Sure, some of us remember using the Commodore 64, but do any of us recall what the ads for it were like? Boingboing has aggregated a wonderful collection of 101 classic computer advertisements by everyone from AT&T (yeah, I forgot they tried their hand in making PCs too) to Texas Instruments. Aah, to be back in a world where everything fit inside a bulky keyboard and displays were monochromatic. [Boing boing]

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Honeywell, maker of all kinds of scary top-secret stuff, has just unveiled its design for a "self-diagnostic and self-healing" HDMI cable. No, this isn't like the self-healing armour that for all we know Honeywell also helped design; these new cables use a chip to correct signal as it passes through, and LEDs to tell the user what's going on.

Says David Coleman of Honeywell's CE Cable Products division:

"We've made this cable intelligent by integrating a chip into the connector that performs two major functions. First, the chip's line driver 'cures' corrupted HDCP and EDID data that can lead to serious audio and video artifacts. Second, we added 'light' in the form of LEDs embedded into the connector that let installers monitor the most critical elements of the HDMI interface for problems."

The question is, how much of a problem is corrupted data, and how much of a role do the components themselves (PS3, DVD player, cable box, TV, receiver) play in the fixing of signal? While Honeywell hasn't named its price—presumably because it will sell to vendors, not consumers—the cost will no doubt be expensive as hell.

Not only that, but the lengths of cable only go to 50 feet. That's a respectable distance, for sure, but in our testing, the possibility of problems lie in the longer distances, so perhaps Honeywell should forget about the shorter cables (there's even a 1.6 footer) and focus on 50 feet or longer.

That said, the LED concept is pretty cool: four LEDs indicate whether you have a live connection, whether there is actual video coming through and other situations that can occur. Neat, you know? But perhaps not worth the expense.

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HDMI is the way you're gonna want to hook up your fancy HD home theatre setup. But if you're running cables at lengths of over nine metres, you're going to need to spend tonnes of money on overpriced cables in order to keep the signal integrity up to snuff. Right? Well, not necessarily. The Honeywell HDMI restorer goes between long lengths of HDMI cable and makes sure the signal stays strong and the quality is as good as possible, even at distances of over 30 metres. It's a much cheaper choice than Monster Cables, and if you're running cables in your walls it's a no brainer. At least we assume so, as pricing and availability is unknown. But hey, if it's less than like $US2,000 it's cheaper than 30 metres of Monster Cable. [Honeywell]