRT monitor. That is, a 17-inch CRT monitor will have a viewing area of only about 16 inches where an LCD monitor will have the complete 17 inches.

On the downside, LCD touch screens do not display all colors and also can’t display multiple resolutions as well as CRT displays. Despite these limitations, LCD users are favoring touch screens. In fact, smart phones are the most commonly used LCD touch screens.

If you’ve been looking to upgrade your computer video card you’ve probably heard a great deal about PCI Express and SLI. Don’t run out and buy a new computer just yet and take that AGP motherboard you just threw away out of the trash. The truth is you can probably make some simple upgrades to your current computer to get a couple more years of gaming out of it. Of course if you have an extremely slow processor and/or less than an 8x AGP motherboard, you will need to do more than upgrade your graphics card. However, in most cases people’s computers are only a couple of years old and really have plenty of processing power.

The three things to look at are your memory, motherboard, and video card. To get the most out of the more recent games you want to have at least 1GB of RAM. This is a very simple upgrade and only takes a couple of minutes. For more information on upgrading your memory you can visit my website. Second, check to be sure your AGP slot on your current motherboard is 8x. If your memory and motherboard meet these standards you’re in luck. A new video card will probably float you for at least another year, likely two if you get a top of the line card. The thing to remember is that PCI Express is new technology and not nearly as widespread as AGP is. Game companies want to make as much money as possible from each game. For this reason, they will try to make the games play well on the widest array of platforms. When you think about it like this, it is easy to see how AGP will be useful for a while longer. For more information on AGP video cards visit the Video Card review section of my website.

If your motherboard isn’t up to par or your processor is outdated it is time for an upgrade. If you are a do-it-yourselfer like I am, you should look into building your own computer. It’s not as difficult as you might think and can save you a good deal of money.

Nathan Holsing is the editor of Gaming-Computers.net a website about building and upgrading computers.