~ Early Web Links ~

Neil Brown's personal tech blog documents a fun budget laptop challenge, sourcing and refurbishing a ThinkPad L380 for under £50 while running a current, supported OS. The site is packed with practical Linux and hardware tinkering posts covering everything from ThinkPad mods to Debian configuration tips.

PLASMA online is a hardware identification and reference guide that lets users look up computer components by chip, picture, manufacturer, serial number, or FCC ID. The site covers CPUs, chipsets, graphics cards, audio, networking hardware, and more, with overclocking tweaks and upgrade advice rounding out the resource.

Beyond3D is a technical deep-dive site covering GPU architecture, graphics hardware analysis, and 3D chip history, with detailed reviews of cards from NVIDIA, ATI/AMD, and others. Its comprehensive 3D Chips index cataloguing nearly every major consumer graphics processor ever released makes it an invaluable reference for graphics hardware enthusiasts and engineers alike.

FrostyTech is a comprehensive review and benchmarking site dedicated entirely to PC cooling hardware, covering hundreds of heatsinks, liquid coolers, and thermal solutions from nearly every major manufacturer. With an A-Z brand index spanning decades of products, top-five rankings, and detailed technical analysis, it serves as an essential reference for anyone building or optimizing a quiet or high-performance PC.

Justin Miller is a Portland-based maker, programmer, and photographer whose personal site chronicles an impressive range of projects spanning embedded systems, Bluetooth protocol design, retrocomputing restoration, and consumer electronics R&D. Spanning work from the late 1990s to present day, the site offers a deep archive of professional and hobbyist projects that reflects decades of hands-on hardware and software craft.

Planet Bagel is Willow's personal homepage on tilde.club, centered around coding projects, software, and hardware explorations. The site promises ongoing updates with sections dedicated to programs and computer tinkering, making it a cozy corner of the old web for tech hobbyists.

iXBT Labs is a detailed hardware review site, and this article by Andrey Worobyew puts three Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 MX graphics cards head-to-head across the NVIDIA MX, MX200, and MX400 chipsets. Packed with benchmark data, performance comparisons, and technical analysis, it offers a thorough look at budget GPU options from the early 2000s.

A preserved 1997 Cyrix Corporation product brief covering the 486DX2/DX4 processor line, detailing technical specifications for both desktop and portable variants. This archival datasheet covers clock speeds, power management features, on-chip cache, and floating point unit performance for these legacy x86 CPUs.

A detailed technical review of Mustek Be@rPaw flatbed scanners by Ilya Beskhlebny, published on iXBT Labs, a long-running Russian hardware review site. The article covers the Be@rPaw 1200 series specifications, compares CCD vs CIS scanning technologies, and contrasts the Be@rPaw line with the ScanExpress series.

StorageSearch.com is a comprehensive reference and news hub dedicated to solid state drives (SSDs) and the broader data storage industry, tracking market changes, manufacturers, and technical architectures since 1998. Visitors will find deep coverage of SSD controllers, military-grade storage, PCIe and M.2 form factors, market reports, and a directory of top SSD companies spanning decades of industry history.