And to think I was going to get an iPod

Today, by courier, I got my brand new USB host cable for my Toshiba e750.

One word... SWEETMUTHEROFALLTHINGSHOLY!!!

I love this thing. I was going to upgrade to the e833 a while back, but then I found out that I can overclock this aluminum bad-boy to a stable 708MHz, I can go even higher but it REALLY sucks back the juice.

Last week I again got the urge to upgrade, sure the speed is great, but I want the sexy, sexy VGA screen, with landscape. But, then I thought let's give the silver surfer one more kick at the can with the host cable, and if it doesn't work right, THEN I'll stop talking myself out of getting the new one.

At first I thought to my self... Why the hell do the always ship these things in giant boxes, and then after the Purolator guy skedaddled, I turned the box around, and found one severely crushed corner, and sides. Thanks, for the giant box Toshiba, since the box for the cable was about 1/15th the size of the shipping box, all was cool.

First thing I did was pry open the box, and pull out the cable its black, about 9" long, and looks just like the USB sync cable, except the end connector is female.

By now you're probably wondering why I would be so excited about a USB host cable. Well, last week I found an old, 2.5" laptop HD, (it pooched in the laptop it once was in), and took a long shot by getting an external drive enclosure for it (WELLAND ME-930U2), and it worked. Igor really earned his pay that day. Since the drive is 12 gigs that meant that I could have a 12 gig drive that looks like it was meant for my PDA, same style, and same color LED's too.

Now, I've got these two sweet devices next to one another all the cables are plugged in, and then... nothing happens... beep, beep... What's this could it be working... NOOOoooo... What driver are they talking about?!? That'll teach me to not do me research BEFORE ordering things. I have no idea what the driver is called, so naturally I turn to the box the cable came in... Nothing but a statement of compliance for the EU of all places, and I live in Canada!

At this point I'm thinking I should have gone with the e833... crap...

But, after a moment of combined buyer's remorse, and self loathing, I turned to the trusty Pr0n filled inter-weeb, if I can't find the drivers out there, at least I can be amused for a bit. Now keep in mind that I've just got off of a graveyard shift, did some banking, and drove for an hour to get home, then sat around veging out while watching the previous night's AotS, and X-Play that I had on my PVR from while I was sleeping before work, all this before the cable arrived. I'm tired.

I thought, I’m sure that this is a pretty obscure thing out there, and I was pretty much right. I found one site with some alpha stage drivers for PPC2002, and some REALLY alpha ones for PPC2003 (the one I have), which it warns that it WILL stop working after 15 minutes, with no warning. No luck getting them to work. Then I tried some 3rd party drivers from an external drive site, still no luck. Finally I found the ones that I needed at http://www.ratocsystems.com/ (incase you're looking for them too).

Praise the inter-weeb, for it has saved the reputation of this tiny little cable! But then I found out that it needs me to connect to my PC, and I just set my laptop to hibernate... crap... after the disappointment of the first 2 attempts, I thought lets just get some sleep, and try later.

6 hours later I'm off to work, 6 hours later, I decide to give it a go. It worked. 13.5 gigs’ for my little PDA and it looks great to boot, what could be better? Well, Bluetooth, but whatever, I don't have anything else BT enabled. So really, what do I care?

Now that I've got my modded cell phone holder to hold my e750 in my car, along with it's brother the actual cell phone holder, and iRiver FM transmitter (I'll write up a review for that later), I figured that I needed to geek out the whole way, and I setup my ASUS 333g mini router/WiFi Ethernet adapter in my car as an open network, so I can sync everything wirelessly... With my car!!!

So if you're in the Calgary-Strathmore area, and you see a red Sebring driving around turn on your WiFi, and you just might catch some streaming audio/video, or a wireless LAN-party going on between the passengers.

See you around town.

T