December 2000

Sunday lunchtime... only 12 hours of 2000 left. (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 31-December-2000  13:02:57 (GMT +10) - by Sciby I personally think there's too much fuss over New Years Eve, but anyway... *shrug* Michael Anderson has gone news crazy also! It's actually a good thing (as opposed to obsessive-compulsive disorder), so if you've got news, be like Michael and email us with it. Anyway... The Register has done a look back over the year from the vendor's side of things. Dell has started listing Pentium 4's on their hardware spec site. Some Ebay fraud here... ...and Quepasa.com is out of cash, here. And finally from Michael's bag 'o news, a report on the Pentium 4's bug, apparently related to PCI performance. Burning in a CPU to achieve higher overclocking success has always been a bit of a question mark, some people say it works and works well, others say it's a lot of rubbish. Acid Hardware is in the former camp, and has written an Athlon burnin article. I personally believe it works, I've had some success with the process on my Celeron 466 (don't laugh). Apu's Hardware have just gotten their hands on a voltage-modified KT7. The mod gives 0.3v more than stock, which can be all the difference between a beast machine that strips paint off the walls and a limp wristed flowerpicker that's only good for email and happy websites with no flash or shockwave. *ahem* This is very cool, Nasa has a nighttime shot of the Earth.All that power... gawd, we'll be out of coal and oil in no time. Extreme Overclocking has a streaming video on cooling PC's. I'm on dialup at home, so I have no idea what it's like. Problems with DirectX 8? With this utility, get rid of it and go back to v7, where things are stable and happy. The file you want is DXuninstaller. Back with Extreme Overclocking, they've finished an comparison of the Duron vs. Celeron. The like the Duron and don't like the Celeron. Poor Celeron, hated by so many. Watercooled CPU's, and now watercooled video ram. This is scary, yet strangely compelling. Well, since we're coming up to the REAL new mellinium, here's a list of doomsday theories. As long as I'm drunk and having a good time, I don't care if the world ends. Some benchmarks regarding FSAA and motion blur on a GeForce 2 GTS. Hmmm... Reviews: A7V air duct - at UnaClockers DangerDen water block - at Unaclockers Blorb review - at Overclockers Online. Abit Siluro GeForce 2 GTS 64mb - at TweakTown Hostitude (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 30-December-2000  13:21:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg You might not realise, but OCAU has it's own dedicated server called Odin. It's a dual Celeron machine, 2 C366's overclocked to 550MHz - you can see full stats in it's PCDB entry here and pics here. Yes, I finally did the entry for it. :) I have to say again how impressed I am with the PCDB. I just filled in that entry and noticed a bunch of cool things MWP has added to the interface/backend since I last looked at it. Definitely a valuable part of the site and on it's way to becoming a major part of the international hardware scene. Anyway, that machine is overkill for us still, so we host a few other sites. I thought I'd list a few of the relevant ones here: www.insanehardware.com - hardware news/reviews www.casejunkiez.com - case modders australia www.hardavenue.com - hardware news/reviews www.raidzero.net - personal(ish) page with some cool stuff www.geekthings.net - geek toys news/reviews www.sysnom.com - hardware/software news/mods (very new) That should give you something to do for a while on a slow Saturday. :) We're not accepting any more sites for hosting just yet, maybe in a couple of months or so. Saturday Midday (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 30-December-2000  12:35:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg Only 2 days left in the millennium.. still don't really have any plans for NYE here, hmm. There's been a heap of entries in the PCDB over the last couple of days, it jumped from 598 to 611 overnight. Remember it will host your pictures for you, so no need to go finding banner-infested webspace elsewhere. Far out, we have been on this dedicated server for nearly 6 months, and ONLY NOW someone tells me that the email signup form is broken. Heaps of people sign up every day and would have all seen that error.. sheesh. :) Thanks Stephen. BTW, I haven't sent out any email to the mailing list in a loooong time. I want to get the back-end management of the list working better before I start regular mailouts again.. Wow, how cool is this? A fold-out LCD screen that fits in a 5.25 bay.. go check it out! Thanks Chris. Mek has shrouded his orb.. no pictures and an ALL CAPS WEB SITE, but interesting info. Might be worth an experiment on a rainy day.. D128.com (weird name - anyone else remember the C128D? :) ) .. uhhmm.. have an interesting idea which might let you make a slightly more educated guess about the potential core speed of a given cpu., help you pick a good one at the markets mebbe. Another interesting idea on G3D, using chopsticks to remove/install heatsinks. You often need to use a tool for extra leverage with the tight clips on modern heatsinks and a chopstick won't carve up your mobo if you slip like a screwdriver can. GU have a little info saying the X-Box will be launched/announced on Jan 6th. Marz points out power-one who make teeny-tiny power supplies. Not suitable for replacing your ATX PSU, but good for powering those other little goodies inside your case like peltiers etc I think.. Hexus have a thing on making cat5 ethernet crossover cables.. OCOnline checked out a couple of cardcooler-type devices. We reviewed the same two units here a few months ago. This is quite neat, a database of blorb compatability.. so you can find out if it'll fit your video card or chipset.. thanks Allan. CAD have a video of motion blur in action, a demo in Q3.. IH have some preview info on a new DDR P3 board from Epox. Nothing too exciting.. Reviews: Abit SA6R i815E mobo on Apu's. Senfu DIY House on HardwareOne. My review here. I have been using it recently, for a testbed in my new computer room.. PC-170 SDRAM (not a typo) on IANAG. Wow. Yes I know it's not a standard. Go away. 1GHz Tbird Athlon on PCStats. Videologic Vivid Kyro-based vidcard on Guru3D. Razer Boomslang 2000 on EXHardware. Our review here. Budget Xeons? :) (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 30-December-2000  11:50:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg alchemy sent this along: Just been reading a review over at apcmag.com - the online side of Australian Personal Computer. It appears that these people have had their daily dose of crack - they think that an Intel Xeon is a budget processor. Check these quotes..   Taken from the intro for a pc-comparo they're running:  "Budget processors, such as the Intel Xeon and Celeron, and AMD Duron, were not as prevalent as they were last year."   And then again, taken from a short review of a system: "With its 700MHz AMD Duron processor, it's one of only two systems here to feature one of the budget processors -- Celeron, Xeon or Duron."   TWICE - thats shocking. One of their senior tech writes obviously thinks Intel's expensive-as-all-hell server-orientated processor is for value markets - HEH. Not good for Australia's second biggest print tech mag. Hehe.. oh dear. :) Friday Midday (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 29-December-2000  12:22:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg I just noticed MWP has added the ability to view the last 10 added/updated entries in the PCDB's gallery. Plenty to see in there, some of those cases are absolutely amazing.. Apparently there's a pretty huge Linux Conference happening in Sydney on the 17th to 20th of January. Lots of speakers etc, might be worth checking out if you're a penguinhead. :) Stmok pointed out an interesting article which explains in some detail the apparent failings of the P4. The author sounds a little biased but there's some convincing info there. ARP have v1.6 of their Win2K Tips & Tweaks posted.. SpeedCorp have an interesting one about making a ramdrive.. I remember these from the DOS days, can't say I feel a strong need for one now but maybe this guide will change my mind. xbit have some Asus Motherboard Roadmap info, while PCStats have a thing on Abit's upcoming offerings.. Some more case mods on TweakTown. Go the dodgy sticky-tape action. :) Dean points out a silly overclocking your tv tuner card guide. TechReport have an editorial on software pricing, while TE have one on video card perfection. More tales of woe on Max3D. Apparently this page has screenshots of Motion Blur and FSAA on a GTS.. but they're taking too long to download for me. ADSL soon.. sooooon. N0TH1NG, something of a celebrity in the CS mapping community, sadly took his own life recently. More info and dedications in the CS Forums. Tweakmeister can apparently get a good deal on that tasty Mushkin Rev2 SDRAM. They're in the US, but do the numbers, it might be worthwhile. I'm waiting for DDR. Forever on the bleeding edge of PC hardware, Dan's reviewed a torch. A flashlight. A bit too much eggnog I suspect, Dan.. actually, looks pretty funky. Reviews: X-Micro Hulk V GeForce2 MX on NVNews. CoolerMaster CB5-5G12 copper-bodied socket cooler on CaseJunkiez. Guillemot Maxi Sound MUSE on TechnoYard. Super Orb on ClubOC. Cooler Master ATC-201 case on Apu's. Iomega Clik! drive and MP3 player on ARP. AOpen AK73 Pro on BXBoards. This is a brand spankers KT133 board and they were impressed. Abit SA6R i815e motherboard on OCOnline. PowerColor PowerGene MX video card on RizeNet. Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 29-December-2000  10:38:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ah-ha! I have wrested control of the news script from Sciby! Actually, I snuck in here while he's not around, I better hurry and get this posted before he comes back.. :) Hope you guys all had (and are still having!) a good holiday. I got some great diving in on wednesday, 23C water with good visibility, dead-flat ocean.. it was perfect, probably the best couple of dives I've ever had. Good riding and good food over the break, too. I think the best Christmas present was seeing my name in NewScientist tho.. :) I've been getting 5 or 6 of those "Hahaha - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" emails a day lately, I knew it must be some kind of worm/virus that someone out there has.. Manaz sent along a link with much more info about it. It's pretty amazing, the worm connects to a usenet newsgroup and looks for update modules for itself so it can be upgraded to attack more types of files etc.. neato. No problems for people who don't run mysterious executables received via email tho.. which if course includes YOU, I hope! While on that site, I noticed an interesting page listing hoax virii. HardOCP have been busy over the break, they have a review of the MSI K7T Pro 2.. I've heard a lot of good things about this board lately, seems to be the dark horse challenging the Asus A7V / Abit KT7 rein in the SocketA motherboard world. Go see what Kyle has to say about it. They also have a Newbie Guide to Overclocking your Video Card.. Funny thing on Wired, the Top 10 VapourWare for 2000.. ie, software we were promised but never appeared. Some of these programs were nominated for the second year in a row.. Anand has an updated AMD and Intel CPU Roadmap. TrainWrecker have hooked up an interesting heatsink test rig, for hopefully more accurate results. Thanks to Mitchell and TechWatch. Reviews: VoodooTV 200 PCI tv tuner card on Max3D. Sony Minidisk Recorder on TE. MSI MS-6321(694D Pro) dual FCPGA motherboard on Digit-Life. VC133 SDRAM on BXBoards. SOYO SY7VMA VIA PM133-based FCPGA mobo on OCWB. Wind Tunnel Plus case on TheTechZone. More in a bit.. OCAU is famous! (again) (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 29-December-2000  01:01:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg In the 23/30 December issue of NewScientist magazine, on page 61, there's an article titled "Faster Faster" - it's about overclocking, with a focus on some of the more extreme cooling methods. We get a mention and they quote me in a couple of paragraphs. Also mentioned is Ed from overclockers.com, Andy from Tech-Report, Ramil from OCTools and of course Dr Ffreeze. The story is not reproduced on NewScientist's website, so you'll have to grab y'self a printed copy. $5.44 for a bit of holiday reading's not too bad.. the issue you want has a mostly red cover with an angel picture. 3-way SocketA Cooler Roundup (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 28-December-2000  23:43:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg Jeff McLuckie, who has submitted a few articles in the past, sent in a 3-way SocketA Cooler Roundup. This review compares the Coolermaster DP5-5G11, GlobalWin FOP32-1 and Thermaltake Super Orb.. Click here for the comparo! Wednesday... the late, late news. (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 28-December-2000  02:32:31 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Sorry about no news today until now, was busy saving orphan child... no, no, they'll never believe that. Hmmm... okay, I was walking across the road and God spoke to m-.... nah, not that either.. *sigh*... okay, so I was playing Counter-strike out at work for most of the day. I'm sorry. *sob* At least I was, er... *ahem*... "owning" some of the time. Right, first off, a bunch of links about the built-in "copy protection" thing that's apparently happening. It seems that the same technology can be used in cable/payTV, possibly making movies un-tapable. Many thanks to Malleus. Actual proposal. This didn't want to work for me. Does it work for anyone else? Slashdot's take on it. The Register has their opinion too. More from The Register, but this time regarding the copy protection via cable. Apparently, Kuro5hin.org had one of the first article about this topic. A longer article from SecurityFocus. How The Grinch Captured The Flag. This is very well done, bloody funny too. Cop a load of these SUMA GeForce 2 cards. Black pcb's are always damn sexy. Note that the GTS Pro has heatsinks on the memory chips, and it's DDR. *dribble* Check out the clearish fan on the MX below it. AND these cards are supposed to be relatively cheap. An i815e motherboard with a SCSI controller? Don't laugh, it's feasible, and Asus agree. Here's a news article on the Asus CUSL2-LS, as its known. And some more information. Fool.Com want to spit on AMD, laugh in the face of Cyrix/VIA (who wouldn't?) and *really* want to see the Pentium 4 do well. And they think it's going to do very well. Calculating the Potentiality of Your GeForce2. (Is "potentiality" even a word?) I'm not that intelligent, so I won't waffle on about the formulas on this page, I'll just say that it shows you that you've gotten your money's worth with that new GeForce2 Ultra. You lucky sod. The Guru of 3d has a Win98/Win2000 Dual Boot guide. Yar. Hmmm... not much to say. It's what it says. Nice snow animation. American McGee doesn't not appear to be your stereotypical games programmer. This article is damn interesting, a good read. Check it out. Finally, a collection of portable media players. They call it a music battle, but it's really just more of a comparo. I mean, where are the cannons and cavalry charges? Reviews: Leadtek Winfast GeForce2mx DH Pro - at Extreme Cooling. ATI Radeon 32MB SDR Review - at X-bit Labs. Tuesday night... Boxing day is almost over... (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 27-December-2000  00:12:13 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Well, that's X'mas pretty much done with... time to go out tomorrow and use those gift vouchers I got. :D Right, Red Alert 2, you know the game, hell, you might have even bought the game(heaven forbid). But now here's a guide on how to defeat 7 opponents, by yourself. It's more of a "here's a flaw that'll let you win" rather than a true strategy guide, but it might be worth your while. Acid Hardware have a new site design. What? I didn't say it'd be *exciting* news, did I? TechZone have updated their weekly price guide. Note: It's US pricing kiddies, don't get too excited. And here's a section of the News that I'm going to call the Michael section, because Michael sent it a HUGE amount of news and links... *deep breath* Hmmm, it seems after last weeks theft of approximately 55'000 credit card numbers, the rightful owners are coping huge bills. Not surprising really. A little off topic, but it seems that Vodafone wants to buy a chunk of Optus. Snapping a socket lug must be the most gut-wrenching experience a computer hobby guy (read:l33t h4rdc0re geek) can experience. Well, Overclockers.com has got a neat little idea for you to do if you ever snap off a lug. Even more stuff on FMD (Fuorescent Multilayer Disc), (I told yas it was gonna be big, but nooooo, don't listen to me), this time the report is from Cnet. Problems getting printed media lovers to read digital books here, and VISA makes claims of record e-commerce holiday spending here. I'm tired, so I'm not sure what's in there, but here's a article on burning cd's. Reading MS doco's gives me a headache at the best of times, so I'm not about to check it out now. That's it for now, news tomorrow, night. Tuesday afternoon... Boxing Day... X'mas leftovers aplenty. (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 26-December-2000  15:52:04 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Righto, if you've gotten some gift vouchers for x'mas yesterday, you might consider getting a Microsoft Sidewinder Strategic Commander. Sounds impressive eh? Well, it remains to be seen, go read the review. Digit-Life, those busy little review-beavers have reviewed the Asus P4T i850 based motherboard. This, of course, is for all you Pentium 4 owners out there. All two of you. Still at Digit-Life, they've got an article of the FMD (Fluorescent Multilayer Disk). I told yas we'd be hearing more and more about these neat little things. Athlon 1.2ghz with 266mhz FSB. There, that should be enough to get most of you breathing heavily and rubbing your nipples. A bit of 3dfx vs Nvidia goodness at Rizenet... Right, that's it, go find something else to do, more news tonight. Hopefully there'll be some more. A big hello to Iceman, who I was playing CS with yesterday on one of the Optus@home servers... I was really sucking at it yesterday, the phrase "cannon fodder" comes to mind. Iraq buying up Playstation 2's. (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 26-December-2000  01:39:56 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Well, we all know they've been buying them, there's been enough reports of it. Whether they're for controlling Scud missles or just for having a few games over the x'mas period, it seems they've still getting the things. Be this as it may, the stupid/silly/laughable thing is the power of the PS2 is developing from being sold to Saddam. Normally, you'd think a computer product, PC or console would only gain in power with a physical upgrade, a cpu here, some more memory there, maybe a new video card, or a mod chip in your trusty old Playstation, but not the PS2 it seems. Maybe Sony have merged their marketing and R&D departments. Anyway, here's a quote from an email we received, and here's a "report" *COUGH COUGH CHOKE* from MSN. Thanks to Paul Scott for the email. WASHINGTON - Iraq has been buying computer video games to harvest their microprocessors for weapons, a TV network claims. NBC, citing unidentified government sources, said an informant warned US Customs officials a month ago that a group with links to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was buying large numbers of Sony Plation games and shipping them to the Iraqi military. NBC said federal investigators discovered the group had bought 1400 Playstations, but could not confirm they had be shipped to Iraq. No export controls exist on such games. Experts (Sciby: Cough, cough, blergh) said the game's computer chip and video processor have 1000 times the power of the most sophisticated computer on the consumer market, making them highly desirable for military use. PlayStation 2 is even more sophisticated. One expert said even Game Boy has 11 times the power of the computers that first send man to the moon. For Pete's sake, my cat has more processing power that the Apollo 11 computers. Note how all the reports we've seen so far have been about Iraq buying PS2's, now this one claims Saddam is buying original Playstations, then they tack something on about PS2's. Unh, hello Mr. Reporter guy, if Saddam was even buying consoles to put into rockets, don't you think he'd buy the latest, not cruddy old last-generation consoles?? Sheesh. I love it when people quote "experts", which usually turn out to be: A)Their son, who's aiming for a PS2 for Christmas. "Please Dad? I can help defend America against Iraq with it!" B)Some guy who bought an original Nintendo and a 386 "do-it-yourself" home computer kit. I'm still amazed and dismayed by this, but what can we do? I hope I see them in a Darwin Award soon. I'll go calm down now. Monday night... ergh... can't breath... food filling every... *gasp* body space... (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 25-December-2000  20:31:14 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Yeaaaah, X'mas is good for food. If you're bored over the next week and you're thinking about modding your case, here's just what you need. Here, at the *ahem*Case Modification Resource Center, there's plenty for you to read up about, and I'm sure you'll be able to pinch a few ideas for your own moddin' project. New to overclocking? Well, BXboards has a nice lil' Overclocking and Tweaking FAQ that might be just what you need. Freaknuts has a lastminute wishlist. It's a bit questionable, involving Shannon Elizabeth and whatnot. Well, that's it for now, I'm off to another BBQ, hopefully there'll be more news tomorrow morning, see ya! Monday morning... CHRISTMAS! (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 25-December-2000  12:24:32 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Merry Christmas everyone, hope you're having the usually great day... anyway, onto the news so you've got something to read whilst you digest... Rambus and 3dfx have merged, so they can pool their collective talents of stupidity. As you do. Wil got bored, got a new mouse and got into the reviewing spirit, here's his opinion of the Logitech Mouseman Optical. Seems quite good, but personally, I'm happy with my MS Explorer. News from the US today... well, from GeoffD1 in the US... the Neo35 is a hard drive-based MP3 car audio jobbie that allows you to remove the drive and plug it into a drive bay, and edit your mp3's that way... accepts any standard 40pin 3.5" drive... this is kinda cool for all you unix/linux geeks out there, Compaq is making some resources available over the internet... best check it out quick before it becomes too popular. It's an Athlon T-bird 800 review! Yes, I am running short on time to finish off the news, why do you ask? :) Anyway, they got the 800 running at 1045, not too shabby. Faster than my p.o.s c466 running at 613. *mutter* ...and here's a heatsink review to go with the Athlon 800... Some geek bits of interest at ZZZ Online, including what seems to be a nuclear weapon-proof laptop. Finally, thanks to Bonsai and everyone for the x'mas emails, hope you all have a great day, and do what I plain to do: eat too much, drink too much, have 3 helpings of dessert and doze off in the arm chair in front of the tv, whilst all your cousins and nephews and nieces run around yelling and trying to kill each other with their new toys. :) Have a good day! More news tonight. (If I'm concious) Sunday... Christmas Eve. *w00t!* (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 24-December-2000  20:00:21 (GMT +10) - by Sciby I'm afraid not much is happening, and the news email account was filled with christmas wishes from other hardware sites and some from the users... thanks guys, it's all appreciated, hope Santa gives you want you asked for. ;) Apparently, this is funny. I've only had a quick look, I'm running late to go out to dinner, but Jesus is willing to work miracles for food. Read the page, you'll understand. Adrian's Rojak Pot has reviewed the Asus E612 DVD-ROM. It's a dvd drive, it's a 12 speed. 'Nuff said. And I'm afraid that's it, no more news. Ever. Again.[1] Sorry, but it's finally happened. Welcome to Boredom: population, You. (I'll dig up some more stuff later and do a bigger update tonight.) [1] The Management does not share Sciby's outlook of the news situation and we're sure that something will come up... hopefully... um... oh, Madonna got married. See? That's news. Sunday midday... one more sleep. *wibble* (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 24-December-2000  13:53:11 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Having troubles getting up to and past a 150mhz fsb? Think it might be that cruddy ol' PC-100 noname ram? Well, check out TweakTown's PC-150 SDRAM Roundup. Well, only 5 hours left of x'mas shopping, so get moving! If you're looking to get someone a game, have a loo at this review of the Gunman Chronicles, at Beddoestech. Apparently it uses the Half-life engine, which, if my memory serves me correctly, uses a modified Quake 2 engine. Hmmm... I care not for these new games, just let me on Counter-strike and I'll be happy. Y'know, you mod your case, you think you're pretty l33t and any second the girlies will see your modded case and go crazy for you. Then you see these. Check out that water window. ProCooling.Com has been back at their Project: Double Header. From my understanding, they're making a system that can cool the bejeezus out of any hardware config they have in that case. Good idea, but then, most of us don't have the money to just chop and change our systems every week. :) Digit-Life has way too much time on their hands, this is like the 4th review from them in as many days. This time, it's the Powercolor Evil KYRO. Before you even ask, KYRO is the 3rd generation chip from PowerVR. (Remember them?) I don't know where the "evil" part comes from, maybe it bit them. Hmmmm... slow news day today... oh well, we'll all have to find something else to do. Hmmm... *thinks*... nope, don't have a life, can't think of anything else to do. I think I'll go play Counter-strike. If you want to join in the fun, come join us on IRC and we can sort out a bit of a game. If you don't want to do that, go have a peruse through the older reviews and articles... or you could go read the forums! Now don't ever complain that we don't give you enough entertainment. I'll be back with some more news at about 5-6pm Oz EST. :) Merry Christmas! (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 24-December-2000  01:09:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg I'm heading off early tomorrow (Sunday) morning, going down to the South Coast to see my parents, do some diving, laze on the beach etc, the usual holiday stuff. I'll be back on the 29th but probably still taking it fairly easy until the new year. Sciby will be handling the news in my absence but cut him some slack if he misses a day here and there.. I just wanted to say "WOW!" what a year it's been for the site, to be pushing 1.5M pageviews a month is just mind-blowing, thinking back to this site's beginnings back in July 99. Many thanks to the people who send in news, the guys who have contributed articles and reviews and posted the news, the vendors and sponsors who have loaned or donated hardware for review or otherwise, the forum moderators who do a great job keeping things under control and of course ALL YOU GUYS who read the site, hang out in the forums and make the site what it is. I feel privileged to be a part of this community and YOU GUYS make it all worthwhile. So take it easy (especially on the roads), have a great Christmas and new year/millennium, spend some time away from your PC's and with your family! I hope we can all bring the site to bigger and better things in the coming year and it's fantastic having you all along for the ride. Have a great one! Saturday afternoon... quick update, then off to a bbq. *wheee!* (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 23-December-2000  18:01:30 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Wow, Seti@home is getting geared up to power on all their backend servers and start processing all the data that we people at home have been crunching for them. They're going to be looking over positions in space that have set off alarms more than once or twice. The story is here and you can help out both the human race and the OC/AU race by joining the OC/AU Seti@home team. If you don't have a Seti@home client, check out the offical homepage I'm all for large chucks of metal getting rid of that nasty, nasty heat: I've got some nice big heatsinks, with fans that can julienne-cut a potato in 3 seconds, but The Captain Insane-o Socket A heatsink is just stupid. IMHO, that top middle fan is going to do very little that far above the heatsink, and having one fan blowing into another won't make the air come out twice as fast. *mutters something about smp* Agg hoped this thing was a joke... I don't think it is. I could go on about this all afternoon, but best if I don't methinks... It's been a little while since we last heard from the FMD (Fluorescent Multilayer Disc), and it looks like we're getting closer, check this story out. I don't know about you guys, but I have a feeling FMD's are going to be rather big, if not the Next Big Thing in a little while. After all, look at cd-rom's and dvd's, they're even in consoles now. Gone are the days of cartridges and floppy disk games. Thank god. Thanks to Kase for the link, you crazy lil' RMIT guy you. Here's a couple of things handed to us by Michael Anderson (Thanks Mikey, you're a helluvaguy)... Egghead.Com (?) has been hacked into, and the hackers seem to have stolen a large number of credit card numbers... It looks like Intel has decided not to rush ahead with McKinley and Itanic processors, instead they're continuing with their pilot programs, The Register has the goss... Now stuff like this annoys me and my sense of doing whatever the hell I want with my computer. The latest mindless idea is to introduce media copy protection directly into a harddrive, even before you've purchased it. Thanks to kloster64, I think. Hmmm, you don't see many motherboard-specific FAQ's (Aside from the ones on the manufacturer's support site. The ones that are written by someone who uses english as their tenth language), but Athlon MB has written an Asus A7V faq, full of all the info you need, if you own an A7V that is. Useless to everyone else, but there you go. Ooooh, it's a tiny, tiny harddrive! I want one! It's an IBM 1gb Microdrive, and it's been reviewed by those busy beavers, Apu's Hardware. Reviews: Cooler Master ATC-100 case - at Apu's Hardware. News crazy? Maybe... (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 23-December-2000  14:06:10 (GMT +10) - by Sciby News is good, news is fun, I'm happy to do it and keep you guys as up-to-date as possible... and if I can find a way to recruit some female OC/AU news groupies, I'm laughing! Anyway, my doing the news more often will free up the Aggmeister to do more indepth reviews and the like, so all you nice hardware companies, send him more gear! You know you want to. :D Erm... Intel, if you're feeling generous, I could do with a P3 if you've got a spare one lying about. I'll be your friend! Honest! Don't forget guys, if you've got some news, reviews or something that's just plain silly and you've got an uncontrollable urge to share, send it to news@overclockers.com.au You like to read us waffle on about the goings on around the place, so help us out. Send in news! :) *cough*andaP3forme*cough* Crappo default cooling.. (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 23-December-2000  13:30:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ian sent this in: Just bought a V7100 2vid and have had lots of probs with it. From go it would not run more than 5mins without crashing due to overheating (even on low usage such as email, surfing). (admittedly a contributing factor to this was NO case cooling in an "old" PII-400 system. To cut a long story mercifully short, a case fan helped, and I just bought a blue orb, which in conjunction with the case fan should do the trick. On removal of the orig heatsink I noticed what appears (to me) to be inadequate spread of thermal paste between the heatsink & the GPU. Unfortunately none of the asus diagnostics work on my system (error messages) so I cannot quantify any of the above except to say "didn't used to work, now it does." Hmm, that is NOT what you want cooling your card in this heat.. Saturday morning... *yawn*... lotsa reviews. (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 23-December-2000  12:29:23 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Even more news/comments/articles about the consumtion of 3dfx by Nvidia, Creative has made their comments about it to Digit-Life. Here's a Duron 600 running with a 155mhz front side bus. Ahuh. VR-Zone are the mad fools who did it. *mutters something about frames and death* It's Part 2 of the Machines of the Masters, over at Maxmium 3D. Our own Agg has even got his specs in there, although I wanna know more about the 1155mhz beastie. Some Christmas cheer from PC Extremes, Shockwave style. Corel is about to sell it's Linux interests. Doesn't surprise me really, from all reports, Corel Linux wasn't that exciting or earthshattering. *shrug* Reviews: Napa Dav309 CD/MP3/VCD Player - at GideonTech Microsoft Sidewinder Game Voice - at PC GamerWeb Soltek SL75-KAV-X (VIA KT133A)motherboard - at Digit-Life Creative Labs Webcam Plus - Overclockers Online. Iwill KA266-R DDR Motherboard - at ClubOverclocker chat all day.. :) Modchips to be banned in Australia. (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 23-December-2000  03:21:12 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Well, modchips have been around for a while, mainly for the original Playstations, but they've surfaced for a few other consoles, including my beloved Dreamcast. But it seems modchips will soon have to be hidden away under counters and passed around in back alleyways if this turns out to be true. To follow up on the recent post about Sony cracking down on Piracy in Australia, Modchips and other devices will also soon be banned in Australia. The recently formed Digital Agenda Bill,covers copyright and other issues concerning digital mediums. Its pretty long and boring, but here's a small quote: "manufacture and dealings in devices with a limited commercially significant purpose other than the circumvention of these technological protection measures will be prohibited" The bill will come into affect in March 2001. We were given a website, http://www.copyright.org.au as the source for this information, and here's the Digital Agenda Bill itself. (You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader) The point we're concerned with is right in the overview, 3rd item down in Major Points. Hmmm... normally with large items of interest like this, we'd say something witty like "salt, one grain thereof, consume" or whatever, but this looks quite legit. Telstra Bigpond maximum duration limit. (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 23-December-2000  03:05:39 (GMT +10) - by Sciby We've recieved this email from Kesento, and it appears that Telstra has put a 24hr hour connection limit in place, to "protect" you from being "accidentally" connected for long periods of time. Even though the quoted email is from Telstra, we at Overclockers Australia recommend a daily dosage of salt grains should be taken before reading. IE: It might be true, but we can't and don't promise that. Update: It seems that Telstra has been busy with emailing BigPond clients, Ben has let us know that one of his clients, who has a BigPond Business connection, received practically the same email, just swap "Home" for "Business". Updated update! Thanks to Lloyd, our Telstra "insider", we can confirm the max call duration is true, oh well, so much for 24/7 leeching via BigPond. not that I condone that sort of behaviour... but... y'know. Dear Telstra BigPond tm Home customer In response to the feedback of our customers, BigPond Home would like to safeguard you against accidentally accessing our Internet service for extended periods. In order to provide you with an even better service we will be implementing a maximum duration limit of 24 hours. The limit will be for all Premium, BIG150 and Rural Connect plans. This won't affect most customers as not many of our customers have their BigPond Home service running continuously for more than 24 hours. However, if you accidentally leave your service running, or perhaps you are downloading large files which could take a long time, your service will be disconnected after 24 continuous hours. Of course, you can reconnect immediately if you choose to. The new time limit will take effect from 1 January 2001. If you have any queries about this new feature of the BigPond Home Service call our Customer Support Centre on 131 282. Thank you for your continuing support of Telstra BigPond Home. Kind regards The Telstra BigPond Home team As we said, take it with a grain of salt. Friday night, news is a bit late sorry... well, no, no sorry! I've been socializing! I have a life! (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 23-December-2000  02:43:12 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Right, into the main issue lately, the purchase of 3dfx by Nvidia. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, take your medication). Anyway, Tech Extreme wrote a "3dfx trip down memory lane" before all this ugliness of takeovers and the like. They decided it was even more relivant now. It covers the beginnings of 3dfx, the Voodoo chipset, and so on. Tech Extreme have also collated a Holiday Pressie Wish List from their staff members. (Note to international viewers: "Pressie" is Australian slang for "Present given by relative, which the contents of will not match what you really wanted, and will most likely be handkerchiefs or '70's patterned underwear". Sorry, I felt this was an important point.) Anyhoo, check it out. I bet Santa's never been asked for a hostname like "Pornomatic" before. Wheeeeee! TweakTown is acting like a website in a Santa suit (they're just helping the real Santa kids), and giving away free stuff! And they'll even send it to Greenland if you win! Er... if you live there at is. What I mean is that it's an international comp. Yeah. *ahem* Anyway, moving right along... Alchemy's just informed me that wild an' crazy guy, Dan Rutter has written a huge (surprise) article about skungy stuff that can grow in your waterblocks, radiators, pipes, etc. Best to check it out, quick, before that water slime gains self-awareness, enrolls in uni and lumps you with the bill. AggAdvice™:"I use cheap vodka to stop growth in my water." Ever heard of Korean-based company Suma? Neither have I, but apparently, they make a rather large collection of techo-stuff, and X-bit Labs has given Suma's products a good lookover, namely at their video card line. Yes, it's been put in the OC/AU news before, but it's still cool and froody. We'll all be using these to get to work soon enough. I can also see some fanatical modders would try to rip the fans off and weld them to the side of a case. Thanks to GeoffD1 for the link. VIA's gearing up the Cyrix III, now with the new Samuel 2 core. Via Hardware has got the goods on it. I always like reading about these particular processors, I owned (still own) an old 6x86L-pr200, so I've got a bit of a soft spot for them. :) Overclocked really well too. :D After a few coughs and splutters, Insane Hardware has their Abit VP6 dual mobo review up and running. It's a shame it can't support dual celerons, ppga or fpga. Have you just bought a new computer case and it's got no nice, shiny softswitch on the front? Well, stop your uncontrollable weeping, 'cause Taconuts ha- ...er... Taconuts? *ahem* 'cause Taconuts has got a guide to make just want you need. The NSW Police have given AustralianIT the excuse to make bad puns about police officer's going "mavrick" with the new Mavrick2000 mobile terminal. Equipped with a colour touchscreen, police officers will have the ability to use the terminals just like they do with their standard desktop computers (does this include downloading pr0n?). I bet they can't get a good fps on Quake though. Acid Hardware has written a nice little guide to maintaining your system. Pretty commonsense stuff, but good for you people out there who are still new to this computer marlarky. Finally, for all you gamer fiends, here's an interview with Rich Carlson. He's a level designer from Rogue, who just finished "Alice". Reviews: Alpha PAL 6035 heatsink/fan - at Techzone. Chenming ATX-901A Case - at Apu's Hardware. Friday midday... (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 22-December-2000  14:34:01 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Okydoky... First cab off the rank, Overclockers.com has finished a review of a Swiftech MCW462 waterblock. Apparently, it's quite good for Socket A's, but I wouldn't know, I don't have a Socket A mobo. *sob* Thanks to Epoch (You typerweasel you). If you own a Hercules brand video card, you'll probably want to have this little utility produced by The Ctrl-Alt-Del.Com. Adrian from Adrian's Rojak Pot has informed us of a revision update for his Windows 2000 Hints and Tips Guide. It's now Rev 1.5, go have a gander. They've linked a couple of competitions at Hercules and Thrustmaster. Praise be to the Temple of Technology, because they've written a review/guide to Upgrading to High Quality Crucial PC133 Ram. Digit-Life don't like to sit around, do they? They've let us know about their Firewire in use article. Now this is cool: Steven Speilberg has done a deal with Lego to produce a film studio set, complete with digital cam and pc software to make your own movies. Comes complete with a Lego T-Rex. :) Thanks to Xixys. Finally, an article about Biometrics security, and another one about Microsoft's Tablet PC. Reviews: Mustek GSmart 350 digital camera from Ripnet-Uk. Sluggish.. (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 22-December-2000  12:45:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg There was a server slowdown this morning due to a certain fat-ass hosted site taking up more than its fair share of memory on the server. Order is restored now. :) Fri Morn - Kinda Hungry (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 22-December-2000  09:12:41 (GMT +10) - by YYK Back again! Damn it’s hot in here… My computer is complaining about it… Adrian informs me of a very dubious name for a game for the Dreamcast With the dubious desire to own the internet’s currency, Beenz.com might itself, be something of a has-been… yeah yeah really bad pun I know… Dutch scientists have been working for three years and a bit on how best to get astronauts drunk. They’ve finally done it! In totally unrelated news, Uni of Berkley are trying to make robots to replace those drunkards, I mean, astronauts Your girlfriend/parental units/friends/complete strangers telling you that playing games will do you no good? Well how about lightening fast reflexes? How’s that sound to ya? Cheers to Neko Neko also informs me that the 2nd best James Bond is also a fake! It alll makes sense! Mr. Petkovic informs me that if you have a problem that needs urgent resolution, then this is the site for you. (I think they need to goto webmasters4hire.com) After so many near-accidents with utter fools, it feels me with glee to find that NYC is passing laws to prevent this kind of thing from happening Thursday night... slightly cooler, with a chance of a late shower or thunderstorm. (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 22-December-2000  00:36:07 (GMT +10) - by Sciby In late news this evening... before I crawl into bed and pass out... TweakTown has added a whole ten new case mods to their case mod gallery. The lengths some people go to... *quietly covers blowholed gamebox* Holy small motherboard Batman! That thing's tiny, so tiny it could probably be placed in a standard sized car stereo casing. I wouldn't try running Quake 3 on it though. The Guru of 3D *giggle, ahem*, has reviewed the drool-worthy Hercules 3D Prophet 2 GTS Pro. I want one. It's got 64mb. It's amazing to think that's like half the ram I've got in this computer right now. *shakes head in wonder* It'll all end in tears, mark my words. The wonders of nature.. (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 22-December-2000  00:20:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg ..are all very well outside your computer room window, but you don't want them inside your PC. Gary_J sent some pics (click for larger ones) of a machine someone brought in to him because it wasn't booting.. Cobwebs. Bad. Is this a termite nest?? Thursday afternoon... still damn hot outside. (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 21-December-2000  19:41:42 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Benchtest.com has been fooling with the idea of using a "heatpipe" to transfer heat efficently. Very sciency, ie: way over my head, but a very good article, they even doing some cutting and soldering! VR-Zone has played around with a Pentium 4, and have got the goods on how to mod it so you can set a higher voltage. I'm leaning towards filing this under "Theoretical" because I'm not even sure P4's exist. [Agg Update: Yes they do, Scibs (removes rock you've been hiding under :) )] All the tv news shows were carrying footage of the new Airbus 3xx over the last couple of nights, here's a bucketload of words on the huge aircraft from Wired.com. Where are they going to fit the 20mm cannons, that's what I want to know. Whilst we're at Wired, you might want to check out their take on the whole Nvidia-3dfx deal. Way back when, I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D on a 386dx40, Powermachine™ of day. Now we've got Athlon 1.2ghz monsters and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. This is looking seriously sexy, but will it take as long as Duke Nukem Forever? Eh? Well, I don't know, but check out that flamethrower. If it's animated well, we'll be in BBQ heaven. Meanwhile, back at the ranch... er... Tech Extreme, we've got a review of the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick. Good timing, I'm on the lookout for a new one... they've still got that scary Santa face picture though. *whimper* Apparently Oracle's still exist and didn't die out thousands of years ago, because Tech-Report has got one. He should be able to help with your pc problems, but probably not with that strange growth on the back of your thigh. See a doctor. Before we leave Tech-Report behind though (and before you run off with a prescription for topical cream), they're having another crack at Apple. It's just perpetuating the PC vs Apple war, which will never be resolved. Oh, and on a side note, I don't care how fast PC's get over Apple's, Windows will make sure the pc's always bluescreen faster. ;) Soundcard Central is a newish soundcard website. I'm not sure, but I think it's run by beach bum geeks, or ex-surfies-turned-geek as evidenced by the large wave-cd logo thingy. Pretty. Anyway, not a bad website. Check it out. Finally, Anandtech has introduced a newcomer to the gargantuan powerstruggle that is the Value Chipset Arena. (that'd make a good FPS title, John Carmack, Cliffy B, call me, we'll do lunch.) The feisty young newcomer is the VIA KM133 Socket-A chipset. Will it succeed and rise to glory? Or will it fall and become crowbait? Er... *ahem*... too much Gladiator for me. Reviews: DFI AK74-AC Athlon motherboard - from OCWorkbench. CD-RW IDE burners, part 5 (?) - courtesy of Digit-Life. Thursday morning... it's too damn hot outside. (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 21-December-2000  11:42:23 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Systemlogic.net has done a neat little review of the clear plastic-y device known as the 2CoolPc Turbo Cooling System. *ahem* It's a plastic vent with a fan. Nevertheless, have at it, you can also check out Agg's opinion on the very same product here. I like mp3's. Legal ones. Yes. Er, anyway, Spode of Spode's Abode has let us know of their Guide to Mp3. There's a Part 1 and a Part 2. LittleWhiteDog (?) has writen an interesting open letter regarding the current state of play with mp3's and the politics surrounding it. Good read. Who would have thought that a small canine could be so passionate about music? A couple of interviews over at Digit-life. Firstly, there's the Gigabyte interview, then the Aopen interview. G3D aka Gaming In 3d, have a joystick! A suitably cyber-looking joystick that goes by the name of Logitech Wingman Force3D Pro. It wobbles. And they've done a review. More from Digit-life, this time an Intel roadmap and pricing updates. It's on the front page. An interesting read called Machines of the Masters over at Maximum 3D. It's a look at what the webmasters of various hardware sites use to produce their websites. Seems they practice what they preach. :) Networking in any serious way? You need a switch. They're fast. Not as fast as... er... something faster, but still pretty damn fast.And here's a review of the Intel InBusines 10/100 switch, courtesy of Hardware One. Er... and Apu's Hardware is giving copper spacers. Huzzah. Quick links: Everglide Giganta over at Rizenet. Check out our review for comparison. Thursday Early Morning... 6 bells an' all's well. (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 21-December-2000  03:17:57 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Like the rest of us, the Guru of 3D begs the question, "How could you die 3dfx? How?". Yes, well, we all have to let go. Only a few x'mas shopping days left, better go out and get some of these for that techo/geek in your life. Nothing really specific, just "genres" really. For example:"Gifts that keeps on giving". Just like a pregnant cat. More from the Guru, who's managed to obtain a RealMedia file of a press call Nvidia made. You'll need a copy of RealMedia player to listen to it. Here's a WCPUid pic of a Duron 600 running at 900 with a 150mhz fsb. Gneb. Reviews: Mushkin Rev2 CAS2 PC133 vs PC100 memory battle. - Must be the night of the living Mushkin reviews. This isn't very fair, that Muskin stick has way more acronyms. Sleep now, yes. Cable Rounding! (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 21-December-2000  00:58:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg Looks good, easy to do and does wonders for your airflow - a great guide to this very worthwhile hack by Wolfy: Click for the full article! Wednesday night... part 2 (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 21-December-2000  00:45:20 (GMT +10) - by Sciby It seems if you play lots of FPS games, or in this case, Unreal Tournament, you can react faster and save a pretty maiden from certain death. I wouldn't try jumping from high ledges though, you'll lose more than 20% health. Thanks to Clonex for the link. A new Australian gaming website has arisen, Mammoth.com.au. Full of cheats, reviews, etc, it doesn't look too shabby, I can even read up on stuff for my Dreamcast! *wibble* It looks like Digital TV is getting closer, thanks to Bubblez: "From 6am this morning, all Nine's local programming is being shot in 16:9 and broadcast on its digital television services. Kim Anderson, Director of Digital Services at Nine, informed DBA that Nine News, current affairs, game shows (such as Sale of the Century) and local dramas (such as Water Rats) will be broadcast in 16:9 on the digital channel. The analog programming will be 'centre cut' from the 16:9 picture. Nine has also launched its digital television web site providing useful links (including a link to the DBA web site), digital TV online forum, and a Q&A. A video tutorial is also planned for the site." That's it, more news tomorrow morning... Wednesday evening... Part 1. (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 21-December-2000  00:06:37 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Evening all... HardAvenue has updated their Value & Performance Buyer's Guide, for a change from most "buyer's guides" they give you options in each section. It seems Saddam wants to have a go of Ridge Racer V, 'cause he's bought 4000 Playstation 2's. Apparently Japan restricted exporting the PS2 because of their processing power, and clustered together, they have to power to guide big nasty rockets to their targets. And the Iraqi's can play Gran Turismo while they're waiting. Another article here. Thanks to Morgan and... er... Agg. :) Tech Extreme, owners of the most scariest looking Santa, have interviewed Brian Burke, regarding the Nvidia-3dfx dealings. It seems some "world class engineers" have crossed over to the other side as well. As you do. TweakTown has been looking at 3dfx Motion Blur, still in it's early stages, it's all part of the scientific-sounding "T-buffer". Interesting screenshots, but probably way more realistic in real life I'm guessing. :) Chick's Hardware has modded a Pioneer DVD, so you can see the cd spinning. Interesting. Even more interesting that modding a dvd seems to involve the eating of a tin of peanuts. End product looks good (the drive, not the eaten peanuts). If you're going to do this, put some wood under the top bit when you're drilling a pilot hole, you won't get the bendies. :) Well, Heath Birchfield has been frustrated, and now he's finally snapped, after not being able to find A7V bios' and drivers whenever he wanted, so he's started his own "mini-website" with all the files you need. Pretty comprehensive. According to OC Workbench ECS will soon produce "dual" memory motherboards, capable of supporting DDR and SDR dimms on the one board, article halfway down the page. Doesn't say if both memory types will be able to run together, but somehow I doubt it. Until this moment, I thought that Santa was real and loves me enough to give me things I don't need. And underwear. Lots of underwear. Not a page for the kiddies who still believe. *sobs quietly and starts singing "Cat's in the Cradle"* "Da Beast" is Tech-Planet's answer to... well, every single other paint-stripping, cow-killing, wish-list article ever written. The page is a nice shade of blue though. OCInside has finished a rather large comparo of lots of heatinks. It even includes sound bites of the fans in action! German site, but in english. Reviews: Muskin Rev2 PC133 Memory - at AthlonMB.Com AOpen AK73 Pro motherboard - at Via Hardware. AggCave 3.0? (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 20-December-2000  22:09:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg No, not really. :) A pic from Mr Bill, he says they're just pIII 600 boxes that are used for capacity planning.. lots thereof. Click for bigger pic (140KB) Sciby assisting with news.. (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 20-December-2000  21:39:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg Please welcome our newest newshound, Sciby! He'll be helping out from time to time - mostly over the holiday period as both Manaz and I will be away from home and PC's.. I'll be down the South Coast at my parents place, hopefully getting some SCUBA diving done. Welcome aboard, Scibs! Wednesday Midday (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 20-December-2000  13:11:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg Apu's explains exactly what all those memory timing settings mean. Turns out Normal/Fast/Turbo are not as simple as you might think.. If you're in a tweakin' kinda mood, you might want to check out the Win9x Tweak Guide on TweakMeister - if Win2K is more your thing, perhaps the Win2K Hints & Tips v1.4 on ARP is more suitable. While you've got the bonnet open, check out this Win2k Toolkit which lets you set a bunch of hidden options and fix some other stuff.. (Update:KngtRider reported problems after using that toolkit, be warned). Finally, this patch is supposed to boost NIC throughput in Win2K. Speaking of Win2K, CAD have Service Pack 2 available for downloading. This is a beta and Microsoft recently yanked it off their own site.. so you'd have to be barking mad to install it IMHO. Pat pointed out that PricePoint now have a cooling fans section, so you can in theory find the cheapest coolers without having to run around. Looking at the page though, there are a few entries like "Pentium Fan" and "Case Fan" and no other details about the specific unit like brand, size, CFM or dB rating etc. Hmm, kinda wonder how useful that will be, time will tell I guess. ..but if you're after some cheap fans, OatleyElectronics have 240v AC 120mm Sunon Fans for $9 AUD. Brand new, limited quantity.. thanks Redback. Lots of interviews and info popping up on the net post NVIDIA's buyout of 3DFX. An interview with a few people from the industry here on 3DHardware, some info on rivazone (thanks MWP), more info on digit-life. All you Voodoo5 owners can stop sniffling into your cornflakes now about the NVIDIA thing too - a few people pointed out this Q3Arena Motion Blur thing - people in IRC last night were saying this makes Q3 look awesome. Update: This is not a patch, it's a demo of an earlier pre-release version of Q3. So, you need to stick it in a separate directory by itself. Thanks hellfire. This is not the way to lap a video card. :) Thanks alchemy. A little more info on the 100MHz FSB Celly2's in the forums.. thanks HaRm. Uhm, mind-reading helmet game to help kids concentrate. I think it's a good thing, but.. wow, are they serious? :) Quick Articles: MP3 compression on Digit-Life. Super Audio CD on Digit-life. Building the ultimate gaming system on AcidHW. Reviews: AOpen MK33 SocketA mobo on SysReview. MSI K7T Pro 2 SocketA mobo on AcidHW. Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 20-December-2000  11:28:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg Quick bunch of reviews for you, more waffly news in a bit: Seagate Series 5 HDD on xbit. AOpen PA256MX Deluxe GeForce2 MX video card. ABIT Siluro MX video card on OCOnline. Elsa Gladiac GTS video card on JSI. AT-Tech CM21 copper heatsink/fan on OCWB. Iwill KA266R DDR mobo for Athlons on TweakTown. Leadtek GF2MX DH Pro video card on Tweak3D. Round ATA66/100 Cables on ClubOC. DingoBlue Official Comments (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 19-December-2000  13:42:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg Just got this from Jackie Priestley, DingoBlue's Marketing Director, in response to an email about the 3 rumours drifting around at the moment, his comments in italics. 1. Dingoblue will stop being an Optus reseller At this stage we have NO PLANS to stop using Optus as our wholesale provider of dial up internet services. As we have always done, we will continue to look to the market to source the best available capacity at the best price to meet our customers needs 2. Dingoblue's internet access will not be via the Optus backbone anymore so this could affect user speed As above 3. The unlimited dial up plan will persist but there will be an 8-hour connection limit At this point in time we have NO PLANS to implement an 8 hour hard limit to our unlimited dial up product. (Keeping in mind we're the only TRULY unlimited ISP) We do have plans underway to introduce 'Small Bytes' - a limited 8 hour plan that will complement our existing internet product, not replace it. Ahh, rumours.. Tuesday Midday (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 19-December-2000  12:02:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg There's some minty goodness brewing in the forums. Just so you know, I am getting a regular bulk order also - the first lot arrived a couple of days ago and I will start selling them via the site in Jan. BTW, the cinnamon ones are STRONG! :) Hey, apparently the Telstra BigPond AUP Monitor (thing that will get you kicked off if you leech too much) isn't actually working yet..?! Thanks Azrael. xbit have their Monthly Hardware Overview posted. Anand has an article comparing P3 chipsets for Linux.. interesting. Reviews: Matrox G450 video card on OCOnline. AOpen AX34 Pro 2 Apollo Pro 133A Mobo on PE-UK. OCZ MX video card for overclockers on VIAHardware. RIO 600 MP3 Player on TheTechZone. Nimbus PC2000 "best case in the world" on PCMech. VPU review updated on Hexus. Abit Siluro GeForce2 GTS on xbit. Taisol CGK742092 Socket heatsink on MikhailTech. MSI K7T Pro 2 on Rizenet. Creative Labs 3DBlaster GeForce2 Ultra 64MB Review! (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 19-December-2000  02:06:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg 6000 3DMarks @ 1600x1200x32 not impress you? What about 9123 at default, then? This is one seriously fast card.. Click here for the full review! cC0 Celeron2 SMP - No go (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 19-December-2000  01:38:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg There have been rumours in the forums (and on this news page!) about the cC0-stepping Celeron2's possibly having SMP support. Greg sent this in: An end to the rumours. It was rumoured that celeron2's cc0 stepping did dual cpu operation in conjunction with the bx chipset and abit slotket3's. I can now safely say this is crap. Test spec - epox kp6-bs with dual 366's @ 550. 256mb ram. yadayadayada. Insert 2 x cC0 celeron2-600's. Board finds one. Flaky as all hell with a second cpu plugged in (rarely gets past post) and on the one occasion I did get to boot windows got one cpu recognised. Well, that's pretty definite and is unfortunately exactly what I've heard elsewhere, too.. DingoBlue Sold? (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 18-December-2000  17:29:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg 3 people in rapid succession reported that DingoBlue who do telecomms and internet services around Australia (and are a popular ISP for OCAU readers) has been bought for AUD$22M by AGL, the gas and electricity provider (who apparently are interested in the telecomms market too). All 3 people named Optus employees as their source (but are not optus employees themselves) and wanted to remain nameless. The rumour continues that the unlimited dialup will continue but an 8-hour hard limit will be enforced (presumably disconnect/redial will be fine). More interestingly, they (apparently) won't be reselling Optus anymore, and the internet services won't be on Optus's backbone, so it's possible the speed may be affected. I have no official word on this, so grab a grain of salt on your way through.. UPDATE: HDM sent word that there is now a press release on AGL's site with info about the acquisition. Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 18-December-2000  09:40:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg [-CaTHaRSiS-] created a bizarre, almost surreal flash tribute to the forums.. :) PCMech have an intro to peltiers for you wannabe extreme coolers. I noticed this page as an inbound referrer this morning. Seems to be a list of every useful patch, free utility and tool in the universe. I think it's all genuinely, legally free stuff, too. Might be worth a bookmark. Guru3D have a buyers guide for that gamer in your life. AthlonMB looked into whether changing AGP Aperture Size actually makes any difference. G3D also have a SocketA Cooler Roundup. More bizarre stuff on ZZZ Online.. Reviews: Juno P3 midtower case on Ripnet. Good if you wish you'd bought an iMac instead of a PC. Blue Orb on NetKills. S4 MidiLand 8200 speakers on TheTechZone. Sunday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 17-December-2000  23:04:48 (GMT +10) - by Manaz There's only 5 shopping days left before Christmas. I hope you've all bought all the gifts you need to buy - that way there'll be no rush when I buy all mine next Thursday. :) Anyway, on with the news. Following the news yesterday that the latest "leaked" BIOS for the KT7 tended to cause problems, Abit have released an official updated BIOS (dated 14/15th December on their FTP site and mirrors). The new BIOS is referred to as "WT". Apparently though (thanks to alchemy for all this info), the WT BIOS contains a beta version of the HPT370 (HighPoint RAID Controller) BIOS, which *may* cause problems for owners of the RAID variant of the board. Both the new WT BIOS and older UL (for KT7-RAID owners) BIOS can be downloaded from here on Abit's FTP site, though our Australian readers should find the Australian mirror site faster. As of the time I'm posting this, there's no update to the Abit website about the new BIOS, but considering it's on their official FTP server and mirror sites, I think it's a safe bet. As always though, take care to follow the instructions Abit provide for flashing your BIOS, and make sure you take a copy of your previous working BIOS before you flash, so you can revert back to it if you come across problems. SkAnDi recently asked in the OCAU forums how processors are actually manufactured. FyreBlade responded with this URL, which, while it doesn't implicitely refer to how Intel and AMD CPUs are produced, would be close enough for most readers (unless they are actually involved in CPU design and manufacture), and certainly makes a good read if you're at all interested in this area of computing. vthiru, a regular on the Overclockers Australia Forums has mounted a Golden Orb cooler (with a controlling potentimeter) on his GeForce256-based video card. You can check it out (and ask him any questions about it) here. New lithography techniques developed by a chip consortium (incl Intel and AMD) using extreme ultraviolet to create ~30nm transistors that can switch at 50GHz. What does all this mean? Basically, that faster, smaller and lower powered processors are coming. You can read a bit more about it here. Link courtesy of flarets. Hexus.net have got two new databases online. One, like our own PC Database, allows you to list your overclocked CPU (or search for others), and can be found here. The other is a listing of online traders (on eBay, etc), and can be found here. PC Mechanic and Maximum 3D have teamed up to bring you a Christmas Giveaway. Check out the prizes, and enter here. Overclocking @ QGL (that's the site name) are giving away an Abit Slocket !!!. Guru of 3D has released a new version of their GeForce Tweak Utility - you can download v2.4 from here. Dan (from Dan's Data) has had a look at the Sony UP-DP10 photo printer - and in doing so, compared it to the Epson Stylus Photo 1270 printer he reviewed a while back. Not content with doing your average, run-of-the-mill review however (would it be Dan if he did that?), he's boiled something. Confused? You won't be after you read the article, which you can find here. Take 2 80mm fans from a relatively unknown manufacturer, clip them together.... Tweaktown have reviewed the SpeedyCool System Blower. Inside-Hardware.net have reviewed the latest Socket-A motherboard from DFI - they're relatively unknown in Australia from what I've seen, but that doesn't mean they're not any good at making motherboards. The AK74-AC is based on Via's KT133A chipset, and is suitable for use with the new 133/266MHz FSB Athlon processors from AMD. You can check out what Inside-Hardware thought of the AK74-AC here. Digit-Life have posted a review of the FujiFilm FinePix 4700 digital camera. They've also gone into a relatively in-depth, yet understandable explaination of how digital cameras are rated. Nominations for the Year 2000 Darwin Awards have closed, and the winners have been announced. I wonder if the two would-be attackers in Brisbane lately made the cut, or will be standing for nomination for 2001? Thanks to alchemy for dropping the link in to us. In case I don't get the opportunity to say so between now and Christmas (I'm off, computer-less for 2 weeks starting this Thursday), I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday season, and that I'll catch you next year - 2001, the first year of the 21st century AND the new millenium. Saturday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 16-December-2000  23:00:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg Tshirts are "sampling" early next week. So it seems unlikely we'll be getting them by Christmas. I just got warned via a group email to a bunch of people I ride with, that there have been a few deaths/injuries on the Old Road (I'm presuming this is the Old Pacific Highway, north of Sydney) in the last couple of days, so it'll be a cop blitz area for the next few weeks no doubt. So take it easy, cars and bikes alike. Thanks to Hellfire, we now have thread hit counts working in the forums. This new column on the right side of the thread listing in each forum lets you see how many times each thread has been viewed. The counts started from about midnight last night I think.. While on the forums, people are expressing their thoughts about the big news of 3DFX being bought by NVIDIA here in the general forum. It shows how badly consumers have been treated in similar situations in the past, that we automatically presume a monopoly or near-monopoly will be abused to the detriment of the consumers. We'll have to see how NVIDIA behave in the marketplace once they totally dominate it. Alchemy pointed out that apparently the A7V and A7-Pro are not approved for the Duron 800MHz. 750 is ok, but 800 is not. Actually that's an interesting page, quite a few boards don't have the 800MHz part listed. Whether that means there's an issue or they just haven't been tested, I'm not sure.. Speaking of 800MHz, I notice on Akiba that 800MHz / 100MHz FSB Celeron II's are hitting the market there. I swear there's some kind of temporal distortion around that marketplace, have Intel even announced these chips yet? Apparently there's a new bios for the KT7 out. UPDATE: Don't do it, kids! Apparently they fry your mobo. Thanks alchemy. Some people call it cable rounding. Some call it cable wrapping. Some call it cable stacking. Only the CaseJunkiez would call it "Stealth Wiring".. actually not a bad guide - the finished product looks good and improves airflow, what more could you want? Wondering what to spend that pesky, yet huge pile of USD$100 bills in the middle of your living room floor? TheTechZone have a guide to some mind-wobblingly expensive Christmas geek gifts. I'll take the laser lawnmower, thanks. ..or, now that they're available in lots of pretty colours other than pink, you could buy me one of those "sweet kiss" Aopen motherboards.. and I could kill you, slowly, with my new laser lawnmower. Thanks Dave. After forking out for any of those geek gifts, you'll need to use a budget system guide to get your next PC, lucky for you Tech-Planet have a new one.. I spent all day benchmarking video cards. I'm starting to see those red trenchcoated guys from 3DMark2000 walking around my house out of the corner of my eye. :) Hope to have my review of the Creative Labs GeForce2 Ultra posted Monday morning. About 8 things in the review queue after that, too.. Reviews: Soltek SL75KAV-X KT133A mobo on OCWB. Can't wait to see my first 133MHz-FSB Tbird system. Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 Ultra video card on Digit-Life. Abit SA6R i815E-based mobo on BXBoards. in Adrian's Rojak Pot. fUnc 1030 mouse surface on Max3D. MSI StarForce Intergalactic Runabout on PlanetGeForce. Or maybe it's just a video card. NVIDIA inhales 3DFX! (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 16-December-2000  10:52:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg Well, this is the big news for today. Rumours of this happening have been flying around for months but it's finally happened (to some extent, depending which side you ask). Do NVIDIA want the technology or is it to avoid the whopping lawsuits 3DFX have against them? Hopefully ATI or another player can keep competition alive in this part of the industry.. Kyle has mirrored the various press releases here on the HardOCP. Friday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 15-December-2000  22:09:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg This whole massive-heatsink-on-video-card thing is just getting silly now. :) 3DSpotlight have an IE5 Tweak Guide. Aussie_Paul pointed out this interesting Microsoft Media Player 8 page which claims near-CD quality sound at 48Kbps, enabling file sizes almost one-third the size of MP3. LiamC sends word that he runs a regularly-updated OZ Price Guide.. tells you cheap prices but doesn't seem to tell you where those prices are from. Evilcthul pointed out that there's a stereo VU kit for sale "To Clear" on Dick Smith Online.. details/ordering here. KngtRider in IRC was saying this one is fairly cheap and nasty. Well, at AUD$10 it's certainly cheap. Reviews: Arctic Wind is what polar bears get when they eat too many penguins. Curiously, it's also the name of a new heatsink that G3D checked out. Razer Boomslang 1000 & 2000 on PCGamerWeb. JimX reviewed the 2000 here and is looking at the 1000 unit at the moment. MSI 694D Pro-A dual FCPGA mobo on ClubOC. Netgear 10X Phoneline Networking Products on TheTechZone. Power Colour Evil Kyro video card on VIAHardware. Alpha PAL6035 socket cooler with SocketA clip on ExtremeOC. Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 15-December-2000  09:20:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Tech-report have an Athlon vs Duron comparo posted. One's cheaper, the other's faster. But how much faster is the question.. Interesting thing on EEtimes about some design decisions behind Intel's final P4 layout, thanks Mike. Hypothermia are giving away a few Abit motherboards. GamePC have some info on QDR: Beyond DDR. There's a new WINAMP out, v2.71. AnandTech found a secret hidden surface removal option in the new Voodoo4/5 driver which apparently improves performance.. Reviews: Abit VP6, their latest dual-cpu mobo offering with ATA-100 and RAID, on Hexus. Enlight EN-7233 midtower case on EXHardware. Silent Drive hdd mounting kit on UKGamer. AMK 292-3333 Midtower case on TheTechZone. AOpen HQ08 fulltower case on OCOnline. Asus P4T Pentium4 mobo on Sharky's. Kenwood 72X CDROM on ExamPC (?). Thursday Morning #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 14-December-2000  09:59:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg Anyone else finding hotmail dog-slow at the moment? My GF reads her email on there and it is unusable today.. The russians are coming! The russians are coming! Actually, they're already here - they're discovered our Pub forum. No idea what they're saying, but I think I've discovered their command headquarters.. here in this thread on HardWare.RU. TomsHardware have a 17-way Socket Heatsink Roundup.. thanks OZEight. I noticed on slashdot this indestructible mouse.. for people with indestructible hands I think. Clearly aimed at the "Super Heroes who get frustrated with their PC" niche market. OCShoot reviewed the new Vapochill unit. -14C is nothing to sniff at, but neither is the pricetag.. Adrian reviewed the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. JimX reviewed one for us here a few months ago. Anand reviewed the SIS 730 chipset.. cheapy mobo chipset for Durons. Dan's been playing with an AMD reference DDR Athlon motherboard and a 1200MHz CPU. I hate him.. oooh, how I hate him. Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 14-December-2000  01:44:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Just lost dial tone on my phone line for about 15 minutes. Very odd. PCMarket.com.au are giving away some coolers.. Digit-Life checked out a couple of new DDR chipsets here. ApusHardware have a guide to putting a super orb on your video card. Hint: lots and lots of duct tape. No free PCI slots. Riiiight. Freaknuts have a mousepad roundup including a diaper. I swear, the hardware scene is getting weirder by the day. BXBoards have an article on Flask MPEG, an encoder which is being used as a CPU benchmark lately. TweakTown have some basic DDR benchmark numbers on their front page. 5xx/7xx in Sandra memory, fnarr fnarr. They also have a babe of the week, fnarr fnarr. SiS announced some new chipsets that support DDR SDRAM on Intel and AMD platforms. CPUReview reckon AMD have won the price war.. VIAHardware have some leaked 4-in-1 4.26 drivers.. AthlonMB have a system recommendation guide. Reviews: Antec SX1030B fulltower case on.. uhmm.. a site that doesn't appear to have a name. Samtron 95P 19" Monitor on FrostyTech. AOpen AK73Pro KT133 mobo on OCWB. Personal Video Station on TE. Software that enables you to watch, manage, and record television using your PC. Epox EP-8KTA3 KT133A mobo on TweakTown. 133MHz FSB Tbirds, mmm. Cyclone 5000 Ultra Mid Tower on TechZone. SuperOrb socket cooler on NeoSeeker. System Blower FC-2000-B cooler on LWD. Copper Hedgehog cooler on UKGamer. Chipsets cheating in benchmark? Partial Frame Skipping? (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 13-December-2000  22:06:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg I received some very interesting info via an anonymous email a couple of days ago. I've been mulling over whether to post it or not and have decided to make it public, with the caveat that people read it with a large grain of salt because I have not personally confirmed the results myself yet. The claim is that SIS have, with certain chipsets, been cheating in a popular benchmark by not rendering all the required frames: This trend continues with Frame 3 and Frame 4. On Frame 3, the ringed planet is now in exactly the same position in both the SIS 630 and PM133 systems. But in Frame 4 on the PM133 system, the gap between the ringed planet and the laser beam has widened further, while on the SIS 630 system the gap has remained the same as on Frame 3. Again, the only change in Frame 4 on the SIS 630 system is the counter. Read the full article here: Partial Frame Skipping? Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 13-December-2000  00:40:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg TacoNuts (no, I've no idea) have a list of overclocking problems.. fairly basic stuff. Hellfire points out this PowerColor VooDoo4 card. Is this this first card out under 3DFX's new policy of letting other companies make cards around their chipsets? Andrew sends word that Intel have made the world's smallest transistors.. more info here from Tim. Some watercooling info on OCShoot. They use the Cool-Computers radiator we reviewed here a little while ago. Chrome Orb vs Super Orb here on OCOnline. KnightRider mentioned in the IRC channel that Murray Walker is retiring from commentating Formula One after next year's season. It'll be a shame to see him go. His blunders are not what we'd like to remember him for, but SabreTooth pointed out this page of some of his classic quotes from commentary.. some funny stuff there. Reviews: Voodoo4 4500 on HardOCP. Atto UL3D Dual Channel SCSI RAID Controller on AthlonMB. P1500 Rumble Pad controller on TE. GXT1212 Super Mid-Tower cool case on TechZone. Green Monster, another cool case, on TechZone. Arctic Silver Adhesive on InsideHardware. Mushkin Rev2 PC133 SDRAM on TweakMeister. Palm M100 on TheCoolRepublic. MSI-6337 i815E mobo on HardwareOne. The Claw controller on CaseJunkiez. Bizarre stuff from Will: 3 December 2000, Australia) A stabbing death of a man in the suburbs of Brisbane was precipitated by a bizarre twist of fate. Two men, aged 21 and 28, went to a caravan park intent on doing serious damage to the occupant of one trailer. In the ensuing confusion, the intended victim escaped without injury while his two attackers managed to viciously stab each other. The 21-year-old knife-wielder died at the scene, while the 28-year-old was hospitalized with severe injuries. The incident thus qualifies for both a Darwin Award and an Honorable Mention, a rare event indeed! Tuesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 12-December-2000  22:42:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg In the absence of any other news, some forum-goers made some of their own. Funny stuff, guys :) - thanks to Wolfy for pointing it out. Wow, this article is probably the most comprehensive comparo of video cards I've ever seen. 33 cards tested in a bunch of games, screenshots, the works. Worth checking out.. Are your golden orbs all skanked up? OCWorkbench will show you how to get 'em clean.. hmm, must be a slow day in Singapore. McGoff points out yet another page of PC bits going bang, being shot, blown up etc.. Funny "leaked benchmarks" from Intel's "Celeron 3".. thanks Hellfire. Digit-Life have a thing up about video conferencing.. JSI have been cranking their Celly2 600 to 1008MHz.. not bad at all. Spode's has an article on how much of an effect on total system performance that memory performance has.. Ooroo points out a new Beowulf cluster in Melbourne.. not much technical info, sadly. The usual bizarre stuff on ZZZ Online.. Reviews: GlobalWin FKK50 SlotA cooler on HardAvenue. I covered this unit a while ago in my 6-way SlotA Cooler Comparo. They found similarly that it performed pretty well when you move the fans to the middle. IWill Iwill WO2-R i815E motherboard on TweakTown. I actually met Mr Tweak in Sydney the other day, showed him how to play snooker, he showed me how to get kicked out of a pub. Nice one. :) Soyo 7VMA PM133 mobo on PCInsight. Abit VP6 (woo!) on BXBoards. Blue Orb on GideonTech. More in a little while.. Not dead, resting. :) (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 12-December-2000  17:51:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg I dunno, I go offline for a day and everything falls to peices. I was moving house yesterday so couldn't do news, Manaz was busy elsewhere and couldn't help out, then today when I finally get the new AggCave online and go to check the site.. the server is down because there's a major power outage in Sydney's Circular Quay and my ISP is dead in the water! There goes my nearly 200-day uptime.. Anyway. Most things seem to be working now. The PCDB is down and for some reason I can't open a shell on the server to fix it. I'll be visiting the server tomorrow and seeing what the story is.. Expect some news tonight! Sunday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 10-December-2000  21:35:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg Note to self: never move house in summer. 3DGameMan have an Abit KT7 Modification Video Guide.. for all you high-bandwidth users. Did I mention my new house can get ADSL? :) It's not cable, but it's not dialup, either. OCWorkbench have info on a recent pc show in Singapore. Digit-life have a monthly storage digest posted. The KT7 FAQ has been updated. ProCooling have a guide to stealth watercooling.. ie, fitting it all inside your case. Bah, you're not a man unless you have a big plastic bucket next to your PC. :) An interview with someone from MadOnion on Hypothermia.. Reviews: copper spacers on Apu'sHardware. Linksys Fast Ethernet 10/100 Network In a Box on HWNews.net. mouse bungee on Guru3D. Compare our review here. chrome orb on PCInsight. Abit KT7 on RizeNet. Abit Sound System on OCOnline. Blur Orb on UKGamer. Soundgood MP3 Module for the Visor handheld on AwareMag. DigiDoc 5 hardware monitor on ProCooling. Saturday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 9-December-2000  09:36:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg Big congrats to my good friends Bren and Daron who almost certainly don't read this page, but are getting married today.. awww. So, what with packing and going to the wedding later, I'm in a big rush today so not going to be checking many of these links.. some may suck. There's some speculative benchmarks of the NVIDIA NV20 graphics chipset.. OCWorkbench have the scoop on KT133A, the 133MHz-FSB version of KT133. They reviewed the EPoX 8KTA3 which uses this chipset. VIAHardware snuck in behind them with a guide to overclocking KT133A. TE have an article they're calling the Pentium IV Bible.. TheTechZone have a holiday heatsink roundup happening. AOpen have made a pink motherboard for the Japanese market only, called "sweet kiss".. okey dokey. Coupla interviews on Puces3D (in English): someone from LionHead studios here and someone from 3DFX here. Reviews: Abit SA6R i815-based mobo on IANAG. Cisco ADSL router and Netcruiser 10/100 Nway switch on FreakNuts. fUnc mousepad on PCStats. Pioneer DR-105S 16x DVD-ROM on CDR-Info. Microsoft Sidewinder Commander on HyperActive. This is MS's answer to the Claw.. thanks alchemy. 3Ware Escalade 3W-6400 4-channel UDMA/33/66 RAID Controller on HardwareOne. Guillemot Maxi Muse 4-channel sound card on MrPCPro. Elsa Gladiac MX on JSI. Friday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 8-December-2000  16:19:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg Just a quickie before I duck off to the pub.. IPFreely sends word that Linux has been ported to the DreamCast.. cool. Grab it here. Serious pet-inhaling fan pointed out by Hellfire.. 1100CFM ..?!! Realtime have some interesting info, Corsair are testing engineering samples of their DDR SDRAM.. Poppers points out some AMD Info.. 1.7GHz, mmmmm. Friday Morning #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 8-December-2000  10:31:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg I count about 110 virtual tshirts so far. No idea what pussy.com.au is about. Still, not what I thought that domain would be. Thanks Will.. TacoNuts (?) checked out 3 40GB Maxtor HDD's. There's now an english version of that smashing thunderbird thing from a couple of days ago. Still looks to me like he's using an FDP-32 on that tbird, in which case I'm not surprised it smashed into little peices. Those things were scarily strong back in the mendocino celeron days. TweakTown are getting all excited about seeing an AMD billboard in Sydney. Doesn't take much, obviously. :) RX pointed out this cool star-trek-like device. Set phasers to stun! Spwny sent word of this mobile phone gun.. err, now that *is* a worry.. TechnoYard have a system cooler comparo posted. Reviews: Iwill WO2-R on i815E mobo on DigitLife. Kodak DC4800 digital camera also on DigitLife. Inno3D Tornado GeForce2 Pro ALSO on DigitLife. Busy bees! Philips Acoustic Edge PSC-706 sound card on NeoSeeker. SoundGood Mp3 Player for HandSpring Visor on SysReview. copper shims on ClubOC. Leadtek GF2 MX yet again from Digit-Life. Coolermaster Heatpipe Heatsink on UKGamer. Asus CUSL2 on Hexus. Don't forget we have our own CUSL2 Forum. Right. I'm off to the post office now.. if you hear of terrible violent crimes being committed in newtown, sydney today - it's because my mints haven't arrived yet. Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 8-December-2000  09:44:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg I hate packing! But my new computer room is going to be cool. :) Special greets to Widowmaker, registered user number 3000 in the forums! Also sometime last night Beannie added the 500th entry to the PCDB! Don't forget to go register your interest in tshirts, in this forum thread. After all the dramas with the recent A7V 1005 bios, 2 days later Asus have hurriedly put up version 1005A. Initial reports of this one are good, thanks to everyone who sent in the link. Apparently English and German aren't Romantic after all, they're Germanic languages. Just as well I'm a hardware freak and not a linguistics professor. :) InsaneHardware have some P4 Price Drop info.. Tech-report have a Visor Keyboard Showdown.. similar to the Palm Portable Keyboard I reviewed ages ago. Cool foldy keyboards for palmtops. TE have built an Intel Killer Gaming Rig. ipKonfig have a guide to removing capacitors so you can fit your orbs into new and exciting places. TheTechZone have an article titled The $5.13 Lazy Man's Case Mod.. Tshirts - Interested? (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 7-December-2000  15:22:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg Please go to this thread if you're interested in getting an OCAU Tshirt. This is just so I get a general idea of how many to get made. Thanks guys! Thursday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 7-December-2000  14:59:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg Seems all is not well with the new A7V 1005 bios. Might pay to wait a little while before flashing that one, I've had a few tales of woe via email too. The FBI broke into a crook's office and used a keyboard sniffer to steal their password. Protecting the peace or trashing personal privacy? InsaneHardware reckon the VP6 is not being recalled. Okey dokey. Tweakmeister have a guide to memory heatsinks aka ramsinks.. TweakTown have a 14-page AMD Overclocking Guide.. OCOnline compared blue and green core Durons. Dan's been playing with a couple more portable MP3 players.. Silly/funny tech-support video clip on BrainBuzz.. thanks Stewart. More tales of tech support woe on Max3D. McGoff points out that there is another site (besides babelfish.altavista.com) that you can use for translating french reviews like the one we had the other day.. translator.go.com. Seems to use the same SysTran software as babelfish. Romantic languages only (that's languages descended from Latin, which the Romans spoke, so German, English, French, Spanish etc, but not languages from asia or other parts of the world). Reviews: FrontX Multimedia Ports on EXHardware. MTe-LAN USB to USB networking kit on Guru3D. SBLive Platinum 5.1 on TechExtreme.. Abit SA6R i815E motherboard on Hardware-One. Wednesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 6-December-2000  23:40:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg InsaneHardware have a sneak pic of the new Indigo Orb for P4's by Thermaltake.. 3DHardware.net reviewed the Creative Labs GF2 Ultra. HardOCP have the 2nd installment in their case modding guide posted. VE have a preview of the Voodoo5 6000.. thanks Mitchell. AnandTech have an article on the GeForce2 Pro. Wednesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 6-December-2000  15:20:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg Moving house on Monday, gotta start packing all my stuff up, pulling my desk apart etc.. A few people said that Shafted, regularly getting 330 or so people, is bigger than QGL, so we were wrong in saying QGL was the biggest LAN party in Australia. Well, I don't know the full numbers either way, but the newspapers were billing QGL as the biggest ever and I'm sure I heard the number 385 at one point. Ahh well.. HardOCP have info on a recall of revision 1 Abit VP6's.. the Rev 2 boards are apparently fine. While on HardOCP, I noticed this exploding motherboard and someone realising that CD-ROM drives really are cupholders.. :) There's some desk modding going on in the forums. Scarifier points out that the A7V 1005 full-release bios is out. Grab it here. I haven't looked at it yet, hopefully this irons out the wrinkles with the on-bios multiplier adjustment. Remember Bad Things might happen during bios flashes, so be careful. Andy over at BXBoards has cranked out a couple more non-BX motherboard reviews.. :) firstly the Asus A7V and also the AOpen AX34 Pro 2. Not bad for a guy with a broken shoulder. Tigger sends word of a fix for a CounterStrike DoS attack which people can use to kick you off the server.. these files let you stop it happening to you, apparently. This french site has a comparo of the Voodoo 4-4500 and GeForce2 MX. Pics and graphs you can read if not the French body of the article. Mmmm.. french bodies.. Dan has some sensible advice up, his top 8 computer myths. My favourite is that really hairy computer that runs around Canada. Squozen wants the world to know that by going here and downloading the new Alice demo, you put yourself in the draw to win a GF2 Ultra. Seems to be open to international peeps, too.. Adrian has a guide to making a battery extender for longer usage times of portable devices.. Tim sent a link about Telstra Big Pond Advanced's New Acceptable Usage Policy.. very similar to Optus@Home's "10 times the average" thing. Hmm, still got to chase up if I can get Optus@Home at the new place.. Inside Hardware reviewed the Soyo SY-K7VTA SocketA KT133 mobo. Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 6-December-2000  01:41:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg Dangit. I was halfway through a news post, got distracted, a mate dropped by and I went and played pool for a couple of hours.. got back to find a blue screen. Bwaaaargh! Still, some stuff to keep you busy.. You may have noticed I added a link " OCAU chat" to the left-hand menu in the site template. This explains how to get into the IRC channel where lots of site regulars hang out for way too much of the day. :) Also, I updated the Article/Review Archive with links to the last month or so's content. Also updated the little drop-down boxes at the top of the page with some more recent stuff. Insanehardware reviewed the AOpen MK33 SocketA motherboard. Tiny, KT133, no multiplier adjustment.. hmm. In-depth technical comparison of Linux and Windows2000.. here on BBSpot. :) Pages and pages of pics from the recent QGL finals, the biggest LAN party ever held in Australia, beginning here. For an idea of the size of it, check this picture out. There are demos from the tournament finals here.. thanks alchemy. Hellfire pointed out this page which has, among other things, a WCPUID shot of a P4 overclocked to 2144MHz.. fnarr fnarr. OCWorkbench reviewed the Gigabyte 7DX DDR (Socket A) mobo. ClubOC checked out some copper-based thermal paste.. OCOnline reviewed the Asus A7V. I've been playing with one of these for the last couple of weeks, very nice mobo.. About time.. (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 5-December-2000  19:21:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg MWP passed this along: UPDATE - 1/12/2000 18:32 The latest advice from Telstra is that the cable has been re-joined and is being tested. Telstra plan to restore service over the cable by 3:00AEST 2-Dec. RESOLUTION - 5/12/2000 14:21 Telstra advises that the cable has been successfully re-joined and is fully functional. This is, of course, regarding that undersea cable cut from a couple of weeks ago. Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 5-December-2000  11:26:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg D-Silence have a guide to choosing a monitor based upon it's emission standards ratings.. TheTechZone have a review of the Enermax 651 PSU we had some sneak pics of earlier.. is it a 650W? 550W? They think it's only 530W.. hehe, "only". :) TheRegister are reporting that AMD's new processor, Palomino, is currently testing at 1.5GHz without a fan, only a passive heatsink. This is big news if it makes it to the market.. thanks John. Reviews: APC Back-UPS Pro 500 on 3DHardware. Superpower Landmark KS-299XP Midtower case on FastMHz. Dlink DMP-100 MP3 Player on MRPCPro. fUnc Mousing Surface on G3D. Cambridge SoundWorks DTT 3500 Digital 5.1 Surround speakers on Anandtech. Sennheiser HD570 Headphones (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 4-December-2000  23:36:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg Headphones are pretty much mandatory at LAN parties these days. JimX checked out some quite serious ones from Sennheiser: Click here for the full review! Monday evening (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 4-December-2000  23:34:27 (GMT +10) - by Manaz 3 weeks of the Silly Season left.... alchemy sent us this link, for a PC-based alternative to the tivo, or hard-drived based VCR-replacement. Since the tivo isn't available in Australia, maybe this offers an alternative.... ]-[eLLfire has managed to find an Australian online store selling Dremel tools. VooDoo, who many of you who read the forums would know as "The MOS Boss" is coming down to Sydney (from Brisbane) for the next MPU. He is looking for 3 people to come with him - he wants to hire a Tarago van, and split the costs (leaving each person with a bill of approximately $120, including fuel and car rental costs). If you're interested, please send him an email. [H]ard|OCP are giving away a dead 1.2GHz Athlon as a keychain. Apparently the last such keychain they gave away - a dead 1GHz Athlon - was a rather well-sought after item. Details on how to win this (formerly faster) Athlon keyring on the main [H]ard|OCP page. Rizenet.com are running a Christmas Cooling Contest. Entry details when you follow the link.... ipKonfig are giving away a Super Orb. The Tech Zone are giving away a 1GHz PC! Reviews. LITTLEWHITEDOG.COM has just released their latest review - they've had a look at the EZ Connect USB 10/100 Fast Ethernet Adapter by SMC. 3D Spotlight have reviewed the 2Cool PC Plus. Club OverClocker have reviewed the PEP66 Version 2. The Tech Zone have had a look at the 530W Enermax ATX Power Supply. Tech Extreme have posted their review of System Commander 2000. The Tech Report have reviewed the KT7 motherboard, for AMD Athlon/Duron processors. Inside Hardware (sporting their new Christmas look) have reviewed the 32MB ATi Radeon video card. Neoseeker has posted a review of the Epox D3VA motherboard. Ho Ho Ho! (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 4-December-2000  23:31:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg :) Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 4-December-2000  11:16:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg I did 370km's on my bike yesterday.. bah, bit sunburned now too. ClubOC are giving away 155 prizes between now and Christmas.. UPDATE: Levi points out it's for USA and Canada residents only. So much for the Christmas spirit. Another basic home networking guide is up, this time on HWNews. Morjo points out these Unreal (2) Engine Pics on VoodooExtreme.. mm, tasty. There's been rumours of RAM prices rising for a while and we've even seen some notices from distributors, but TheRegister reckon they'll keep falling.. thanks enforc3r. CaseModdersOZ, one of our hosted sites, has reviewed the Titan Majesty Twins cooler that I checked out a couple of days ago here. I thought it was pretty dismal, do they? You think napster is completely untrackable? These people don't. Thanks James. This huge non-english page contains pics of, among other things, a guy building a PC in front of a shelf of what look like porno videos, and a tbird that has snapped into 3 peices. Is he using an FDP-32 on the tbird? That does NOT sound like a good plan to me. Ahh, the eternal question - what's better, silicone-based thermal paste or the newfangled silver stuff? Or maybe peanut butter? Okey dokey. More bizarre stuff on ZZZ Online.. where he finds this stuff is beyond me. Reviews: Saitek Rumble Pad on Max3D. Game Commander 2 voice recognition system for games on AVault, thanks b5lurker. SocketA Mobo Roundup on FullOn3D. Copper Shim testing on OCOnline. World Exclusive Review! ..not. :) (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 3-December-2000  23:14:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ok, you've seen a few reviews of the Mouse Bungee already on other sites, but not like this one by OCAU's resident rodent fetishist, JimX. He finds a better way to use it and even turns it into a LAN-party weapon.. :) Click for the review! Sunday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 3-December-2000  09:08:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg Going for a long ride today.. Apparently there's a Pro Linux virus running around at the moment. Of course, you all know better than to launch executables received via email anyway.. Wow, Mushkin have SDRAM rated BY THEM to do 150MHz @ 2-2-2 timing. More info on FlingingSquids, thanks Flight. We've seen this bbspot article before, but Sniper sent it along again and it's worth another link. All you case modders take heed. :) Some more modded cases on Fast-MHz. Another good place to see modded PC's or add pics of your own is the Gallery section of our PC Database. I wonder what we'll hit first, 3000 registered forum users or 500 database entries.. :) Dan gets all the cool toys! This time he's got another remote-controlled tank, but this one shoots stuff. Some tweaked GeForce drivers on RizeNet. Reviews: Evga.com Geforce2 MX on GideonTech. Pyrod CD-R's on Tech-Junkie. Soltek 75KV2-X SocketA KT133 mobo on PCInsight. Blue Orb and Silver Adhesive on Project1GHz. Chrome Orb on JSI. Creative GeForce2 MX (MX with DDR) on x-bit. Saturday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 2-December-2000  11:49:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg There's bunch of stuff to win out there this morning - 1.1GHz PC on HCW, 1GHz PC on TheTechZone (hmm, both Ibuyer link-clicking competitions).. and some copies of Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek: Elite Forces being given away as part of an interview with Jake Simpson from Raven on Hypothermia. MWP pointed out an interesting thread in our P3V4X forum which details some mods to address cold-boot problems with GF2-based cards. PCMonkey reviewed the Plexwriter 12/10/32A CD burner. 3DGM have a video guide to replacing your PSU fan. Good for high-bandwidth users I guess.. Apu's KT7 FAQ has had a pretty big update.. Anand has a big SocketA KT133 Motherboard Roundup. Bit of a surprise winner at the end.. Titan Majesty Twins twin-fan socket cooler! (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 2-December-2000  01:03:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Well, you saw the sneak pics a couple of weeks ago, now read the full review. Does the performance match up to the great looks? This is the first review of this product anywhere in the world: Click here for the full review! Also, Manaz's review of the Lian-Li PC-10 Aluminium Case got kinda buried under all the news we had yesterday :) so go check it out if you missed it! Friday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 2-December-2000  00:03:10 (GMT +10) - by Manaz I hope you all liked my Lian-Li review.... :) One of our readers (you may know him as Bort in the forums), took the time to do a comparison between some of the nVidia Detonator drivers, and has put his findings online for all to see. Zoggy (another of our readers) received an email from Intel during the week, detailing their release of the AGP8x Interface Specification (Draft 9). It is available for public review here. Michael Ahlf, from Glide Underground, doesn't like the Intel Pentium 4 Processor. x-bit Labs have posted information about the Iwill DVD266-R mainboard - the first dual-processor DDR solution for Intel Socket370 platforms. Despite this, OCWorkBench claim to have the exclusive story on the same board - scroll down their main page a bit for the story there, as well as information on a Transcend DDR motherboard. Tweaktown have a preview of the new Max Cool Case, made by the guys at The Card Cooler. Tech Extreme have an interesting article on China's rollout of broadband Internet access. They (Tech Extreme, not China) also have a review of Partition Commander 6, a powerful, user friendly alternative to FDISK. AthlonMB are reporting sketchy details on Tyan's upcoming Dual-Processor Athlon motherboard, guessing that it may well be based on AMD's upcoming 760MP chipset.... Overclockers Shootout have put together a water cooling comparison. Overclockers Online have reviewed the 800MHz Duron. 3D Spotlight have published a Soldier of Fortune Tweaking Guide. On the lighter side of things, don't follow this link if you want to eat fast food (particularly chicken) again, Volvo, the car manufacturer known for making boxy cars, has produced this ugly duckling as a concept car, and the idiot of the week award goes to the owner of this car. You can thank Mitch for the last two links. And if you ever needed an explaination of why this time of year is called the "silly season", take a look at this Christmas offering from Stupid.com.... Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 1-December-2000  10:23:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg I can't believe it's December already. Nearly a year since the whole Y2K thing.. I wonder if the parties for the REAL beginning of the Millennium will be as big, or has everyone forgotten about that now. :) BTW, November stats for OCAU: 1,309,499 pages served to 281,317 visitors, totalling 56GB of outbound web traffic. For pageviews, this is 30% growth from last month. Thanks guys! Interesting thing on TheRegister about AMD's rumoured 1.7GHz Athlon product, and how much a heatmonster it's going to be. Guru3D have some info on their page (scroll down) confirming that KT7-RAID and 3D Prophet II Pro is an unworkable combination. InsaneHardware have some info on that Abit Beowulf cluster we saw a while ago. IH have an 11MB powerpoint presentation that looks like it might be an interesting read - covering SMP, parallel computing etc. I imagine it's oriented towards their products, but I'm going to print out a copy so I have something to read during the next thunderstorm here. :) Sharky have a guide to installing video cards. SysReview have a guide to setting up a LAN.. ProCooling have some watercooled Duron action. Hexus have a Elsa GeForce Shootout posted. Scarily enough, they seem to really believe the NVIDIA marketing machine's claim that graphics were totally crap before the "GPU" was invented. That firetruck-image comparison is just ludicrous.. Some caveats about buying P4 systems on GeekNews .. like as if there weren't enough reasons to stay away from P4 for the moment anyway. Their "comments" thread rapidly degenerates into an "Who can say 'Intel Sucks!' the most" contest. :) APU's checked out a GeForce 2 Pro card from OCZ. HotHardware reviewed the Enermax 451 PSU. We have a review of this unit and of course the 651 model coming soon.. Dan has reviewed 2 portable MP3 players - one here from Iomega and one here from Samsung. Simon sent word of a possible issue with Asus's iPanel. Apparently the monitoring causes some stuttering in games. He argues that, since MBM can monitor the same hardware without causing stuttering, there must be some fault with the iPanel. More info in this thread in our CUSL2 forum and some here in CUSL2.com's forum. I'll add to this by saying that MBM *DOES* cause stuttering on my A7V - I have to disable MBM for 3DMark2000 runs or it is noticeably jerky. So maybe it's something to do with the monitoring H/W Asus are putting on these motherboards? I have asked my Asus contact to look into this, and also there is an iPanel on the way to me for review, so I will be able to see it for myself (and whinge about it in the review) soon.. Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 1-December-2000  01:19:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg So, did anyone pick up a PS2? They were apparently available in Oz from midnight last night. I guess, if you did get one, you wouldn't be online reading this page. :) x-bit have some sneak info on the First Socket370 DDR Motherboard for Intel chips.. from Gigabyte. P4 machines are apparently being recalled due to "performance and heat issues".. surprise. Herbert pointed out this thing on Australian phone numbers replacing URL's.. didn't Telstra talk about this kind of thing ages ago? I guess nothing happened.. Jim sends word that Corsair now have 150MHz SDRAM. There are some caveats, but they have pretested the ram to 150MHz @ CAS3.. IPKonfig have an interesting thing about an adapter that lets you use 35mm lenses on digicams.. Kodak digicams only, I think. TechReport have a guide to building an Athlon system.. AthlonMB have a BIOS for the MSI K7T Pro 2 that lets you get up to 1.85v core voltage. Compu-Geeks have a silly satirical thing on the P4's performance.. thanks CompuWife. Apparently this is the status of the Telstra Cable Cut (not sure if I can name my source, thanks tho): Update. Technical staff are onsite. Cable will be repaired by approx 17.00 30/11/2000 Links will be tested and services will be restored by 16.00 1/12/2000 Reviews: Abit KT7-RAID on SpodesAbode. Coolermaster CH5-5K11 heatpipe-based cooler on JSI. SuperMicro SC-830W Server Case on HWCentral.. thanks Redback. Blue Orb chipset/video cooler on TweakMeister. Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive on Max3D. Rocco 5.1 Dolby Digital speaker system on TE. Visiontek GeForce2 Ultra on HardOCP. Blue Orb also on TheTechZone. Lian-Li PC-10 Aluminium Case Review (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 1-December-2000  00:36:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Manaz checked out the Lian-Li PC-10 all-aluminium case. It's pretty damn sexy, has great stock cooling and all the bells and whistles.. along with a hefty pricetag. Click here for the full review!

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