January 2001

Paid OCAU Membership? (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 31-January-2001  19:13:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg Axis brought up an interesting idea here in the forums and I'd be very interested to hear what people think about it. Before you go panicking, we're just bouncing the idea around. If you've got an opinion either way or want to comment, please do so in that thread.. thanks. Wednesday Morning #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 31-January-2001  10:11:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Sometime last night we served our 2 millionth pageview for this month. I'm stunned. The Intel Pentium 4 is checked out in some detail on AcesHardware. PCMech have a guide to making audio CD's as opposed to drink coasters. The ArsMasters have an "Ask Ars" section all about the WinMe File System and System Restore. Finding your GeForce2 Ultra a little sluggish? Well, either lay off the amphetamines, or check out this GF2U Overclocking Guide on 3DRage. I dunno, fastest video card in the universe and it's still not fast enough for you lot. :) These kinda things normally annoy me as they're just banner harvesting.. but in this case it seems a bit more permanent. It's another hardware site ranking thing.. go vote for OCAU, you know you want to. :) Thanks EzyduzIt. That Lubemobile Free SMS Page has mysteriously vanished.. hence the 404 error, thanks Daniel. More IT/Ginger speculation.. I'm dubious to say the least. Thanks afro. SystemLogic are giving away some PC150 SDRAM. LiamC has detailed his experience upgrading to a tbird - click on the first link on that page due to frame evilness. Looks like Napster won't be free for long. If you're still keen to use it, 3DSpotLight have a napster tweak guide. Dan has a guide to swapping HDD's and transferring your Windows installation intact.. There's a LAN on, this Saturday, in Mudgee. Hurrah. ClubOC have a sort of mini-review of the Voodoo5 5500, arguing that they are a decent midrange card for the price. Be aware that support is going to be really minimal.. Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 31-January-2001  09:32:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg Lovely weather in Sydney today.. not. Reviews: CompuNurse temperature monitor on TacoNuts. GeForce2 MX TwinView on TE. FIC AZ11E KT133 mobo on TweakTown. Those guys are cranking out the reviews lately.. Abit KT7A-RAID SocketA KT133A mobo on PCScoop. Iwill KK266 KT133A mobo on VIAHW. Iwill DVD-266R Dual FCPGA with DDR mobo on xbit. Rocco 5.1 Speakers on SysReview. Crucial PC-133 CL2 SDRAM on AcidHardware. Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 30-January-2001  11:32:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg Happy 18th to Morgan! 3DPulpit have an interesting comparo of how Giants looks on Voodoo5 and GeForce2, java image-swappy thing that lets you compare how the different cards render a scene, thanks Tigger. TheHeatsinkGuide, quiet for so long, awaken with a very useful article listing the max core temps for a variety of CPU's.. so next time a Newbie asks "is this too hot?" you know where to send them.. Interesting thing on EEtimes, info on the RAM battle brewing, thanks Mike. 3DSpotlight have a Voodoo3 Tweak Guide. I think we might have seen this already, but anyway, good idea for blorb modding in HardOCP's forums, thanks TrustNo1. EuroGamer are trying to make a silent PC.. We know smoking is bad, and smoking near your PC is bad.. so why is fitting a cigarette lighter to your pc so cool? :) I'd seen this ages ago but they've really revamped it with a heap more info, HowStuffWorks.com is a definite time-sucker, be warned! All kinds of cool info there, thanks StratosFeaR. FragolholicsAnonymous are having a lan party in Sydney on the 11th of Feb. Reviews: TDK CyClone 161040 IDE CDR-W on CDRInfo. Coolermaster ATCS 201 case on Hexus. Iwill DVD-266R Dual FCPGA mobo with DDR on Fullon3D. Monday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-January-2001  23:47:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg Special greets to Don411, entry #800 in the PCDB.. The P3V4X forum has been, at the request of some readers and with the concurrence of Beast, the moderator, renamed to the Asus P3V4X & CUV4X Forum. This forum has been quietly churning away for months now, basically a little subcommunity by itself - only recently did The Pub pass it in terms of total posts. The P3V4X evolved into the CUV4X and it seems natural for that forum to cover both motherboards. Some forum peeps are making a Half-Life Mod.. involving a fish. Another newish site, this time it's from Norway.. but in English. There's actually have some content too on ModdingZone.com.. worth a look around. Sniper650 sent word of an article explaining how Intel suddenly seems eager to license chipsets in the wake of sudden competition from AMD.. Reviews: Creative Labs Web Cam Go Plus on Hexus. Mylex Extreme Raid 2000 SCSI RAID controller on AMDMB. Abit KT7 and KT7-RAID on ArsTechnica. Asus CUV4X-C Socket370 mobo on TheTechZone. FIC AZ11E mobo on NeoSeeker. I'm sure these are good and I'm annoyed at having blown mine up. :) Asus V7700 Ultra on IANAG. OCZ Monster II Socket Cooler on LWD. Looks suspiciously like a GW FDP-32 with a bigass fan strapped to the top. Monday morn - Easy Sunday, Lazy Monday! (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-January-2001  12:48:35 (GMT +10) - by YYK that's right, i've been lazy! talen’s been finding out that being bored and having an internet connection, leads to strange things… He points out the science fiction cook book… then points out that aliens could be responsible for more than just the occasional probe What do you do when you live in Turkey, and you don’t have “smack down” or “Monday night Nitro” to watch? Camels, my friend, camels… cheers to neko Uh-oh to KFC, where the secret of the 11 herbs and spices, may no longer be a secret Cloning people may be closer than you think, [sigh], haven’t people watched enough movies to learn that this type of thing leads to disaster? Just ask Arnie.. More moons discovered hiding around Jupiter, which brings the siblings count to 28… what a champion of a gas giant, working hard, such a trooper, which is more than what i can say about YOU! A nice little article that explains the story behind Beta vs. VHS. Hey brother, can you spare $20 million? I need to get to the ISS, i got a job there and everything, i just need the fare… The company that brought hours of endless roleplaying via classics such as Shadowrun and Battletech, FASA, has shut its doors. To end the post nicely, here’s something that is “an exciting, and time honored, device for internal cleansing” thanks again to "neko" Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-January-2001  09:16:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg Hope everyone had a great (safe) long weekend.. David points out another benchmark showing dissapointing performance from Intel's P4. For instance, they show that an Athlon processor in a system with double-data-rate SDRAMs delivers about 15 percent more performance than a Pentium 4 system with Direct Rambus, Kennedy said. They also show a desktop with two 733-MHz Pentium III chips is almost twice as fast as a PC using the latest 1.5-GHz Pentium 4.. There's a comparo between the KM133 and i815E motherboard chipsets here on Puces3D - it's in French, but lots of graphs etc. There's a 3-way Card Cooler Roundup on DreddNews. We checked out the original CardCooler here about a year ago. RivaStation have a GeForce2 Ultra Roundup happening. See what we thought of the Creative Labs Ultra offering here. Another lot of interesting/bizarre stuff on ZZZ Online.. Reviews: MSI K7T Turbo-R KT133A motherboard on TweakTown. Intel Play QX3 Microscope on Digit-Life.. hmm, interesting. Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse on OCOnline. Chipset Cooler Comparison! (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-January-2001  00:41:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg To help you get through this Monday morning we've got a 5-way chipset cooler comparo. These small cooling units are for the hot spots on video cards and motherboards.. Click here for the full review! Sunday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 28-January-2001  23:30:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg Alex pointed out these benchmarks of a 1.2GHz Athlon humming along at 1.668GHz.. unsurprisingly, it whups the P4, oooh yes. Argh, alchemy sent this in, apparently people (including high-ranking members of Team Lamb Chop) have been cheating in SETI to inflate their scores and get higher up the ladder. This kind of thing pisses me off, that people will go to such lengths to see their name in lights. I just hope the SETI@HOME database has not been rendered useless, which would set the entire project back, perhaps irrepairably.. DF sent word of an interesting postal experiment.. pushing their luck with the US Postal Service. :) AMDMB are celebrating their 1st birthday by giving away stuff.. Reviews: Iwill KK266-R KT133A mobo on TweakTown. Digital Doc 5 system monitor on AcidHW. Sunday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 28-January-2001  14:46:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg BXBoards took a 1.6GHz P4 and cranked it up to 1.76GHz, benchies etc here. MadMike points out Anand saying that there will not be 1.3GHz Athlons released on Monday. The GeForce FAQ has been updated, thanks XG8. Heh, mofos.org have been taking the piss out of a few large HW sites lately, now they get a taste of their own medicine from IANAG. Here's some feedback about the LED-swap optical mouse mod.. some good, some bad. Hypothermia are giving away 2x 30GB IBM HDD's.. OffTopic Stuff: Sounds like alchemy spends too much time on slashdot, he sent a few things in - firstly, if it wasn't bad enough being way out in the middle of nowhere and freezing your volcanoes off, people are now saying that Pluto isn't really a planet anymore. Bah, it'll always be a planet to me. Also, using the :-( "frowny" emoticon - or even if you've used it in the past - you're gettin' sued by the copyright owner*. Finally, a very cool ascii webcam thingy. A few people pointed out that Ericsson are going to stop making mobile phones - info here on Wired and here on Shortnews (link doesn't work for me). Nokia 0wns j00! If you've got any files stored on JustOn, grab 'em quick because they are shutting down soon.. thanks Michael. Another interesting "number of hacks sorted by O/S" page here, thanks Moldy. NT tops the list unsurprisingly. According to the FTC, DoubleClick are not Evil. I mention this, of course, because DC are going to be handling OCAU's banner ads from now on and some people expressed concerns to me about DC's privacy record. Reviews: AMD Duron 850 on Hexus. Gigabyte GA-GF2000 GeForce2 GTS video card on Digit-Life. LinkSys EtherFast 2-port PrintServer on PCStats. Mosel Vitelic PC143 RAM on HWDaily. * This one is a joke. No, really. I just thought you might be unsure. :) Saturday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 27-January-2001  21:37:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg Had a good day today, rode to Canberra, rode in a massive convoy of bikes being waved at by townspeople and kids etc.. lay around on the grass in front of parliament house with god-knows-how-many other motorcyclists, chilled out, got a little sunburned then rode home (last 15 minutes or so in hurling rain) .. very pleasant saturday. So I'm a bit shagged out.. here's some quick reviews for you, longer news later.. maybe. :) Reviews: Abit KT7A-RAID on IANAG. Supermicro SC760 server case on Tech-Planet. SMC Barricade 4-port router/firewall on AwareMag. Plextor PX-W1210Si and Teac W512SB SCSI CD-RW drives on Digit-Life. DTS SocketA Shim on UKGamer. Be careful, kids! Monitor Cooler and MS Trackball Explorer on UltimateGN. Tbird 650 @ 1GHz (pretested) on TheTechZone. P3-700E @ 1.2GHz (pretested to 933) on ExtremeOC. OCZ Titan II GeForce 2 Ultra on 3DRage. Friday evening.... (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 26-January-2001  23:51:54 (GMT +10) - by Manaz I hope all of you in Australia (and any ex-pats overseas) had a good Australia Day. I know I did - BBQ for lunch, spent a few hours down at Circular Quay and the Opera House - had a great day. :) But enough about me, let's get down to the news. Want to know how strong the Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy is? Check this out. Thanks (and condolences) to Pat from Tech Patrol for this link. B5lurker thinks that owners of Matrox video cards (G200, G400 and G450 series) will be pleased to know I'm sure that there are new official drivers available now. Any of you running Norton Anti-Virus 2000 may wish to take note of the following information, supplied by Tony. Upon doing a liveupdate of Nortons AV 2000, you have to reboot. (sometimes normal for Nortons updates). But on the latest update, once you reboot Nortons doesn't apear (No Autoprotect is enabled). The way I fixed it was to open Norton AV2K up, Click Options, then Reset, and Reset to defaults. Then you have to manually re enable Email protection (if you had it running) and double check your config in your email client. So, all of you running NAV2K, a quick check might be a good step in saving your systems from a virus infection. CanEater pointed out that DirectX 8.0a has been released. Dan from Dan's Data has posted a step-by-step guide to sharing an Internet connection. This article is probably more relevant to Australian readers than some others on the 'net, as Dan himself resides in Australia, and so covers the Australian systems, which can differ from those in the US and other countries. ViaHardware have posted a guide on tweaking the memory settings on the VIA KT133 and KT133A chipset, using WPCREDIT. EXHardware has just posted a short but sweet guide to cleaning the Thermaltake SuperOrb cooler. Would you like to know what RAID is? What it stands for, and what benefits it offers you? If so, check out this link, courtesy of 3DRage. Not to be beaten, SystemLogic.net has posted an in-depth article on RAID technology. Seems RAID is quite the rage these days.... Reviews. Mortin down at Icrontic has the "world premier review" of the new Aqua Stealth II water cooling unit be Be Cooling. Read what he has to say here. Rizenet have posted a review of the DFI AK74-AC motherboard. The Tech Zone has posted a review on the Global Win ISTORM. SystemLogic.net has done a review of the Netgear RT314 DSL/Cable 4-Port Router. Hmmm, reasonably long post tonight. I wonder if Agg realises he's paying me double-time-and-a-half for this, being a public holiday and all.... :) Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 26-January-2001  11:17:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg Happy Australia Day! Looks like things are starting to happen on the SMP Athlon front, info in our own SMP Forum, thanks Manaz and Chris. HardOCP have a massive Socket A Cooler Roundup, 10 units featured with all the big names showing up. Guru3D have a guide to building a PC. Wired have some info on why MicroSoft sites have been slowly disappearing over the last few days, missing for up to 23 hours in some cases. DNS misconfiguration - I bet someone in the Microsoft campus is being spanked pretty hard right now.. Mike sent in a link to a claimed successful solution to dual FCPGA P3 on Abit's BP6.. very interesting. Shame my BP6 is a little busy right now. :) QLD peeps looking for bargains might want to head over to the Sunday Market at Hurcotte St, Enogerra, QLD - thanks luke. OCCafe have updated their Detonator Comparison and note that v6.72 is a bogus driver, don't use it. It changes your start page to some German page. XtremeTek have a list of Hardware Acronyms.. Omnibot vs Aibo, two toy robots go head-to-head. Man, I remember so wanting one of those Omnibots (they were sold over here by Tandy, can't remember what they called them).. back when I was a little geek. This German site has a comparo of 3 "silent coolers". They included the dreaded Titan Majesty Twins, the original one we had the scoop on here. It's lucky that alchemy pointed this out while Sciby is away in Perth, he'll be devastated.. Sega are pulling out of the console market, no more DreamCasts.. Spode have modded a mystery purple cooler for SocketA. Hmm, that looks to me like a purple-adonized GlobalWin FDP-32, from the PPGA days. Still got a couple of those monsters lying around here somewhere. Reviews: TheClaw game controller on Busted-Ass. Seems to like it. :) Gigabyte GA-7ZXR KT133A SocketA mobo on BXBoards. Olympus C-2100 Ultra Zoom digicam on DansData, he likes it too. Fanbus on RipNet. Be careful when buying online.. (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 26-January-2001  10:47:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg This from Manaz: Check out Ebay item number 1204183251: "Playstation 2 Original Box And Receipt." http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1204183251 It sold for $425.00. Afterwards, the auction winner wrote negative feedback: "Paid $425 for an empty box!" "Caveat Emptor" isn't it? Argh, if you read it again, you'll see all that was offered was the original BOX and the receipt.. the seller responded with "I sent what was listed in the auction". Thursday Night #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 25-January-2001  22:11:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg Dark Angel says there's a computer market on in Parramatta this Saturday. Update: About a billion people said Dark Angel was wrong, and I should look at the link before I post it. Well, fooey. :) Something that often pops up in case modding circles is the use of DynaMat for noise dampening. MikhailTech have a review/guide about the stuff.. Win some MS Strategic Commander game controllers on ShinyNews. Doesn't say if it's international or not. Spwny sends word that Shafted LAN is a CPL Qualifier.. this means the winners of the main events at Shafted will be auto-berthed into the CPL Pacific event in Melbourne at the end of March. $1250 first prize for CS is nothing to sniff at. TE have a story of someone upgrading to Win2K. Need to cool your video card? Slapping 5x 56W peltiers on it should do it. G3D made another keyring.. [shakes head] guys, guys, guys.. [hides dead tbird and FIC mobo] Reviews: OCZ Value (Infineon PC133) SDRAM on OCOnline. GlobalWin YCC-802 Case on ExtremeOC. Taisol CGK monster SocketA cooler on TheTechZone. Mobile Serial Number? (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 25-January-2001  20:37:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg Liam sent this in. It seems to work as described on my phone, but I've no real way to verify it. Might be worth a try, tho.. Just in case you lose your mobile or it gets flogged. Did u know this? a little 'get your own back' if you have your mobile stolen. May be of interest to those Mobile Users among you. To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 # A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. Should your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody did this, there would be no point in stealing mobile phones. Hmm.. Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 25-January-2001  20:23:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg I suppose everyone is watching the tennis? :) Spwny sent word that http://www.lubemobile.com.au/freesms/freesms.html is a free SMS service for any mobile in Australia. I just tested it, it actually works with my phone unlike every other free one I've tried, cool! Spode has a SocketA Cooler Roundup happening, 6 units covered - mostly CoolerMaster units and not a single Orb, for a refreshing change. Wilch pointed out this cool page, a complete history of the Amiga. Brings back some memories of my A1000/A2000 days.. Poit has a new article up, about using a nibbler tool instead of a Dremel for some case-modding tasks - cheaper, quieter and doesn't spray metal filings everywhere, he argues. 3DSpotlight have a guide to Windows File Protection, built into Win2K. Tech-Report, always a source of sensibility in the hardware scene, have their full review of Intel's Pentium IV posted. Worth a read. They also have a view to the P4 from a developer's perspective, via an interview with Tim Sweeny, one of the names behind the Unreal engine. AMDMB have updated their A7V FAQ. HardAvenue emerge from a rift in the space-time continuum, grasping a review of the FreeSpeed Pro 2. This is a GFD for adjusting multiplier and voltage from the SlotA days. Check out our 7-way GFD comparo here and if you're still longing for the days of SlotA, reminisce with our SlotA Showdown article. Reviews: Hercules 3D Prophet II Pro on A1Electronics. Gigabyte 60XE i815EP motherboard on TweakTown. GlobalWin VOS-32 monster cooler on Rizenet. Our review here. MSI K7T Master KT133 SocketA mobo with FireWire, on Digit-Life. Mouse Bungee on AcidHardware. Our review here. CaseAce Thumbscrews also on AcidHardware. Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 25-January-2001  00:37:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg 3DRage have a SocketA Cooler Roundup happening. 6 units going head to head, compare our results here and here. Someone in IRC (forget who, again) pointed out this 1777MHz Athlon screenshot. You could call Photoshop, that someone has edited the file, but Bunny (who's site the picture is on) is a long-time liquid nitrogen overclocker and not prone to falsifying his results. Thedo points out an interesting email rant/article on content protection by John Gilmore of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Presents some compelling arguments about what is wrong with the way MegaCorps view copyright. Found on ArsTechnica. Malleus noted that TheRegister have a say about it too. Heh, I wonder how many OCAU'ers this article describes. Don't try to deny it! :) XLR8 is organising an Aussie CS Tournament.. people will need teams of 3 and it will take place over 4 weeks on Friday nights. Reviews: Hercules Geforce 2 MX video card on Hexus. Dually i815 sneak preview on VIAHW. HP PhotoSmart C912 digicam on Digit-Life. MS Strategic Commander controller on NeoSeeker. Digital Doc 5 on PCRoddin. Wednesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 24-January-2001  13:52:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to everyone who sent happy birthday email. :) HardAvenue updated their budget gaming PC guide.. Interesting stuff on the Reg, apparently 32bit hardware portion of a 667Mhz Itanic wheezes along at the speed of a 75Mhz Pentium. Although in some benchmarks, it races up to match a 100Mhz Pentium. Sharky has an SDRAM Performance Guide, shows what a lot of those mystery settings do. Another new site hits the scene, this time it's PCAbusers.net. Not a whole lot else happening at the moment, as far as I can see. Maybe everyone's checking out the HardOCP Babe Thread or something. :) Reviews: Afreey 12X DVD Drive on TechnoYard. Neon light kit on Icrontic.com. Duron 850MHz on GamePC. Thermal Compound Remover on UKGamer. Hmm, I just use metho.. Wednesay Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 24-January-2001  00:31:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg It's my birthday! The nice man from Harvey Norman is coming to put airconditioning into the AggCave today, too.. finally. This heat has been killing me.. Speaking of killing, EXHardware reviewed a CPUFX SocketA Copper Shim, and they tested it with a Super Orb! I thought using a copper shim with a Super Orb is a really bad idea, and so does my now-dead Tbird950. BTW, seems it took out the FIC AZ11E I had here for testing when it died. D'oh! Anyway, EXHardware had no such problems. Hmm. Don't forget, the Celebration Ride is on this Saturday. All motorcycle owners should make an effort to get to Canberra, show the politicians how many of us there are - not a protest but a celebration of motorcycling in Oz. Riding in a big convoy is a great feeling, townspeople cheer you on, it's great, be there. CaseJunkiez have a cool article on painting your drive bezels to match your custom case.. or in their case, not match. :) I noticed some 1400MHz Tbird benchmarks in the PCDB. Even beats the P4's FPU score.. 6-way KT133A benchmark comparo on OCWB. A bunch of MS Whistler Screenshots on SavageNews.. interesting, thanks Malleus. Reviews: Compaq iPaq (eew) on Hexus. Super Orb SocketA cooler on FrostyTech. Epox EP-3SPA3 i815EP Socket370 mobo on NeoSeeker. Abit KT7A-RAID SocketA KT133A mobo on A1Electronics. FOP-32 and FOP-38 socket coolers on TechPlanet. Bomb Squad Practical Jokes (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 24-January-2001  00:30:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks Will. :) Tuesday Morning #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 23-January-2001  09:38:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Additions to the PCDB slowed for a little while but they've picked up again, nearly 10 a day for the last few days and 12 last night! Since I last looked in the Gallery there's been 6 new entries with photos. Perhaps people were inspired by the MPU case mods coverage.. :) There's a bulk buy of Corsair SDRAM Goodness going on in the Forums (don't bother telling me guys, let me dig this stuff up myself!) .. find out what all the fuss is about with our review of their premium stuff from a little while ago. TomsHardware have a 6-way KT133A mobo roundup, can't wait to check one of these out m'self. SDRAM and DDR SDRAM go head-to-head at RealWorldTech. Some bubble-bursting there, d'oh. Digital-Silence have an eulogy for Slot1 and BX. A minute's digital silence, please. Hypothermia interviewed someone from Bungie, makers of Oni. Yup. It's a game, I think. When CS Cheating Goes Bad! Serves you right if you're walking along a corridor and suddenly you become a helicopter.. thanks alchemy. Reviews: OCZ Coolcase Ultra on HardwareOC. Shuttle AV30 (Apollo Pro 266) mobo on LostCircuits. Abit KT7A-RAID KT133A mobo on AnandTech. AOpen AK73-1394 KT133 (non-A) with onboard FireWire, also on AnandTech. VisionTek GeForce2 Ultra on NVNews. (video card) on Digit-Life. DataVac (vacuum for your PC) on Speedy3D. Soyo K7VTA PRO KT133A mobo on AthlonOC. Abit SA6R on TechGods. Right, that should keep you busy for a while.. then you've got all the new posts in the forums to catch up on. :) Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 23-January-2001  08:38:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg Reviews: MSI K7T Pro 2A SocketA KT133 mobo on TheTechZone. Epox 8KTA3 (part 2, benchmarks) on MrPCPro. Pentium4 brochure, err, review on ActiveWin. Thanks HarBinger. VideoLogic Sonic Fury (sound card) on 3DSpotLight. Gigabyte GA-7DXC AMD-760 SocketA motherboard on FlamingShrubs. Epox EP-8KTA3 on BXBoards. He thinks it's an Abit KT7-RAID clone. More in a bit.. Monday night.... two sleeps and I'm off to Perth... (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 22-January-2001  23:02:05 (GMT +10) - by Sciby That's right kiddies, I'm off to visit rellies and friends in Perth, state capital of Western Australia. Lovely place, nice roads, great beaches, nice desert bits and nice women. I heard once that there's a 4-to-1 ratio of females to males in Perth. I'm thinking of moving there. First up, some people REALLY don't like all the DotCom companies that have become the vogue in the last few years. As well they shouldn't like them. They're evil, EVIL! So is Alchemy, who gets a thumbsup for the link. ZZZ Online has been updated, with such interesting items as powered combat armour, a new form of screwdriver head and a freaked out keyboard that would give me vertigo to use. PC Market has a competition that even international people can enter! W00t! Tiny thermometers. They're a good thing to have. You could get a good idea of hotspots in you case with these things. And finally (from me, gotta get to bed, on medication that makes me kinda drowzzzzzzzz... *thud*), here's an article about correctly benchmarking hardware, using games such as Quake 3. Nighty night! Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 22-January-2001  10:30:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg Congrats to Rick "Dmband" Reeves who turned 18 today.. bah, don't remind me, it's my birthday soon and I turn, hmm, OLD. Azrael sends word that the Linux Clients for Open DivX have been released. Uhm, good. Ooo, a dual FCPGA motherboard with DDR, yes please - reviewed on OCWB. alchemy points out that there's a new version of the system status script that people use to tell everyone their system details in IRC. Or maybe it's just the .dll or something.. I dunno, 'coz I don't use it, 'coz it's bloody annoying! :) Using plastic chopping boards as mousemats is pretty old-hat these days (see our reviews of such things here and here) .. but now someone's using a glass chopping board, and calling it the Icemat. I dunno, you crazy kids and your crazy mousemats, I just use the desk. :) A DIY cardcooler eight my balls! Digit-life have an article on 2 future memory technologies.. EI have the comprehensive super test of socket A heatsinks.. covering 3 units. Compare our mega-whammy woo-funky hold-my-hat-dear 7-way comparo here and more recent 3-way one here. :) In fact, expect another SocketA roundup here soon.. Reviews: Epox EP-8KTA3 KT133A SocketA mobo on xbit. D-Link DFE-538TX network card on BlueSmoke. Gigabyte GeForce 2 MX on PCReview. Sunday morning... case moddin' day! (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 21-January-2001  14:33:38 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Yes indeedy, I started work on the new OCAU server last night, cutting a very large hole in the front for a nice blowhole. Will be cleaning that up today, plus painting the thing, mainly because I can. :) Agg: That is, of course, the new CS server, not a new webserver.. Mofos.Org has done a Portrait of a Website, featuring [H]ard|OCP. Tres cool read. Sex dolls have taken another leap into the future, thanks to an Australian scientist. The love doll is controlled by PC, and here's a quote: "The doll itself will be essentially passive, but certain key body parts would be motor driven, the patent says." Hmmm, we'll be requesting a review unit as soon as they hit the market. Those crazy Slovenians at Slo-Tech have a bucketload of silver and made cooling blocks! And we all know that silver is a better thermal conductor than copper, don't we kiddies? :) It seems that Extreme Overclocking has killed so many cpu's, they're now giving them away, as keyrings. Doesn't say if it's international or not. Vindaloo has done a complete article of his case mods and paintjob that we posted in the news just recently. Looks purty. Tim Armstrong doesn't want to know about laptops, he wanted to make his Duron fully portable, and he's done it in a very cool way. Another comp, this time from Club Overclockers: you could win a Blizzard Intercooler Kit with Peltier. Again, doesn't say if it's US only or international. Now THIS is a very sexy, professional mod job. Makes my hack and slash jobs look horrible. *sniffle* Thanks to Jong for the link. According to the US Surgeon General, violent media and video games are harmful to children. Well, duh. Thanks to B5Lurker. ][ellfire from IRC and the forums is organizing a bulk waterblock order from Cool Computers. 15% discount is to be had, if you believe the forum postings. Okay, this is just plain unfair: Overclocking.DK had a reader submit screenshots of WcpuID and Sandra benchmarks. A 1.2 Tbird running at 1439mhz. With just a standard FOB38 and 12cm fan. *shakes head* Live in Darwin? Want to own some people face to face? Well, check out the DGA (Darwin Gamers Assoc?). There's pictures on that page from their last Lan also. W00t, first New Scientist, now Australian PC World! In the January issue, page 112, Overclockers.Com.Au is recommended to someone who wants to know about overclocking. As well they should be pointed here! Welcome to the people who got here via way of Aus PC World mag. :) Thanks to theone333 for the info. The GeForce FAQ at http://www.geforcefaq.com/ has been updated again, it's now version 17.5. Thanks to XG8. News from SlashDot, by way of Pengo (thanks moit), wearable translators, the reason why all of Star Treks characters speak fluent english, is becoming a reality. Overclock.Co.Uk has gathered together, what they believe is the definitive freeware collection. Hey, if it's free, it can't be bad. Can it? Finally, an alternative use for thumbscrews. Hmmm... not really that alternative, but *shrug*, whatever boils your water. Reviews: Plextor 12x10x32A Review - at 3D Rage. Quantum Fireball Plus AS Series 30 Gig Hard Drive - at the Tech Zone. ATCS 200 case - at OverclockIT Kãrna's Razer Boomslang 2000 - at OcShoot. Asus iPanel - at Digit-Life. Altec Lansing ATP5 speakers - at PC Hardware. VRJoy 2000 3D glasses - at Glide Underground. Saturday morning... *yawn*.... *scratches head*... (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 20-January-2001  13:13:01 (GMT +10) - by Sciby I really have to stop playing Counter-strike until 3am. Oh, and hello to anyone who plays Ultima Online! Yes, I've regressed in my gaming habits and gone back to my RPG'ing roots. Tis very cool, so if you see someone named Sciby wandering around the Oceania Shard, looking lost, say hello and offer lots of gold. :D iBuyer and hardCOREware are "proud to introduce" their new Weekly Hardware Price Index. It must be said, of course, that prices are US$. As usual. MSI has released a new BIOS for their spiffy and stable board, the K7T Pro2-A, version 2.2. This is... er... interesting. AMD has patented a new technology called "Magic Packet"™. Sounds like normal old wake-on-lan to me. Thanks to GARY_J. :P Still more from Gary_J, and still on Wake-on-LAN, here's a website that'll let you send a wakeup packet to the computer you want to be up and working. 8balls.com.my has written an article on how to get the most out of Fdisk, that happy cheap little partitioning proggie. Overclocker Cafe has done an nVidia driver comparsion, the blurb goes: We benchmarked all the Nvidia Detonators versions 6.32 through v7.17 with Q3A and 3Dmark 2000 v1.1 to see who rocks the hardest. Right. "Rocks the hardest?" What kind of talk is that? According to Insane Hardware, Hercules will be using shallower Blorbs on their new NV20-based video cards. SystemLogic also has a price watch thingy happening. Again, USD prices. *mutter* Holy stormy weather Batman, just heard on the radio that there were 25'000 lightning strikes in one hour last night, from a storm that went through Central Queensland last night. It seems that certain game company isn't playing fair with reviewers. Hmmm... More internet angst: a norwegian hardware site as been plagurising a BIOS optimization guide, from Rojak's Pot. Stealing from one is plagurism, stealing from many is research. Teehee, some naughty, naught l33t h4xor kiddies have hit http://www.campbelltown.nsw.gov.au/. Take that, Campbelltown government suit types! Fight the power! There were no demands from the perps, apart from beer, pr0n and mp3's. *ahem* I'll put my order it too, thanks. Thanks to Manaz for hunting down this violation of basic website existance. (Manaz, will you give me beer?) Reviews: Creative SB Live! Platinum 5.1 - at Digit-Life. Aopen HQ08 case - at NeoSeeker. Purty faceplate. Coolercase Extreme-XS (431W PSU) - at PlanetHardware. Enermax 330watt power supply - at MikhailTech. nVidia GeForce2 MX 16mb reference card - at IamNotAGeek. Agilent Arcticooler Model CA (HACA-0001) - at Club Overclocker. LAN by Bike (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 20-January-2001  12:56:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg We were talking in IRC last night about LAN parties etc and people jokingly suggested I go (and take my PC) by bike. Actually, I used to take my PC to friends places by bike a fair bit for small LAN things. I took some photos a couple of months ago, intending to write a little article about it, but the photos are pretty much self-explanatory. They caused some amusement in IRC so I thought I'd put them up here too.. :)     click for larger images VP6 Rebuttal! (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 20-January-2001  11:38:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg Well, I've been contacted overnight by a few vendors and a few end-users, and they paint a very different picture of the VP6. The vendors quote low, almost nonexistent return rates and the end-users, while a few have some teething issues and minor compatability niggles (no more than with any other via-chipset board), seem to all be very happy with the board. It was pointed out that some of the threads listed in the earlier post here have been resolved as similar compatability or setup issues.. So, it seems that the problems listed in the earlier post are the exception, rather than the rule. It's a shame that, due to Abit's lack of response, I won't be able to play with and review one of these very interesting boards myself.. Friday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 19-January-2001  18:42:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Sneak footage shows what IT/Ginger really is!* Tech-Report take a look at the big stories of 2000. RealWorldTech have a thing on whether ATA-100 is worth it over ATA-66 or all hype. Bring on the 10,000rpm IDE drives, I say! TomsHW has a KT133 Mobo Roundup.. A few things on Anand's.. an integrated video roundup here, a review of the Apollo Pro 266 chipset here and an interesting story about them building a new site server here. Reviews: Asus A7M266 DDR mobo on MidnightCafe. Creative DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT3500 Digital speakers on MadOnion, thanks Quadbox. Epson PhotoPC 3000Z on TheTechZone. Creative Labs CD-RW Blaster 12x10x32x on TE. * = no, not really. VP6 Quality Issues? (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 19-January-2001  18:42:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg PappaSmurf had a bit of a rant: Hi, I recently puchased a new Abit VP6 and it didnt work upon delivery and ever since that day I've been in Abit HELL! Im now waiting on my THIRD Abit VP6 (yes THIRD), and I am mighty annoyed at the lack of true quality in these boards. Ever since the word go, the BP6 was troublesome and now the same thing is happening all over again with the VP6 only much, much worse. If you look around at various message boards you will notice that there are many people having problems with this board: vp6-board thread 1. vp6-board thread 2. vp6-board thread 3. vp6-board thread 4. OCAU troubleshooting forum thread. overclockers.ws forum thread. bp6.com thread 1. bp6.com thread 2. Thanks, PappaSmurf Well, Abit haven't been returning my emails for a long time, no idea why, so I don't have any VP6 experience. I will say though that, despite having some teething issues, the BP6 established itself as a very respected (if a little controversial) motherboard and I had no problems with the 3 or 4 I personally experienced. As most know, this website is powered by a BP6 and it's proven itself very stable. It does seem that PappaSmurf has genuine cause for concern about the VP6 based on his experiences.. anyone else had good/bad luck with one? Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 19-January-2001  11:09:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg Pengo sends word of a petition and further information questioning Telstra's broadband policies. Need a lot of fans for your case mod project? This lot should be enough.. thanks Hellfire. TweakTown checked out the VIA Cyrix 3 processor.. MultiPlayCity have a guide to Modding the Lian-Li PC-30.. carving up your aluminium case would be a little nerve-wracking. A dark horse sprints to the lead in the "bizarrely named hardware site" stakes. I thought the competition was long dead after TrainWrecker and LittleWhiteDog had wrestled for the crown.. but no, now there's a site called (I'm not making this up) .. EightBalls.com.my - no doubt their slogan will be "The best hardware site because of My Eight Balls".. or maybe there's 4 webmasters or something.. anyway, they've reviewed a Yamaha CDRW. The ecronom has info on assembling a VU meter kit and a fans, lights and vu-meter baybus. Interesting projects, nice clear diagrams. Abit VP6 dually Socket370 mobo reviewed on OCOnline.. GideonTech have a guide to making your PC look like it's full of water.. heh, cool. Case Mods at MPU #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 19-January-2001  00:36:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg I went to MPU last weekend, saw a few cool modded cases, took some photos.. Click here for more! Thursday night... (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 18-January-2001  22:23:59 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Firstly, happy birthday to Sam "Grimraeper (I'm not dyslexic)" Moffitt, who turns 18 tomorrow (Friday), w00t! Now, don't drink too much mate, it'll be your first sip of alcohol, don't want you going too wild. :) (Can I come to the party?) Cool interview with Kyle Bennett of [H]ard|OCP over at Mofos.Org. Features a lot of abuse. Check out this Duron with a 160mhz FSB. Woooh, I's got da chills. Sorry, I'm tired, my level of excitement is low. This is interesting: the heatsinks of the future may have hundreds of tiny fans instead of one big one. Thanks to Agg for the link. ;) I haven't looked for ages, but we've been told that Mad Onion has changed/updated it's website. Quote: "My PC sounds like a Boeing 747, and I like it." As you do. Are you like 99.9% of IT professionals who like absolute power? Here's some evil things you can do to your co-workers. I like remotely killing processes on other workstations. :D CPUReview has a bit of a editoral aimed at Microsoft Whistler, called *ahem* "Whistle(r) Blowing". It concerns the report that Whistler will generate a key, based on your computer's hardware at the time of installation. This could prove annoying/expensive to hardware and software reviewers wanting to test stuff with Whistler. Naughty MS. Daddy smack. Ooooooh dear, it's showdown time at the Mousepad Corral. *ahem* Anyhoo, TacoNuts has done the comparo of four mousepads: A Ratpadz, Everglide, sUrface (sic) 1030 and a cheapo mousepad. Feel like showing your ugly mug to the world? Have a perv at the new Logitech QuickCam Traveller, which works both as a digital still camera and a webcam. Grooooovy. Here we have an article on how to deal with that nasty condensation, which will kill that CPU in about 0.3 seconds if it appears. Or it'll at least corrode things a bit. Yeeeuuky. Article is written around socket's though. Finally, a warning from Highpoint.Com: WARNING! ABIT KT7-RAID users: If you are running HPT370 BIOS version 1.0.3/1.0.3b, be wary of ABIT's current BIOS update for the KT7-RAID motherboard. This "WT" version was released on 12/12/00 and will downgrade the HPT370 BIOS revision to 1.0.0622. This downgrade could create problems with your RAID array (the array may be disabled). You may want to contact ABIT for information about this BIOS update: http://www.abit.com.tw Hmmm.... scary shtuff. Thanks to Gary_J for the info. Reviews: Epox 8KTA3 KT133A Motherboard Review - at AMDMB.Com. OCZ Coolers review - at IamNotAGeek.Com. Right. I believe you. Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 18-January-2001  11:04:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg Happy birthday to Samson who turns 18 today, and to my sister Emma who turned 29 (har har) yesterday, not that she reads this page. I turn 26 next wednesday.. beginning the slippery slide down to 30.. These KT133A boards are cranking up some high FSB's.. OCOnline have their KT7A at 160MHz while OCWB have their Iwill KK266R at 163MHz.. DDR, of course. There's a new Linux-on-Itanium Supercomputer in the works, should clock in at 4th fastest in the world. At the other end of the scale (heh), ArsTechnica have their coverage of MacWorld SF.. G3D have a guide to modding your GeForce into a Quadro.. OCOnline have a case-modding guide. Azrael wants the world to know that Open DivX has been released. Mobile durons, GeForce2Go.. going to be some monster laptops hitting the market soon. I wonder if they'll have titanium cases.. :) Reviews: Abit KT7A-RAID on OCWB. Enermax 451 PSU on HardwareOne. GF2 cards from Chaintech on Digit-Life. Wednesday night... quickie. Ooooooooooh baby. *ahem* (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-January-2001  21:43:26 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Okydoky... Here's a pic of the new Iwill KK266R motherboard, which, I believe is one of the new breed of DDR mobos. Gimme. Neoseeker has reviewed the Polk AMR90 speakers, a 4 speaker set, plus subbie. I'll stay with my two speaker/subbie setup fer now... nowhere to mount the two extra speakers anyway. It's a parade! Hurrah, I love parades! Well... I just like looking at the cheerleaders and marching girls.... er, yeah. Anyhoo, USB Workshop has a USB 2.0 Device Parade! It's a lineup of all the new usb devices released at Comdex last year, and Macworld this year. Digit-Life has an indepth look at the new nVidia NV20 GPU. Wooooo... the thing is, it'll come out, and all us people with GF2's, GF2U's and MX's will feel like crud and lust after that. It's all a vicious circle, I tells ya. Finally (quiet news night tonight), [H]ardOCP has a review of the new EPoX KT133A motherboard. It seems they've gotten their act together. Er... EPoX, not Kyle and his crew. Wednesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-January-2001  17:56:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg South 'o the border peeps might want to visit Network Meltdown in Geelong this weekend. TweakTown have a thing on Intel Integrated Chipsets. Reviews: Mushkin PC150 CAS3 SDRAM on Rizenet. Logitech Mouseman Wheel Optical mouse on Gideontech. MS Intellimouse Explorer Trackball on Icrontic. Biolink Umatch Biometric Mouse on PCStats. Scans your thumbprint for security, wow. EPOX 8KTA3 SocketA KT133A mobo on MrPCPro. DLink DMF-560TDX NIC/56k PCMCIA card on SysReview. Everyone knows that PCMCIA stands for People Can't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms, don't they? :) Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-January-2001  10:55:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg Special greets to Lou, who about 5 minutes ago added the 700th entry to the PC DataBase - also to noddy, who became registered user number 3500 in the forums a couple of days ago. AMD announced their Mobile Duron product recently, thanks Azrael. Alchemy points out a massive new cooler on HardOCP.. he says rumor has it the army has orders to shoot on sight if they see any flying cases. i also heard that you may need a pilots license to operate the fan on it too.. hehe. In this photo you can see the fan has 14K written on it. Surely that doesn't mean it's a 14,000 rpm fan? Surely not?!?! Hold me, I'm scared. Interesting graphs of Defacements by OS showing what evil hackers have been doing from August 1999 to December 2000, thanks RapidBaBoy. Reviews: Abit SA6R i815e mobo on Digit-Life. Soyo K7ADA ALiMagik1 DDR motherboard on OCWB. Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card on TE. Competition for the Creative juggernaught? Hopefully. Blizzard water-cooling kit on Hexus. Fragzone this weekend (Sydney) (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-January-2001  10:37:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg Just got sent this, it's on this weekend so doesn't give you much chance for intensive pre-tournament training! Fragzone 1 is a national Tournament hosted by Aus3D featuring a Quake III Arena 2v2 Tournament and a 4v4 Counter-Strike Tournament.  It will be held in Chatswood on the 20th and 21st January 2001. Tournament winnings stand at $4500 thanks to Aus3D & Intel Australia, and one lucky person will be going home with a full Pentium 4 System, which will be drawn on the sunday before the Finals (but you have to be a player to be in the draw!).  Other prizes include Claw's and games from Activision. For more information, go to Fragzone's website: http://fragzone.aus3d.net Regards, Robert 'Xizor' Moss 200MHz FSB P3 (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-January-2001  10:08:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg This WCPUID screenshot was listed in last night's news but we couldn't read the Slovenian page that explained about it.. this morning the webmaster noticed the traffic coming from here and sent me an email explaining: It was actually done during the testing of ABIT SA6R versus ASUS CUSL2, but result was achieved on SA6R. The processor I used was a cC0 P3 667MHz (133MHz FSB x 5). The 1GHz was achieved at 1.85V (since SA6R doesn't support it, I couldn't raise the VIO so it was at default 3.4V), RAM vas naturally set to CAS 3 (Micron 7.5ns PC133 SDRAM was used). The CPU was cooled with Alpha PAL6035 and an opened window in cool Slovenian december noon :). It was enough stable at 200MHz FSB and 1GHz to play Quake3 with SETI in background for about a hour and a half but I can't say if it would be able to work 24/7 at that frequency because I hadn't the time to test it. I would even boot @ 205MHy FSB but couldn't load Windows. Not too shabby at all! 75GXP Acoustic Level Utility (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-January-2001  09:55:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg This was mentioned in the news page yesterday. KngtRider had a less-than-rosy experience with it: I own the 30.7gb 75GXP has AAM disabled by default. Uitlity lets user choose 3 levels *Disabled (default from factory) *Enabled (full) *User (Slider) I chose enabled, power cycled my machine and reboot. The seek and motor noises of the drive completely disappear, not even audible with ear near HD, startup seek gone, win2k loading noises gone, the lot. Booted win2k, ran HDTACH, BANG. hd LED lit and win2k gone dead. Reset my machine, my primary profile is now corrupt (again). So I am using my secondary profile. Win2K dies when I overclock, when I max out my ram timing, when I use any 3rd part tweak utilities. I am writing this from hotmail because all my mail is in my primary profile which I cant use because of BSOD, how I have to go thru the tedious process of rebuilding my profile. Please announce this, and if you have any tips/ideas suggestions on user registry repair for the profile tell me, as I have in the past get all my files out, delete the account, make a new one and reinstall all my apps to re-write their registry settings I am going to be telling IBM about this anyway. KngtRider If you have any tips (or other experiences) add them this thread.. Tuesday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-January-2001  00:10:32 (GMT +10) - by Manaz Greetings all. Yes, I'm back from holidays, ready, willing and able to post all sort of irrelevant inforation, links and stories, and somehow call it all "News". Anyway, on with the show.... Given that Agg recently killed a Socket-A Athlon processor (I can still hear the sobbing from when he gave me all the gory details), he (and others who have done such a thing) can hopefully take heart in knowing that at least you didn't do it twice. To a friend's processor at that. Azrael pointed out that Telstra BigPond now have a usage monitoring tool for users on the Freedom Plan. If this applies to you, expect an email from Telstra shortly. From what I can make of it, it will be somewhat similar to Optus@Home's "My Netstats" tool.... Morgan pointed out this page, for those of you who are paranoid about your PC's registry being hacked over the Internet. I don't know if what it says is correct, so I leave it u to you to judge for yourself if such a procedure is necessary. Cav and Wolfy both pointed out this page, with instructions on getting Linux to work with the A7V's ATA100 controller. Skibum pointed out that H-Oda seems to have stopped downloads and support of several of his popular utilities, including WPCRSET and SoftFSB. Browsing his site, the FAQ has been removed as well, as have the Guides he had published. There doesn't seem to be any explaination as to why this has happened on the site, if anyone knows, feel free to email us. Some interesting information about the latest CD copy protection schemes. Pointed out by Kazashi, and provided as a link by us for theoretical educational purposes only. [H]ard|OCP have posted a quick GeForce 2 Chipset Comparison, based on reference cards made by Visiontek (who make all nVidia's reference boards). OCAddiction have thoughtfully posted PDF documents containing templates for different sized blowholes. Download them, print them, use them to cut holes in your case. Couldn't be simpler! OCAddiction have also posted an exclusive press release from IWill regarding their new DDR motherboard for Intel Pentium III processors. There's a new site in town. RAzOR recently opened the online doors to Overwear Online, and is celebrating by giving away a couple of heatsinks as prizes in a competition. Get a load of this for a WCPUID screenshot. Unfortunately Alex didn't give any further details on the system which achieved this performance - and I don't read Slovenian.... And just when you thought you might get a day of news without IT being mentioned, -=IcE=- sent in the following.... "maybe coincidence,but last night i was surfing my austar channels and came upon a program on the life style channel,that was reporting on a fantastic new invention....a personal airship thing!apparently you harness yourself to the underside of this mini blimp filled with helium,strap some wing/airpaddles on to youre arms and of you go!looked like heaps of fun,although the contraption is confined to indoors only as the slightest gust of wind renders the flying wonder completely uncontrollable:)quite amusing stuff!is this related tö "IT" by chance? the program was called "Exccentriiiks".why its spelt that way is beyond me,but there it is!" Having said that, it turns out the inventor of the mysterious IT says we're all over-reacting. The plot thickens (or is that the mud clouding the crystal ball).... Reviews. Jab (and Chris Nolan, though Jab beat him to the punch) pointed out that 2CPU.com have reviewed the Abit VP6 motherboard. As a bonus, the review also mentions a utility from IBM for improving the performance of 75GXP model drives, at the expense of a slightly noisier drive. Note that this utility is NOT suitable for ANY drive which isn't in the 75GXP range. And nor do we (Overclockers Australia) condone, support or suggest that you use it, so if your hard drive grinds to a rather noisy and expensive halt, please don't come crying to us about it. 3DRage have a review of the MSI K7T PRO 2-A Motherboard. The site seems very slow for me though, so it might take a bit of time to load. X-bit labs have reviewed the Asus A7M266 Motherboard. See what they think of it here. There's a review of the Creative Annihilator 2 MX with DDR Memory here on I am Not a Geek dot com. Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 16-January-2001  11:07:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg Wow, attack of the freaky Sydney weather yesterday. Baking hot temperatures, big wind-storms snapping branches off trees etc, huge areas of Sydney without power, cops all over the place.. seems to be blissfully overcast today tho. Slashdot.org are having a look at case mods again. No mention of the PCDB tho, I see! [mutter] InsaneHardware claim to have some Tualatin pics/info. No, not some rare species of flightless bird, it's Intel's new P3. However, a few people pointed out that VIAHardware are giving them a hefty front-page he-bitch man-slap, saying the pics are actually Coppermine D photos, and the info is wrong. I haven't seen a rebuttal from IH yet. You decide. Pengo points out a letter to Telstra asking a "please explain" on their broadband policies. Also, an interesting article about online advertising on somethingawful.com. Hmm, I'm getting all depressed again now.. BBSpot project Microsoft's next 25 years.. hehe. TE have some info on AC3, SBLive5.1 and Win2K.. some apparent compatability issues there. A sneak-peek of MS Whistler on PCMech.. Intel have inhaled Xircom.. details on the Reg. Digit-Life have an analysis of the NVIDIA NV20.. Reviews: Corsair and Mushkin SDRAM on ExtremeOC. Monitor Shelf on OC-Cafe. Not sure I'd be doing that in this Sydney heat. AverTV USB Tv Tuner on LWD. Abit KT7A-RAID on FlamingSheep. Mouse Bungee on DreddNews. Compare our review here. CoolerMaster DP5-6H51 socket cooler on ExtremeDK. Hercules Prophet II MX on Rizenet. Iwill KA266-R DDR Athlon mobo on BXBoards. A couple of other sites were pimping their "exclusive press release" of this board today and BXBoards whipped out a full review. Go Andy! :) Monday night.... back to volleyball, very sore. (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 15-January-2001  23:06:46 (GMT +10) - by Sciby This is quite neat: the Powerleap PL-Pro II socket 370 > socket 8 converter card. I always love cheapo upgrades like this. :) More on the mysterious IT thingy, this time from Wired. Thanks to Keith for the link. Do you suffer from not getting sex? Well, buy Playboys no more! Just install a Linux dist[1] and you can be like this guy and get some good lovin'! [1]But not CorelLinux, that will get you a date with a goat. And finally, squirrel fishing! I had a damn good giggle at this. Many thanks to |Mitch| for the link. Reviews: Hercules Prophet GeForce II GTS Pro 64mb - at Hexus.Net. Sony GDM-FW900 24" monitor - at Icrontic.Com. DFI AK74-EC motherboard - at AwareMag. Antec Datachute PCI removable storage - at Neoseeker. VideoLogic Sonic Fury - at The Tech Zone. Toshiba SD-M1402 12x/40x DVD-ROM player - at the Guru of 3D. Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 15-January-2001  11:16:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg CaseJunkiez reviewed the 2nd generation Titan Twin Orb. These do NOT mix well with the Asus A7V, as my dead tbird shows. Interesting, this Unika GeForce2 Pro card apparently has jumpers on it to switch into Quadtro2 mode. Saves you having to do the Quadro hack y'self. Will sends word of a Traffic Cone Preservation Society.. okey dokey. GideonTech have a Peltier Guide posted.. Sarkee points out that there's a new WCPUID (version 3.00 Beta1-003), some people in IRC were saying it looks different/cool last night. It's a beta, if your house burns down I don't wanna know, blah blah. Also, MBM 5.04 is out. More Blorb Modding in the HardOCP forums. Digit-Life have an editorial on the X-Box.. Hypothermia are giving away yet another firebreathing system. OCShoot have a briefcase PC guide. More interesting/bizarre stuff on ZZZ Online.. big truck, small camera. Reviews: MSI StarForce 818 GF2 MX on Puces3D.. french, but readable pics/graphs etc. Soltek 75KAV-X KT133A SocketA mobo on PCReview.co.uk. Yamaha CRW2100E IDE CDRW drive on Digit-Life. fUnc Surface 1030 Review! (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 15-January-2001  02:05:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg We've got a quick review of a quite bizarre new mousepad up, the fUnc Surface 1030: Click here for the review! I also updated the archive and the drop-down boxes (top of every page) with some recent reviews/articles. In case you missed them, they were: Creative Labs 3DBlaster GeForce2 Ultra 64MB Aopen CRW1232 CD Rewriter 3-Way SocketA Cooler Comparo #2 Mouse Bungee Cable Rounding for better airflow Partial frame skipping by SiS chipset? Sunday night, quickie news post. Sleepy. (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 15-January-2001  01:06:43 (GMT +10) - by Sciby This is weird: Apparently ThermalTake is suing this guy for saying that that the orbs lower the temperature around the thermistor in Socket A motherboards so that it gives lower temps that what the core actually is. It looks like AMD is going to start moving into the server market with Sun's Cobalt systems. Tres interesting, now we should see if they really can do 16 unit SMP. Thanks to Sniper650 for the link. Harvey Norman is great for those Saturday afternoon quick computer part purchases that you badly need for a LAN or when you're building the missus a new computer. Here's some info that'll let you get some information about how much cost price is for that new video card you're holding. It'll make haggling with the sales assistant that much more in your favor. Thanks to Alchemy for the link and the info itself. :) New Banner Code.. (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 14-January-2001  21:59:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ok, I just moved the new banner code into production. This new code allows for DoubleClick banners and has a little bit of clever JavaScript in it. You should see a banner above (as per normal) and also, on the left hand side, 2 small boxes and 1 larger Ebay box. The 2 small boxes probably only have 1 empty (white) one and 1 OCAU ad in them, for now. If anyone DOESN'T see that, or sees the page looking weird, please email me and let me know your operating system version, browser version and ISP.. thanks. Sunday lunchtime..... hmmm... I'm hungry. (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 14-January-2001  15:12:05 (GMT +10) - by Sciby First up, we've got a couple of pieces sent in by Simon W: cutting cpu's open, which will make you wince and go "Awwww... no, don't do that!" *warning: contains engrish*, and someone that's running their Celeron 566 at twice the rated speed. Nice. Extreme Overclockers has Slot 1 Gorb to fit on an old SECC Celeron. Ah, modding, gotta love it. Some people who own damn fine cars, like to make them even finer and fill them with high-end audio systems, and occasionally, you'll see a Playstation or DVD player pop up. But it seems there's a bit push for mobile entertainment. If only I had a better car... Alchemy has sent in this. It'd go well with a tin of mints TacoNuts have updated their modding case gallery. Komson has overclocked his P3-700e to 1152mhz. Not incredible nerve-tingling, but still... Erg, information overload! Neat though, thanks to Morgan. Amdmb.Com has updated their Asus A7V FAQ, with information on bios updates, lockups on booting and VIA drivers. MSI has released a new bios for their K7T Pro2-A motherboard and you can get it here. IQ-Hardware has tested a VIA KT133a motherboard with a Duron 600, running at 6 x 150mhz. Wooooo... chills. Here's some new dual motherboards from Asus: the CUV4X-D and the CUV4X-DLS, which adds onboard LAN and SCSI. Two articles from Spode's Abode: a jam jar as a watercooling resevoir, and apparently a RAID article, but it doesn't seem to be there, or have a link on the front page. Oh well, I'll leave it in, it might be up later. Reviews: GigaByte 8TX i850 motherboard review - at Digit Life. Mushkin PC-133 128MB Rev3 HSDRAM - at Acid Hardware. Ricoh WR7083A CDR/RW - at The Ctrl-Alt-Del.Com. Iwill's KK266-R "Overclocking" Motherboard Review - at Club Overclocker. Yamaha 16X SCSI CDRW burner - at Icrontic.Com. Shuttle AV30 DR266 Motherboard - at Fullon 3D. Saturday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 13-January-2001  09:33:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg A few people pointed out that the explanation for "IT" I posted into the thread was an old patent, so that's not the current mystery technology.. hmm, the plot thickens. Kyle over at the HardOCP has checked out the new Abit KT7A KT133A SocketA mobo. He answers the question everyone's wondering pretty early on, "Can we run our existing Tbirds at 133MHz FSB on this board?" .. here's a hint: 140MHz+! :) Looks like a good 'un. Another KT7A review on Icrontic.com and yet another, this time of the RAID variety, on VIAHW. Is that an NDA I hear lifting? InsaneHardware have some info about Super Bypass on the AMD 761 (DDR) chipset. FiringSquad checked out a cool little device called an emarker.. that identifies songs on the radio for you, so you can work out what that cool song is and download it from nap... errr, buy the cd! Check out page three of this heatsink comparo (heck, check out the whole thing, despite it being written by someone calling himself Wesley Crusher - Star Trek fans will understand/shudder) .. uhm.. yeah, page 3. Very weird-but-cool looking cooler. Thanks Mitch. 4-way SocketA Cooler Roundup on OCAddiction. Reviews: Alpha PEP66T uber-cooler on OCOnline. 1.3GHz Athlon (pretested) on IANAG. ATI Radeon 32 Meg DDR video card at TheTechZone. Crucial 256MB PC133 SDRam @ EXHardware. Lian Li PC-31 all-aluminium minitower on DansData. Yamaha CRW2100E CD ReWriter, 16x10x40 on HardwareOne. Fri Arvo - Sore from Climbing (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 12-January-2001  17:12:11 (GMT +10) - by YYK Further to the article about the new AUS$5 notes, a source that works in a bank has emailed me that the bank note counters don’t like them either and that the dye in the notes runs...très intéressant Napster version 2, beta 9 has been released, now please read the rest of the posts before running off like school girls to download it… (Napster site seems to be very slow) Agg’s favourite free money maker, All-Advanatge has closed its office in Australia & UK… I guess all those monies owed will never get paid out, but then who is surprised at that ? neko who says that "beauty is in the eye of the beer holder" also warns that if you are a Turkish kid and are surfing the web or playing backgammon, are in big trouble! “ Let this be a lesson to you!!!” neko warns his gf and all other women Melinda, who has seen neko’s warning, has finally found an article that explains her and many other women’s fetish for shoes… oh she also says “Not ALL crimes pay....” A UKTV show will auction a boob job on air…um… ok… Following the step of Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, has made a silly commercial… hey I could have inserted a silly monica joke in there….but it was just too easy neko also informs us about sacred monkey madness that is sweeping India… No, not the cool great sage equal of heaven type, but Surly Simians! In other monkey news, ANDi has been created… good or bad? Look I’m sick of telling you how to think… how about you decide for a change Nude night surfing has been cancelled yet again @ bondi (a small beach in Sydney, Aust)… but don’t let that stop you from going to Fringe… It seems that everyone was wrong about which presidential candidate was the robot… poor Al, thanks to neko (again!) On a final note neko has a thought of the day - "Computer games don't affect kids, I mean, if Pacman affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." enjoy the weekend kids! Water-jacket with built-in SocketA shim.. (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 12-January-2001  12:11:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg This is interesting - TheGOOM.com (short for the German Overclocking Online Mag) are making these water jackets: You can see they have designed the unit with holes for the SocketA chip "feet" and room for the bridges and SMD components. It'll certainly help stabilise the jacket on the core (and don't I know how important that is) .. but it means you can only use it on SocketA chips, which might affect how long it stays useful for. Also, being (seemingly) aluminium, you have to be careful if using it in the same system as copper equipment, or galvanic corrosion may occur (which is Bad, as DansData recently discovered). More info on their site here (in German). There's apparently a review unit on the way, so we'll see. Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 12-January-2001  11:07:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg The IT mystery has been solved it seems, I just posted a link to the patent documentation here in the forums.. (scroll down the thread a bit).. seems to be some kind of funky scooter chair thing, reading it now. Akiba have pics of Asus's AMD761 (Athlon DDR) motherboard, the A7M266.. thanks alchemy. Cool lan box on PCRivals.. thanks leperMessiah. USBWorkBench (new site?) have info on a new USB DVD-RAM drive from LaCie.. mmm, 9.4GB rewriteable media.. xbit have Part 2 of their CD-R Media Roundup posted.. interesting stuff. Andrew points out an Aussie Astronomer who says humans are too primitive to be of interest to alien civilisations. Well, fine. Microsoft have been kicking heads over software piracy again.. the biggest damages payout (for software piracy) in Oz history. Digit-life have a GeForce Ultra Overclocking guide posted.. they got theirs to 370/580, which is not too shabby at all! P4 gaming rig on InfernoMaster (?). Reviews: FIC AZ11E on Overclocking.DK. Cooler Master "Heatpipes" cooler on TechWatch. Apollo Pro 266 (P3 DDR) chipset review on xbit. Extreme Sports! (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-January-2001  23:39:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Will sent in this pic.. Apparently it's an ad for Boeri helmets. :) Thursday Night #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-January-2001  23:10:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg Interesting thing about the Asus A7V in an Anandtech Forum thread, thanks Mike. I've not fully read it, but the responses are interesting in themselves.. :) Apparently the CoolBits registry hack (which you can get, incidentally, from an OCAU mirror here) doesn't work on Detonators 6.50 and above. On lower versions, CoolBits enables hardware overclocking of your NVIDIA-based video card. TweakTown have a guide which shows you how to re-enable overclocking using those higher-version Detonators. Some Canadian overclocking silliness on CAD. Taking the cold-ambient-air thing a bit too far.. Icrontic.com have a guide to Adding A Blue Orb & Removing BIOS Chip From The KT7.. okey dokey. Windows streaks ahead of the opposition in the vital "who's webserver product is hacked the most" stakes. SysReview have a petition against CPRM. I dunno how effective these things are, but CPRM is genuinely Evil and it only takes a few seconds to sign this petition, so I did. Speaking of Evil, IRC is apparently under attack from nasty haX0rs.. no, really. Thanks Romio. Digit-life have a CDR Media Roundup.. They also have a thing on digital audio recording which I understood not at all. Another depressing story about how web advertising sucks.. [covers ears] ..thanks (a lot), Manaz. :) However, I note now that Encyclopaedia Britannica's website seems to be free again. I posted excitedly over a year ago when it came online and was free, then grumpily 6 months or so ago when they (apparently) decided advertising wasn't making enough money for the site and started charging a subscription, and now I'm excited again because it seems to be free, with banners, again. One of those sites you can literally spend years exploring. OCOnline have compared a few VIA 4-in-1 driver versions and shared their results.. ProCooling ask Are Pre-Tested CPU's Worth It?. TheTechZone have their wrap-up of the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show. Malleus points out that the Australian Broadcasting Authority has issued a take down notice to a major Australian ISP requiring them to remove newsgroups containing illegal material. Ahh. Another pointless exercise involving the Aust Govt and the Internet - your tax dollars at work. More info here on WhirlPool and here on Kuro5hin.org. P4 1.3GHz retail box on sale in Japan. Reviews: Low Profile Orb on Neoseeker. Apollo Pro 266 chipset review on VIA HW. IT? (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-January-2001  22:06:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg Is this massively big news or just a scam? A fad or serious life-changing technology? I've no idea, but a few people are very excited.. read this story on MSNBC then let me know what you think in this thread. Also, if you see any other news stories about it, please post the URL's in the thread! Super Orb + Shim = Bad! (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-January-2001  21:18:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg Damnit, killed another CPU. Ok, get it over with, everyone stand in a circle, point and laugh at Agg. Right. The story: Copper shim and Super Orb. Apparently, as I discovered 5 minutes after frying my Tbird950 that occasionally did 1160MHz, "everyone knows that's instant CPU death". Well, I didn't, and I'm betting a lot of you didn't either. The problem is this ridge on the bottom of the Super Orb:     click for larger images This ridge rests on the shim and means, even though the heatsink feels snug on the socket/shim, the cpu core is actually not touching the heatsink.. hmm, bad. AMD rate the cores to, what, 8 seconds without a heatsink? I got to the POST screen, hit Del to go into the BIOS screen, suddenly all the fans on the machine sped up, then it shut itself off. Inspecting the CPU revealed burn marks on the ceramic around the core and, incredibly, on the BACK of the ceramic package - it was mighty hot for the last few of those 8 seconds. :) What would I do differently? Next time, I'll assemble the heatsink/shim/cpu, then strip it down and make sure there's thermal paste being obviously squished out between the core and sink. I was reluctant to pull the assembly apart too much due to the previously chipped core - click here for a pic of that massive missing chunk if you missed a few days ago. Durons for me from now on I think, getting too expensive to play this game with $400 Tbirds. Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-January-2001  20:29:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg Been at the track all day today, good fun but boy it's hard work.. :) Some reviews for you first, more news as the evening unfolds.. Reviews: Gigabyte 7ZXR SocketA mobo on Guru3D. Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse on LWD. Mushkin REV2 PC133 SDRAM on 3DSpotlight. Globalwin VOS-32 "mini review" on ExtremeDK. Our maxi review here. CNet CNSH-500 5-Port 100/10Mbps Switch on Max3D. Coolermaster CH5-5K12 Heatpipe heatsink on FrostyTech. FIC AZ11E SocketA mobo on OCWB. X-Micro Micro Impact 4 GeForce2 Pro video card on LegionHW. Pre-rounded IDE cables on G3D. Wednesday night... payday tomorrow!!! Woohoo! I can eat again! (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 10-January-2001  22:09:34 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Just got back from having dinner at my mate's place, and his son has just learnt to say "Sciby". I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing, he keeps yelling at me to do stuff: "Sciby, up!", "Sciby, play!". Gawd. The Tech Zone have updated their hardware price guide. Danger, danger, US prices! *ahem* Sorry. A new Australian case modding site has sprung up: Casemods Melbourne. (Must be a Victorian thing) Anyway, it seems they practice what they preach, they've heavily modded their server case. Some news about the new ASUS CUV266 Mainboard. Apparently it's lost PC133 sdram support. Sheep looks like a bizarre, yet addictive game. FiringSquad have completed a review about it. Scared to go to the next level with your case modding project? Afraid of soldering and live, sparking electricity? Well, Tweakmeister's can help: they've written a happy little article on LED's, fans and regulators, and how to use them without killing yourself. Procooling has stopped cooling stuff to hack away at a Palm IIIx, not because they could, but because they had to. We all know a guy who's just the l33test computer guru, he knows it all, even when he's got it all wrong, he's still right. (I'm one of 'em) But Tech Extreme have found a bit of a standout: meetthis Gateway Dude. He knows it all. Ah, this article at Ugo.Com takes the "Wazzup?" bud beer ads, just a *little* too seriously. Thanks to TrustNo1. Right. Hah! Motorola is striking back with a new G4, the G4+! JC's has got the goods, about time Apple got a good processor out. Speaking of which, Apple have annouced their new Titanium Powerbook and the PowerMac G4-733. Tres sexy. I've already asked work to buy me one. They asked me to leave the room. Whilst we're still talking about Apple stuff, Samson pointed out some information that he spat out in the forums. Very interesting news about what Apple's got coming out. I even put in my two cents. :) (and like I could help myself) ExtremeCooling.Org have written an article on resolving graphical problems. One graphical problem is getting rid of that weird intro screen. *ahem* I'm okay now. Here's some pricing for Optus@Home's Warp and Lightning deals. (see Agg's post below to understand what the hell I'm talking about) Thanks to B5Lurker and Snoopy for the information. TacoNuts has opened their own case mod gallery. Woohoo. How to rip off MacDonalds: Bob's been found! Have a free dessert. Finally, here's a good collection of overclocking links, plus a few local articles. Reviews: Rounded Hard Drive IDE Cables Review - at Gaming in 3D. nVidia GeForce2 MX card roundup - at Extreme Overclocking. SMC Barricade 4-Port Internet Router - at NeoSeeker. Abit VP6 motherboard - at PCScoop. Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 10-January-2001  10:57:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg This is completely unsubstantiated, but B5Lurker says When I was called by O@H today about a cable connection I was told as of this morning Monday, 8th January 2001 that installations of both the Warp speed pack and the Lightning Speed pack have increased by $200.. d'oh! I can't get it anyway. There's nothing on their press release page about it.. hmm. Andrew sent in some info on Telstra's take on the whole Optus / Vodaphone merger thing. After dicking around with Linux for a while, Corel are expected to do something else instead. Real Men use Debian anyway. HardOCP have a SocketA chipset shootout going on, KT133 vs KT133A vs Ali DDR. TweakTown checked out one of those little hangheld infra-red temp probe thingies. I want one. Got my firstborn here all packed up and ready to go. Tweaktown have their swanky new logo up, too.. Wired have a little thing on quantum computers.. and I thought they only made hard drives. :) We've linked this before, but it's pretty, err, cool. PC in a fridge. As you do. Apparently there's a patch to Q3 that gives you higher framerates. Not the old "run it in 320x200 mode" patch? :) Apparently not, more info here. VIA 4-in-1 v4.28 is out, install at your own risk, if it kills your whole family I don't wanna know, yada yada. Abit's VP6 dually FCPGA mobo apparently has an issue with SCSI cards, to be corrected in a future BIOS update.. more info here on HardOCP. This is interesting, SeaLaunch will apparently video-stream their next rocket launch onto the net. You can see archival launch footage here. Thanks Grant. Ooo, new book on Cryptography.. Reviews: fUnc mousing surface on EXHardware. Pioneer DVD-U05S SCSI DVD-ROM on CDRInfo. Ricoh MP9120A IDE CDRW/DVD drive also on CDRInfo. Opera 5.1.. a leading "alternative" web browser on Icrontic.com. AMI HyperDisk ATA-100 IDE RAID controller on xbit. AOpen AW754 sound card on Digit-Life. Antec SX1030B midtower case on OCHW. Tuesday night... ho hum, lotsa news. (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-January-2001  21:26:44 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Digit-life has reviewed three new cards from SUMA, a Korean-based company:the SUMA Platinum GeForce2 GTS 64MB, SUMA Platinum GeForce2 Pro 64MB and the SUMA Platinum GeForce2 MX PowerUp with SIF. Pfft, 'sif. Some info from the forums: a cool (teehee) cold air duct from CoRDS, and some flashy things here from AmnesiA. You need a Divx decoder to see the flashy thing movie. Got a rubbish chipset fan on your Abit KT7? Well, Tweakmax.Com have an article to help you replace that slow-moving piece of junk with something far better (and l33ter). Those English-types love to stick together, for example Spode (from Spode's Abode) and Dr.Surlyjoe(from UpAvolt) have joined forced, but the combined efforts will still be known as Spode's Abode. I guess that means that Dr.Surlyjoe is sub-letting. Insane Hardware has some new information about those credit card number thefts at Egghead.Com. Got a Voodoo 4 or above? Voodoo4+ Runner is what you need. Nvidia-based cards usually gets all the attention, good to see someone cares about all those orphaned Voodoo cards. Some more Tales of Woe at Maximum 3D. It's scary to think that things like this happen all too often. TacoNuts has a SanDisk 16mb SmartMedia card to give away. I don't know if it's international or not. Give it a go anyway, can't hurt. OCAddiction has a Best and Worst of 2000, including a Beer of The Year award. I vote for Hahn Premium Light, that stuff is just damn tasty. Is Quake3 Art? Good question, I dunno, I don't play it enough, I'm more of a Counter-strike guy. Read the article, tres interesting. Thanks to Kazashi for the link. Now this is just not fair!! First the cops get WRX's, now THIS!!! Join the police, get a uniform the chicks go for, get a gun, get to shoot people if they cut you off and now they get to drive Beamers! That's it, screw this geeking lark, I'm gonna be a Pig! (More so) Thanks to my mate Messiah, who'll be the first I pull over and harrass-...er, arrest when I get out there. This is just silly: BCBoy's keyboard. Don't look very ergonomic to me. *shrug* How to cool your video card down (literally). Trust me, there's a freezer involved. Good read, I love modding pages with lotsa pictures. I like pictures. Finally, before I charge off to dinner, "Why Intel is Two-faced" over at SystemLogic. Reviews: Samsung 750s 17" monitor - at PC Stats. Enermax EG451P-VE Review - at Club Overclocker. Creative X-Gamer 5.1 Review - at Tech Extreme. Abit VP6 motherboard review - at IamNotAGeek.Com. Advertising (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-January-2001  20:28:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg There's been a lot of noise on the hardware scene over the last few days about advertising revenue, some of the large site networks are rethinking their strategy and this is having a shakedown effect on the scene. A couple of good blurbs about it are on BXBoards.com and ArsTechnica. A few people have asked how this affects OCAU.. well, it basically doesn't. We're not in a network, we have our own dedicated server and are financially independent. This kind of thing is one of the many reasons I have kept the site as independent as possible from other sites, no direct affiliation, no network membership etc. I freely link any site with interesting and relevant content. Having said that, by sheer coincidence I have been working on getting a new banner company over the last couple of months. The one we were with (no names) turned out to be unfortunately not very professional with their approach to sites so I have ended my contract with them and looked elsewhere. I have had a couple of meetings with DoubleClick, did a presentation to them on the site and they have been very keen to get OCAU under their wing and start displaying their ads on the site. So you'll see their ads soon - they're already testing in the forums. Banner ads are a necessary evil when running a high-usage site like OCAU. At the current rate, we will do 1.8M pageviews this month which equates to over 70GB of outbound web traffic for this domain alone. Add in the hosted sites, email, DNS and other miscellaneous traffic.. it becomes an expensive exercise. I make no secret of the fact that OCAU has been losing money pretty consistently for the 18 months it's been running (more so, since we got the dedicated server). I don't mind covering the cost, I think it will eventually pay for itself and even if it doesn't I enjoy being part of the community - but I obviously can't keep throwing money away indefinitely. Hence, banner ads - they really are the only substantial source of income for this site. Hopefully DoubleClick will send a wider range of ads than we've had in the past, and you will see things you are genuinely interested in. Almost all of the ads you will see will be for Australian products, sites and services. We are paid per ad viewed, but the advertisers will definitely take note of the click-through rate and be less happy about advertising on sites that never attract any clicks. So, while I'm not asking you to click banners at random, I hope you find the future ads more interesting and decide to check a few of them out. Thanks again to everyone for helping make OCAU the thriving community it is today, it's great to be part of it. :) Bet you never thought you'd see overclockers.com.au on a C64? (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-January-2001  19:19:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg Click to enlarge..:) Thanks KngtRider.. Tues Lunch - Busy at Work (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-January-2001  12:01:04 (GMT +10) - by YYK The new five dollar notes issued in Aussie doesn’t seem to be working in vending machines… but who are we to question the infinite wisdom of the Reserve Bank of Aussie? Wanna get to Mars? Those nine or so months it takes to get there a little too long for your impatient little mind? Well then here’s the answer for you my friend. Twentieth Century Fox can’t seem to get anything right, and now having learnt from their lessons of “marry a millionaire”, has released yet another silly reality program Who is more hated than Hussein? Even more than Adolf? I tell you what; those Brits really love their polls, the answer is pretty cool, and you gotta hand it to him, he’s been working hard for it. The rules of the great system, that is the US Patents have changed for genes… gotta love that! The international sport of Darts just keeps getting more and more exciting with those enormous pay rises, all those endorsements those physically fit athletes get and to top it off - now they have streakers! A nice little article about how great Google is… well duh! Tough times ahead for Sean Combs it seems, well you know what they say: be careful what you wish/sing/rap/plagiarise for When you think the Theatre can’t get any better, Kevin McCallister decides to throw his hat into the ring… may God have mercy on our soul. Just when you’ve thought buying all those DVDs have been the right decision, along comes JVC with D-VHS… maybe that too, like DVDs, will be just a phase To finish the news nicely, a nice article that will make men laugh, grimace and shake their heads at the stupidity of it all... cheers to "neko"!!! ta ta my sweets! Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-January-2001  08:13:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg Next time you have an argument with a Mac zealot, comfort yourself with the fact that they may REALLY be typing with one hand. Duron 850 came out last night apparently, here's some reviews: One2Surf, AnandTech, TomsHardware, FiringSquad, GamersDepot, SharkyExtreme, AMD's PR on HardOCP. My review: It's just like all the other Durons, but a little bit faster. PCMech have an article on whether or not to run WinME.. Vindaloo pointed out his very cool paintjob on IRC last night. A7V BIOS v1005c is now out, flash at your own risk, if your head explodes I don't wanna know, blah blah. Reviews: FIC AZ11E SocketA mobo on PlayNow. Not too technical review. Leadtek Winfast GeForce2 MX on Extremecooling.org - has an LED on the card to show when it's in AGP4X, cool idea. Yeong-Yang YY0221B server cube case on ProCooling.com. Jazz Speakers DE-006 & DE-005 dolby digital decoders on TechnoYard. ATI Radeon (32mb vs 64mb) on PCMonkey. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P1 and, unsurprisingly, a bunch of other interesting stuff on Dan'sData. Monday night... hmmmm... South Park and Rex the Runt tonight.. (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 8-January-2001  22:29:39 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Anyway, before they start, let's have some news: There's a new version of CPUIdle out, beta 2. Standard beta warning applies, yadda yadda yadda. Some Soltek mobo news from "Celeron450" (You know who you are, and I hope your parents do too): Soltek is lanching PM133+686B board SL-65MIV2. It is a Socket 370 uATX S370 board. It supports 133Mhz and has 3 DIMM, Savage4 AGP 4x. AC 97 audio, 3 PCI, 1 AGP, 2 ATA100 IDE interface. Size : 245mm x 220mm Tiny, tiny, tiny. Waitaminute, Savage 4? Eww. ZZZ Online has updated with Issue 65. Whilst we're in the middle of updates and issues, Adrian's Rojak Pot has update their Chunksize Optimization Guide, now v2.0. More guides/digests/issues, DigitLife's Storage Digest is the focus this time. Whilst we're at Digit Life, they've got all the info on Athlon and Duron overclocking article. Check it out. Okay, this is just plain bizarre: order an action figure of yourself. Unda da water... an' G.I. Joe got stuck..." Apparently, some french persons have made a PS2 emulator. It could be true, it could be false. I can't tell, it's in french and I'm damned lazy to open another window to translate the page with AltaVista. Hey, consider it an adventure. PCInsight has had a wee bit o' a Q and A with Diane Vanasse of Nvidia. Interesting read. Tech-Extreme have had enough of people saying the Pentium 4 isn't what it's supposed to be, so they've written this: A Misunderstood Processor - The Pentium 4. Ooooooh, a new processor from AMD, designed with the extreme overclocker in mind, how cool is that?? It's going to be called The AMD Athlon Extreme OC Processor. I want one. I want one a lot. *cough*pisstake*cough* Here's some PR blurb about the new AMD Duron 850mhz cpu (yes, yes, this one is real. :) Inside Hardware has a comparo between the Elsa Gladiac MX and the PowerColor Evil KYRO. Cool, yet bizarre name for a video card. Evil KYRO. Hmmm... doesn't quite roll off the tongue. Version 2.5 of the GeForce tweak utility is out. You need it, go get it. Thanks to the Guru of 3D. (Okay, so I'm running out of things to say here, so sue me.) Part 3 of [H]ardOCP's Case Modding article is out. This is quite funny: Design Your Own X-box Controller! Fun for the whole family. Reviews: Intel D815EEA motherboard - at Rizenet. Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro - at Hardware Avenue. AMD Athlon 800mhz cpu - at Tech-Planet. Hammerhead FX gamepad - at DreddNews. SWIFTECH MC1001 hsf - at OCTools. Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 8-January-2001  01:08:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg Don't forget MPU is on this weekend - big LAN day in Sydney. Apparently TheNerdFest is a LAN day in Canberra on the 27th of this month. Just wandering around the PCDB gallery, a few that grabbed my eye - NGTPrime's PC in a drawer :), DeadEye's watercooled machine, a very well-ventilated unit from Microsoft and a serious liquid-and-peltiers system from Orthello. Don't forget you can see the most recent entries with the Sort by Addition/Modification Date option. Detonators 6.66 and 6.67 are "leaked" onto http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/.. thanks Malleus. Linux kernel 2.4.0 came out a few days ago, too. Get it from kernel.org or your nearest mirror. Wired have some info on what's new and improved in 2.4. Overclockers.com have a guide to building a PC.. good for newbies. Someone in IRC pointed out this interesting story about a secret-ish base abandoned by the NSA, and what people found there. Funny counter-strike video on Fargo.. thanks dmband. TomsHardware has an article up covering the 3 chipsets that accomodate 133MHz-FSB Athlons, thanks alchemy. Martin has an "interesting" use for spare bits left over from case modding.. TheTechZone have coverage of Day One of the Consumer Electronics Show in the US. Apu'sHardware are now called icrontic.com.. no, I don't know either. Neither do they. Reviews: Hercules Prophet 2 Ultra on Hexus. Wind Tunnel Plus case on TweakTown. Leadtek WinFast Geforce2 MX DH Pro on G3D. NerdsByte "MiniSinks" ram sinks on Rizenet. Reviews for youse (urgh) (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 7-January-2001  11:11:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg Soltek SL-75KA-V KT133A mobo on BXBoards. Looks like a good 'un. Matrox G450 on Overclocking.dk (english review). Senfu Watercooling Kit on Spodes. Compare our massive review here. Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy on GideonTech. Intel Celeron 800 on digit-life. VIA Cyrix III also on digit-life. AOpen MK33 SocketA mobo on Max3D. IWill KA-266R motherboard on GamersDepot, thanks Malleus. Sunday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 7-January-2001  10:47:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ooow, I'm sunburned. Went for a ride to Wollongong yesterday, went scubadiving in Shellharbour, very very nice. Rode back home via the National Park, stopping to wolf down a couple of Robbers Dogs hotdogs in Stanwell Tops on the way. Very pleasant way to spend a Saturday.. Blak-jak from the forums has his Duron 800 at 1100MHz.. aircooled at default voltage. Lucky sod! The computer game industry manages to squeeze out another motorcycle game that sucks, great work guys. Speaking of motorcycles, there's a Celebration Ride coming up soon, this is a MASSIVE bike exodus to Canberra to celebrate motorcycling in Australia, hear riding celebrities talk about issues, make the public more aware of motorcycling etc. I went to the previous one back in 1996 and it was awesome, riding in a column of more bikes than I've ever seen, even more than when going to the Philip Island GP. I will most probably be going on this one too.. TweakTown have a bunch of stuff to give away.. easy to win, cool prizes. Ryan sent in a couple of interesting Microsoft Whistler links, firstly this one lists some of the new features in the latest build, including the shock revalation that the Recycle Bin has been relocated to the bottom right of the screen (saves me dragging it there after every install).. one of the few things the Mac got right early on. :) Also, more serious license enforcement technology. This other link apparently also has info, but it's not working for me at the moment. MPU is on again next weekend.. VooDoo from MOS will be holding a modded-case competition, if there's anything interesting I will grab some photos and put them up here.. Geeks asking a porn star questions. Riiight. I'm afraid to look. Only on Hypothermia.. Very funny C64 ad dug up by Mr Picolenie here in the forums.. Interesting new water-cooling radiator on the market.. More in a bit. Saturday afternoon... erg... too much news. (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 6-January-2001  18:37:46 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Firstly, congrats to two of my closest friends Ado and Carlin, who had their second baby boy yesterday, Jacob. Weehee! His older brother Nick is almost old enough to wield a screwdriver. "Here Nicky, this is how to take apart Daddy's stereo and computer!" :) X-bit labs has got a looksee at one of the first Athlon value motherboards, the Asus A7VI-VM. Here's how to build your own UPS. There's no point unless it's for a server, imho. *shrug* Getting sick of Counter-strike? Yes? (Freaks) Then have a gander at this review at UGN of Wasteland: Half-life. Tres interesting, but I'll stick with CS for a while longer, until I get sick of doing 3-for-1 awp shots. *grins wildly at [P]engo* Now this is cool: http://www.overclockers.com.au/ubb/Forum11/HTML/000458.html . An AT-to-ATX case conversion as well as doing some major functional and visual mods, lotsa metal. :) OC Addiction is giving away a GeForce2 MX video card, and it's a reference card. Oooooh. AthlonMB has the new Gigabyte 7DXC motherboard, with DDR. Isn't as good as they hoped, it seems. Well, according to The Register, the copy-protection-in-hard-drives thing may put some control back in the hands of the users. Thanks to Sniper650 and davisgj/malleus/catharsis (make up your mind. :) for the link. OCForce have got two news articles up: a fanbus guide, and a Senfu Temperature Monitor review. Exciting stuff. This is great: http://207.138.115.112/aft/warrantyvoid.jpg - probably should learn to read or ignore those uncontrollable "new toy" urges, your cpu might live longer. Thanks to Sabrtooth for the link. *teehee* TweakTown has a preview of some new Gigabyte boards, namely the Gigabyte GA-7ZMM (Socket A, VIA KM133) and the Gigabyte GA-7DXR (Socket A, AMD-761 DDR chipset). The GA-7DXR is the usual Gigabyte shade of blue. Purty. And to go with that pretty blue DDR mobo, you'll need some DDR memory, like this stuff at Mushkin. Buy me some too, will ya? Thanks to Jai for the link. Digit-life has the goods on an S3 Roadmap. I thought Diamond swallowed up S3 and then renamed the last bits of S3 as SONICblue. And now they're going back to the old name? I'm very confused. UPDATE: Agg: Actually, S3 inhaled Diamond.. thanks eski. A bit of info on the new *deep breath* MS-StarForce 815 Pro Advanced Level Graphic Accelerator with nVIDIA® GeForce2 PRO™ Chipset from MSI™. I'll have one, thank you. Want to see the inside of the new Microsoft X-box? Your wish is granted. :) VIA's latest 4-in-1 drivers have been released, we're up to version 4.27 Beta now. Download it here. Someone in IRC was asking about disk caching the other day, can't remember who, but they could have done with this: Adrian's Rojak Pot has update their Disk Cache Optimization Guide. Reviews: Coolerguys Windtunnel Plus ATX Case - at PC Mechanic. Plextor 12/10/32A ATAPI CDR burner - at Apu's Hardware. Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - at Extreme Overclocking. SMC Barricade EZ Connect Cable/DSL Router - at Hardware One. Justcooler HD-100 and HD-600 harddrive coolers - at Overclockers Online. Creative Soundblaster Live! Platinum 5.1 - at the Guru of 3D. Wind Tunnel Plus Mid Tower Case - at Extreme Overclocking. Free fix offer for Oz CUSL2 owners! (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 5-January-2001  19:25:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg This is pretty cool - Bill AKA sync_array from our own Asus CUSL2 Forum has offered to send a free kit (a peice of wire and instructions) to anyone in Australia who mails him a stamped self-addressed envelope. This kit will fix the coldboot problem on CUSL2's, apparently. Full details in this thread.. good on ya, Bill! Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 5-January-2001  11:08:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg VIAHardware have collected VIA drivers and patches on their page.. Wired have a Dreamweaver 4 Overview.. Dreamweaver is a website design program that I obviously don't use, or my website would look less like something buried in a timecapsule in 1997. JC's has a thing on AMD and Intel machines in stores.. US info of course. Overclockers.com have a lengthy editorial about consumerism with some interesting case studies about online mis-pricing.. Some discussion/rant about CounterStrike in the Forums. I've been playing for nearly a week now so feel comfortable in commenting on the scene :) and it seems whenever anyone does anything interesting they are accused of being a bot/scripter. At the moment the whole experience is too laggy for me, but hopefully in "2 to 3 weeks" when my ADSL is hooked up, I will be able to 0wn j00 4ll. FastMHz have even more case mods posted. Of course, all the cool kids have their case mods and PC stats listed in the PCDB.. :) Interesting baybus on this page.. in the UK tho. 3DRage have a guide to ripping and burning.. just the thing for peasant villagers. Oh, CD's too? Doesn't sound like nearly as much fun. VR-Zone have an idea for volts-modding the Epox EP-8KTA3 mobo. Info on an alterate internet on infoanarchy.org. Hmm. A shift in Chipzilla's strategy? Info here on cnet and here on MP3NewsWire about a move towards the consumer electronics market. GJDavis sent in a HEAP of the news today, including this bit: ian clark, the Man behind FreeNet comments on this wired article which craps on about tracking piracy over public networks using Media Enforcer and another one, Copyright Agent ..the rant in question is here.. thanks GJDavis! SysReview tell you how to set up a LAN.. ..and someone calling themselves Doc Overclock (hmm) wants to describe common memory types to you. Reviews: Gigabyte GA-7DX AMD 760 (DDR Athlon) motherboard on xbit. D-Link DMP-CD100 MP3 CD player on SystemLogic. Transcend TS-ASL3 i815 motherboard. Gen-X Tech OFRIO copper-body socket cooler on OC.com. CoolerGuys Cyclone 5000 ATX Case on SysReview. CNet 16 and 24 Port LAN switches on PCMech. Alpha PAL6035 heatsink on OCOnline. Abit VP6 dual FCPGA mobo on OCWB. American McGee's Alice on FlingingSquids. Abit SH6 i815 mobo on JSI. Thursday night... up in the skies... (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-January-2001  23:03:05 (GMT +10) - by Sciby I hope you all were outside at 7:45pm EST tonight to watch the International Space Station float overhead, was very trippy. :) We're all gripped by OC/AU Counter-strike fever at the moment (and rightly so!), but Converted2 stepped back and asked the question, "Counter-strike: Is it killing the mod community?". Well... is it? PC Hardware has a looksee at the new MSI Pro266 Master-R, which is a board based around the VIA Pro 266 chipset, supports socket-370 chips. Very sexy. I love naughty hacks and mods that void warranties, and I think this one is no exception: TacoNuts have taken a Maxtor Firewire external drive, and ripped out the old drive and plonked a bigger and faster drive in. Check it out. Bench House have gone comparo mad, firstly with a Logitech Mouse comparo, then a comparison of IDE controllers. Own an Asus A7V motherboard? Then you need a BIOS update. HardcoreWare have a post-Christmas upgrade guide. PCMech has a guide on setting up network printing. As you do. It's a bit old, but still cool, how to mod your nokia phone with blue leds. Interesting, can't do it with my phone though, it's work's. :) Holden fans will be shocked to hear that Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards have signed up with Ford for the 2001 V8 Supercar season, thanks to KngtRider. Reviews: Razer Boomslang 2000 - at Techwatch. Coolermaster ATCS 310 case - at Hexus.Net. 2CoolPC/2CoolPCPlus - at TechWatch. Check out our review. ThermalBuster heatsink - at FrostyTech. Abit BE6 II motherboard - at TechPlanet. DFI AK74-AC motherboard - at EXHardware. Epox 3SPA3L motherboard - at TweakTown. Thrus Nite - Still at Work (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-January-2001  21:19:15 (GMT +10) - by YYK Did know that the UK banks have no ATM fees? Yes? Well fine! Aussie banks are saying that they won't follow... the b!#%^.. Ever thought that your relationship with starwars ran deeper than fandom? Thanks to Kazzie Christmas Island has decided that they are independent from Australia Strange structures are said to be appearing in Seattle, big phallic things In absolutely shocking news, Peter Andre has been dropped by Mushroom… bwaahahahahah! The bizarre but very cool, Bill & Ben, the Flower Pot men are making their comeback after 30 years The results of the poll “who in Hollywood should keep their clothes on” are in. The Y2K bug viciously attacks trains in Norway... well.... The police bomb dog that ran away scared during Sydney’s incredible NYE fireworks has been found Co-Pro, Ho Ho (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-January-2001  18:44:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg Jason Richards sent in these pics of something be bought at a garage sale recently. This piece should be at a museum or something. The best thing about this, is that it is still in the shrink wrap!     click for larger images Okey dokey. :) OCAU Counter-Strike (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-January-2001  17:22:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg There's a mostly-official OCAU Counter-Strike server running at a top-secret location :) in Queensland - it's become pretty popular and a good place to meet and shoot fellow OCAU people. You can find it at 138.77.36.250:27015 - it's a v1.0 server. However! The hardware it's running on has been reclaimed, so we are requesting any donations of old bits to help build another one. Full details here, I think most bits have been sourced already but still a few fiddly bits needed. Thanks, and hope to see you in there! The dreaded crunch - but it survived! (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-January-2001  14:22:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg Spent some time this morning playing with the new Titan Majesty Twins .. you remember, I reviewed the original one about a month ago and was less than impressed with it. Well, Titan went away and did some thinking - they sent over a new version with a few improvements.. sadly, it was as frustrating to mount as the original version, clashing nastily with the power riser on the A7V. After fiddling for a while I gave up trying to get it on and went to re-mount the super orb that normally cools the testbed.. and saw, to my horror, this: Click to enlarge.. Look at the top left corner of the core. Bad. I felt/heard no crunch or grinding noise or anything. Anyway, the chip survived, but I feel pretty lucky - that is a big chunk out of the core. Suffice to say Titan are off my Christmas list. I'm currently working up the courage to test the cooler on another SocketA mobo I have here. Wednesday evening, via multilink 56k dialup, w00t! (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-January-2001  21:37:29 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Yes, that's right, Sciby has gone BEYOND plain ol' boring 56k dialup and gone the DUAL dialup... which is less than exciting. Alas, Rockhampton doesn't have ADSL or cheapish cable. At least all the pages are loading faster whilst I check them out. Onto the news... The-Ctrl-Alt-Del.Com have sent us an email with the subject "Satisfy your sadistic needs...". I will if they send one more damn html email. Pine just can't deal with it, and my brain can't translate html code in realtime. Anyway, the aforementioned needs they were referring to are the needs you have to see a dead Athlon go up in smoke. Truely disturbing. Downloaded fairly quickly with the multilink though. :D The ThermalTake SuperOrb is a dirty great big orb-style fan. I think they're way too big, but then I don't own one, so I'm probably biased. OC Addiction has reviewed a SuperOrb and think it rather spiffy. (still too tall :P) Gawd, a new type of RAM called FeRAM. Most exciting. Warning: article contains the word "paradigm". Rune, apparently, is a very popular game. I've never heard of it, but that doesn't mean a hell of a lot. 3D Spotlight has written a tweak guide for it. They say "Drivers, it is essential to get the latest drivers for you video card & sound card." I disagree, especially with the nVidia Detonator drivers, 7.17 yeek, go with v6.47, thanks to Voodoo giving me that advice I got another 250-300 points out of 3DMark 2k. Hmmm... I think this hack has been done and reported before, but it doesn't hurt: if you own an Abit BH6 motherboard, here's a lil' tweak to give you an extra voltage boost. Amdmb.Com (?) have updated their ATTO UL3D SCSI RAID controller review. No, I've never heard of either. No matter. According to Whirlpool, Telstra's "AUP Monitor" isn't even offical. Thanks to Azrael. [H]ard|OCP is taking a look back at the, *ahem* "[H]ardest of 2000". Fairy nuff, but "chipset of the year"? Hmmm... ...and welcome to OCForce, the newest overclocking website on the Internet (for the next 10 minutes at least), Kris (aka ][ellfire from IRC) will be covered in little booties and baby photo books in no time, and OC/AU wishes the happy family the best of luck. *polite applause* If you care about consoles, you'll care about the X-Box, Microsoft's effort. Here's some offical pictures. I'll stick with my Dreamcast for now thank you very much. Anandtech's got their grubby lil' American hands on the new Intel Celeron 800 cpu, it's the one with the 100mhz fsb. Groovy. Gasp! More optical mice! Yes, it's true, they starting to breed and The Tech Zone has reviewed of the Logitech strains. Thanks to Malleus It seems that Microsloth is being sued (surprise surprise) for being racist. Hmmmm... perhaps they weren't employed because they were incompetant, not because they were black. Oh well, the world just takes another turn for the worse. Reviews: Epox KT133a motherboard - at VR-Zone. Dlink DI-701 Firewall - at Aware Magazine. Enermax 330w Powersupply - at Club Overclocker. Thomson VMD2S Digital Camcorder - at Ripnet-UK Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-January-2001  11:27:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg Uuurgh, sleepy. AthlonMB have a KT7 and KT7-RAID FAQ posted alongside their A7V FAQ. Popular boards around here, those two.. If you have an Abit KT7 and a Sound Blaster Live!, Apu's want you to test something for them. Compu-Geeks are giving away a blue orb, scroll down the page a little for the link. MOS have announced a competition, win stuff by designing a banner or button. NTCompatible.com have a guide to Tuning Win2K/NT for Games, thanks Malleus. MWP posted some cool pics from the Le Mans race in Adelaide on NYE, in the forums.. Apparently battle.net were hacked, people changing DiabloII characters etc. Tresh pointed out a funny comic on PVPOnline.. 3DSpotlight have a bunch of OS Patches available in one spot. DarkAngel reckons these foods are perfect for lan parties.. give me convenience or give me death! Interesting article. xbit have a DirectX 8.0 FAQ. UngratefulNinja sent in a link to this Nintendo GameCube thing. I don't follow consoles, so I don't know if it's new or what. I'm posting it anyway, last thing I need is an ungrateful Ninja doggin' my tail. :) CaseETC have an airflow guide.. they recommend blowholes and suckholes. Okey dokey. Anand has an editorial looking back at 2000, certainly was an interesting year for hardware.. Reviews: Super Orb on EXHardware. Xyloc Wireless Security Device on LWD. Aopen CRW1232 CD Rewriter Review (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-January-2001  03:07:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg JimX reviewed this 12X (W) 10X (RW) 32X (R) unit. Although it doesn't have a "Burnproof" feature like many new drives, he found it a very decent unit.. Click for the full review! HDD goes Phut! (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-January-2001  20:25:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg Tarrasque showed me an interesting thing at the LAN party. He had 2 Quantum Fireball +KA 13.6GB HDD's die in spectacular fashion. He suspects a dodgily-modified Promise card (for details of the mod, see here). Apparently the status LED's on the drives turned orange, then nothing. Closer inspection of one of the drives reveals: Click for larger (100KB) image.. Hmm, Bad. To give you a sense of scale, those silver things in the top right are the power connector terminals (for the molex plug). Pic taken with a Nikon CP990 digicam. Update: Apparently the drives were not identical, one was an KA, the other was an LCT. The promise card was not modded, either. Apart from that, the info Tarrasque gave me was right.. ..there's some speculation about the cause of this problem here in the forum. Happy New Millennium! (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-January-2001  17:43:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ok, I'm a bit late. :) Hope you all had a good one, from the sounds of the Pub threads most people had a good time, with some exceptions.. :) I got in touch with my Geek side on NYE (still looking for my other sides, btw) .. went to a LAN party over at SecretNet. Fun was had, spent much of the night completely failing to 0wn in CS and occasionally 0wning in Porsche Unlimited (usually when someone took JimX out early in the race). Click to enlarge.. There were 8 or 9 people there, including Andypoo, JimX and Tarrasque from the forums, Jason, Kev, Nukie and a few others who wandered in and out. Note the pile of pizza boxes. :) That's JimX wandering off to the right, Tarrasque's machine is the fan-riddled one at left. Click to enlarge.. My machine (front), JimX's machine (right).. caffeine (mints and coke) intake was kept at a sustained high for both days.. :) Scarily, my 17" monitor was the smallest screen there. Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-January-2001  12:07:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg Would you pay $20M for a 6-day holiday in space? Enjoy such activities as "transferring equipment" and "performing science experiments"! If I found $100M behind the sofa I probably would - this guy did too. Either that, or this is one of the biggest scams in history. :) Thanks Lord-Skippy. Hmm, leperMessiah pointed out this non-computing page that asks, " What is an Athlon?" Malleus sends more info on CPRM from TheRegister. I just read this, and my Evil-O-Meter peaked off the scale. This does NOT sound like a technology I want in my PC.. (starts hoarding hard drives). Sciby had some info on this before, here's a working URL to the proposed standard in PDF format.. except that doesn't work for me either. Hmm. UGN is a new site on the gaming scene, they have an interesting article pointing out some of the flaws in the "gaming violence leads to real-life violence" argument.. ARP regurgitated a couple of old articles for some reason.. a thing on MMX (it'll never catch on!) and another one about some trolling guy from ages ago. Seeing as they're reposting old stuff, here's some of ours - the first 3 articles on this site were the Socket370 Cooler Comparo, my Slug-Sanding How-To (still drawing a fair bit of traffic) and my first peltier experiment. Those were the days, so young and innocent, less hairy and smelly. Relive the good 'ole days in the articles archive. MikhailTech have an article about what to do with old computers.. let me guess, shooting them, smashing them with hammers, setting fire to them, dropping them off buildings. (reads article) .. oh, they just pull it apart to see what's inside. Hmm. APU's have a new AMD FAQ for all you non-intel folks. Finally, a review! PCHardware.ro checked out the Shuttle FE22.. teeny-tiny mobo. I haven't seen any Shuttle stuff in Oz.. (anyone who points out the space shuttle in Darling Harbour gets ignored :) ) ..G3D crank into the new year with a review of Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy.. New Years Day... what a great song... oh, er... happy new year! Welcome to 2001: the REAL new millen (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-January-2001  15:15:58 (GMT +10) - by Sciby Hope you're all suffering from hangovers. That'll learn ya. For all of you with a Corvette just lying about under a tarp in the backyard, here's a step-by-step guide to tubbing out the wheel wells to take 12" tyres. I couldn't do that. I don't own a corvette for a start. Apu's Hardware had a LAN party, and they went techno-ghetto-crazy with their T1 and lan string setup. The setup downloads Counter-strike in 2.5sec (80mb worth), and requires the supervision of Chris the Cat. Just click on the link, you'll understand. Unh... how to switch the screen layout on your HP Jornada from portrait to landscape. As you do. Not a bad thing, but as I don't own one, and no one wants to give me one, it's earned my contempt. Here's a look at the new motherboards being produced by MSI in the first quarter of 2001. MSI's rock. Oh dear, I'd better finish the review of mine before Agg hurts me. He locks me in cupboards you know. Honestly. Some random techo goodness from ZZZ Online. Adrian's Rojak Pot has updated their Windows 2000 Hints and Tips guide. Modding a video card to take a bigbutt heatsink is one way of spending New Years Eve. Not mine though. You have to love reading about the way people mod stuff anyway. If you can read Dutch, go read this large article about dual cpu motherboards. Then come back and tell us what it says, 'cause damned if I can read that. Thanks to Chris Nolan. Aopen has changed their front page on their Taiwan website. Anymore flashy things and we'd all be having epileptic fits. Thanks to alchemy for pointing out the Flash mind-trip. The Guru of 3D has updated his RivaTuner util to to version 2.0, check it out. I will be later when I get my games machine up and running. I'd had a lovely lil' MX sitting in there for two-three weeks, and all I've done is run 3dmark a couple of times. Finally, MOS Technologies has an affliate program running, and a banner design competition to go with it. Check it out, you could win a whole bunch o' Stuff™. Reviews: Asus A7V Socket A mobo - at 3DGameMan (warning, it's a streaming video review.) Plextor Plexwriter 8/4/32A at The Guru of 3D HighSpeedPC Rounded Cables - at Rizenet IBM P260 21" FD Trinitron Monitor - at Not on Monday

All original content copyright James Rolfe.
All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.
Interested in advertising on OCAU? Contact us for info.