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June 2001 |
Go on, get back into it. :)
Forums are down for a few minutes while I fix some minor database corruption. Go outside for a walk and a stretch or something. :)
Manaz sent word of this VERY modded case over in the HardForum. More pics on page 6 of the thread.
Steve from Adelaide says: Just letting you know that the blue led mod does work with logitech mouseman wheel etc and its easier than when done on the microsoft ones. The trick is to use a 5600mcd 5mm water clear lens (dick smith part number z3905 @ $8.75au). I've used the basic $2.50au from the local electronics shop but the tracking was bad. The cheaper LEDS 3mm + 5mm are perfect for modding other parts (so far I have managed my Pioneer DVD, floppy, HX08 case and diamond touch keyboard as well as the mouse mod.) Just thought I'd let you know that they work and look so cool..
Vindaloo thinks that this box is great news for electronic music fans.. okey dokey.
Smash made a keyring from his dead duron.. wow, that's a tiny crack considering my Tbird kept working like this.
Got lots of old computer stuff lying around? Chris has an idea for how you can put it to a good use.. in the forums.
Digit-life have an article on modem compression.
Cool lego case from thedriver..
Interesting "IT Industry" report on RealWorldTech, thanks Manaz.
VIAHW have been playing with a C3 processor.. building a cheapy PC around it.
AboutLinux have a funny article up listing the 10 things Linux needs to be ready for prime time on the Desktop..
Very interesting thing on AcesHardware.. Can SSE-2 save the Pentium 4? - benchmarks aint benchmarks..
Andreas notes that Swiftech have a new pin design for their heatsinks.. seems to be a screw thread or straight serration to increase surface area.
From Andrew: The "Australian Security Research Symposium" is happening on July 11th in Perth. Costs $50 and includes subjects such as Information "Warfare - the Impact of Ethics", "Extranets and Information Warfare" and "Mobile Commerce: its Security Implications". There's an online programme. Obviously only for the nerds among us, but it interests me, so im sure it must interest someone else. You can sign up here. Please emphasise that the stuff about late signups is wrong, there is no late fee :)
Reviews:
Abit T400 GeForce MX400 video card on PCHardware.
AOpen AK73-1394(A) DDR socketA mobo with firewire on Accelenation.
MSI Pro266 Master DDR socket370 mobo on Overclocking.DK.
Cirque's Internet Touch Pad on Radeonic.
AGP AirLift Cooler on Rizenet.
Abit KT7E socketA mobo on Max3D.
NewQ DAP headphone/speaker switch/relocator thingy on AwareMag.
Power Cooler PCH123 (7020) socket cooler on NeoSeeker.
Hercules Fortisimo II sound card on SystemLogic.
Abit Siluro GeForce2 MX400 video card on NewsForge.
Evergreen RumbleFX force-feedback headphones on ChicksHW.
Had no net access pretty much all day yesterday, grr, Something Bad happened to Primus. Anyway, was a good opportunity to go sort out stuff in the Real World.. it was bigger than I remembered.
JAB pointed out this Poetic Version of the OCAU Forum Rules by Mr Picolenie in the forums.. very clever.
A funny article on the "first overclock" rush, thanks aXXe.. I'm sure we can all relate. :)
Interesting experience with XP licensing here on ZDNet, thanks Gary_J.
Rhythm noted some pics of the Southern Cross Cable.. it's a biggun.
Seagate have a new HDD which is almost totally silent.
Dan's been playing with flourescent stuff.. and basically getting it all over himself.
Tom noticed this 1GHz Athlon Laptop review on CNet.. they compare it to a 1GHz P3 unit with a surprising result.
Looks like Microsoft might not be broken up after all, thanks Andypoo.
They're offering Windows XP Preview cd's in Oz now, thanks Graeme. Pay for the privilege of using pre-release software.. okey dokey.
Anthony has pics of his modded case posted, a lot of work gone into that..
Wokket pointed out this interactive heatsink-motherboard fit guide.. it's an interesting idea but I don't know how useful their implementation of it is, it's hard to see if things will fit or not. Worth checking out and having a play with tho.
xbit have been overclocking the Kyro2..
There's a mousepad roundup on BlargOC.
Reviews:
SiS 315 32MB SDR reference card (new video chipset) on ChicksHW.
Antec SX 1240 fulltower case on MikhailTech.
Enermax 350W PSU on SlauTech.
Cooler Master ATCS 200 case on SlauTech.
Guillemot VGA-to-TV converter on Digit-Life.
Fan Grills on GideonTech.
MSI StarForce 822 Retail GeForce3 64MB video card on AnandTech.
Leadtek Winfast GeForce 3 TD video card on HotHardware.
Cool-View Window Kit on IANAG.
HP PhotoSmart photo printer on NeoSeeker.
OCZ PC166 SDRAM on PCStats.
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 28-June-2001 03:40:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Well, I think it's fair to say that the new forums are a huge success! :) 1100 signups in 24 hours, yikes! The forum system served 122,934 pages during Wednesday. We did have a minor hiccup at one point when the MySQL server hit its connections limit.. a quick fiddle with the memory settings, double the limit and we were back on track. We had 200+ simultaneous users browsing the forums at one point.. I admit, I had my fears that the community might have been struck a mortal blow and dispersed elsewhere in the absence of the OCAU forums - but nope, here we all are again. Good to have you back. :)
Happy birthday to Diluded for yesterday too. No more announcing birthdays on the news page I think, looking through the forum calendar it's hard to find a day that doesn't have 2 or 3 people's birthdays on it. :) BTW, if you are involved with a LAN Party group or some other organisation that has events of interest to the OCAU community, drop me a note and I'll make you a Calendar Administrator so you can add publically-viewable events to the Calendar.
In all the excitement I missed the PC Database passing 1700 entries.. so not sure exactly who's it was. The cool entries keep pouring in though - some tricked-out boxes from Arachnadactly, Da_Mann, pH@tTm@N and DrunkenJeckel.. all very cool. Of course, entries without pictures are also very welcome, the more data in there the more useful it is.
SilverProp posted pics of a Vapochill unit now available in Oz, in the forums. Supercool, superfast, super non-cheap.
Silly geek medical condition article from Andrew.. :)
xbit went for a wander around the AOpen motherboard factory.
Ryan points out this thread on overclocking your KyroII.. with a soldering iron.
VIAHW have a 686B Bug/Corruption FAQ document posted..
There's a 4-way socketA cooler roundup on PinoyPC.
This site is really slow for me but apparently there's a guide to making a steering wheel for your PC on it, thanks pohar.
BSOD have a shim shootout. I've had a couple of shim throwouts before..
SystemLogic went to PCExpo2001.. they don't say where it is, tho. I'm presuming the USA somewhere.
From Julian, a hand-powered Linux webserver.. hmm, is this another joke like the potato-powered one? :)
Reviews:
Enermax EG365P-VE 350W PSU on HWExtreme.
Seagate Barracuda 180GB HDD on PlanetHardware.
eVGA GeForce2 MX400 video card on RizeNet.
Romtech Trios drive-swapping thingo on TechnoYard.
Dell Inspiron with GeForce2Go laptop on ARP.
Soyo SY-K7ADA Ali Magik1-based DDR SocketA motherboard on HardAvenue.
Glow Wire on IPKonfig.
SuperMicro 370DDE DDR Socket370 mobo on Digit-Life.
Archos 8x4x24 MiniCDRW portable CDRW drive on FutureLooks.
Laser-cut fan grills on ClubOC.
Prolink Pixelview PlayTV Pro TV/FM Tuner & Video Capture Card on TweakTown.
Enermax 350W PSU on TheTechZone.
Iwill BD133 i815EP motherboard on Hardware-One.
MSI Starforce 8816 GF2MX video card also on Hardware-One.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 27-June-2001 01:39:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Happy Birthday to KngtRider for yesterday!
VooDoo points out this online test to see how much of a hardcore gamer you are.
Tech-Report have their GeForce3 Review posted.. with a movie 'n all.
Figrin points out a fairly nasty auction.. read the description carefully. Reminds me of that PlayStation2 Box one we saw.
There's an interesting article on 64-bit processors on RWT, thanks vindaloo.
xbit have a 3-way roundup of high-end IDE raid controllers. These are not the normal onboard things but separate controllers supporting RAID-5 etc.. a good long read from the Russians.
A funny dilbert comic courtesy of JWR.. replace "email" with "forums" and I'm sure we can all relate.. :)
ReaX is all excited because on VortexOfSound someone from MS is hinting that XP might have full Aureal sound support.. maybe.
AMDPower pit the OCZ Gladiator Vs. WBK-38 against each other in a brutal fight to the.. err.. lowest temperature.
Similarly, 8balls drop the Thermoengine V60-4225 vs FO-BE25D into the ring and see who comes out on.. bottom.
Iroquois notes that AnandTech have a FAQ section, lots of info there. Hmm, OCAU FAQ, there's a buried project..
Also from Iroquois, a guide to blue-led modding your mouse.. I've heard some optical mice really lose it in the tracking department if you do this to them, but they certainly look cool..
Australian vendor Silverprop are giving away a waterblock.. a "Cyclone" one to be precise.
Reviews:
Thermalright SK6 socket cooler on OCrCafe.
ThermalTake Volcano II socket cooler on Tech-Planet.
Romtech Trios harddrive selector on TweakMax.. interesting.
Right! We've finished testing the new forum software and it seems to be ready for prime time. Big thanks to Manaz for sponsoring the cost of the new forum software for a year.
Having trouble connecting? Try adding a line with "61.8.3.18 forums.overclockers.com.au" to the "hosts" file on your computer (do a search for it, might need a reboot afterwards.)
FAQ's:
Will my old username/password work? Nope, we're using new software now.
Will the old messages be available? Not immediately, but selected forums will probably be available in a read-only archive soon.
Do I have to register to use the forums? Yes.
Does this mean the legal thing is over now? No and I'm still limited in how much I can say about that.
Why don't I have a picture under my name? Go into User CP (leftmost of the buttons at top right), Edit Profile, choose an Avatar.
Why are we using this software? We tried a few others and this is the only one that did everything we wanted and then some.
Is this why you upgraded the RAM in Odin? I knew it! Yes, very clever. :)
Hey, the colours/logo are crappy! Yeah yeah, we're working on it. :)
Uhmmm.. that should do it for now. See you in the forums!!
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 26-June-2001 11:27:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hogging the spotlight today is the Digital/Compaq Alpha processor. Mike from TheInquirer confirmed that Intel have acquired the technology from Compaq. There's more info here on CNet. The first alarm bell ringing involves AMD's licensed use of the Alpha's EV6 bus in the K7 range of chips (Athlon, Duron), but Mike has pre-empted our fears and has info here saying it's not a big issue with AMD moving to a NUMA bus soon. Given that AMD has a shortage of engineers and you can guarantee some percentage of the Alpha team won't want to work for Intel, it may even help AMD overall. Next interesting thing will be if Intel actually USE the technology or just inhale it to bury it as we've seen many companies do to competitive technology in other markets.
Interesting watercooled machine in the PCDB from shepete2.
RedStar notes that people are a bunch of slackers.. surely not?
Simon points out a page on heatpipe design..
Digit-Life have a roundup of western digital hdd's.
HP are bringing out laptops based on 1GHz Athlon4 chips.
Guru3D have released a program called SoftQuadro which lets you turn on the Quadro features of GF/MX/GF2 cards without soldering. DrKildare pointed out an alternative download site but I think this one's safer.
FireStone says that Tualatin is on sale in Japan.
We've already linked to this but I get sent it a few times a day so here we go again. Some people are trying to raise money for a newspaper advertisement about/against Telstra for the whole 3GB cap on broadband thing. If you want to contribute, go there.
OCrCafe are BBQ'ing a video card..
Some notes from Les: I not only agree that it is bad to use the 5v from the tacho pin, I have seen the results on a FIC (the owner plugged the floppy connector onto it , the two centre earth pins actually shorting the tacho and ground together, very inexperienced user decided to do own u/g) and it burned two tracks for about 6 inches and detroyed one of the fan controller chips. Amazing this mother board still ran (no monitoring), finally being donated to me for the cpu socket to lap with (socket 7 board). Even though this board still ran the consequences are obvious. A fan shorting would provide an equally exciting result :-(Also some generic advice if you ever do an another article on watercooling, and is with regards to the type of hose used inside cases. Everyone (including myself) seems to be using the clear PVC style hose for there watercooling experiments. I use clear PVC externally but have been exclusively using high pressure fuel hose inside my case since about may '99. You can see the black hose in my original k6 2/450 watercooled article back in oct 99. You can buy this hose at any auto shop, it is expensive ($4-$8 a metre), but is a very cheap investment for your computers internal safety. It is not the high pressure capability of this hose that makes it ideal for internall use, but rather that it is rubber, an therefore seals very well and with relatively little effort. Also because it it reinforced it maintains its roundness when you bend it. The only drawback besides the cost of this hose is its stiffness, which is why I always have reasonably extravegant clamping systems for my water block.
Reviews:
Abit TH7 Pentium4 motherboard on OCOnline.
Senfu DIY House on Bit-Tech, our review here.
TDK CyClone 24x10x40 IDE CDRW on CDRInfo.
ColorCases 303 stainless case on Max3D.
Well, turns out I'm not the only one with concerns about that fan-reversing thing from this afternoon - but not everyone is in agreement as to how bad it is. It seems that the fan connector, when reversed, will draw +5v from the RPM monitoring line. This might be ok, but it might overload the line, possibly blowing the fan header or the monitoring hardware. Thanks to FyreBlade and ViPeR-7 for their detailed explanations. To be honest, it sounds a bit risky to me and I recommend not doing it!
Manaz points out the AOpen Che Che on Akiba. This is the purple smiley-face board we saw earlier in the week. Weeeeeeird.
Heh, found some Lego Films out there, including 2001, a Lego odyssey which is funny for fans of the Kubrick/Clarke original.
From Lujan: Tarrasque and I were playing around with my Athlon 900, unlocked the multiplier, and started running it @ 9.5*104 fsb (voltage 1.8), (best I could get). I had the system up for over an hour, running prime doing the torture test, when I opened motherboard monitor, apparently my cpu was running @ 95 degrees celcius. Not believing it, I touched the heatsink with my finger, and have a nice blister now :(. Then Tarra realised that my cpu fan was NOT running (I had replaced my fop38 fan with a 80mm panaflo) the wire had bent. Amazingly enough, my cpu is still fully functional, and working :) without any problems at all. Yowch, not recommended.
There's an Internet Explorer 6 Public Preview, thanks vindaloo.
Ricoh and Pretec have launched a 640MB CompactFlash card.. wow.
Some bad news from Crash Dummy, who's watercooling adventures we've been following: I've taken the watercooling system totally offline and removed from my bedroom and relocated to the bathroom. Water managed to leak from between the hose and one of the barbs and got on my lovely Abit KT7 RAID and quite a bit of stuff attached to it. Things that got wet: 4x PCI slots (wet inside and behind), AGP slot (with a videocard featuring a lovely puddle of water on the back of it), NIC, TV tuner card, ISA slot and bios chip. Water was not distilled water. This was straight tap water. And needless to say, the computer didn't like it, shorted and hard locked. Recovery process consisted of wiping each card as i removed it and mopping up all the water. Then putting paper towel on the end of a stanley knife blade and sticking it in all the slots soking up all the water. And finally going to the lot with a hair dryer. This board has cheated death for the last time. I'm not letting this EVER happen again. Has this put me off watercooling? Yes. For how long? A week or so till i wanna watercool again. But next time i'm gonna get it right and make sure the thing never gets the chance to leak. It's totally true the old saying. Do it right the first time or pay later on. Now for me to get a decent pump, new radiator and lot's of silicon on those pipes to stop leaks. :) Sobering news and good advice. Test, test and test again!
Reviews:
Thermalright SK6 socket cooler on IANAG.
Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM on HardAvenue.
Lian-Li Mini PC-31 aluminium case on TheTechZone.
AMK TKO 2003 fulltower case on NeoSeeker.
Archos Jukebox 6000 mp3 player on FutureLooks.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 25-June-2001 13:27:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's a bunch of new Max Payne screenshots up on 3DRealms.com.
OCMod have a guide to making a waterblock clamp, quite a neat one that uses all three socket lugs.
PC-Critic have a new look (hmm, phpNuke) and a new tutorial on lowering fan voltage. This isn't the normal 7-volt trick, they just reverse the fan plug on the header.. isn't that just going to reverse the polarity, reverse the direction the fan spins in, and possibly damage the stator etc over time? Or am I just particularly slow this morning? I'm open to either possibility. :)
V8R has a page up about his overclocking adventures, 1.1GHz from a Celeron 733 is not too bad at all.
Digit-Life have reviewed the Onboard AC97 Audio on an Intel board. I had a quick look at this codec in my Transcend TS-ASL3 review and wasn't too impressed.
Wokket says 3DSpotlight are giving away Duron600's to people who sign up for their newsletter. I've been thinking about doing a similar kinda competition for the 2-year anniversary of OCAU.
Also from Wokket, Unisys apologise for inventing the first commercial computer 50 years ago.. :)
Another Monday, another ZZZ Online..
Reviews:
Epox EP-8KHA KT266 socketA motherboard on OCWB.
Thermaltake memory cooling kit on Ripnet - I prefer Dan's recent review. :)
Compex PS2208A pocket LAN switch on AMDPower.
Detonator 12.90 on ComputerChaos.
OCZ Enhanced SDRAM on ARP.
DiskOnKey solid-state USB drive on PCReview.
Added some recent content to the archive. There's so much stuff in there now.. will need to find a better way to organise it soon.
Early Monday Morning
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Monday, 25-June-2001 01:06:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I read this a couple of days ago but didn't think much of it at the time - someone by the name of Ellen Spertus has been voted sexiest geek alive. The cool thing is, she was wearing a "Dead Tech" corset she bought over the net from my girlfriend's shop, Gallery Serpentine. You can see Ellen wearing the corset in these pics.
ReactorCritical have gotten themselves a (very) high-rez pic of an nForce-based Asus motherboard. This is the first non-reference board using nVidia's new motherboard chipset that I've seen. Of course there's integrated video onboard, but Asus have also added sound and network controllers.
This is interesting - Abit have announced Coppermine-T (Tualatin) support in new BIOSes for a couple of their BX-based motherboards including the BX133 (thanks Asher) and the later BE6-II's, thanks bjcem. There's an australian ftp mirror of the Abit BIOS updates, which should be quicker.
I updated Odin's PCDB entry to reflect the recent RAM upgrade and noticed some new entries in there. Cool paintjobs from divdiv-sweat (bizarre effect), Sacrifice (AMD colours?) and Bookee's big red box. Frazas has a tricked-out box too..
Wokket sent in a silly Llama Matrix ripoff and proof that the tip of a flicked towel travels faster than sound.. okey dokey. :)
Reviews:
Volcano II cooler on 8Balls.
256Mb Crucial PC133 CAS2 SDRAM on BSOD.
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 24-June-2001 16:53:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Not a lot going on out there.
Dan's checked out (and ripped apart) some force-feedback headphones called RumbleFX. It's an interesting if lengthy read in typical Dan style..
OCWB have some info from Akiba on the new MSI Dual SocketA board.. it's on sale in Japan now.
GideonTech have a quick blowhole guide posted.
This from renegade and exarch: 1GHz T-Bird to 1.533GHz. his Water Block leaked and the CPU fizzed:
![](/pic.php?pic=images/cpubbq.jpg&x=250&y=216")
click to enlarge..
Yowch. Update: Apparently there was some confusion and this is a different CPU.. a 900 (obvious from the numbering) that was crunched some other way. Still a nasty pic.
Reviews:
Kyro2 video card on Hexus.
CoolView Window Kit on OCrCafe, you can win it too.
OptiJnr optical wheelmouse on 2FastCPU.
Ben from over at Rizenet points out these pics of the GNU/Linux kit for the PlayStation2. They're on akiba, so it's all Japanese, but the pictures tell most of the story. Looks extremely cool.
Digit-Life have info on the i815b chipset that supports Tualatin. For those that don't already know it's pronounced two-ala-tin... and it's a pretty speedy chip as well. Runs nice and cool AND has a heatplate to stop you chewing cores.. if only AMD processors had something similar.
Tony pointed out this review of some Aliminium cases.. and they look bloody awesome. Sort of like hi-fi gear.. the internal layout is a bit weird tho, a different place for that PSU might be a good idea. Australian distributors? Me Wantee.
On the same site there is a review of some solid copper ramsinks. They look fairly serious too.
Paul pointed out a review of a combo tape/mp3 player thing. You've no doubt seen them before, they are pretty cool. It's on T3 a UK techno site with babes thrown in, which is also a pretty cool print magazine.
InsideHardware have reviewed the Gigabyte GA-7VTX, a KT266 motherboard. Doesn't say whether it's a rev2 board, but from what I've read it apparently dosn't matter. All the "rev2" consists of is a new BIOS and new IDE drivers, apparently none of the hardware has changed.
PCreview.UK are running a competition. It's one of those post-in-our-forums jobs. And to win big you need to post 35+ interesting, helpful and insightful posts. Right. I don't like those comps, not at all.
Bigpond (is there a usage limit with your nick? hehe) pointed out that 3Dchipset.com are back after some serious DDoS-ing. DDoS-ing bad, them being back Good.
Mick points out some new leaked Matrox Drivers
Now this is a bit of a shock. Compaq appears ready to sell of its Alpha arm that manufacturers the server-only processors, which it obtained from Digital in the buyout some time ago. Those quick off the mark will note that the Athlon processors use an Alpha bus to communicate between the CPU and chipset, that being the EV6.
Also on the Inq, they are reporting that WinXP RC1 is nearly with us, while pirated final-release copies of OfficeXP minus the "activation" security are on sale for $US2.36 from your favourite Pakistani street seller. Oh, and Intel and AMD are in it until Death do them Part. Enough Inq links from me.
Reviews:
Kingmax PC150 128Mb DIMM on CoolHardWarez.
Logitech Cordless Optical Mouse on MGon, thanks Simon.
Asus V7100 GF2MX board on AllTechBox.
Koh's Water Jacket
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Saturday, 23-June-2001 16:01:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Koh sent in some pics of his (presumably custom) waterblock on what looks like an A7V133. He's a toolmaker from Singapore. Apparently this jacket has a copper base and has heatsink-like fins inside. His 1.3GHz Tbird sits at 43C which is not bad. Looks pretty serious with the single inlet right over the CPU core and dual outlets.. nice job!
 
 
Click images to enlarge..
Saturday Midday
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Saturday, 23-June-2001 12:17:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A heap of people sent in this link to a bizarre purple-plastic and smiley-face-encrusted version of AOpen's AX3SP Pro.. is it a joke or for real? I'd say probably real, it might do ok in the Japanese domestic market. No need to bother with a review sample for us tho, thanks AOpen. :) BTW, I disagree with Alchemy about that white one from yesterday too, I think it looks terrible. :)
You might remember one of the niggles from our Epox 8KTA3 review was the somewhat fiddly approach to FSB setting. Walkinshaw says: I just obtained a new MB EP-8KTA3+ RAID by Epox. Delighted by the board and new sticker on the front labeling it as an EPOX-8KTA3+PRO, I delved into the bios to notice that the FSB now is in 1mhz increments from 100-180......Just the thing to improve an already brilliant overclocking board. Hmm! I wonder if they'll make a PRO version of the non-raid (no "+" in the name) version, or if this is something that can be flashed onto older boards with a newer BIOS.
There's a Red Dwarf movie on the way! Thanks sw1tch.
Tomato got his Palomino 1.2GHz to just under 1.5GHz aircooled with a hefty volts boost. 1430MHz @ default voltage is not too shabby, but the Thunderbirds are doing better aren't they? We'll have to wait for a bigger sample set of Palomino results.
While wandering around last night I discovered BadAstronomy, a very interesting site that tries to debunk and correct mistakes and misconceptions about (mostly) astonomical phenomena. For example, they debunk the toilets swirl backwards in the southern hemisphere one. They even have a review of TombRaider showing all the bad astronomy in that film. :) We need a BadComputing site which tears strips off films like ID4 for using things like computer virii as a plot-windup tool.
Intel went the stealth-mode product launch for the new Tualatin, according to EB.
I dunno if we've already linked this or not, but anyway we should - it's an article on theoretical limits of computing over on ArsTechnica. When all is said and done, Ng calculates that that the limit on a 1 kg black hole computer is ~1051 operations per second. So according to Ng, a 1 kg black hole computer would be able to perform ~1032 operations on its 1016 bits during the time that it exists - which is the same value as that found by Lloyd. .. Keeping in mind the rather challenging issues of making a black hole in the first place, programming it, and extracting the data once it evaporates, this kind of computer seems somewhat impractical - though quite entertaining to think about.
Another one from ArsTechnica, this time an ancient article on overclocking myths.. from back in 1998, before OCAU even existed! BTW, it's our 2nd birthday soon, I hope to have some goodies to give away.. hmm, that's not how birthdays are supposed to work.. :)
Interesting one from Kazashi, a press release about copyright protection in the new game Operation Flashpoint. Apparently anyone attempting to play an illegal copy of Operation Flashpoint will begin with a game that looks and plays just like the real thing. However, over a period of time, the game gradually self-modifies and degrades elements of play to a point where the game is no longer playable. Hey, wait a minute, that sounds like Windows! :) As Kaz points out, it could just be a marketing ploy to deter piracy, but it's an interesting tactic regardless.
I'm not really sure what to make of this next one.. it's a lengthy article about Kolody vs Coca-Cola, a legal "one man against the corporate machine" story. The first coupla pages were interesting, if you're up for a long read check it out, thanks G.
There's a thing happening to raise money for a newspaper ad expressing people's views on the Telstra 3GB cap.
Wow, according to the spammers this morning, I have been selected to win 3 separate world cruises! So I guess you'll be seeing a lot less of me soon.. not. :)
Reviews:
Shuttle AK31 a socket370 mobo apparently using "Revision 2" of KT266.. on VIAHW.
MSI Starforce 822 GeForce3 card (again) on PlanetHardware.
RumbleFX Headphones on Max3D.
Hercules Prophet 4500 on PlanetHW.
ViewSonic VG150 ViewPanel TFT monitor on OCNZ.
Exams are nearly over and holidays are approaching which is good. Thanks to all those people who sent in vortex2 suggestions, I'm going to try them all tommorrow and I'll be sure to let you know how it works out.
Someone pointed this out to me as a prime reason why there is a cap on the Telstra BPA services now.. some quick and dirty 1am maths suggests to me that is 18k/s constant downloading nonstop over a 1 month period. HAH. Sounds like the dingoblue days. Theres also an old-ish article on AustrainIT talking about users getting their Installation Fee refunded.. cool - thanks Frank.
Hmm.. chillblast have been into the moonshine again. They want me to do their news post in pirate style.. I'm not too sure about them. Anyway, they've reviewed an Akasa Silver Mountain - which sort of sounds like something you'd see in a Japanese roadmap, but it's actually a solid copper hs/f thats silver plated. I'm pretty sure that silver dissipates heat more effectivley into the environment than copper, so there is some merrit in this, but I'd imagine it to be miniscule..
Mikhailtech have a sort of budget buyers guide for overclocking gear. Explains what all the trick overclocking things are and what benefit they bring. Good for newbies.
Bit-Tech have a blow-by-blow photo-by-photo guide to some case modding they recently performed. Fun for all you modem people, and any Telstra users trying to see what 3gb month feels like.
Yet another guide for newbies:- this time how to change a video card, psycho style. S'not in english, but it dosn't really matter - the angle grinder says it all. Thanks to eddie for this highly amusing link.
The coloured PCB craze is starting to spread.. ABIT has moved on from the aqua-ish KT7E to an i815e board thats white. Looks.. weird, almost not-real. Cool tho.
WildAndyC has Intel's latest roadmap up, and the dissapointing news comes with the Tualatin not being able to be used in SMP, as reported here on the Inq.
HardwareOne has looked at a device called a Bit88 that claims to improve sound quality. And supposedly really does. I'd be interested to see inside it tho..
YYK is a bit concerned as to what the world is comming to when the cookie monster becomes the victim of physical attack. Makes me wonder too..
The Guru of 3D has been busy doing a bit of detonator benching, and have in fact started a database benching all the drivers on the basis of speed. 8.03 and 12.90 get the rundown this time. They also have pics of the upcomming Creative GF3 card.
Eeep - this is not good news. According to this article on Tech Report, GamePC experienced trouble using Thunderbirds in SMP on a 760MP board. Baaad.
Finally tonight, some factory overclocked madness for you. Vapochill, in associations with Asus and AMD are now selling a 1.82GHz Athlon system.. vapour cooled of course.
Reviews:
Enermax Temperature Monitoring Driverack on 8Balls.
Sonigistics Monsoon MM2000 Speakers on Neoseeker.
OCZ Gladiator on TweakTown. 10/10 = not bad.
Vantec Ultimate HDD Cooler on SystemLogic, ours here.
OCZ Titan II MX400 on PCStats.
Asus 8200 Pure GF3 on IANAG.
ThermoEngine V60-4225 on GideonTech
Gainward GF3 "Golden Sample"
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Friday, 22-June-2001 22:05:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Chainbolt reviewed this card from Gainward. "Golden Sample" refers to it having been picked as a good overclocker, with guaranteed higher core/memory speeds than the default product. In testing, this card reached a blistering 240MHz core and 550MHz memory! It also has full Video-In and Video-Out capability.. making it quite an attractive option if you're looking to blow some serious cash on a video card.
Click for the full review!
Oh.. it's also very, very red. :)
Right! Odin, OCAU's dedicated server, now has 640MB of RAM - up from 256MB. 640MB should be enough for anyone! :)
Thanks to Realtime Systems (the Australian distributor of Corsair memory) and KingMax Australia for the RAM used in this upgrade.
Whoops, some confusion over who was doing the news last night. Here's a bumper update for your lunch break.
Daemon over at TechWatch has a 3-way socket cooler roundup posted and BSOD have a 15-way one happening. Meanwhile, Dan has added 10 more coolers to his monster roundup.. if that's not enough coolin' goodness for you, check out our own 21-cooler roundup.
TomsHardware has a 21-motherboard i815 roundup.
DreddNews compared two kinds of silver paste..
Seems SkyBiz have been shut down.. pyramid schemes are bad, mm'kay? Thanks Joel.
Electic send word of a BIOS update for the Tyan Thunder K7. This of course is the dual socketA board we scooped in a big way (big enough to kill our server :) ) earlier this month.
There's some pics of a recent LAN up here.. apparently held out in the sticks..
SysOpt have a core layout photo of a Tualatin .13 micron P3 with 512K cache.. mmm, pretty colours. InsaneHardware parry and riposte with the full spec sheet from Intel. I wonder how long it'll be before someone pops the heatspreader off those chips in order to more easily molest.. errr.. cool the core.
Here's some neato LCD glasses, thanks Neill.
Got a cablemodem? Worried about security? HardwareNewsNet have a guide to locking y'self down.. pretty basic stuff, but probably useful for ADSL and dialup users too.
Optus will apparently have Australia's first two-way satellite service, thanks Morjo.
IPKonfig have some instructions for a possible SBLive! and VIA chipset fix.. mostly aimed at KT7A peeps.
Another day, another detonator, thanks Dr Kildare. Not sure if these are official or Beta or blow-your-house-up, so be careful.
For those of you who want to be a riceboy but can't afford the Hyundai Excel, huge aluminium wing or turbocharger, Alchemy points out the blowoff valve noise kit which will electronically produce turbo blow-off valve noises at appropriate moments, virtually guaranteeing* your success with the ladies. That page has sound samples and everything! The third noise lets you pretend you're in an episode of Dr Who, too. This all reminds me of a sticker I saw on the back of a ute the other day - "Only juice and milk comes in 2 litres!" .. heh.
(* "virtually guaranteeing" means, of course, not actually guaranteeing in any way whatsoever. sorry.)
Reviews:
MSI StarForce GF3 video card on HardOCP.
MSI StarForce GF3 also on AnandTech.
Thermaltake Dragon Orb on HardCoreWare.
Rumble FX 3D Sound Amp on G3D.
Cappucino PC on Ars-Technica.
Window and Neon kit on LostUniverse.
Shuttle AK31 v2 KT266 Socket370 DDR mobo on ClubOC.
OCZ Gladiator socket cooler on NeoSeeker.
Speeze 5E34B3 (?) cooler on OCrCafe.
SiS 635/735 DDR chipset on TheTechZone.
Matrox G550 preview on SystemLogic.
Samsung 570v TFT screen on IANAG.
AMD 1.4GHz 266MHz FSB Thunderbird socketA CPU on ClubOC.
Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical on EverythingUSB.
Crucial PC1600 / PC2100 DDR memory on PCStats.
Server Outage Tomorrow
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Thursday, 21-June-2001 19:50:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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At about 1pm or so tomorrow this server (including OCAU and the hosted sites) will be unavailable for about 15 minutes while I pull the server out of the rack and stick some more memory in it. :)
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 21-June-2001 01:54:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A heap of people sent word that Star Wars Episode One will be out on DVD soon..
Wolfy notes that OCAU SETI has cranked up 100 years of CPU time, not bad.
Sabretooth points out 10 ways to make your life like a video game.. pretty funny. :)
Microsoft say open source software is evil again.. but hang on guys.. you use it, don't you?
Slightly more on-topic, here's a DIY Fan-Bus Guide.
Reviews:
FIC AZ11EA KT133A SocketA motherboard on TweakTown.
Vantec FCE-6030D socket cooler on OCCafe.
Nexian HandyGPS on SysytemLogic.
Antec EasyUSB on VYW.
Hercules GeForce2 MX 400 32MB on AtlantaOC.
Elsa Gladiac 920 GF3 videocard on Guru3D.
CaseAce GearGrip CRT monitor carrystrap thingo on CHW.
MacPower DigiDoc5 on MikhailTech, our review here.
Dragon Orb 3 on IANAG.
Vantec CCK-6035 socket cooler on FrostyTech.
Epson Styles 890 printer on NeoSeeker.
News from me over the next couple of weeks is going to be a bit sporadic (my big word for the day) as I'm in the middle of exam block and I really need to study. Really really need to study, because I spent most of swotvac drinking beer at ReaX's place (cheers for that) and looking at F1-11's (which was awesome). I'd also appreciate it if anyone who has a Vortex2/MX300 sound card, an Asus A7V133 mobo and Windows 2000 all running in harmony to email me and let me know how to do it. I can't. It frustrates me to no end. On with the news.
UPDATE: Response to this request has been overwhelming, thanks everyone for your emails. I'm going to reinstall win2k this evening, and I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. Once again, thanks all :)
TweakTown have a review of the ECS KT133A mobo.. they're fairly easy on the wallet and pretty decent in the performance stakes according to this review. I also noticed on the TweakTown news page that Cam Wilmot, the TT webmaster has been employed by VIA and will no longer be continuing work on TT due to impartiality issues. I'd like to wish Cam all the best in his future endeavours and congratulate him on a lot of hard work that's paid off. Well done mate.
Micheal has reminded us that there is also the open source version of MP3, Ogg Vorbis begging for your attention. It hasn't really caught on yet, and I'm not really sure why. Copyright issues I 'spose. Toooo many codecs these days.
For KyroII users there are also some new reference drivers available for download from electic, v7.111a. Win9X ones here and Win2k here.
LCM Network has a pretty interesting article up comparing the differences between the four Socket-A DDR chipsets (VIA KT266, ALi Magik1, AMD760 and SiS735) including lots of tastey graphs. Problem is it's in German. Oh well.. 'spose you could always put some babelfish in your ears.
AMDmb has a nice guide up explaining the basics of cooling your system. Good if your new to the overclocking world, explains the reason/idea behind most of the cooling systems we use.... And if you want to add more cooling, Rizenet have a blow hole how-to up as well.
Dan from DansData suggested I sleep on burlap sacks of hard currency. HEHEHE. Life of a student. Anyway, he's reviewed some video cards that people might actually be able to afford. Maybe even students. Maybe.
FrostyTech have given a Spire 5E34B3 hs/f unit a going over, and it seems to be a fairly interesting unit. Looks like an ordinary aluminium fop-type heatsink until you notice the 4mm thick copper heatplate on the bottom.
Another Matrox G550 review on neoseeker.. If you havn't read them yet the card isn't terribly exciting, more designed for the OEM market than anything else. It's pretty much the same as a G450 with a die shrink and a T&L engine thats a bit odd. Tech-Report also have a preview.
PCHardware have reviewed the MSI K7T266 Pro-R, a KT266-based DDR board. Now that the dust has settled, the BIOS-es and IDE drivers have been tweaked the board seems to perform quite well.
Overclocking.DK have a quick quide to adding a logo to the System Properties Dialog box. For those that just must customize everything.
It seems all is not well in the networking world. Not only do Cisco have pretty massive inventory problems, 3COM is now selling off it's real estate to get some cash flow. Owch.
The guys over at Tech1.DE are pretty nice.. they send personalised emails to the news box.. awww. They also want to give away 10 Zalman CNPS3100 hs/f units as well. But it's in German, so I'm not sure what the restrictions are.
Finally, ViaHardware has a new site design and some new 4in1 drivers. Apparently the 4.32 drivers are now official, even though it still says Beta on their page. New in 4.32 is a new AGP CART driver, which offers a bit of a performance boost.
Reviews:
Inno3D Tornado GeForce3 on Digit-Life.
Asus V7100 GF2MX on AllTechBox.
VisionTek GeForce3 on Technoyard.
Early Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 20-June-2001 01:58:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Whoosh! Another NDA lifts on countless sites across the web. Today's product is the Matrox Millennium G550 video card/chipset. Thanks to everyone who sent in links. Info:- here on Matrox's site.
- here on Electic.
- here on AnandTech.
- here on IANAG - focussing on the "HeadCasting" technology.
- here on TomsHardware.
- here on PCStats.
Been rounding your cables? Concerned about performance? So were SystemLogic, so they benchmarked a buncha them to see if they degrade performance compared to flat cables.
Eddie word that Kickups 2.0 is now out! WARNING: Don't go to that link if you value your spare time.
There's a big gaping hole in IIS that can cause all kinds of horrible things to happen to your webserver. Again. There's a patch, too. Thanks Sniper770.
Scott says there'll be no Athlons faster than 1.6GHz this year. We'll just have to get by with those, then.
On RealWorldTech, a comparison of 5400rpm vs 7200rpm HDD's. They also compare the Abit KT7A and IWill KA266 socketA motherboards - this is interesting because the former is an SDRAM-based KT133A board while the latter uses DDR memory and the ALI MAGIK 1 chipset.
Boo Boy reckons you can get y'self a free tshirt on this page. Doesn't look too bad if you don't mind being a walking advertisement. :) Speaking of which, look for the OCAU tshirts coming back on sale next month.
Reviews:
Vantec CCK-6035D socket cooler on OCCafe.
Matsonic 8308E cheapy mobo on CPUReview.
Thermaltake Volcano II socket cooler on NeoSeeker.
Swiftech MC462-A Rev1 socket cooler on ClubOC.
Seagate Barracuda 180 180GB (!) HDD on TomsHardware, thanks Leon.
Swiftech's MC370 socket cooler on Icrontic.
Game Doctor cd-repair tool on PlanetHardware.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 19-June-2001 09:54:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Dead quiet out there, fairly standard for a Tuesday..
Wired have an article on a new power source.. the effect of gravity on people, vehicles and animals. It's been met with some skepticism..
There's been some discussion of this on the 2600.org.au mailing list over the last couple of days and it seems the mainstream media have picked it up - a recent coca-cola competition has been hacked in that people know how to generate false codes which let them bid for prizes as if they'd bought more products than they really have.
FlingingSquids have their Computex coverage posted..
Reviews:
Gear Grip CRT monitor-carrying handle on NeoSeeker.
Hercules Game Theatre XP sound card on PlanetHW.
Mushkin PC2100 DDR RAM on OCPrices.
CV Chill socket cooler on FrostyTech.
The Ars-Masters have posted an article on the A+ Certification. This is a PC technician's certification, one you can study in Oz, too. Apparently good for entry-level support etc.
A couple of people pointed out this aggressive marketing from Optus in response to Telstra's recent 3GB limit on some broadband products.
ReaX shows a cheap way to make your car look, perform and sound better.. not.
AnandTech have an IDE Raid Comparison posted..
..while BlueSmoke have a hdd shootout.
MessageKing is a new site that apparently indexes discussion forums into one central searchable index.. hmm.
There's an interview with a CS Hack Creator on 3DActionPlanet.. some insight into why/how they make these things, thanks Kazashi.
OCrCafe checked out the Storm Fan Cap, an extra fan you clip onto the top of your Orb coolers. Sabrtooth noted the dodgetastic graph showing a difference between 95C and 96C as massive. Grrrrr.
Dr Kildare points out some SBLive! drivers that are apparently pretty good.. bear in mind they're hosted on GeoCities (ie, are in no way endorsed by pretty much anyone) so I'd approach them with some caution.
Reviews:
CV Chill 370/462 socket cooler on TheTechZone.
SyncMaster 180T 18.1" flat-panel monitor on IANAG.
Vantec CCK-6035D & FCE-6030D socket coolers on ClubOC.
inClose Bay Cooler II on ClubOC.
Cyber Cooler HC-350 hdd cooler on MikhailTech.
Enermax EG651P-VE PSU on AcidHW.
From the author of this very useful program:
I finally got around to re-writing Radiate with a bunch of new features - for you guys and for your users/readers.
Still has the classic watt calculator, however now has Ambient temp, CPU temp, and C/W sliders.
You can now drag your ambient temp & CPU temp and it'll calculate the C/W ratio - or you can go the other way, drag the C/W ratio and it'll calculate the CPU temp - or drag the Mhz and Voltage and watch the CPU temp change given a fixed C/W value- or drag the Mhz and Voltage and watch the C/W value change given a fixed CPU temp!
It's really slick for doing endless What-If scenarios.
It now has a 'Coolers' database to keep track of all the latest C/W rating for the coolers out there.
The coolest part for you guys is this: the databases are now updated via the web, and you guys can add new coolers to your coolers.dat file (just drag the C/W slider, type a name for the cooler and click 'Add')
Then make your coolers.dat file web-accessible, and tell your users to update their radiate settings to point to the web file - the next time the user clicks "Web Update", viola - they are using your coolers.dat file!
This way everyone can be reading your review of the cooler - and playing a what-if game in Radiate with their processor and the cooler you just reviewed!
Sounds like a lot I know, but the simplicity is still there - I hope you guys have time to check it out, and make a posting to let the users download if you like.
Thanks Fellas! - I hope you enjoy using Radiate as much as I enjoyed writing it - hopefully I can keep adding new features that help us even more in the future.
Cheers,
Kevin Croft
OCAU has a mirror of the new version here. I'll definitely be looking into using this as part of our next cooler roundup.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 18-June-2001 13:19:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Digit-Life have checked out a few Maxtor HDD's.
Interesting idea on OCNZ, using a socket cooler as a radiator in a water-cooling system. At first I scoffed at this, at the obvious drop in efficiency (ie, it'd be more efficient to just stick the cooler on the CPU) .. but if you think about it, you could run the lines outside the case and have the cooler running in ambient air.. or even stick a cooler on either side of the second waterblock. Hmm! Food for thought, anyway.
Wired have an article on the future of toys..
CHW have a guide to using thin tubing to control your wires.. can't see much use for the way they use it, but their same technique used on 10mm fishtank tubing around an IDE cable might be a goer.
Ever keen on saving space (including inside their refrigerators), the Japanese have come up with square watermelons, thanks Tigger.
Deejay points out this list of Post-SP2 Win2K Hotfixes.. we've linked to it before, but it's useful if you're supporting 2K boxen.
Brett sends word of a petition about the Panther XL Pro.. rumour is the manufacturer is moving away from the PC market to concentrate on consoles. If you want to show your interest in their sticking with the PC market, go sign.
ExtremeTech have a thing on nVidia Crush, thanks Electoad.
The BB Gatling Gun page has been updated with a new model and some videos, thanks DF.
ComputerChaos compared the 12.41 and 12.42 detonators..
RedHerring have an article about gaming cheats from the vendors perspective, thanks Tigger. Might be time for a reminder that the speed cheat affects benchmarks too.
Apparently this site has some BMW car-promotion videos, some of which are pretty cool, thanks Herbo.
It's Monday, and your new issue of ZZZ Online is full of stuff like laser lawnmower with Internet access..
From Denis: This doesn't really qualify as news, but I have just completed two months' worth of trying to get my new Athlon 1.3G system working, and have finally diagnosed what the problem has been all along - the Via AGP drivers!!!
After trying two different motherboards, two different 2940UW SCSI cards, upgrading the video card, upgrading the power supply, replacing IDE hard
disks with SCSI, removing the sound card, using four different motherboard BIOSes, multiple different combinations of BIOS settings, and reinstalling
Windows 2000 half a dozen times ... it now works perfectly provided I don't use the Via AGP Drivers from the Via 4in1 set (4.29 or 4.31).
Without the Via AGP drivers -
1. It doesn't hang randomly and constantly.
2. 3dmark2001 benchmarks display nice and smoothly rather than with the
'jerky' motion that was prevalent with the Via AGP drivers.
Reviews:
Swiftech MC462 socket cooler on OCrCafe.
FrontX Multimedia Ports (updated) on 8Balls. Our review here.
Zalman CNPS 5000-Plus socket cooler on OCShoot.
Zalman CNPS3100 socket cooler on ARP.
Crash_Dummy's WaterCooling #2
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Monday, 18-June-2001 02:21:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Crash_Dummy sent in some more pics & info on his watercooling project..
As i promised i got my watercooled rig up and running in a experimental stage. Just testing the waterblock. As before, Duron 800 @ 1000 1.9v on a volt modded Abit KT7 RAID
The top of the waterblock has been changed this time. It's bigger, The threads for the fittings were tapped this time, and i'm no longer using two peices of perspex, I'm using the one peice now as the waterblocks top and hold down, The back plate for the block (behind the cpu) has been cut into two small strips. The actual cooling setup, Well. There isn't one really at the moment. I'm only testing the block and haven't got anymore hose so i can't run a radiator inline with the water supply. Cooling and pumping is supply via a 2000l/h powerhead (Atman brand) in a lovely pretty blue bucket :)
Quiet frankly. I'm at a stange where i'm just beyond pissed off with this pump though, I can't put it in any containers. It's just too big. And the 2 containers i did put it in just split and pissed everywhere. It doesn't matter though, I'll figure out something.
The goal of this system is pure quiet. I've got much MUCH quiet and cooling with this setup right now. As a matter of a fact, The most noisey fan in the computer is the bloody northbridge fan. I'm pretty sure i can run it without the fan now though, I replaced the standard northbridge heatsink with the standard heatsink off my Hercules Prophet II MX.
  
  
Click images to enlarge..
Epox EP-8KTA3 & Athlon 1.33GHz
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Monday, 18-June-2001 01:39:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hagar has written up his experiences with this KT133A motherboard and AMD's 1.33GHz Athlon CPU. He reviews the board in some depth and provides benchmarks showing the overall effect of various CPU speeds. It's an interesting read..
Click for the full review!
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 17-June-2001 15:07:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I've got a zillion things to do today, so I hereby declare this as "Minimalist News Day". :)
Articles / News:
Multithreading article on Systemlogic.
1.33GHz Athlon Shootout (3 different cores) on ClubOC.
SIS Chipsets beating AMD & Co on TomsHardware, thanks Leo.
GeForce3 Comparison (in French) on Puces3D.
Tualatin & Coppermine-T preview on TomsHardware.
Gaming Controller Mods on TheCoolRepublic (click link at left, grr.frames)
Mod your PowerColor display card to ASUS V7100 on TweakHardware.
GhettoScooter (silly), thanks Tigger.
Tualatins thrash Foster Xeons on TheInquirer.
Tweaking NVIDIA video cards on PlanetHardware.
Fanboy article/rant on Tech-Report.
OpenGL video cards high-end roundup on TomsHardware.
Taming the delta article on OCOpolis.
Computers designing their own processors on ShortNews, thanks Morjo.
Digital Media Recorder, thanks Morphic.
Mirc 5.91 is out, thanks Squirrel.
C64 Cooling Fan for sale on eBay, thanks Eddie.
Borg Case Project on Bit-Tech, compare VooDoo's Borg and Borg II.
New Asus A7V133 BIOS v 1005a out, thanks James, be careful flashing.
Voodoo5 6000 (the 4-processor ones) apparently for sale, thanks swodahs.
Case Modding Step-by-Step on OCMod.
Digital Photography (posted before but good) on Ars, thanks Azrael.
AMD Tech Tour on TheColdShop.
Negative review of Tomb Raider film on Wired.
Reviews:
SOHOware CableFREE NetBlaster II wireless router on NeoSeeker.
Silver Mountain heatsink on AMDMB.
Gigabyte GV-GF1280RT GF2 MX400 64MB videocard on Xbit.
IWill KD266 ALi M1649-based SocketA mobo on OCOnline.
MSI K7 Master AMD761-based SocketA mobo on Accelenation.
Zalman heatsink on Bit-Tech.
Lite-On LTR-16101B IDE CDRW on CDRInfo.
ThermalRight SK6 heatsink on FrostyTech.
Clear-bladed fans on OCIA.
Thermaltake Copper Orb socket cooler on Tech-Planet.
Belkin UPS on BSOD.
Dlink 8-port LAN Switch on BSOD.
Kanie HedgeHog socket cooler on ChillBlast.
Poco Foam Waterblock on SpodesAbode.
Power controller for pre-cooling CPU on OCIA, thanks Bradley.
Samsung SyncMaster 753df 17" flatscreen monitor on 8Balls.
AOpen CRW-1232A 12x10x32x CDRW on Digit-Life.
Tai-Sol CGK760092B socket cooler on IPKonfig.
Non-conductive shims on IPKonfig.
Hydraulic ATX fulltower case on GideonTech.
Thermoengine heatsink on IPKonfig.
One Tech Eclipse Light on G3D.
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 16-June-2001 15:14:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's a new MP3 format out as of yesterday, called MP3Pro. Info here and here, thanks Talking_Goat.
GameSpot have an article about gaming around the world - of course Australia gets a mention, even if it's mostly a rant about Telstra. :)
Powermike was the first of many to mention a new P3V4X BIOS, 1006 BETA 3, is available now. Remember, beta BIOSes are a leading cause of lost data, dead boards and tooth decay, so be careful. KngtRider notes it's been a full year since the last P3V4X bios release.
There's a mobile phone virus - no, really this time :) - doing the rounds in Japan.
Digit-Life have a Scanner Buyers Guide..
"Max Payne" has been almost the epitomy of vapourware for PC Gamers.. seems they've got a website for it now and you can even pre-order it, thanks Mike.
Apparently www.3dchipset.com has been taken out semi-permanently by a DDoS attack, nasty.. thanks Sud.
Some LiteStep info from Wokket: firstly they're making a development/usage map so if you're involved, register here. Secondly, litestep.net has had their server seized by the FBI (!) so the project has taken a big hit there. Hopefully their community can pull something together until the feds give it back.
Tim says: The overall project stats show that 50% of the keyspace has now been checked. Hooray! .. join the OCAU RC5 Team if you want to help out with the rest of it.
RedStar points out a couple of SMH articles: a funny one on buying titles on the net and another about nanotechnology..
Futurelooks checked out some fuel cells for powering mobile devices..
SysOpt have obtained undisclosed insider information on how VIA plans to circumvent the P4 bus license in order to legally manufacture their P4M266 chipset. .. all in VIA vs Intel, P4 DDR.
CreativeLabs have some SpyWare accusations aimed at them, thanks Spikey.
Dan has hacked his A7A266 to allow multiplier adjustment. This is similar to but simpler than our own A7M266 multiplier mod.
PlanetHardware want to tell you how to install a video card..
Transmeta apparently have a faster Crusoe processor almost ready to go..
GF3 not fast enough for you? Check out Digit-Life's Extreme GF3 Overclocking article.. those graphs give me a headache. :)
Icrontic have built 3 monster gaming machines.. hmm, dual slot1 p3's, not what I'd be using for a games box.
I spent the last 3 days in Brisbane, having been invited to a BBQ by ReaX from hardware.ausgamers.com. Frequent flyer points are a wonderful thing. :) Anyway I had a great time, good food in good company. I spent the next day wandering around Brisbane (queen street mall, south bank etc) and hanging out with a non-Net friend up there. Many thanks of course to ReaX (Mitch) and his wife Peta for their hospitality and for arranging the F-111 tour at his work (the nearby RAAF base), thanks to Alchemy for letting me crash on his living room floor for a couple of nights and thanks to Sciby for driving us all around in the Tarago Of Terror. Thanks to everyone else who turned up for making it a great night, too. :)
The BBQ was quite a cross-section through the Oz hardware scene. Here's a couple of pics of the action:
click to enlarge
Left to right: Phil (ReaX's brother-in-law), Sciby (grey top), JAB (Realtime - black top), Alchemy (white top), Sabretooth, Daemon (Techwatch), Mozz (Techwatch - bottle), VooDoo (can), Soc (CaseJunkiez).
click to enlarge
Left to right: Daemon (Techwatch), Mozz (Techwatch), Agg, VooDoo, Soc (CaseJunkiez), Electoad (hardware.ausgamers.com), ReaX (hardware.ausgamers.com), ReaX's wife Peta, Alchemy, JAB (Realtime), Sciby, Chris (JAB's wife, blocked), Phil (Reax's b-in-l).
More of my pics here. More pics from other people here and here.
SecretNet ICQ Meet!
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Saturday, 16-June-2001 12:19:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Andypoo told me about this last night but I fell asleep before newsing it, d'oh. Anyway, RIGHT NOW in Sydney there's an ICQ Meet happening. Go meet people you know via ICQ or meet people you don't know at all and get their ICQ numbers! Bicentennial Park, Sydney, right now (until 4:20pm), BYO food and drinks! Info here. I wouldn't bother registering now, just go. :)
Ack, no news! Have some reviews :)
Reviews:
WindTunnell III Case on TweakTown.
Evergreen ProForma 766 CPU upgrade on SystemLogic.
Building the Ultimate P3 Value Computer book review on TTZ.
Samsung SM-308 RWCombo CD-RW/DVD drive on EXHardware.
Hercules 3DProphet III GF3-based video card on IANAG.
AMK 3333 300 case on OC.DK.
Window and Neon kit on OCTools.
AOpen DVD-1640 Pro DVD drive on 2CPU.
Mushkin Rev 3 SDRAM on MikhailTech.
Creative Labs DT2200 speakers on JSI.
Seagate Cheetah 36XL 18.2GB U160 HDD on NewsForge.
MSI K7T266 Pro SocketA DDR motherboard on HotHardware.
Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 socket cooler on OCrCafe.
GlobalWin CAK38 socket cooler on OCdCafe.
CoolPC Window Kit on Tech-Planet.
VisionTech GF3 video card on PCStats.
Samsung SV-7000W World VCR (?) on PCStats.
Sometimes I just don't think people know where to draw the line. This page is one of those times.. RojakPot is benchmarking Pocket PC's. Like, umm.. yeah. OK. RC5 for WinCE? Hmm.. probably, knowing this.
Hexus have found a Secret BIOS!! (gasp).. for the EPoX 8K7A+, and the tricky thing about it is that it allows up to 250MHz FSB speed to be set from within the BIOS. Not that you're going to reach those speeds, EVER, but.. the thought is there.
Hmm.. I wonder who the Aussie Tech Mag Atomic MPC is owned by.. seems to be a Fairfax company, at least going by this article on the Sydney Morning Herald. Seems Overclocking is getting mainstream tho.. and cheers to Christian and RedStar for the link.
V8R wrote in to say that the Telstra saga has reached yet ~another~ twist in the road.. apparently the whole Telstra broadband network is down at the moment, for reasons unknown. apparently the isp-aust email list has the news. Just keeps on getting better and better for them.
VyW have a 60mm fan shootout.. HMMMM.. I guess who wins. Stupid question. Maybe if they had a 60mm fan shootout for people that want to sleep in the same room as their computer.
Tech-Report have a review of a handy little USB port relocator thing. It goes on a 5 1/4" bay at the front of your computer, and has 2 USB ports within it. It also allows you to fit a 3 1/2" drive in as well. Seems alright.
Anandtech have reviewed another GeForce3 card.. this time it's the Gainward CARDEXPERT PowerPack (their caps not mine). It's a GeForce3, it's a reference design, yadda yadda yadda.
Micheal pointed out that there is a new CUSL2-C BIOS out, Rev 1007. According to mates of mine that own a CUSL2 tho, new BIOS-es seem to be a weekly occurance.
OCWorkbench has news up about an earthquake that just recently hit Taipei.. pretty close timing to computex, which is no good. Taipei City apparently measured a 5 on the richter scale, which isn't exactly gentle. Dosn't seem to be much damage tho, which is lucky. Low RAM prices must stay low~!
Reviews:
IWill DVD-266-R Dually DDR P3 Mobo on OverclockersOnline.
ADDA B53 HS/F unit on Icrontic.
Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical on Maximum 3D.
Zoltrix Cyber Cam on G3D.
Inno3D GF2MX400 card on overclockedPC.
Thursday, sometime around midday (hopefully)
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Thursday, 14-June-2001 12:48:33 (GMT +10) - by Manaz
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OK, making another news post from work - I hope this one doesn't take as long as yesterday's double attempt...
Yesterday, I posted a news item about a new distributed computing project, called United Devices. DaRkDwArF wrote to me today, to let me know that he has created an Overclockers Australia team to process UD data - you can check how they're going, and join the team, on this page.
If you're one of many people mourning the fact that the Coolbits hack doesn't seem to work with the nVidia 12.41 Detonator drivers, WildAndyC has given you reason to rejoice - check his Coolbits re-activation page, and be saved!
OCWorkBench think they have sussed out how to tell the difference between the Intel Coppermine-T and Tualatin processors. They are also reporting that Intel have announced the official name for the mobile version of the Tualatin processor - "Mobile Intel Pentium III Processor-M", apparently to compete head-on with AMD's "Mobile Athlon 4". Personally, I think "Mobile Athlon 4" is a better name, at least from a marketing point of view. OCWorkBench have more info up on their main page.
Adrian, from Adrian's Rojack Pot, wrote to tell us that the ever-changing BIOS Optimisation Section on his site has been supplemented with a guide specific to "Features" section in most BIOSs.
Beannie from Tech Planet dropped us a line, pointing out a rather funny page of examples of mixed-up computer terms. The scary thing is, I recognise quite a few of them - I've worked in Computer Support for 5+ years now...
Some of you may be old enough to remember when NEC, and not Sony, made what where considered by most to be the best monitors you could buy. Well, while Sony may currently hold the top place for manufacturing CRT screens, it appears that NEC have leapt ahead in the Plasma Monitor arena - and are currently producing a 61-inch plasma monitor - they're actually the first to mass-produce such a screen of this size. Speaking of companies considered to be leaders in their class, it appears that the US Army (no, that's not who I meant as a leader in their class) have ordered a 16-processor Cray SV1 server. No price has been released, but I don't think you order a Cray supercomputer if you're on a tight budget...
Reviews:
Ars Technica have posted a review of the Netgear RT4314 Internet Access Gateway Router - which works for both cable and DSL connections.
Anandtech have posted a Via KT133A motherboard roundup.
Dan has added another 5 coolers to his already large and comprehensive cooler comparison article.
CoolHardwarez have taken a look at the Mouse Bungee - we reviewed it a while ago, so for a compariative review, check here.
Accelernation have reviewed the DFI AK75-EC motherboard.
Hardware Daily have had a look at the Antec SX1240 Full Tower Case.
PC Stats have posted a review of a Samsung DVD-N501 DVD Player. That's not a DVD drive, but a DVD player remember...
Hopefully I won't have to put this news post together twice, like I did this morning.
Chainbolt (who is practically our man in Japan) wrote to tell us that GeForce3 prices have dropped in Japan - the GainWard CardExpert GeForce3 card can now be had for 41,000 Yen, or around USD$330. Hopefully that means world-wide drops in GeForce3 prices are on the way...
Zanthius sent us news of yet another distributed computing project being run over the Internet - this one is called "United Devices" - it's a bit similar to the Folding@HOME project apparently, they're modelling the interaction between molecules and proteins in the hope of finding new drugs to fight cancer. Like so many of the recent medically-based distributed computing projects, I think it's definately worth the processor time. Anyway, you can check it out here.
Dmitri sent in a link to a rather amusing video clip - of someone repeatedly punching an Intel balloon out the back somewhere at Computex 2001 in Taipei. It runs for 15 seconds, and may be a bit of a download if you're on dial-up (or Telstra cable I guess, though for a different reason). Here it is here.
OCWorkBench have a picture of one of the new Intel Tualatin P3 processors (sitting beside a regular Coppermine P3, for comparison). You can check it out here, on their main page.
Via Hardware are hosting the latest BIOS for the Abit KT7 motherboard - version 3C apparently. You can get it by going to their KT7 FAQ. They also have an article covering their visit to the VIA factory in Taiwan.
Not to be outdone on the factory-tour scene, Tweaktown got to go on tour inside the ABit factory while they were in Taipei.
Rambus (if no-one else) are confident that they're here to stay. They've released a roadmap of their future direction, up until 2005 at least. Electic Tech have the details.
PlanetHardware have posted an Athon Overclocking Guide, covering both Slot-A and Socket-A versions. Thanks to ArSoNiSt for letting us know about this one.
FutureLooks have had a look at a rather interested Internet project. Called "Open Cola", it is an open-source project which will attempt to provide a truly open, combined, collaborative, communicative, commerce community, which is scaleable, speedy, secure, simple and searchable. Yes, I know that was a big sentence - but if you check the story, there's lots more where that came from. It's a really interesting (in my opinion, anyway) idea, and I'd really like to see it work.
EXHardware (and also MegaBaz) raised an interesting point. Check out this site, and then check the EXHardware site. Now, as you can see, the layout is rather similar - not that similarity between websites is a sin - but when you also consider that the same JavaScript being used to present the date, identical META keywords, etc, EXHardware think it's going a bit far. I'll leave it up to you to decide if they have a point...
Finally, what appears to be a nail in the coffin for those people complaining about Telstra's recent change to their AUP (adding the 3GB/month limit). Reaper sent in a response he received from the TIO, or Telecommunications Ombudsman...
"Re: Telstra AUP Enquiry
Thank you for your recent e-mail about Telstra's planned changes to its Freedom Plan 'Acceptable Use Policy' (AUP).
The TIO has received a large number of complaints about Telstra's recent decision to change its AUP by imposing a limit of 3 gigabytes per month for Internet users signed up to the Big Pond "Freedom Plan".
The TIO has reviewed the current contract for this plan and formed the view that Telstra's action has so far been in accordance with its terms and conditions (specifically Clauses 10.3 and 10.4). Telstra has provided customers with adequate notification of the changes, and is allowing customers unhappy with the changes to leave the contract without financial penalty.
The TIO's jurisdiction gives it the power to investigate complaints where a company is deemed to have breached its terms and conditions. The TIO is not, however, empowered to investigate matters relating to the setting of policy or to the setting of the terms and conditions of a contract - these are commercial decision taken by the company.
Given this, the TIO will not be pursuing complaints about this matter with Telstra; however, all individual complaints are being recorded.
Allegations of false advertising or misleading practices are matters
investigated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which administers the Trade Practices Act 1974. Should your complaint raise issues under the Trade Practices Act, you may wish to consider contacting the ACCC. However, the TIO has received advice from the ACCC that it considers that the changes to the AUP will increase the clarity of Telstra's terms and conditions and will therefore be of assistance to consumers.
The TIO believes that although the changes are currently causing confusion and dissatisfaction, greater clarity to the AUP will help overcome some of the difficulties faced by consumers in interpreting what it considered was an uncertain AUP.
People wishing to cancel their contract have been asked to e-mail Telstra Big Pond at aupquery@bigpond.net.au before 18 June 2001 with the following information:
- Account number
- Name of account holder
- A brief sentence stating that you do not accept changes to the AUP and wish to cancel the service
- An alternative e-mail address or contact details for use after 18 June 2001
If you happen to experience difficulties being released from the contract, the TIO can investigate. Also, if you believe that Telstra is not acting in accordance with its new AUP (once it becomes effective), the TIO would be able to look into your complaint.
I hope this clarifies the TIO's role and jurisdiction in relation to this matter. Please refer to the TIO's website for any updates on this issue.
Sincerely,
John Pinnock
OMBUDSMAN"
This release is also available on the TIO's website, here.
I'm sure a lot of you are thinking "damn" (or something along those lines anyway) right about now... :(
Reviews:
[H]ard|OCP have had a look at the MSI K7 Master motherboard. Based on the AMD 760 chipset, they give it a good looking over to see just how well it performs. They've also had a look at the Gainward CardExpert GeForce3 video card.
The OverClock Intelligence Agency (otherwise known as OCIA) have taken a look at some Cold Cathode Lighting for lighting the inside of your PC (for display purposes).
HotHardware have reviewed the D-Link FDE-910 Network In A Box kit.
Lost Universe have had a look at the fUnc Industries Surface sUrface 1030 - a fancy, and from what I've heard, rather decent, mousemat.
Early Wednesday afternoon
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Wednesday, 13-June-2001 13:11:46 (GMT +10) - by Manaz
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I *was* supposed to have a news post up this morning. Unfortunately, IE/Newspro decided to chuck a fit on me, and I lost about 2 hours work. I also lost some of the actual news (I'd deleted it from the inbox).
Update: Ahh, thank goodness for Outlook's "Recover Deleted Items" feature...
aXXe sent in this link - it gives galvanic corrosion potential of all different metals - very useful if you're using, or considering using, a water-cooling setup for your PC.
űńdę® thę íńflűęń©ę wrote in to let us know that there's a whole pile of new Counter-Strike maps available - new, high quality maps at that. You can pick them up here. In further Counter-Strike related news, ArSoNiSt wrote in to let us know that there's a CS Tweaking Guide available on Planet Hardware.
I think we've linked to it before, but it's still a damned useful site. StratosFear sent in the link to the Microsoft Corporate Windows Update website, which lets you just download the updates, rather than automatically installing them for you as well - useful if you've got a *lot* of PCs to update, or just want to keep a copy of the updates on CD or something, for the next time you need them (this is especially useful for those who don't have broadband connections).
StratosFear also wrote to tell us that he has been in contact with Alfredo, the author of the speedfan program, and has received a succession of improved betas of the program, to try make it compatible with more boards (Stratosfear's AOpen AX6BC in particular). It seems that Alfredo is indeed keen to get his program working with as many boards as possible, and I think this is a good thing. Stratosfear *also* noted that there's a link on the MBM website to a program called FanSpeed, which is supposed to work on, amongst others, the BP6 motherboard. Personally, I think software controlled fan speed can only be a good thing for those who want to try keep their systems a bit quieter when they're not hard at work.
Pyroteq pointed out that Telstra's share price has been dropping lately. Telstra claim it's due to a lower-than-expected predicted profit in the coming financial year, but as Pyroteq pointed out, you have to wonder just how much of an effect the negative press about them imposing such a harsh data cap on their broadband customers has also had on their share price...
There's a new version of the SiSoft Sandra benchmarking program available apparently - Sludge thought we should know. You can download it from the SiSoft Sandra website.
Greg wrote in to let us know that the ADSL page we linked to earlier this week, on the DingoBlue website, has been there for at least 6 months, maybe even longer. So if DingoBlue are considering getting into the ADSL market, they're taking their time making the decision...
ZNIPER-X pointed out this interesting article, which seems to indicate that all the Iraqis had to do to detect the F-117As in the Gulf War was hook up with Vodadfone! (OK, that over-simplifies things a bit, but read the article, and you'll see what I mean).
Dan (from Dan's Data) has been doing some research into just how damned (or should that be Danned) fast SD-RAM is capable of going. He's gotten hold of a 256MB stick of OCZs 166MHz, CAS-2 rated SD-RAM, and a Thermaltake Memory cooling kit, and, well, you can read the rest here.
Electic Tech are reporting that there's a new BIOS available for the Tyan K7 Thunder motherboard. They don't link to the file, but I'm guessing that it would be available from Tyan's website. They're also reporting that there are new BIOS files available for the Matrox G200, G400 and G450 video cards. Again, check for the actual BIOS files on Matrox's website.
The Guru of 3D wrote, to tell us the latest version of the GeForce Tweak Utility (now at version 3.0.3.2) has been released. You can get it here.
If you believed half (perhaps even more than half) of the Computex coverage I've seen so far, you'd think that it was just a pretty girl convention, with the computers there as an after-thought. Insane Hardware are helping keep that notion alive, with their Ladies of Computex 2001 article.
Acer Communications and Multimedia here in Australia are, in conjunction with BMG Records, giving away some music CDs. They're also giving away a free movie ticket with every Acer 3300U scanner sold. Details are on their website.
Maximum3D have a statement made by someone at Hercules, about the supposed "bad blood" between Hercules and nVidia.
Reviews:
Ars Technica have had a look at Palm's latest PDA, the slim, sleek, colour m505.
Thermaltake SK6 heatsink at VoidYourWarranty.
RipNet-UK have had a look at the AVGS CA-1050 cooler.
Elsa Gladiac 920 GeForce3 video card at OCPrices.
A new-look BlueScreenOfDeth have had a look at a .
PCStats have taken a look at the MSI StarForce 822 GeForce3 video card.
inClose Mobile Dock (removable hard drive bay) on Club Overclocker.
Wednesday The 13th.. Da da daaa~!@#
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Wednesday, 13-June-2001 01:52:45 (GMT +10) - by alchemy
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Fwoar, alot of news tonight. And I'm supposed to be up on time to go out and do Real Cool Stuff. Heh. Might be a bit quick, but I know that some of you like it rough :)
NEC has teamed up with nVidia to make a Jumbo 61" Plasma Display monitor. Jumbo indeed, 61" is pretty big.
HaRm wrote in thinking he found a world first.. but I'm sorry dude, I'm going to have to cut you down. He found 300MHz DDR RAM on Samsung's webpage.. but I'm afraid that Corsair already make this stuff.. they follow the DDR naming conventions and call it PC2400.
DarthStrike thought he'd tell us why he didn't make it to a recent LAN in townsville.. he hit a roo! Heh, pretty bad damage as well. Incidently, this isn't the first roo to interfere with an OCAU-reader's lanning activities.. I remember a while ago VooDoo hit a roo in his commo on a trip down to MPU.. not only did it damage is car, his HX-08 case flew through his car and took out his windscreen. Heh. It's in the news archives ~somewhere~ if you're interested.
MrPC Pro is giving away a motherboard a week.. for how many weeks, I dont know. Not sure about how good the boards are either, but eh. Free. Post in our Forum bad tho.
Speedguide have a pretty decent article up about sattelite internet.. which would be a killer technology in Australia if the people would let it. There is already one-way sat, but it is pretty expensive.. and verrrrrry laggy. Both-directions (can't think of right word atm) sat would be better.. but it's even pricier than the already pricey one-way stuff. There also microwave both-way Internet in existance (chello), but that's been hampered by high price, limited coverage and restricted usage (ie. not always-on). Oh well. Maybe soon.
Chillblast have been drinking the rubbing alcohol they use to remove artic silver from heatsinks, and they've made up this big comparitive graph of all their heatsink tests. Heh.. productive little drunks arnt they?
Just when you thought 20gb/platter was pretty neat, Seagate come along and scoff at you and deliver a 40gb/platter drive. That's 32.6Gbits/square inch folks. Pretty high density if you ask me.
FutureLooks has reviewed the Visor Edge, a Handspring PDA. For those that don't know, Handspring make Palm-Pilot clone PDA's that run the same OS. And like the Mac clones before them they are pretty good.. so I wonder if 3COM will do an Apple and close em down when they get successful?
If you're still hunting for Aliens with TeamOCAU, Myrddin points out that you can check the stats here when the normal stats server is down. Cool.
OCWorkbench have Day 3 coverage of Computex up.. AOpen and FIC get the photos this time.
Hmm, this suprised me a little bit.. DFI, a small mostly value-based Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer has an AMD 761-based board out.. never knew that. Anyway, PC Hardware.ro has reviewed it for all to see.. should be nice and easy on the wallet too, knowing DFI.
Finally tonight, CaseJunkiez is taking case ricing, err.. modding (sorry guys) to a new level with Glowwire. Wire that glows. Looks pretty cool tho, I must admit.
Just a side note.. Manaz is going to be taking care of the news for the next few posts.. both Agg and myself are going to busy for the next few days. So be gentle. Even tho he's been doing it for longer than me :)
Reviews:
Thermaltake Memory Cooling Kit on Max3D.
GW WBK-38 on Icrontic.
DigiDoc 5 on AwareMag.
Thermaltake Copper Orb on Neoseeker.
Thermaltake Chrome Orb on PC-Critic.
Kyle @ HardOCP has posted his full Computex Coverage. PCStats have their coverage posted too. VooDoo's back in the country now so expect a comparable roundup here soon. Thanks again to Achieva Technology and Computer Alliance for helping get him there and (eventually!) back.
UnderTheInfluence says: Running both Speedfan and Asus Pc Probe 2.12.02 simultaneously on my P3V4X causes random voltage drops in the Voltage Monitor of PC Probe. Of course, this gets rather annoying at times. However I still find Speedfan an incredibly useful piece of software, just have to work out how to configure it properly.
Yaleman pointed out this 4-port NIC, just the thing for LAN parties. :)
Dicey says that Microsoft has worms.. oh dear.
MikhailTech are rounding cables again.. compare our method here.
We now have a Genome@Home team, if you're after something to do with your spare CPU cycles. Thanks to chestRcopRpot for setting it up. I'll be moving all the distributed computing teams onto their own "Team OCAU" page at some point with info on what they are and how to join them - we have SETI@HOME, RC5 and Folding@Home teams too.
Nice solid-state hard drve info from Sacrifice..
The Oz telecomms drama continues to unfold - cd_crazy sends word that GoConnect are moving away from free services now. Hellfire notes that DingoBlue are looking at ADSL services soon. Someone sent me an email saying that DB have been appointed by the Administrators of One.Tel to provide immediate internet access to One.Net customers.. but I seem to have lost that email now. There's another site with info & action to take about Telstra's 3GB cap. Telstra have made it pretty clear that they are not going to reconsider the cap so I wonder how much effect these petitions etc are going to have.
Reviews:
Logitech Cordless Mouse on EverythingUSB.
Power Cooler PCH141 socket cooler on CHW.
Yamaha 2200E 20x10x40xIDE (!) IDE CDRW drive on CDRInfo.
CyberDrive 126D 12x40x IDE DVD drive on CDRInfo.
Gigabyte GeForce2 MX400 video card on TechnoYard.
Asus iPanel on TweakMax.
RPM Cable on OCCafe, or make your own using our guide.
FreeFrag's Peltier Disaster
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Tuesday, 12-June-2001 01:28:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Only a near-disaster really, but FreeFrag has shared his experience as a peltier newbie, slapping one into his system with high hopes for low temperatures. Is it as simple as that? Unfortunately not - check out his article for details. Some important lessons learned!
Dual SocketA Boards
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Monday, 11-June-2001 23:48:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The first thing from VooDoo are some shots fresh from the AMD NDA room. These are of upcoming dual socketA boards. Pics are not huge, but click to enlarge:
 
Abit KP20 and GigaByte GA-7DXDW 
MSI MS-6502
VooDoo: The MSI is due out in the next 3-4 weeks as this is the final revision before the release. The other 2 mobo’s are still in early reference design. The Tyan is the official reference and has had working models for 3 months. Note the Abit and GigaByte boards are almost identical. The green connectors at top left of these two boards are for diagnostic purposes and won't appear on the retail boards.
The thing that strikes me about all these boards is that they're clearly NOT meant for servers. No onboard SCSI, no onboard LAN, no onboard video - looks like the MSI has a Promise ATA-100 controller onboard, but it also has onboard sound. :) Factor in the rumours that Durons work in SMP and we will hopefully see cheap, fast SMP systems very soon.
For a detailed look at a dual aocketA board, check out our world-first detailed preview - with benchmarks - of the Tyan Thunder AMD760MP with 2x 1.2GHz Palomino CPU's onboard.
Roving Reporter Returns
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Monday, 11-June-2001 23:15:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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VooDoo managed to get a plane back to Brisbane eventually. :) He's sent along a bunch of stuff and has plenty more which I'll be putting up over the next few days. He also did a fair bit of PR work for us with manufacturers, spreading the good word about OCAU and the Australian hardware/overclocking scene. Sounds like fun, eh?
No fun at all, its all business.
click to enlarge
This pic: Jamie from www.daitronics.com.au, Anna from www.pacstar-tech.com, John Gatt from www.via.com.tw, VooDoo from www.overclockers.com.au and a couple of German guys from a tech site over there. (I was to pissed to remember at this stage.) Its Mr. Tweak behind the camera and I promised I wouldn’t mention him being tied up and whipped by some ladies in a bar. While an extreme amount of alcohol was consumed it was for the greater good of mankind and the improving of public relations between manufacturers, online media and the opposite sex.
I guess if someone has to do it then I will have to volunteer..
Sounds like a difficult assignment.. I think next year I will definitely have to undergo it myself. :)
Thanks again to Computer Alliance and Achieva Technology for sponsoring OCAU and VooDoo's attendance at this event.
Well, I didn't have to get over to Rochedale to return my 75GXP after all.. Kris from OCForce grabbed me on ICQ and let me know about these IBM Disk Utilities. If your IBM drive is making bad noises, might be an idea to run it through that and see how it fares. If something IS wrong, you DO have to wipe all your data to fix it.. but small price to pay I 'spose. It also has a drive "exerciser", which pretty much thrashes your drive for a half hour or so. Made the 75GXP pretty warm, and it was sitting on top of the case next to an open window. There are also tools there to enable SMART monitoring and other drive-related stuff. In short, a great resource for IBM hard drive owners.
I had a look at that SpeedFan program Agg posted yesterday, and it seems to be pretty nifty to me. It dosn't work on my A7V133 tho, so I emailed off the coder to let him know.. Anyway, had a bit of a chat with him and he said he'd really appreciate it if more people could send him in reports. Not that hard to do, once you've downloaded the program you just type in what sort of motherboard you have and click send report. Hopefully it'll lead to SpeedFan being a really useful bit of gear in the Overclockers Toolbox.. so get to it!
Jai from Insane Hardware wrote in to say that he's seen the Tyan Thunder K7 Dual AMD boards (like we reviewed here) in Aus for around $1,800.. which seems a bit out of everyones price range. Other rumors I've heard have said more around the $1,300 mark. Still a bit high, but remember - these boards are not intended for the consumer market.
Whilst the Telstra fiasco continues, One.Net customers are also getting thrown out to dry.. and have the crows pick at their bones. According to this SMH article OzEmail are going to collect One.Net's user database.. buut, according to this News Ltd one Dingo Blue are going to get em. To add to the confusion, IPrimus seem to be making a grab as well.. thanks to Narkov for some of the links.
Anandtech has a pretty timely guide up to building a High-End system.. or maybe untimely? Quite a few interesting technologies popped up at Computex, and they will no doubt become more mainstream in the months to come. Incidently, VooDoo is ~finally~ back from Taipie, and I've had a look at some of the photos he took - pretty interesting stuff!
Planet Hardware has a pretty usefull guide to backing up your system data, formatting and re-installing. Something I've been doing alot of the past week with the buggered hard drives. If you've got the hard drive space, keeping a known-stable ghost image of your OS and apps ready to go is a pretty handy move as well.. wish I knew about ghost last week.
The guys over at CPU review have apparently been pretty busy of late.. they've been working on v0.89 (Alpha) of their Memory benchmarking software - MemTach. Looks to be pretty useful, maybe as an alternative to SiSoft's Sandra?
It's been a while since we've seen some really extreme cooling as a part of overclocking attempts. Sure, there are always the crazy Japaneese with their raw-but-effective NO2 on CPU method, but the guys over at XOverclocker have been busy making a compressor based super cooling system. Sort of like the Kyrotech/Vapochill systems, except home-made and alot cheaper. Good to see.
It seems the next update to the Half-Life engine, v1.1.0.7 is going to bring voice-communication technology to the game, similar to roger-wilco. This comes right out of the blue for me, and it definitely seems a big plus. It's pretty hard typing commands to your teammates when you're bailed up fighting off a bunch of enemies.. but yelling at them is always effective. Yelling instructions at your teammates has pretty much been restricted to LANs, but this'll mean you can weird out your housemates and do it from home. Thanks to XG8 for the link. Also on HL-type news, DF showed me this screenshot from a game he had on cs_militia today.. how the heck did they manage that?
It seems Dan has forgotten about us again, but not to worry, Andrew has sent in the link to his latest review for us instead - he's found some more LED Torches, except these ones are smaller and more torch-looking than the previous lot. Looks pretty cool to me, Dan always gets the cool toys.
Hmm, PCExtremes are running a comp to give away a set of Altec Lansing ATP5 speakers.. buuuut it's one of those post-in-our-forum contests. Which I, and a large number of you, detest. But it's free. So meh.
Reviews:
ABIT VP6 on Tech-Report.
Swiftech MC462 borg socket-a cooler on The Tech Zone.
AMD Duron 900MHz review on ClubOC.
64Mb Hercules Prophet II MX video card on Guru3D.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 11-June-2001 12:52:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I've managed to hook up some cheap hosting for a second OCAU server box - low-bandwidth only, so it'll do behind-the-scenes stuff rather than hosting much actual content. It'll make administration of the DNS and a few other things a lot easier and during heavy load it will help with image serving etc. I'll be using the bits donated to the CS server to make this second server. Anyway, the problem is that it has to be a 19" rackmount box and I'm having trouble finding a cheap case to stick the server in. Anyone got an old ATX-capable rackmount case they're wanting to get rid of cheaply? Drop me a note if you do, thanks..
ExtremeOC have an article on something we were chatting about in IRC a couple of nights ago, mod_gzip. This is a module for the Apache webserver software (that we use) that lets it send compressed data to browsers that will accept it (and most do, these days). This means, at the cost of higher CPU utilization, that your webserver uses less bandwidth and people receive pages faster. Definitely something I'll be looking into on our server(s) as our bandwidth usage continues to rise - we've got CPU power to burn most of the time.
The PCDB has been powering away, 20 entries in the last 2 days - wouldn't mind seeing some more pics of Downer's watercooled system, Astro1 has a nicely tricked-out gold box and noX-ripperUTZ uses ducting to assist the dreaded Titan Majesty Twin cooler. :)
OC.NZ have some pics of some new ThermalTake products including the Dragon Orb..
Radeonic have a guide to buying a case for your goodies to live in. Never thought I'd see the day when a miditower case could be the most expensive part of your system but it's not that uncommon these days. People are recognising that a good case makes life easier if you're the type to be ripping the side panels off all the time and delving within. I don't even know where the side panel for my main machine is at the moment..
This is old news now, but AMDWorld have an article on AXIA Athlons and why they're good.
Your weekly dose of the bizarre on ZZZ Online..
Reviews:
Non-Conductive Shim on ExtremeOC.
Tornado 3000 case from Cole3D.
Senfu Thermal Probe with LCD from Ripnet.
Thermalright SK6 on BlargOC.
Epox 8K7A socketA DDR mobo on JSI.
Swiftech MC462 socket cooler on Inside-HW.
Asus V7100 All-In-Deluxe video card on HardAvenue.
Nearly picked up a new server for OCAU in a bidding frenzy on eBay today.. I tell ya, those online auctions can be pretty addictive.
Wow, a link to the Microsoft KnowledgeBase that isn't a joke. :) Matex sent this one which is a general Win2K USB Troubleshooting guide, looks interesting.
Devil says: Check this out: SpeedFan. It's joy. On my ASUS P3V4X it can control the fan speed on 2 of the motherboard fan headers. I hooked all the fans up to the motherboard, 2 case fans on one header and cpu& video on the other. When its idling (web surfing ,word etc) my box is almost completely silent! Give it something to do, and the fans fire up. You can set the min and max fan speed as well as the desired temp. Finally an answer to the "how do I make my pc quiet?" question. Hmm, automatic fan control - I'm surprised MBM doesn't do this.
OCWB have their Computex Day 2 Coverage posted.. I was going to make a smartass remark about VooDoo missing his plane but it's just too easy. :)
Having trouble with CS? Eddie says: There are a few WON bugs going around:- 1) "WON authorization failed / out of date" = Fix here. (mainly for retail CS but people say works on CS mod version)
- 2)Game hangs while authing = Fix here.
- 3)"Invalid Authentication Information" = Fix - Reinstall COunter-Strike
Motorsport fans might enjoy this calendar which has the 2001 schedule for all kinds of championships..
Hagar is over in Bangkok at the moment and spent some time at Pantip Plaza. Definitely worth checking out if you're in BKK, I was there for 5 weeks in 1998 with work and went to Pantip a few times. Anyway, some pricing info from Hagar:
Leadtek Geforce 3 (TV out) for $747
Infineon PC133 Ram - 256 Mb for $87
Celeron 633, Iwill slotket, fan for $118
Sparkle GF2MX for $127
T'bird 1.33 Ghz for $320
ASUS A7M266 for $300 (touch dear maybe tho' not familiar with Aus price)
Epox 8KT7 (DDR Ram) for $285
256 mb Nanya DDR ram for $115 (not 100% on this)
Definitely saw Office XP on the pirate shelves (with a key code supplied), so Microsoft's denial that it's not crackable sounds a bit exagerated.
If you enjoyed that "Lots of Robots" animation I linked to on Saturday night, check out two more from the same guy: Rocket Pants and Gone Bad. Both maybe a little disturbing but just amazing image quality. Big downloads tho.
Reviews:
PowerColor GTS 2 video card on ModdingZone.
Cooler Master EP5-6I11 & DP5-5G11B socket coolers on 8balls.
The Q USB hard drive on ClubOC.
Chainbolt spotted these in Japan - they've been on sale for a couple of weeks now for about USD$400..
 
 
Pretty quiet today.. not much news to report on. My 20g 75GXP hard drive decided that it'd work better if the heads crashed into the platters, but that obviously wasn't the case. I luckily managed to grab all my data off there, despite The Evil Noises, and I got a 40g to replace it.. just gotta get it out to Rochedale for warranty now. Oh well.. now that I've got hard drive space I can have fun with my netstats :)
Had a chat to VooDoo today on IRC.. he's still in Taipei because he missed his flight home.. has/had to spend 23hrs at the airport waiting for the next plane. Apparently the net cafe where he's Doing Time (not the first time I'd imagine hehe) has 21" TFT screens and superfast P3's.. damn.
WildAndyC have reviewed a Taisol CGK760092 cooler with a copper insert. It's another one of those killer-heatsinks-with-a-crap-fan jobs, which a delta monster soon takes care of. Not sure what he's trying to say with the URL for the review tho.. hmm.
In other hs/f reviews, AMDmb have had a look at the Thermalright SK-6.. an all copper job with a decidely better name. It also comes with a delta already strapped onto it.. it performs pretty decently as well. Shame you don't seem to be able obtain either in au easily.
More news on the Telstra broadband AUP front.. Reaper sent in an email from Telstra explaining that subscribers will have 14 days after the "Usage Meter" is introduced to cancel their account.. 'spoze it gives them more time to leech, as a large number of them are now doing. In case you where unaware, you are able to terminate your contract without penalty up until that yet-to-be-determined-date. Does not really help with the installation fee you've already paid tho. Also, it appears this "Usage Meter" is just going to be a data counter, so not that cutting edge.. can already get fancy programs like DUmeter that do the same thing pretty well. Final thing to note - it'll probably be counted as 1Gb = 1000Mb, when 1Gb really = 1024Mb.. so you miss out on a whole 72Mb, that's 2.5% of 3Gb!
It seems Telstra is not content to screw their users over with a oppressive AUP.. they now want spread the troj_hybris.m virus amongst their subscribers. leperMessiah wrote in to say that he copped that virus as a part of EDLIFNED.EXE attatched to the 2nd Telstra email, talked about above. Mmm.. fun time to be a BigPond Advance subscriber. Manaz also pointed out that it's not a Bandwidth cap, but a Data cap.. for those that don't know the difference, Telstra already have a Bandwidth limit (haha) which is the 256/64 or 512/128 speed you chose between.
isometrix pointed out this fairly sweet looking desktop-image page on IRC - desktopimage.com. Some nice images there if you're looking for a computer-art type background.
It appears Intel have developed the world's smallest transistor to date, and Electic have the article. Bit of predict-the-future talk about 20GHz in there as well. They also have the latest build of IE6 beta, 2488 available for download.
OCWorkbech has a huge smattering of Computex-type news over their news page.. might want to go over and have a look if you're not a regular to their page. Looking at all those µATX nForce boards makes me want a little bookpc-sized box even more.
It seems the US Army are keeping with fashion.. they've got a new APC that, well, not really an APC. Heh.
All that news about a new company formed by ex-3dfx employees getting together and forming a company called 3DPower and releasing a chipset heavily based on the now-defunct 3dfx "Rampage" engine is false. It did seem a bit suspect, quite a few legal issues in that.. They are still making nVidia based boards tho, just not the "Rampage" ones.
Steve from Hypothermia is getting ready to build a full blue-PCB based PC.. heh, looks pretty cool, if not top of the range gear.
Finally today, a reminder for everyone out there with spare CPU cycles. The Overclockers Australia folding@home team needs YOU! (to run folding @ home for them). If you don't already know, it's another distributed computing effort - except it's not to find aliens, it's to help cure cancer and other diseases. Pretty worthy cause. Anyway, the team stats are here, and to join you just put (Overclockers Australia) after your name when you're installing.
Just on distributed computing, there has been rumors of Seti@HOME being a conspiracy theory of the US government to process echelon data. Heh.
Reviews:
YATDR (Yet Another Thermaltake DDR Review) on Rizenet.
Labtec LCS-2514 5 speaker set on G3D.
The PCDB creeps past #1600.. I think Samson's golden orb-cooled Mac was the magic number. Rex, Sabien and thenemesis all have some pretty cool boxes. Interesting paintwork on MaGR's minitower and BinaryZero has a cool wooden case kinda reminiscent of MWP's. Not sure what to make of the bottom picture + caption in PingGU's entry, tho. :)
Digit-Life have posted their May 2001 storage digest and 3D digest.
Seen this before but it's cool - sodaplay - click on "Soda Constructor" if you've got a lot of spare time.
OCMods have a guide to installing an LCD display, controlled via your parallel port.
Check out this amazing animation called "Lots of Robots".. probably too huge for dialup peeps :( but quite spectacular. You'll need Quicktime..
The CEO of Telstra notes that We have got a really high-quality underutilised HFC (hybrid fibre coaxial) network that is clearly going to participate in the delivery of digital television, but offers us all sorts of other high band with opportunities for cable modems. leperMessiah wonders (in slightly more colourful language) why Telstra have limited their broadband customers to 3GB/month, if it's underutilised..
Here's a list of 10 reasons to upgrade..
More info on the latest Dets, from Steven: I just downloaded and installed the latest DD from nvidia's website. After putting them on games such as Midtown Madness and NFS went stupid and objects like wheels were missing from cars.. most textures in the games were missing too. And for some unknown reason.. CoolBits is gone, And I can't get it back. The box in NvMax says it's there... but it's not... grrr. .. and from Ray: This is the first paragraph from the 12.41 driver download page. I just cut and pasted it. No mention of TNT at all. "TNT2, Vanta, GeForce256, GeForce2*, GeForce3, Quadro, and Quadro2 family of graphic processors are supported through NVIDIA's Industry Standard Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)." The plot thickens.
Reviews:
Antec SX480 midtower case on ExtremeOC.
Power Cooler high-speed fan on ClubOC.
Nanya 256mb PC2100/CL2 DDR memory on ClubOC.
Elsa Gladiac GF2 GTS Pro video card on Hardware-One.
Saturday Morning
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Saturday, 9-June-2001 09:30:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Alchemy's PC has died so he's unable to do news for a little while.. you'll just have to put up with me. :)
I watched the end of ID4 again last night, to see if it was as bad/annoying as I remember - it was. Apparently "Swordfish", the new John Travolta film, has some glaring technical errors too.
Here's a really well-done watercooling project, lots of pics of the construction process etc. This guy went all the way including carving big holes in his case for tubing etc and pulled it off nicely, thanks Timbo. While on that site I noticed another project, slapping a Golden Orb on the North Bridge.. again, nicely done.
Similarly, a good use for those old celly coolers is on your north bridge. Or, use one on your video card.. same with your old P3 cooler too.
Andrew points out a nice little tape drive.. with 1.5TB capacity.
From David: I don't know if you are interested in the Dremel / multi-tool things, but reading your review I thought I would point out that you can get most of the accessories for $2 each at the jewellrey supply store in Sydney (there is one in Brisbane too and they do mail order) ... the store is called Fordells .. seriously instead of $15-$20 or even $40 for tungsten carbide you can pay $2 for steel bits and maybe $8 at most for other bits ... they have everything you can possibly imagine, for polishing, grinding, even making a smooth surface or a matt finish ...
Imagine getting thrown out of a pub by a grandmother! Not the coolest way to end your evening, thanks Wokket.
CPUReview say that DDR is 41% faster than PC133 for certain things..
Lauhead noticed this page explaining the Sunon fan product numbers.
Hmm, just noticed I have a sore throat and I'm sneezing.. gah, better not be getting a cold.
Reviews:
Asus V8200 Deluxe GF3-based video card on HWMania.
Icemat mousepad on AcidHW.
MT-PRO1100 Supremo Plus case on Radeonic.
Compubuzz P-5500 & P-5600 socket coolers on ClubOC.
Canon C755 printer/scanner/fax on TheTechZone.
Kensington Expert Mouse Pro on HWDaily.
Rheobus fan controller on IANAG.
LED flashlights (more!) on DansData.
Computer Bits Auction
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Saturday, 9-June-2001 09:15:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Dash has info on a computer auction happening online today:
There are 7500 items to be sold, all with no reserve and starting at $1. Heaps of USB burners, internal ones, SCSI cd drive, scanners, digital cameras, blank CDs, MP3 players, computers, computer hardware, Macintosh systems and loads of other stuff.
Details here.
Bidding starts pretty much immediately, I'm keeping my eye on a few things..
GideonTech have an article on building a LAN box, for lugging around to LAN parties.. in my experience you need a fast cpu/videocard for gaming, a nice small case for carrying.. and lots of free disk space. :)
Dan's been flashing again.. whoah, bad mental image. He's been playing with some flash memory gadgets, I mean.
Seems Australia may be getting another huge outback radiotelescope, thanks KyocEr@~*.
BitTech have a guide to making blowholes using a holesaw. Pretty basic stuff.. contains helpful advice such as Check and see if its all square if not then chuck your case away and buy a new one.
Netscape is moving away from the browser business and focussing on their "portal" side of things. I dunno - monopolies are bad, but it is a MAJOR pain trying to make a website of any complexity work in Netscape. Maybe it's just that my HTML kung-fu is not strong enough.. anyway, mixed feelings about this one, thanks Dicey.
Bit of a further rant/discussion about the Telstra 3GB limit over on CFGN, thanks Tigger.
Icrontic have a pretty good article about making cheapo ducting. They say a coupla strange things in there, but lots of pics and some good ideas. They also checked out the new dets I mentioned earlier this morning.
Andrew says you should all rush over to houseofhelp and win an ATI Radeon.. well, one of you. Maybe.
Reviews:
MidiLand FP21 flat-panel speakers on MikhaiLTech.
Abit TH7 P4 (RAMBUS) motherboard on TheTechZone.
Visiontek GF3 on VYW.
Linksys BEFSR41 cable/DSL router on BlargOC.
Zalman CNPS cooler on OCOnline.
Early Friday Morning
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Friday, 8-June-2001 00:28:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Lots of people sent word that on nvidia.com there's a new official Detonator - 12.41. Baloor offers more info: They have canned the TNT support. Whether it is an error or what I am unsure. The readme states support for the TNT. The inf file tells a different story. Most TNT users who do there own inf editing are greeted with the good old BSOD on bootup. Strangely, the earlier released leaked 1241 whql did have TNT support. Hmm, can anyone else shed some light on this?
Sniper770 pointed out this page'o'pics that sum up how a lot of people are feeling about the Telstra 3GB limit thing. Some strong language in there, so kiddies beware. On a more serious note, seems that the politicians don't like it either. Reaper notes from another Telstra email that you can voice your non-acceptance of the changes to the AUP by emailing aupquery@bigpond.net.au. I WOULDN'T just go mindlessly flaming that mailbox - present yourself and your case sensibly and you're more likely to be listened to.
From The Jaymon: Just been to Compaq's roadshow which was fairly unexciting. Old stuff with faster chips and different colored cases. The only thing of interest was the prototype of an innovation Compaq is calling "Dual Worlds" which is basically a laptop with a large TFT screen. The difference with this unit is the laptop's keyboard is a docking unit which, when removed, operates via a wireless connection. The base unit of the laptop is hinged, so that when the keyboard is removed, the case can be folded upwards at a 90 degree angle forming a stand for the screen so that it looks more like a desktop TFT screen. Unfortunately there is no information on Compaq's site as this technology is still under testing, but the rest of the items on display can be found here.
From Morjo: You will have until June 18th to remove your files from your i-drive. After June 18th, you will no longer be able to access your i-drive account or retrieve your files. Login now at http://www.idrive.com.
Bill @ CPUReview is still moving to linux and finding life is quite bearable without MS software.
Yet another SocketA roundup, this time on OverclockersUK.. thanks Richard.
Wokket says that the Electronic Frontiers Foundation is suing a coalition of the RIAA, SDMI, and Verance because they are preventing scientists from publishing academic work involving recording encryption..
Reviews:
Epox 8K7A SocketA mobo on ChillBlast.
Gigabyte GA-7ZXR (Rev. 2.2) SocketA KT133A mobo on AnandTech.
ATI USB Wonder on NeoSeeker.
Maximus socket cooler on ClubOC.
Sony Cybershot DSC-S70 digital camera on EXHW.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 7-June-2001 16:02:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AMD's CEO expects higher profits this year. Hmm, with SMP and mobile products being announced this year that's not too surprising..
Speaking of which, they announced their 1.4GHz Athlon part yesterday. This is most likely the last Thunderbird-cored Athlon - the next desktop chips will be Palomino-based. This follows hot on the heels of their AthlonMP - the first Palomino-cored chips - for SMP use in workstations and servers. We gave you the world's first decent look at a dual AthlonMP system right here on OCAU.
Max3D updated their SocketA Cooler Roundup.
Online banking, online weddings, cybersex.. no need to leave your PC at all these days. The Pope says there's at least one thing you can't do online though, if you're inclined to do it at all. He's such a spoilsport.
James's experience with the 1005 A7V133 BIOS wasn't entirely rosy: Tried the new BIOS after the post on OCAU, and have found what appears to be a major problem with it - so I am just letting you know so you can pass it on. Under Windows 2000, the standby support appears to be broken. The machine will go to standby happily, but just boots through a normal power-up again when woken up again. Dropping back to version 1004 of the BIOS solves the issues.
Coldfusion says: You can get cheap neons from Clints Crazy Bargains - those discount shops all over Australia. In the Auto section they have them for $19.95AUD or $24.95AUD. It comes with 1M long cable. So I cut it and converted. This save you a lot of money from those Expensive Neon light on the web..
At Computex, the balloon conflict has escalated into a full-scale war apparently - Intel even calling the police at one point to get VIA balloons removed?! Bizarre.
Sacrifice spotted this info on the NVIDIA nForce chipsets on Achieva's site.
If you speak German or can wield a fish you might be able to win stuff on Tech1.
Digit-Life have their May 2001 Hardware Roundup posted.
Reviews:
The Claw gaming controller on 3DGamingDaily.
Duron 950 socketA processor on Hexus.
AL-711 aluminium case on OCopolis.
Athlon 1.4GHz and Duron 950MHz on AMDMB.
Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse on 8balls.
Arctic Silver Epoxy on SpodesAbode.
Lian-Li PC-2 Aluminium case on OCPrices.
Vantec 6254-OD socket cooler on OCCafe.
Case Handles on RizeNet.
RumbleFX headphones on G3D.
Soldam Supremo case on AwareMag.
Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM on IANAG.
Hot off the rumour-mill presses is 3DPower. This is a new company, apparently started by the ex-CTO of 3DFX and he's managed to round up something like 90% of the old 3DFX staff to work with him.
Just looking around the site it seems they are selling cards based on NVIDIA chipsets but apparently they have something big coming involving a different/new chipset on Monday. I don't have a lot of info on it yet but apparently it's a black PCB with gold connectors/fittings etc and is shipped in a sexy wooden box thing. Anyway, have a look around the site - something to keep an eye on for the future. :)
My old MX300 Aureal Vortex2 sound card died last week. I was pretty annoyed with that and I still beleive they're better than the SBLives. Anyway, went and bought a new card today (SBLive), got it home, and it's defective. Hrm. Why do I get the feeling someone dosn't like me listening to MP3's?
The Computex coverage seems to be a bit dry at the moment. Bit odd.. only thing I can find is Via Hardware's coverage of the first day. Oh, and InsaneHardware's coverage of the female promotional staff. Big show this year.. nForce, 760MP, P4X266, i845, Northwood/Brookdale and most important of all, the Via balloons.
I was pretty curious as to who this mysterious "Accelenation" site was with the 760MP review last night.. turns out it's FullOn3D with a new name. Sounds pretty good. Anyway, they've got one of many reviews of the 1.4GHz Athlon CPU. It's still the Thunderbird core, so it's basically a case of same-core-different-clock. No suprises there.. anyway, reviews on Accelenation, Tech Report, CPUreview and Hexus. Finally, not to be left out Overclocking.DK reviewed a Duron 950MHz.
AMDmb has a bit of info up regarding some upcomming 760MP boards.. MSI has the K7D Master-LR in the pipes, Asus the A7M266-D and Gigabyte the GA-7DPXDW. Most notable to myself is the ABIT board, the WA-2A. Another BP6 maybe? Durons are definitely DP-capable, in fact AMD is said to have plans to have SMP Durons as a low-cost SMP alternative to Athlons. I really can't see ABIT producing a server-class motherboard, so it'll be interesting to see what comes of this. Also of note is the Tyan Tiger K7 motherboard - a Tyan 760MP board for the rest of us maybe?
Umm, I don't know what they've put in the water in Melbourne.. OCMelbourne have a guide to cleaning your ball mouse. Mmm. My MS Explorer mouse is buggered, and I rang up Harvey Norman about a warranty claim.. the "service assistant" asked if i'd cleaned it. I said no. He tersley suggested that all mice need cleaning.. So umm, yep. I got someone else on the phone at that point. Nice work mate.
It seems Netscape has finally given the game up, admitting to electic that they are no longer playing for the web browser crown. Ahr well. 3dfx, Aureal, Netscape.. almost everything that was top quality in 1996 seems to of gone belly up now. Sad thing is, they where actually good in their day.. and in retrospect still are. It's all bad management from the looks of things, which is a bit of a shame.
There definitely seems to be a bit of a bright-blue LED fetish among case modders at the moment.. If you don't seem to be able to restrain yourself to turning all the LED's on your tricked-out computer blue, how about the ones in your nokia phone? Only for the obsessed tho, as it's not an easy task. Thanks to TheDriver for the link.
Tigger pointed this out. Intel have shares in AMD. I am pretty damn suprised about that.
Alot of Telstra BPA Freedom users don't seem to be too happy with the 3Gb limit.. and I agree with them. You can do that amount of data in roughly 14hrs.. dosn't seem to be in line with the sort of bandwidth they are offering. Blue Draco pointed out this petition for BPAF users to sign if they don't agree.. it's apparently more effective than the other one we posted. If I was in your situation, I'd sign both. UPDATE: You can actually sign three, Sacrifice has made another one.
Not really overclocking (like half the stuff tonight) but nevertheless.. an NEC scientist in America has broken the speed of light.. which changes a whole heap of things in regard to the theory of relativity, and stuff. And you thought NEC just made televisions, HAH! Cheers to Wokket for the link.
Agg pointed out this wired article covering a survey that showed 25% of computer systems have been the victim of some sort of physical abuse. I don't find it at all suprising.. I've come close to kicking the crap out of this sound card..
Finally tonight, another one from Wokket - Bubblewrap Clothing. I thought this was fairly amusing in Dude! Wheres my Car?, but I didn't think there would be anything more to it than nerds in serch of some oracle thingy. Amusing tho.
Wednesday Morn - Bored in Germany
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Wednesday, 6-June-2001 18:57:44 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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It has been a long time since I've posted!
After much delay, 3G debuts in Japan. Courtesy of NTT DoCoMo.
For those who are paranoid beyond reason, a new bunch of mobiles have been released. The difference? The ability to make encrypted calls... provided that the other guy has the same mobile.
Microsoft are being sued by AT&T. Something about compression of voices, seems very strange to me, and so someone tell me what they are talking about, maybe wav files.
Sick of the usual compilation CDs that the record companies bring out? Well now you can burn your own compilations, legally that is.
Telstra has had a great day at court it seems, winning cases against a typosquatter for telsra.com and against the hacker group 2600 for their reverse lookup service.
Following the signing by the Aussie and Russian government, it seems there are more initiatives, besides building a launch facility on Christmas Island, for Australia to become a major space player.
Received a great quote today from EYC:
"Oh Bother!" said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
Chus!
3-Way AMD-760 Motherboard Shootout!
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Wednesday, 6-June-2001 13:53:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Chainbolt, our man in Japan, has completed a 3-way shootout of SocketA DDR motherboards based on AMD's 760 chipset. He compares the veteran Asus A7M266 to the newer Epox EP-8K7A and Gigabyte GA-7DXR. The performance and overclocking ability on all three of these boards is pretty amazing, but who'll come out on top overall?
Click here for the comparo!
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 6-June-2001 13:47:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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InsaneHardware, one of our hosted sites, has put up a buncha pics from Computex2001 in Taiwan. I'm still looking for the one that doesn't have an Intel logo in it somewhere - talk about guerilla marketing, this is more like carpet-bomb-marketing. Still, with SMP Athlon articles popping up all over the web today I guess they're in a bit of a panic. Speaking of which, I'm beginning to suspect our roving reporter is slumped in a gutter outside a bar somewhere in Taipei..
AusPCMarket have some computex pics too, focussing on cooling gear, thanks Denis.
DrR0M mentioned these two images ( here and here - ~120kb each) in IRC. They're of the Lotus Elise which is a nice enough car but hardly breaking news - however what fascinated me about those images is that they're not photographs, they're rendered. Wow.
OCMelbourne, another aussie site, have a guide to Editing the Win2K Bootmenu..
DansData, yet another aussie site, have added 3 more coolers to their roundup.
Andrew sent in this fanless case - more interesting than it sounds. It uses a vapour phase-change system, piping gaseous refrigerant around through thin tubing, and using the side of the case as a heat exchanger.. hmm.
AMD SMP is here, on shelves, down under - according to this article, thanks Scott. Unafraid to stick it to arch rival Intel, Robinson joked; "We will not only kick their backside, but we will inflict more pain by kicking them where it hurts the most - in the front-side bus". Oh dear, geek humour. :)
Reviews:
Epox 8K7A+ socketA DDR mobo on Hexus.
Vantec FCE 62540D on Icrontic.
Visiontek GF3 (and screenshot frenzy) on RizeNet.
With Computex, 760MP, nForce and numerous other cutting edge releases the news box is pretty damn full tonight. No time for talk, here it is.
AMD 760MP (Dual CPU) Reviews..
Well, AMD 760MP has finally been _oficially_ released to the public, and there are a swag of reviews. There is still our short review from a few days ago, and now there are a decent number of in-depth reviews, check 'em out
Computex-Specefic News..
Anandtech has Day Two Coverage up already.. the Via balloon saga continues. Now they are getting people to hang onto them. Hmm.. need a lawn chair (hehe). In actual industry news however they have info on the Via P4X266 P4 DDR/SDR chipset, the Intel i845 DDR/SDR chipset and even more nForce news.
Computex-Related News..
Factory Tours are pretty common for the journalistic attendees of Computex, and ViaHardware is no exception to this.. they've been on a tour of the MSI factory in China. Interesting to see just how much of the process is done by hand.. labour is cheap in China.
Electic have taken a closer look at the nForce chipset, and how it's similar to the X-Box chipset. Basically, it's just an "MX" version of the X-Box chipset.. but because the X-Box is so advanced that dosn't matter. Can't wait for the X-Box version of Linux ;)
Other News..
Manaz has pointed out that the specs listed for the 80mm fans on QuietPC.com are better than those for Panaflo fans, up until now thought to be the quietest decent-performing fans you could get. I can understand why QuietPC's are getting quite popular as well.. I've moved from several hi-speed 80mm fans to no case fans (!!!!), and I intend on swapping the remaining fans over for quieter ones asap. It does mean I get less of an overclock out of my system, but I can think clearer. CPU cycles or brain cycles. Hmm.
Marc has pointed out a new version of the Via 4in1 drivers - v4.32. It's hosted on Tsing Hua Uni page, a Taiwanese uni.. so umm.. big grain of salt. And remember.. stuff like this can easily turn your beasty computer into a beasty doorstop. Don't say I didn't warn you. Icrontic has the same thing but in English.
Overclocked Cafe has aknowledged that there is a little more to people's choice of computer platform than performance. Like, ooooh, relegion maybe? Not that protestants prefer Intel, but that AMD (and Intel) might be more than just CPU comapnies, they might be great Holy Lords?
For those of you who didn't get the lawn chair joke, Bob sent this in.. I think I've seen it before, but *meh*. Crazy 33yo American Truck Driver straps lots of balloons to a lawn chair and gets up to 4,800m.
There is a new version of WinAmp out.. v2.76. Strangely enough, winamp.com dosn't have it, but electic does. Hmm.. mostly just bug fixes, no new killer features.
FunkNutz and Micheal sent in this fairly mainstream-media article about online gaming. It apparently causes crime now. Yes. I admit it. I have DOUBLE PARKED! at ANZ Stadium whilst attending QGL. SHOOT ME NOW!
GideonTech have updated their CaseMods gallery.. but I still don't reckon it's a scratch on the PCDB.
OCMod has a quick guide to modding your Senfu Radiator for better performance.
Cheers to KnightRider, who pointed out this fairly hefty list of hotfixes for MS Win2K that have been released since SP2. Almost time for SP3 it seems, and I just put SP2 on tonight. Sigh.
Reviews:
Thermaltake Memory Cooling Kit on Neoseeker.
Ideal Elithermal Cooler on Cool Hardwarez.
Telstra 3GB Cap for "Freedom" ADSL/Cable
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Tuesday, 5-June-2001 19:28:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A zillion people sent this in. Telstra sent out an email to its customers saying:
In response to member feedback about the Acceptable Use Policy and
the need for further clarity on what is considered acceptable usage,
Telstra BigPond has now addressed this issue.
From 5 July 2001, the Freedom Plan for cable and ADSL customers will
have a defined allowance of three (3) gigabytes (GB) usage a month.
This change only relates to Freedom Plan customers, not to customers
on volume based plans.
More info here on Whirlpool. There's a petition here which you can sign if you feel strongly about it.
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 5-June-2001 12:41:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Well, the initial spike from slashdot has passed and the server is still alive. We're still getting a lot of traffic from around the world but the server is coping fine.
With Computex being on at the moment, expect big rushes of info as new products are launched there and websites all around the world receive the details from their roving reporters. The first example of this is NVIDIA's nForce. This is a socketA motherboard chipset with a GeForce2 video processor built in! That's not the only cool feature by a longshot - check out these preview articles for details:AllTechBox have a guide to building a UPS.. mmm, mains power.
Ben sends word of smoothwall, a free linux-based firewall that runs on a 386 with 8mb ram. I know, there are lots of other products out there, please don't send me a huge list of them. :) This site is interesting because it has a quick article on the problem of meta tag squatting which is another tricky legal internet phenomenon. Smoothwall is almost worth using just for the cool polar bear graphic. :)
Another thing on Slashdot today is this making PC's quieter thread. Alchemy pointed out an unusual but effective technique for muffling the noise..
Some stupid stuff with fans on Icrontic.
From Andreas: This is very loosly technology related but i bought a new cover for my phone (nokia 3310) today. It was a chrome looking one with splashes of silver paint on it. Anyway when i put it on, my reception dropped to 1 bar then no reception!! Got home a checked it with a multimeter and it's bloddy electrically conductive. So i just thought i warn people with internal antenas not to buy phone cases that look metalic....cause they are
AOpen have made a DVD+RW drive. Rewriteable 4.7GB optical media!
Another bizarre heatsink on HardOCP, thanks Stewart.
PCCritic have a bit of a win2k rant happening.
From Xixys: Thought this may be of interest - 16Mb cache on the drive! I have purchased three of these to run on a 2xPIII 1Ghz server via a Adaptec 2100S Raid controller. Unfortunately I haven't had time to run a benchmark. However, I had one on it's own in my own box (1ghzTbird @ 1.333) via an adaptec U2W, @ LVD, and imaged my system drive accross from a 9Gb WD 10k SCSI LVD and it ran an average of around 500mb a minute. Then when it was time to put the 36gb in the server, I ghosted back from the 36 to the 9gb and averaged nearly 900mb a minute!!! It transfered nearly 6gb in well under 10 minutes and thats at U2WLVD or 80mb/s wonder how fast it would gon a U160?!?! oh and price per 36gb SCSI drive was just under $1100, bit pricey but very very fast :)
Reviews:
Nonconductive shims on RizeNet.
ViewQuest AmazingCam VQ680 PC Camera on ARP.
Adaptec SCSI RAID 3200s on NewsForge.
Swiftech 462A on OCOnline.
Cool Case EL keyboard mod kit on JSI.
Odin (the OCAU server)is copping quite a hiding at the moment. Anandtech was one of the first to link to the Dual Palomino Review (scroll down a bit in case you havn't heard already), and then HardOCP and finally slashdot have all linked to it.. so alot of clicks are comming our way. Agg has a little blurb below this about how it's coping in case your still curious. As it's still early morning over in the states, I expect site traffic to increase quite a bit as all the American's wake up and start browsing. That's not about to stop me doing the news however :)
Computex news..
Well, the first day at Computex is over and already there are a swag of articles from all the big names. VooDoo is there on our behalf, so expect some Computex coverage in the near future..
* HardOCP has some pics of an ABIT board based on the nVidia nForce "Crush" chipset, which if you don't already know about is shaping up to be quite decent.
* They also have a very positive article about the nForce platform up as well.
* Also ABIT on HardOCP are pics of a Brookdale-based socket-478 motherboard for the Intel Northwood processor. That's the next generation P4 based on a 0.13µm process. Notice how small the CPU+Socket is!
* Anandtech have an looked at AMD 760MP boards, nForce, i845 PC133 P4 boards and a bit more in their first peice of covergae.
* In their second article (already!) they have all the news on i845 - apparently it supports DDR RAM in it's native state, but due to agreements with RAMBUS they can only release it in PC133 forum until 2002. It's being hailed the next i440BX chipset, which is a pretty big call.
In non-Computex news..
In preparation for possibly the biggest watercooling roundup to date, procooling has written an article outlining how they intend to test and who the contendors are. 25 waterblocks and 7 radiators - That's going to take a while to test.
Futurelooks has managed to get their hands on a US version of the Gameboy Advance, and they've given it a fairly decent rundown. Not PC related I know, but you can't really take your PC with you on the bus. I wonder if you can overclock a GameBoy tho?
If you're still hankering for more Tyan action, Redback has found a spec sheet PDF and chucked it up on Geekthings.net. Bear in mind that geekthings is an OCAU hosted site, sharing the same server which is under a bit of load atm. So it might be a bit slow :)
Not everyone can get to Computex, but they can still preview the nForce chipset as Digit-Life has done. Dependant on price and performance it's going to be a very interesting board. Effectively, you're going to be able to replace a Duron/GF2MX/SBLive/NIC system that takes at least a mid-tower case with a tiny integrated system that'll fit in a BookPC case. It'll make going to LAN's alot more easier, and I predict it'll make PC gaming even more consumer orientated.
It appears Enermax are not limited to making decent quality PSU's, they also make removable HDD kits and HDD bays with thermal sensors in them. Mikhailtech has reiviewed an IDE removable HDD rack with an inbuilt fan.
Other Reviews..
Thermaltake PC2100 DDR RAM on IANAG.
CoolPC Neon & Window Kit on AcidHardware.
Thermaltake Memory Cooling Kit on PCStats.
Elsa Gladiac 920 GeForce3 on DangerousDog.
Realmagic Remote Control on 3DSpotlight, our review here.
We're being hammed by slashdot.org readers at the moment. I had Odin's apache settings set a little recklessly, it eventually spawned enough processes to completely run out of memory and basically died. :) It was down for an hour but has been rebooted and has some more conservative settings now. So it's a little slow, and the occasional image etc might not load, but overall it's coping pretty well with the load - every page sent is being fought over though, so please be patient. This server slowness will probably continue tomorrow, too.
Our server Odin is getting a real workout today. :)
In less happy news, Dean gave me the official word that ADSLusers and cableusers really are gone for good. A shame.
AnandTech have got their Day One Computex Coverage posted. One thing they mention is something I'd heard through the rumour mill back here - VIA apparently gave big cubic "VIA DDR" balloons to all the vendors featuring their chipsets to display at their stands. This sea of bobbing VIA balloons apparently upset Intel who have requested they be taken down - and some have been, to be replaced with Intel promo stuff. Hmm. Anyway, lots of pics etc in Anand's report - they have additional info on new P4 DDR chipsets here.
Daemon pointed out this software that digital camera users might find interesting, it cleans up some of the classic artifacts you see in (mostly) low-light digital images. It's free for now, too.
RipNet have a little info on a Linux video overclocking utility.
Silly article on Satirewire about Dell & Gateway, thanks Draffa.
Oh dear, TweakMax fried a tbird. I know that 8-second POST-of-death feeling..
More info on ATI's Truform on Radeonic.
TacoNuts updated their case gallery.. all the cool kids are in the PCDB o'course. :)
Morgan noticed these weird Compaq heatsink pics here and here on HardOCP. These have been around for a couple of years or so, we had them in PC's at work. That's either a DeskPro EP or EN.. it's been a while, can't remember which is which now. :)
Another Monday, another issue of ZZZ Online..
Reviews:
GlobalWin WBK38 socket cooler on ComputerChaos.
Adaptec 3400S SCSI RAID controller on Icrontic.
Soltek SL-75DRV-X KT266-based SocketA board on Overclocking.DK.
Titan TTC-D4T, Titan TTC-MS2AB and Neng Tyi KA06 Cu-Al socket coolers on FrostyTech.
Globalwin FNP50 socket cooler on Tech-Planet.
Blizzard water-cooling kit on IANAG.
Romtec Trios RX-910T6 IDE HDD selector (interesting) on CoolHardWarez.
Corsair PC2400 DDR SDRAM on OCPrices.
EyeScream Light on LittleWhiteDog. Good boy!
Fortron 400W PSU on RatedPC.
Scoop! World Exclusive! ..and all that stuff.
It's 2:30AM - I've had a busy day. :)
This isn't the screenshot you've seen already, this isn't some fuzzy press-release photo, this is me and my digicam and a cdrom full of benchmarking programs going to town on Tyan's Thunder DUAL socketA motherboard with 2x 1.2GHz Palomino processors onboard. I only had a couple of hours but I've got lots of photos, lots of benchies, lotsa info - check it out, you know you want to! :)
Click here for the full article!
Sleep.. sleeeeep..
I've just been reading Steve Gibson's DDoS article, and I must say it's a fairly interesting read. I've messed around with the type of trojans he talks about, mainly on an educational level. It's not really viable to "flood" people from Australian 56k modems. I know a few people that have participated in that sort of behaviour, and it's not as underground as he makes it out to be. It's just unknown. Anyway, go and have a read if you havn't already (I think it's been linked twice), but take it with a few large grains of salt. It's not as "underground" or as organised as he says.
QGL is over, and I didn't get to go. Boo hoo hoo. I know (for sure) that I missed out on some killer gaming, but I'll live. Someone I know also came home with a GeForce3.. what a bum. Anyway, expect more qgl info to flow over the next few days.
OCForce have got the first genuine Palomino/760MP benchies. Or so they say. ]-[ellfir, the OCF webmaster is a regular in the #overclockers IRC channel, so I don't really have much reason to doubt him. Just seems a bit inconclusive, thats all. They're impressive tho.
AwareMag have reviewed a DLink Gigabit NIC and switch. VooDoo (who's on his way to computex atm, the bum) took some gigabit gear to QGL to give it a test under some "real world" conditions. Sabretooth took a photo of the card in question, and it's a fairly hefty beast - runs so hot it needs heatsinks. As you can see from this screenshot, it was put through some fairly serious testing.
Overclocking Opolis claim to be the newest overclocking website on the scene, and I think they also take the cake for the biggest mailout list as well. They've reviewed the AXIA "Y" stepping CPU, and they have a Raedon cooling guide up as well. Interestingly enough, a new Athlon stepping is also out - AYHJA. Dosn't really have the same ring to it as AXIA. It's only in the 1.33GHz parts at the moment, but it's also rumored to be a fairly decent overclocker.
IANAG has taken a bit of a look at what's happening on the SMP front, both from Intel and AMD. SMP is going to be getting muuuch bigger next week as well. Why? Well - The release of the 760MP chipset in the form of the Tyan Thunder K7 board, as well as the release of the Palomino server cores to go with it. Can't wait to read about it.
Digit-Life has a fairly interesting article up about cooler testing strategies. We've seen quite a few methods for testing heatsinks lately, ranging from our use-it-normally method, to Dan's use-a-resistor-on-a-big-bit-of-metal method, with peltier methods and other refined motherboard methods everywhere in between. Whilst I don't really think the actual testing method matters so as it being repeatable. The actual temperatures don't matter as much as the temperature differences. Which is why there is no point comparing a review of heatsink a on site b with a review of heatsink c on site d.
CaseJunkiez has reviewed a Thermalright SK6, a fairly decent looking solid-copper cooler. It follows the strap-a-delta-fan-on-it methology which I'm starting to get fairly sick of (I've got a pair of Sunon 4,900rpm 80mm's irking me), but if you can put up with it the performance is definitely there.
Chillblast has reviewed the Silverado cooler from a mob in Germany. I havn't seen a review of one of these before.. it's got a "blowing device" on top of it that can only be described as a turbine "thing". They reckon it's quiet too, which makes a good change from the Delta madness. If you don't mind delta madness tho, see above.
If you have any files stored on MySpace now might be the time to get them off.. Xixys sends word that they are closing. Like, very very soon. In an hour or so I think. Heh. Better hurry.
Stasis pointed out this pic from QGL in #overclockers on IRC. Why is it on the news? Well, it's showing some of the computers from the PCDB in action. TuNeS' box to be precise. Fairly decent looking thing too.
OCcafe is giving stuff away. None of it looks overly superly stupendous, but then, it's free. Live with it.
Well, Microsoft has launched OfficeXP officially, and FutureLooks has the scoop. I say "oficially", because there have been leaked final copies on FTP's and the streets of numerous Asian cities for easily the past three months. Pretty poor form when it takes that long to get into boxes and onto shelves.
Reviews:
Skyhawk Aliminium Case on G3D. Our review of a similar model here.
CoolerGuys CoolShim V2 on ClubOC.
Gigabyte GA-8TX i850 P4 Motherboard on Anandtech.
Romtec Trios HDD Selector on ClubOC.
Thermaltake Cooling Roundup on Overclocker Cafe.
Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM on Inside-Hardware.
Senfu Therman Probe on 8balls Hardware.
Roving reporter Sabrtooth saw this at QGL and had to take a few pics:
  
Nice work. :)
Just been playing Armagetron. It's fairly cool. Graphics arnt exactly real-life, but thats not the point. It's fun. Anyway, playing it from home.. couldn't get to QGL which is a bit of a shame.. maybe next time. Maybe tommorrow if someone wants to give me a lift. HAH. Anyway.. here's the news.
GazG pointed out this heatsink lapping article - it's pretty good, and pretty usefull, and pretty similar to Agg's ancient guide to lapping PPGA celerons.
elvis pointed out this pretty cool arcade machine thing-o. A student found a discarded arcade machine frame sitting beside the road and "updated" it with a Linux/MAME combo, a 15" monitor and a pair of 8" subs. Looks to be pretty well done, good for parties :) Nice work.
If you're looking to build a divx box for your TV, or a pc-based MP3 player or something along those lines, maybe a hifi look alike case might be what you're after. They look pretty decent, but it's in German. Which means the cases are in Germany. If they had stock. Which they don't.
I found some pics n stuff of the upcomming Intel i860 mainboards for the Xeon "foster" processor. They look pretty hardcore. The pics are from an Australian Distributor, so they're obviously not far off. Also on Intel, I discovered that they sell computer cases. Pretty decent server ones.
Rizenet has reviewed a Tweakbox Liquid Neon Light. Neon's look cool. I don't really seem to be in the ranty mood tonight sorry. Dunno why. Computer is irking me. It's not working properly. I want to hit it.
MSI has released a nVidia crush based motherboard. No word on performance yet, but it seems to have it in spades from the specs. Apparently the chipset is going to be called nForce and there'll be four different versions of it aimed at different market segments. The range topper, the 420-D sports dual channel DDR RAM support and onboard Dolby 5.1 decoding. All of them feature an onboard version of the GF2MX core dubbed GF2MX "Plus", reportedly as fast as a GTS. The MSI board is a mATX layout with 3 PCI, 1 ACR and 1 AGP. Usual 2 IDE channels and a floppy controller. Tweaktown have a blurb up (thanks elvis), and InsaneHardware have a decent one up as well. No doubt there are a heap more around the web as well.
OCWB have a blurb up on their news page about the new cD0 stepping for P3 processors. Nothing overly ground shattering, changes are similar to move from cB0 to cC0. The thing that catches my mind about that was the decent overclockability of the cC0 celerons.. They went pretty hard. I wonder what these cD0 P3's go like. Apparently they come with an Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) a-la K6-2 style, but I've yet to see pictures of it. They also require a BIOS upgrade.
Frostytech have reviewed a new Zalman Heatsink - but it's not a "flower" one. Instead this "CNPS-5000 Plus" uses a smaller design with an integrated fan. Dosn't look much at all like the original Zalman's.. looks more like an orb. Sort of. It's orb-ish. Well, it's unique, like all Zalman hs/f's have been so far.
Anandtech have paid a visit to the Hong Kong Computer Expo.. a sort of low-key pre-computex event. What's most interesting are all the slim-profile PC's which are pretty much mandatory in a space-strapped honkers. No HX08's for them.
ClubOC appear to of got their hands in a few DDR pies reviewing the first of seven socket-a DDR boards they intend on, ah, reviewing. It's an ALi-based board, so I'm suprised to hear they reckon it has kick ass memory performance. I shouldn't really, as DDR is such an immature platform, but ALi hasn't made the best showing of itself in chipsets lately.
LiamC has written up a decent article examing the performance differences of various hard drives under the Winstone benchmarking software. Apparently it's quite a bit. Winstone isn't that prominent in the Overclocking benchmark scene, but alot of the popular print mags rely on it quite heavily.
ChicksHardware has looked at the Blizard 360 pre-modded ATX case. Why 360? Well.. 3x120mm fans=360. Not only that, but 3x120mm fans = alot of cooling power. Finally, 3x120mm fans = alot of noise.
Finally tonight, Apache.org was hacked. Yes, Apache of the we-serve-up-the-majority-of-web-pages-on-the-net-today-including-ocau fame. Not really sure what to say about that, but it's sure suprising. No doubt similar occurances have happened to their competitors (IIS for example), but being the nice GNU people they are they've been honest about it and told us exactly what happened. Still suprising tho.
Saturday Midday
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Saturday, 2-June-2001 12:16:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Happy 18th Birthday Stasis! Happy Birthday Lombers, however old you are - older than you were yesterday anyway. :)
Kazashi notes that Computer Fairs Australia are no longer listing Penrith and Sutherland as Fair locations. I've emailed them to find out what the story is.
AthlonOC have an article on some new Athlon steppings, thanks Fahed.
Something different on overclockers.com, Ed has some musings about big dual screens, thanks Epoch.
Redback pointed out this program to catproof your computer.. well, stop them walking all over your keyboard. :)
Kinda old news but nicely presented, AMDWorld show how lower volts = lower temps.
EverythingUSB went to a USB Conference recently.
Tweak3D want to tell you how to build a home server.
Have a bit of a scroll down OCWB's news page, they have info on a few other manufacturers who are announcing dual SocketA boards at Computex.
Here's an interesting thing, a webpage which claims to examine your PC's setup/configuration and offer tweaking/optimization advice. Dunno how detailed or useful it is.. PC Pitstop, thanks Scott R.
Dan's checked out four cameras from a company called Ezionics.
Fad says: i just got a 1.2ghz axia, unlocked, works to 1.466ghz @50C default voltage, quite nice, i havent pushed it any further .. nice indeed.
TechnoYard have a 5-way socketA cooler roundup, compare ours here.
TheHeatsinkGuide have a pic of GlobalWin's improved CAK38 copper cooler with an Alpha-like fan skirt to direct airflow.
Icrontic have a 6-way 40mm fan shootout.
TheTechZone are giving away stuff!.
Got a question about an AMD product? Try their new ask.amd.com website.
Don't forget to update your benchmark scores in the PCDB! Some recent highlights from the gallery: TuNeS's very tidy HQ08-based system (love the paint), DoDg3's tricked-out machine, Venturi's monster server, Christian's directed airflow and X-phile's stone-look paintwork. Check out elvis_a_presley's serious videocard cooling and I notice the PVC-pipe monster fan case has made a reappearance too. :)
Reviews:
Enermax Thermal Bay for HDD on BlargOC.
AOpen AK73 Pro A socketA kt133a motherboard on OCOnline.
Swiftech MCW462 socket cooler on Spode's.
NAPA DAV 309 portable CD/MP3 player on AllTechBox.
Power Cooler PCH113 socker cooler on CHW.
Intel D815EPFV i815EPFV-based motherboard on PCHardware.
GIGABYTE GA-FTI1394 video editing card on Digit-Life.
Lucent ORiNOCO USB wireless adapter on Digit-Life.
Hmm.. I found out that there is a new BIOS available for the A7V133 boards this evening.. 1005. Previous to this it was 1004. It's dated 1/6/01 so that makes it brand spanking new. I haven't seen any news of it on other sites, so it's probably an OCAU exclusive.. I'm not overly sure if it's stable or not, but it's the only BIOS file available in the A7V133 directory of the German Asus FTP, and it was also in with all the other "final" releases in the Taiwan FTP. No mention of it in the Asus.COM ftp. If you're keen on getting a copy for yourself, the German copy is here and the Taiwan copy is here. Just remember, beta BIOSes, or in this case unverified BIOSes, and the process of flashing a bios of any kind, has the risk of turning your motherboard into a novelty ashtray, so don't say we didn't warn you.
There are some pretty intriguing features in this new BIOS. Most notable of these is clock throttling. You probably remember that term from a big controversy generated by accusations of the P4 featuring this technology. Basically, what it does is scale down the clock speed when the CPU gets too hot. This means that if (for example) your CPU fan was to stop functioning and the CPU was to reach the necessary temperatures, the CPU may lower its clock speed to drop its heat output, allowing it to operate without crashing. It's pretty nifty, so long as the CPU doesn't always get too hot and drop its clock. (that's what all the P4 accusations where about) Unfortunately I don't own a digicam, so I've been unable to take a photo as proof of this new option. I had hoped to modbin6 the bios .bin file and show a screen shot of the option, but I've been unable to do that also. It was possible with KT7-RAID BIOSes, but obviously not with A7V133 ones. I've made a go-between and copied down the text from the BIOS screen.
CPU Fan Check at Power On
Disabled
Enabled
"Detect CPU Fan speed at power on. If the fan
was abnormal, the system beeps once and shuts
down. The default setting is Disabled."
Fan Check Beeping
Disabled
Enabled
"System will star beeping if CPU fan goes stop
or abnormal. Default is [Disabled].
CPU Thermal Option
Throttle
Shutdown
"System would throttle or shutdown while CPU"
You can see that the specific option is entitled CPU Thermal Option, and you can select to either shutdown or throttle the CPU if it gets too hot. Shutting down would probably be better at preventing core damage, as throttling would only be successful when there is still a heatsink on the CPU. As demonstrated by Wolfy, this is not always the case ;) The part in exclamation marks is the Item Specific Help.. and note that the help for CPU Thermal Options isn't complete - that is how it is in the BIOS, not a mistake on my behalf... Odd.
Also of note are the Fan Check Beeping and Detect CPU Fan Speed At Power On options. The first one makes the system speaker beep a tune similar to a fire truck's siren if the CPU fan stops operating, and the second one basically doesn't allow you too boot if the system fan isn't functioning. These are also pretty handy by themselves.
I'm not too sure what this all these options mean. My best guess is that they are for the upcoming Palomino CPU. Having clock throttling for AMD processors would be pretty useful, could save a few burnt out cores. The other options are pretty useful in terms of stopping failures caused by overheating. Current AMD CPU's don't have an integrated thermal diode (the Palomino does/will), and so thermal monitoring is vague at best. I haven't really had time to test them out yet, I figured I'd just let you all know about it so you can have a play yourselves. The new BIOS seems to work fine for me.
I must also mention two EXTREMELY useful sites that I came across yesterday for A7V users - first is the A7V Tome of Knowledge - funny name, yes, but very useful. They have a guide explaining WCPRSET tweaks and so forth. I tried the Idle Temp fix and it dropped my temps down 8deg! The second site is A7VTroubleshooting.com, which was pointed out to me by Daemon. Anyway, if you have a look into these new BIOS options and get some interesting results, let me know as well :)
While wandering around everything2, I found this page about hooking old laptop screens to PC's. Amazing the stuff you find in there. I've said it before but I'll say it again - be warned, everything2 has a massive capacity to inhale free time.
TheRegister pull a little more from Steve Gibson's article yesterday, apparently he claims WindowsXP makes the internet unstable because it has a full Unix sockets implementation but will be used by a lot of people with a limited awareness of the need for security (unlike most other machines with full sockets implementations).. thanks Sniper770.
HardOCP have been busy too, posting today an Epox EP-8K7A SocketA DDR motherboard review as well as checking out the Vantec 6035d all-copper socket cooler.
Funny highschool prank sent in by Mike, impaling a car on your school's flagpole. :)
AMDMB have some preview info on the Tyan K7 dual-socketA board everyone's dribbling over. I'm personally waiting for the BP6 equivalent. Imagine a $400 motherboard that could take 2 Durons or even 2 Tbirds.. I'd buy one. Tech-Report have a bit of a rant about how cheap socketA SMP seems very unlikely. Also, IANAG have a photo of the AMD-762 northbridge, this is from the SMP chipset apparently.
Digit-Life have continued their 700MB CD-R Roundup..
Iroquois points out this apparently good CDROM testing program.
Reviews:
Thermal Integration FO-BE25D socket cooler - looks like a short thermoengine - on 2FastCPU.
Swiftech MC370 socket cooler on OCAddiction.
Retracting LAN cable on TacoNuts.
Panaflow 120mm L1A fan on Icrontic.
PCW RM011 rackmounted case on Icrontic.
3D Prophet 4500 64MB Kyro2-based video card on Max3D.
SafetyCable PC security device on OCShoot.
Early Friday Morning
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Friday, 1-June-2001 01:56:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sniper770 noticed on TheRegister that Steve Gibson has put up an interesting article. This details the story of his website being taken out by DDoS attacks and covers a lot of background info on what DDoS's are and how they work as well as a fair bit of commentary. It's an interesting if lengthy read - I hope to absorb it fully later. I had a little trouble getting through to his site - if it doesn't work, hit reload. He may be being slashdotted, which is another form of DDoS. :)
UKGamer wonder if it's worth buying a Prophet III just for FSAA..
Ooh, flexy keyboard, thanks BF. Kinda like the foldy keyboard I checked out ages ago but not quite so James Bond, more Hello Kitty.
Matthew points out that CableUsers.com.au and ADSLUsers.com.au are both down, he seems to think permanently but there's no info on the site.
NEC have Itanium Workstations now too. I wonder if they look the same as SGI's and Dell's? :) Am I paying too much attention to styling? Maybe I should've bought a nice paisley iMac instead of this boring, beige, boxy, stupendously powerful PC. :)
Dan's added the Copper Orb to his Cooler Comparison. I shouldn't need to mention our own 21-Cooler Roundup anymore..
There's some German watercooling going on here.. you can play around getting the text translated if you like, but the pics are interesting by themselves.
Reviews:
Server size window kit on RizeNet.
Millennium Glaciator socket cooler (good 'un!) on Overclockers.com, thanks Lauhead.
Belkin Firewire USB combo card on NeoSeeker.
VisionTek GeForce3 video card on TweakTown.
ASUS S8200A notebook on OCWB.
Fan Adapters on MikhailTech, our review here.
A few quick notes..
Computex Taiwan
Computex is happening soon of course - this is a HUGE computer convention running for several days in Taiwan. The vendors and manufacturers usually offer interviews and factory tours etc to visiting journalists so it's usually a great thing to attend. I won't be going this year although I fully intend to next year - however Stewart "VooDoo" Paternoster who's been a site regular since the early days and has been increasingly involved behind the scenes at OCAU will be going as OCAU's representative and reporting back to us with daily coverage. From what I've seen of his itinerary he's going to be flat out over there (it's a hard life!) so hopefully he'll keep us in the loop and it'll be just like being there. :)
Many thanks to Achieva Australia and Computer Alliance for sponsoring VooDoo and OCAU in our efforts to get some coverage of this event.
Site Design
Updated the site template again, adding a space for another new advertiser, Cougar Computers (bottom button, above Ebay, at left). You'll also be seeing their banner from time to time at the top of the page. I also removed the Counter-Strike server page as that server is only really intermittently available these days due to the massive bandwidth it sucks up.
I'd like to add a Folding@Home link like the Seti@Home and RC5 Team links in the menu, but there doesn't seem to be a team stats link I can use - not one I can find, anyway. Someone who knows something about Folding@Home, pls drop me a note with a useful URL or if you're feeling creative a paragraph about what it is and how to join our team.. thanks. :)
The new site layout (coming soon!) will be a bit more roomy, taking up the full browser width and hopefully looking a little more professional - it'll also have room for a few more advertisers. I dunno how you feel about ads, but if they help pay the server bills then it's gotta be good for the site. If you're interested in advertising on OCAU, drop me a note. I hope to spend some time next week on the new design but I do have some DDR motherboards arriving for review also which will keep me busy. :)
Legal Fund
Speaking of dollars, the Legal Fund has reached about $1500 which is fantastic. I don't know what I was expecting really, but that's a surprisingly large amount and will certainly make a big dent in the impending legal bill. My sincere thanks to everyone who's contributed, it's been another reminder that OCAU isn't just a website, it really is a community. If you'd like to contribute the details are here - no worries if you can't or prefer not to.
I had hoped to be able to give you some more info on the legal side of things but unfortunately I can't - which is probably more frustrating for me than for you, believe me. I am very actively looking into ways to bring the forums back up and I hope to have some good news about that soon. I can't be more specific because I don't know specifics yet. I know it's frustrating but trust me - things are progressing!
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