Today, the Computer Market rolled into Collingwood Town Hall. (That's sort of like a travelling carnival, only with fewer bearded ladies and knife-throwers and more computer-related gizmos being sold at prices somewhat lower than in the shops). So I went along and bought:

• An external 5.25" USB 2.0/FireWire enclosure (one of the cheaper, rounded silver-grey ones), to put one of those removable hard disk racks into. I had already done this with a USB box, but wanted a FireWire one for backing up my PowerBook to.
• An 80Gb hard disk for backing up to. I wanted a 60, but the 80s were only $5 dearer, so I got one.
• Five 5cm blank CDs, "Melody" brand, "Platinum" quality (which is meant to be like gold only even more worthy of your money). The CD stalls were selling those, so I thought I'd get a few. I have no illusions of them lasting decades, but they'd be good for burning files/works in progress to give to people. And they look cute too.
• A PlayStation to USB HID gamepad converter (no brand on the box, though the chipset identifies itself as "GreenAsia Electronics" brand)

When I got home, I found that the FireWire enclosure was a centimetre or two too short for the hard disk rack, and as such it juts out slightly awkwardly. But it works quite nicely, and is cheaper per gigabyte than dedicated removable disks. (My previous Mac was backed up to an Orb drive; though given the lack of SCSI ports on the newer machines, I can't use that anymore. If anyone wants to buy an Orb drive (external SCSI) and a few disks, make me an offer.)

Meanwhile, the PSX->USB converter box works quite nicely with Linux' USB drivers, allowing me to dust off my old PlayStation controller and use it with Mame and a Commodore 64 emulator. It makes a world of difference over a PC keyboard when it comes to games.

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