V+ Box and disappointment

That laptop with the busted hinge I told you about last week!, well lets say that wasn't the end of its problems.  Surprised I didn't clock this before but I'm a robot and don't think. At all.  Took it into to get it done and the guy in the shop said it would be uneconomical to repair.  The hinges alone would cost £85 to order and it would need a new screen as well and the worst bit of all it didn't even power up with the charger in.   Like I say I should have noticed that but didn't so in the end had to take it home with my tail between my legs so to speak and spent the afternoon taking apart with a screwdriver.  On the bonus tip though DDR2 ram for Laptops is actually quite scarce the going rate is around £20 for 2GB, maybe worth selling it through Amazon.

Oh and those in the Dartford area looking for a good computer advice then Ace Computers is well worth your time and money.

You remember last week we talked about Sony necro updating PSP firmware to 6.61 regardless of anything using it well now it has an unofficial downgrade to 6.60 so you can add your own custom firmware.

V+Box.
Found one of these in the week chucked out.  For those unaware they were NTLs / Virgin media's answer to the almighty Sky+ Box before they chucked their lot in with Tivo.  They have either a ATA or SATA hard disk inside to record your TV programs on and that should be about it.  Except that it has a few odd bits and pieces inside.

The first thing I noticed is that although it installed in my external drive shell, it wasn't recognised. Poking around in testdisk I found that it was actually formatted for linux so decided to see what if it would show up in Mint (Question does anyone know what linux these boxes run from I'm guessing something really technical like Debian).  Bingo full access and another problem, there were some recordings there but everything is in a trp. file format so you would need WinFF to convert or if you are a massive linux geek ffmpeg from the command line.  Virtual Volumes will let you see ext2 and ext3 formatted drives in Windows so you can still use WinFF or Handbrake for conversion of any precious files to be honest I have nothing so far, and this is the hardest of all the boxes I've smashed into with BT Open boxes being the most open and Sky coming a distinct second.