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August 2001 |
A small fraction past midday, making it Friday afternoon...
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Friday, 31-August-2001 12:55:08 (GMT +10) - by Manaz
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Lots of news today - I'll get straight into it....
KngtRider pointed this out in the #overclockers IRC channel - a motherboard Northbridge controller with integrated RV200 graphics from ATi. It seem that nVidia weren't the only people with plans for motherboard chipsets with better than average integrated graphics - either that or everyone's just copied nVidia's idea. I'm still pretty keen to see what nVidia's nFORCE chipset can do though, especially with it's dual-bank DDR-RAM...
Andrew sent in some links to some photos that you may find interesting - this is a photo of the 0.13micron Northwood Pentium 4 (with and without heatspreader), and this is a photo of Intel's second generationa IA-64 CPU, currently codenamed McKinley. It's interesting to see that Intel appear to be moving back towards CPU packaging which includes a PCB with surface mounted components.
Cain spotted a new (dated 27/8/2001) BIOS for the EPoX 8K7A/+ motherboards (the link is for the EPoX FTP site, so you'd assume it's safe). Some of the fixes/inclusions include support for Athlon 4 SSE instructions, PCI Latency Timer setting, and a fix for problems with Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller cards.
DarkWing wrote in about a small (4000-user) LAN party he is involved in running. Yes, I said the word "small" sarcastically - 4000 users is seriously HUGE!
Freaek found a job that just about anyone could do. Gotta love it when people enter test data into a live database, and then forget to remove it...
MisterGrister found this error message on the MSI website rather, well, interesting - bad spelling and all...
Submariner sent us this link, featuring information (including a supposed nVidia internal memo in PDF format) about the next generation of nVidia graphic processor chips...
After reading the news the other night, in which alchemy mentioned a "PC on a PCI card" product, Tigger went and found this - a PC on a PCI card, but specific to Sun's PCI-based workgroup servers and workstations - allowing you to run PC software alongside native Solaris applications. I guess the Sun hardware needed for one of these is probably a bit out of the reach of most of us, but it doesn't hurt to dream, does it? :)
Now, I know quite a few of you contribute to the various distributed computing projects that exist today, and most of you are probably aware that Overclockers Australia has several distributed computing teams. These projects require that some client software is downloaded, installed and configured to obtain packets of information, process them, and then send them back to the server run by the project organisers. However, some researches at the University of Notre Dame have come up with a way do do distributed computing without any specific client software at all - don't worry though, this isn't as scary as it could be, or so the article says...
3DSpotlight felt the need to put together this page - it lists all the relevant updates that you need to apply to your PC to have it running completely stable, and as bug-free as possible. From OS updates, to vendor patches, I have to say, this is a VERY useful page - I know I'll be bookmarking it...
RatedPC, in conjunction with OpusWare, have put together a system stability testing application - it tests various aspects of your system, and also includes a benchmarking facility. RatedPC claim that it's "very popular", but I hadn't heard of it until now - then again, I'm not the be-all-and-end-all of computer system stability testing knowledge. You can read more about it here, on RatedPC's website.
Wokket, as only Wokket knows how, sent in the following links for our amusement: Firstly, a recipe for cooking rice (it may not be what you think), and some instructions on how to bet on English sport and still actually win money.
Reviews:
Philips MMS305 flat panel speakers on VyW.
Fujitsu DynaMO 1300SF Magneto-Optical drive review on Radeonic.
EPoX 8KTA-3 motherboard on AtlantaOC.
Swiftech MCX-370 heatsink review on Mikhailtech.
Samsung SD616 DVD drive review on PCStats.
Netgear RT314 cable/DSL sharing router review on Overclocker Cafe.
Purple anodised CPU/heatsink shim review on OCIA.
Hercules Game Theatre XP review on 3DSpotlight.
Fortis A102 HSF review on Overclocked Cafe.
Battlelamp review on Taconuts.
Philips 107P10 flatscreen CRT monitor review on OCMelbourne.
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 Platinum review on Hexus.net.
Friday Morning
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Friday, 31-August-2001 11:49:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Nice water-and-peltier cooled machine here from Hack100. I notice there's been a fair bit of voting going on the PCDB lately.. check out the current Top 10 for looks, functionality, effort and ingenuity. There's also the Overall Top 10 and unsurprisingly the GTRPC is dominating at the moment.
OCPrices compared a Kyro II based video card to a GF2 MX400 unit..
Will this be the next rage in case modding - personalised waterblock mounts..?
Tim noticed over on Tweak3D's news page (scroll down) a quick report on the recent Intel Developer Forum - including this snippet: Celeron 1.1GHz: Intel will soon be releasing a 1.1 and 1.0GHz Celeron processor. When asked about SMP capabilities, Intel didn't say that Celeron and Tualatin "won't" work but says that "we just won't support it but it does work". Get your dual Tualatin boards ready because 512KB Cache Tualatins and Celeron 1.1GHz will be the cream of the crop for cheap SMP action from Intel.
Leo sent in this review of the Tyan Thunder MP dual SocketA motherboard over on SocketA.com. This is the cheapy version of the server-class Thunder K7 we sneak-previewed ages ago, to the detriment of our webserver. Quite a few Australian vendors have the cheapy one on offer now, at about the $550-600 mark. The expensive one remains scarily so, roughly a grand more.
Wokket sent in this link about bystanders egging on and jeering at suicidal people. I'm sure he just meant it as an offtopic-but-interesting link, but it says some surprisingly relevant stuff. Given the insanity going on in our "The Pub" forum lately - and particularly yesterday evening - that link offers an insight into why people behave differently when in a crowd or some other situation that provides a level of anonymity.
Also from Wokket, MS associating alcohol with education and an ancient labyrinth turns out to be (yet another) relic from the 1970's..
On an even lighter note, Tony sent in this humour page, worth having a poke around in.. I've been sucked into the "Supposedly True Stories" section already. :)
Reviews:
Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 Kyro-II based video card on Guru3D.
Romtech HDD Selector on ExplosiveHardware.
Antec JetCool socket370 cooler on NeoSeeker.
Blue Orb chipset cooler on XtremeMods. These things are often not flat so lapping them helps.
VIA P4X266 Pentium 4 chipset on VR-Zone.
Gladiator round cables on Tweakmax. Our review of a similar product here, cheapy option here.
OCZ Titan overclocking-friendly GeForce3 video card on SharkyExtreme, thanks Chuppa.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 30-August-2001 14:53:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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You've probably already heard from the mainstream media, but Graeme "Shirley" Strachan of Skyhooks and more recently "Our House" fame died yesterday in a helicopter accident. More info here and here.
I made www.overclockers.com.au/vendors an alias for that "Online Vendors" listing in the forums. Bit easier to remember, but of course you need to be a forum member to view it.
Special greets to Stromlo High, a school in the ACT who are using their spare cycles to help our folding @ home team and powering up the ranks.. which of course benefits mankind too, hopefully! Some info in this thread in our Team OCAU forum.
Wired have a guide to setting up a Linux firewall.. just the thing for that old PC you built from bits lying around the house. Another popular solution is SmoothWall. On a similar note, the book "Firewalls and Internet Security : Foiling the Wily Hacker" is now available for download as .pdf - there's a thread about it here in our Networking & Internet forum, thanks Pleb.
Flight noticed this mobile graphics comparison of NVIDIA's GeForce2GO and ATI's Mobility Radeon. There's another review of the Mobility Radeon here on ComputerSource.
Dan's checked out some P4 motherboards that suck, or so he says. In the review, I look into why SDR-memory i845 is a big step, um, in some direction other than forward, for Intel, and push the relevant numbers around.
More news about Gateway's financial woes here (thanks Fad) and here, thanks ejhelgeson.
0verload notes this site in Singapore listing 1.1GHz Celerons.. don't remember hearing about those. Funny if Intel's "value" chip clocks higher than their "performance desktop" (P3) chip.. I guess the P4 is going to eclipse the P3 on the desktop soon enough.
Some stuff from Germany - they're organising a 4000-person LAN party (thanks Thomas) and some info on new 333MHz FSB Athlons. All in German, so you might want to stick this fish in your ear. I said, you might want to haften Sie diesen Fisch in Ihrem Ohr. Das hat Recht.
Tim put up a website about his modded case project. In the PCDB, there's a nice new one here from imweazel and some big bong action here from Rampage101.
JimX noticed this funny page of gameshow answers..
Remember, send your news to news@overclockers.com.au not to any of the news posters directly, sometimes gets lost/delayed that way.
Reviews:
ELSA Gladiac 511 TwinView PCI and AGP video cards on XtremePC.UK.
Iwill KK266Plus socketA motherboard on AMDMB.
Lite-On LTR16101B IDE CDRW on HWExtreme.
PlexWriter 12/10/32S PX-W1210TS SCSI CDRW on G3D.
Tshirts back on sale!
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Thursday, 30-August-2001 01:25:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Alrighty, I know this has been a big demand from you guys, so they're back on sale. This is the remainder of the first batch and there's only a limited number of these left - so get your order in!
Click for info!
Well, with a little last minute ass whipping in the #overclockers IRC channel, we managed to break the record of Most-Ever-Users-Online in the forums by quite a substantial amount.. it's now up to 244. We've also passed the 5,000 members flag recently as well as the 100,000 posts.. so all up it's been a record breaking week for the forums. Can't wait for some new hosting to come along and give odin some much needed relief.
Intel really seems to be turning up the heat on AMD, not only have they recently just fwopped us all with the 2GHz P4 part (that you can actually buy - makes for a change) as well as huge price cuts across the whole P4 range, they've also just demonstrated a 3.5GHz P4 Part.. sure, it's probably an excercise in extreme vapour phase cooling.. but that's a lot of Hz.
nVidia have released a " Personal Cinema " add-on for their range of current-model video cards.. and what it does is add all sorts of connectors ala ATI All-In-Wonder style, including one for watching TV on your PC. I've been down the TV-card-in-PC route before and must say that it really isn't that satisfying.. maybe now that my TV is closer to my bed it may be, but still.. it's a bit iffy. Sounds good in theory, but dosn't work out so well in practice.
Joseph pointed out that to celebrate Linux's 10th birthday there was an Install Fest held by the LinuxSA group in.. you guessed it, SA. Tech-Junkie was there, and have info about the event.
TacoNuts have updated their case mod gallery, whilst no doubt our PCDB has been updated within the last hour or so. We win, nyer! :)
A1-Electronics has taken a look at wireless networking as a standard, and as a new gizmo you can get down at your local retail computing store.. dubious benefit to us overclockers tho.
Walrek has been all the ball and noticed talk over on THG about the re-introduction of the PR for AMD CPU's to allow them to better compete with Intel counterparts in the uneducated retail market.. and while I can see weight to their argument (a lot of weight, in fact) I reckon it stinks. The aim of it is to allow customers a fair comparison.. but how can they do that when they are confused? Walrek started a thread in the forums to disccus it. Nicely picked.
Finally tonight, remember that pc-on-a-PCI-card firewall we linked to ages ago? It made it to market, and it made it into The Tech Zones review box as well.. quite extremely cool, if I must say so myself. I never get any of the cool toys. *whinge*.
Reviews:
GlobalWin CAK38 on DreddNews.
Abit Siluro MX400 on JSIHardware.
Hyundai PC133 256Mb SDRAM on ocNZ.
Abit TH7-II on OCWorkbench.
MSI 850 Pro2 i850 socket-423 P4 mobo on PCHardware.RO
Blizzard CPU Intercooler on GamersHQ.
I was browsing the Gateway page about 10 minutes ago, looking for more 20%-of-full-retail-price specials when I noticed their page design had changed and this page was in it's place. Well, that explains the über cheap speakers and monitors a lot of us in the Swap and Shop forums have picked up.. It also explains the rather weary looking sales staff.
Yes, Gateway will cease actively promoting their products in the Australia/New Zealand market.. I'm guessing that means the stores will close and their website will stay in it's current support-but-no-sales state. They're not totally pulling out until they fulfil their warranty and support commitments, which I think is a nice gesture. That explains the 1yr warranty with the monitors.
I know a lot of people that got great deals (a 22" monitor for $900 delivered is nothing to sneeze at), and almost every man and his dog has picked up a pair of the $99 4.1 speakers.. so at least we all came out of it on top :)
Agg: There's an article here on Wired about Gateway cutting 25% of staff, thanks John. No doubt there is a serious reshuffling going on inside the company at the moment. Still no sign of my $99 speakers, though! :) (no sign of mine either, even though I ordered two hours after the special was released! - alchemy)
120mm Blowhole Guide
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Wednesday, 29-August-2001 04:27:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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LoneWolf shared his experience putting a 120mm intake into the front of his fulltower. Lots of pics and info to help you do the same.. the perfect way to boost cold airflow through your system:
Click for the full article!
Late Tuesday evening
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Wednesday, 29-August-2001 02:20:28 (GMT +10) - by Manaz
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Welcome to the OCAU news, late edition. Please take a seat, ensure that you're comfortable, and hang on tight. Yep, it's late. Too late. Never mind, on with the news.
Firstly, *LOTS* of people (too many to list individually) wrote in to let us know that Internet Explorer v6 has been officially released.
JimX, one of our forum and IRC regulars, as well as occasional article writer for OCAU, has come up with an interesting idea - the Overclockers Motorcycle Club. I've seen quite a few threads in the forums from readers who ride motorcycles of various descriptions, I know a few of our #Overclockers IRC regulars also ride, and even Agg's been known to get about on just two wheels occasionally, so it sounds to me like the idea might have some merit. If you're interested, why not go have a look!
Alchemy (who is also an IRC regular) posted this link in IRC today - it's a rather humorous take on the whole Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and ways to get around it, in the US.
Herbo wrote in to let us know that there's an updated version of the fan LED mod been posted - looks nice and clean to me, though I'd be careufl using it on a fan that's critical to your system's cooling. It does look rather cool when it's going though. :)
Edwardnott wrote in to say that he's spotted 1GHz Duron processors on the price lists of at least one Australian computer hardware dealer. Considering that the 1GHz Duron was only recently released worldwide, it seems that Australia may be catching up on computer hardware releases compared to the rest of the world - and not before time!
sabretooth found this rather interesting article, about an open-air hacking festival being held in Europe. Lots of people sitting in a field basically, with wireless links to a broadband Internet connection. And they say technology and the wilderness don't mix...
If you know why you should win a Power Cooler PCH 137 heatsink, why not tell the guys at M:6 and actually win one!
Reviews:
Plextor USB 2.0 CD-RW drive on Everything USB.
ATi Radeon VE review on NeoSeeker.
Lian-Li PC70 Extreme! (pre-modded PC70) case review on ClubOC.
Swiftech MCW462 Water-block review on Cool Hardwarez.
Modifying VIAMACH.INF
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Wednesday, 29-August-2001 01:55:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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OLDMX sent in an interesting article about his efforts modifying VIAMACH.INF in order to get WinME to recognise all the devices in his motherboard chipset correctly - and get the 4-in-1 drivers to update correctly for those devices. It had a dramatic effect on his machine's stability..
Click for the full article!
Coupla pics..
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Wednesday, 29-August-2001 00:58:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Two pics that arrived recently but I forgot about. :) On the left we have a motherboard returned to VooDoo for not working.. looks like yet-another screwdriver slip claims yet-another motherboard victim. On the right we have a cartoon drawn by BlueSmurf, he of the GTR PC. He says: I found this cartoon I'd done back in 1989, on a 386SX-20 running Deluxe Paint II under DOS. To put it in perspective, I don't think the 486 was out of nappies. :)
 
click pics to enlarge
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 28-August-2001 14:04:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Loki, OCAU's second server, is now up and running in Brisbane. Thanks to Teredonn for hosting it for us. Loki will mostly function behind the scenes - the first thing you should notice is that the DNS is now fixed. Any of you who either couldn't access the forums.overclockers.com.au host or had to use an entry in your HOSTS file should now be able to connect fine. If you did add an entry to your HOSTS file you should remove it now, to avoid any problems when/if we move the forums to a new server in the future. Loki is a dual P2-450, nothing too amazing, but I'll make a proper PCDB entry for it soon. Thanks to Manaz and Alchemy for keeping the news flowing while I banged my head against my DNS manual. :)
There's an interesting poll here in The Pub forum, about the future of The Pub. It's not as serious as it seems so don't panic, but I was quite surprised by the balanced results so far and thought it deserved wider attention. So, go express your opinion!
leperMessiah sent along word from a distributor that AMD's 1GHz Duron should be available in Oz next week for about AUD$180. I presume that's the reseller price so maybe $200 for you and me? Either way, with 1GHz (Tbird) Athlons sitting at about the $200 mark also, I know which I'd be buying.. until all the 1GHz Athlons run out, that is. More info on AMD's price cutting here and here, thanks Leo.
Addicted to CS or some other high-adrenaline game? Might pay to take a break every now and then.. and avoid snuffing it for real. The suspicion in that case is that drugs slipped into the drinking water at the Internet Cafe may be to blame. Net access and free drugs? I bet that place's popularity takes a big jump. :)
GideonTech whacked a couple of big heater cores into their case to use as radiators..
Thanks to Dr Kildare for a TheInquirer link saying WinXP Activation may be dropped for Dell and other big OEM's - is this the first sign that MS are accepting what seems to be a general market feeling that XP Activation is Not Cool. Jeff McLuckie had a look at Win XP, including the "Activation" licence-enforcement system for us here on OCAU.
Chris noticed this new XHTML 1.0 tutorial. XHTML is the new standard for web authoring and addresses some important issues - this tutorial might be a good place to start if you're keen to learn it.
TechGamer have a guide to the poor man's case mod.. uh-oh. :) Actually didn't turn out too bad, but I wonder how many Poor Men have Dremels.
A couple more tricked out boxes from Guamy (go the fans!) and Carnage_cdl.
Some more carbon nanotube info from Shannon.. supposedly the Next Big Thing.. or is that the Next Next Big Thing, I keep losing track.
SysOpt have a few new things posted.. articles on case cooling, GeForce tweaking and P3 overclocking.
Daron noticed this service for finding old school chums.. providing they want to be found, that is.
ALI have announced their new P4 chipset which supports SDR and DDR memory.
Building a satellite on the cheap sounds almost like an oxymoron, but it's been done, thanks Paul.
Mort discovered that the SliMP3 device from yesterday's news should go for about $275.. USD presumably, but that's not too bad.
Interesting (old) article about scientists claiming to have broken the speed of light, thanks Brendan.
From Wokket: A church for dogs and blokes getting pregnant in ancient India.
Reviews:
Thermalright CB-6L socket cooler on CaseJunkiez.
Intel 2GHz Pentium4 processor on OCOnline.
Senfu Thermal Probe on PC-Critic.
IWill KK266-Plus KT133A-based SDR SocketA motherboard on PCStats.
Iwill KK266 plus-R KT133A-based SDR SocketA mobo with RAID on Radeonic.
NoiseControl 1888 Slot A cooler on ModdingZone. Our 6-way SlotA cooler roundup here.
Cyber Cooler P-5700 copper socket cooler on MikhailTech.
Abit TH7-II RAID and 2GHz P4 on Icrontic.
Enermax temp-controlled drive rack on TacoNuts.
Well, the big news tonight is the release of the 2.0GHz P4.. and along with it comes a new interface, socket 478. That's right, all four of you that bought a socket 423 P4 mobo will need a new one to run Intel's latest and greatest. Most interesting thing about the new interface is probably the fact that even tho it has more pins, it is significantly smaller than the old design. Small packages now pack a big punch :) The 2 Gigahertz figure really rolls off the lips well tho.. Harvey Norman is running radio adds I've been told.. "you think your 200MHz machine is slow.. IT IS.. THIS IS 2000MHz". Indeed. The P4 platform will have a die shrink down to the 0.13um Northwood process soon, and that's when things will get exciting. For now it's just the same old P4 at an even bigger clock speed (and price). Incidently, I've noticed a few Aus retailers have new P4 S478 pricing out.. and it is rather competitive with the Athlon.
SourceMag have a review here, HardOCP here, AcidHardware here, HotHardware here, AnandTech here, ExtremeTech here, Tech Report here, Hardware Unlimited here, and CPU review here.
I'm sure a few of you would remember BladeRunner's quest for stealth cooling, which he took to the extreme by cooling the water thermally underground. Quite extreme indeed, and very well done, especially the waterblock on the video card. It was so well done, in fact, that the CEO of nVidia, Jensen Huang emailed BladeRunner asking for a sample or plans. For Real. Being the nice bloke he is, BladeRunner agreed, and received a fair swag of nVidia goodies for his trouble. Thanks to RaD and BladeRunner himself for pointing this out :)
Accelenation have reviewed some rather fancy looking Mushkin EMS High Performance DDR Memory.. so high performance it needs heatspreaders, apparently (?). Of course, if you've read this dansdata review you'd probably know what good heatspreaders are..
The latest issue of ZZZ is out as usual for Monday, with all sorts of small and wireless stuff from the world of science for you to read (and laugh) about..
RojakPot have updated their Win2K hints and tips guide, now at rev 3.7
VyW have a watercooling guide up, something we havn't seen for a while. Not so much a review of a specific kit, as a review of the import aspects you need to pay attention to when building your own system.
Paul pointed out this article on The Age which talks about the first Australian to be jailed under music copyright violation laws.. lucky for some of us, it wasn't for mp3-type violations, rather for CD's and Videos.. and he was selling them, not just using them for personal use.. Still, that's the first. No doubt there will be a second.
It appears the issues between the Sound Blaster Live and the 686B south bridge are still lurking around.. but ViaHardware reckon they have a fix for it, that should work.. and with a lot of people about to buy a SBLive! to use with their dirt-cheap Gateway BA7500G speakers it's just as well :)
Finally, on come.to/kewn I noticed this news.com article which talks about a US company allowing people to.. get this.. copyright their DNA. Because they made it, right? So cloning them now becomes a breach of copyright law..
Reviews:
PC133 Showdown on GamingIn3D.
Neng Tyi SN05 Copper-Based Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Epox 4T2A i850-based socket-423 mobo on OConline.
SkyHawk Media Ports on OCIA.
Nanocomposite Thermal Compound review on FrostyTech.
Matrox G550 on NeoSeeker.
ECS K75SA SiS735 DDR/SDR socket-a mobo on TweakMax.
Two news posts in a single day - in fact, in less than half a day! Having said that, this post will be rather short (there's not a lot happened since my last post).
There's been a lot of noise about nVidia's upcoming nFORCE motherboard chipset lately - on one hand, people are hailing it as the best thing (yet to come) since sliced bread, while others say it's just a lot of hype. There's been rumours that nVidia are having problems with yield, that there will be missing components compared to the original published specifications, and that it is being delayed - and then there have been the denials by nVidia that there have been such problems. Then there's been the discussion (and arguments) about how the integrated Twinbank memory architecture works, and how many DIMMs you need to take advantage of it. The chipset is apparently slated for a September (this coming month) release, though naturally, motherboards featuring it won't be available for a short while after that while motherboard manufacturers start production runs and distribution takes place. Having said all that, FiringSquad have published an article on nFORCE, and what is known about it thus far. I for one am quite interested in what nFORCE *may* bring to the computer industry, and so I have read their article myself - if you'd like to know more about the nFORCE chipset, then it's worth a read. Thanks to Robert for the link.
Jekias from BFGLan, a LAN party run monthly down in Tasmania (nice cool climate down there, must be good for overclocking), sent in this link, featuring photos from their most recent LAN party. Their main page is here if you're interesting in finding out more about them.
Anyone who's looking for a commercially produced clear computer case should probably check these guys out. They don't have an Australian distributor (yet, it *could* happen), but if you check their page, they list their current distributors - one of them may be able to get one of their cases to you.
Vergs, V8R and Nigel all emailed me in response to my post earlier about 1GHz Celeron processors - there are at least two other Australian retailers (other than the one I mentioned in my previous post) who are also listing 1GHz (and 1.1GHz) Celerons, with pricing, on their websites. Considering the trouble Intel had getting the P3 much past 1GHz, it'll be interesting to see how the Celeron goes - it's smaller ondie L2 cache may actually help it reach higher clock speeds...
Azrael sent us this link. Yes, it's a flower. What's a picture of a flower doing on a computer hardware website you ask? Well, when you consider that it's actually *not* a photo, but is the result of some serious time with a graphics rendering program - it's pretty damned spectacular. He also thinks that if you're into MP3s at all, you should check this out. I tend to agree - it's definitely cool...
There's a couple of new & exciting PCs in the PCDB - Jekias' rig is here, featuring at least two windows and a modified keyboard, and waxling's rather green entry.
ChillBlast have a world exclusive first-look at the new Epox Aluminium PC case. It looks pretty good, I have to say - front ports, solid aluminium construction - for the rest, go read the review. Oh, and stay off whatever the guys at ChillBlast are on - seriously, I don't think the Surgeon General recommends it...
Hexus have grabbed a bunch of sticks of PC-150 SDRAM, and done some testing on them. Why's this important you ask? Well, not everyone is running DDR RAM yet, and RD-RAM (Rambus) is still expensive (and may have a limited product lifetime), so there are plenty of SDRAM setups still in existance. They've also had a look at the Gainward Golden Sample GeForce3 video card, which is yet another GF3 card based on nVidia's reference design - I'm sure that's not a bad thing, but I remember the days when Canopus designed their own cards, and generally got better performance out of them than reference based cards by other manufacturers. Though that does mean that reference drivers (ie Detonators) don't necessarily work...
Asus GeForce2 - A Pro for the price of a GTS?
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Saturday, 25-August-2001 19:01:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Nick aka max223 sent in an interesting article about his experience with a particular Asus video card. It turned out to have a pleasant surprise for him..
Click for the full article!
Big news this morning seems to be that WinXP has gone gold, which means no more release candidates: just a full, finished (sort of) version ready to get boxed and sent out to your local software store... which means it should be on your friendly warez pub about *looks at watch* now.
Arsonist has pointed out that the Attorney General reckons that R-Rated computer games featuring sexually explicit and violent scenes are not harmful to children. He goes further to say that if the rating system is changed, these titles should still be available in Australia. Finally someone with some sense!
Chris McMahon has a thread in the Case Mods forum with a Mini-Review of the CoolPC Rainbow Neon. Quite a novel idea that too - writing a review in the forums. If it's good, I'm happy to link to it on the news page.. if your spelling is worse than mine (and that's saying something), then your chances drop somewhat.
TheTechZone have guide to building your own case, just like several members of our PCDB have done.
OZEight points out that the Federal Government has approved the proposed sale of C&W Optus to SingTel. It dosn't mean that Optus is sold, it just means SingTel can now make a bid and be confident the Government isn't going to tell them it's not on. Optus shares no doubt experienced a price hike. Of course, with C&W Optus now having a bigger brother the prices are only going to fall.. we hope.
Wokkett points out that the Genome@Home Team are racing up the ladder, now within the top 40. Now, you all know I want you to be running Folding (burn AusGamers burn!), but if you're on dialup that can be a little bit difficult.. so until the F@H client v2.0 comes out, you can go and run Genome. But you better come back now, ya'hear?
OverclockersOnline have been modding the Kyro2.. and modding it just a small amount. Like by adding a Tt Volcano2 Socket-A Heatsink to it's core.. yes, as I said. Small amount *cough*. Good read for all Kyro2 Owners tho, as the card is limited by heat somewhat so some good OC's can be had with proper cooling.
News over at RatedPC is that DDR333 has been revealed in Japan with support from Via, SiS and ALi. Mmmm, 166MHz DDR FSB.
TweakMax has an editorial about the Palomino and Morgan core AMD CPU's up.. in part of it they question why it has taken so long for them to be released.. and to me the answer to that is obvious: no need. Why release a new CPU onto a market that is already dominated by your old one, and faces no significant competition.
Finally this morning, Dan has checked out some cheap gigabit ethernet.. and while it's not something everyone needs (the exception being the attendees of large lans like QGL), at this price point it's rather decent. And fast.. very very fast.
Reviews:
CH Products Pro Throttle USB flight stick on SystemLogic.
FrozenCPU Blizzard 280 mid-tower ATX case on SystemLogic.
Compex 11Mbs Wireless Network Device on NeoSeeker.
EPoX 8KHA KT266 board on Noticias3D.
StreetGlow PC Neon Connector on GideonTech.
Leadtek 64Mb GF2Pro on Tech-Planet.
ThermoSonic ThermoEngine on HWextreme.
1GHz 'Morgan' Duron CPU on AMDmb.
VideoLogic Vivid!XS 32Mb Kyro2 card on TechJunkie.
Vantec 6035D on AMDZone.
Acorp GA815EPD Dual i815EP board on Accelenation.
ProLink PixelView GF2MX400 on Digit-Life.
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 24-August-2001 14:29:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Jeff sees dead people.. they're everywhere.. and they like Microsoft..
Baker has taken the "OCAU Phone Logo" concept a step further with different designs in the forums.
Dan has taken a look at rounded IDE cables and he's not too keen on them. Our shorter review of a similar product is here and of course, the cheapy option (which Dan was kind enough to link to) is always here too.
VooDoo won the tshirt from the first quick joke thread. I've made another one here.. doesn't seem in any danger of being won yet. :)
SourceMagazine have an article about Linux in Education.
Komson over at Xoverclocker pushed a Tbird 1.33 to 1.81GHz.. impressive benchies, but hardly practical.. the iced-over socket is a dead giveaway. :)
There's a new BETA IDE driver for VIA chipsets.. for those who like living on the edge.. and who back up their data regularly.
The ArsMasters compared Windows XP Home and Professional versions. Our own look at the Professional version is here.
Apparently the ACC has denied Telstra's proposed line rental increase. Apparently Telstra has cheaper options but doesn't tell you about them.. reminds me of the HHGTTG episode one - they were stuck in a disused toilet with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".. ever thought of going into advertising?
Reviews:
Everglide mousing surface on 8balls.. our reviews here and here.. not forgetting the breast review here.
Soyo K7V Dragon SocketA DDR mobo on VR-Zone. Black and purple, very Phantom.
PNY VERTO Geforce 2MX-400 video card on MrPCPro.
Iwill KK266Plus on Accelenation.
Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical mouse on Radeonic.
XNTech Play Mouse II mouse on Rojakpot.
Evergreen Technologies RumbleFX 3D sound wotsit on AtlantaOC.
Iwill KK266-R kt133a-based socketa SDR motherboard on OCNZ.
Akasa Silver Mountain heatsink/fan on ClubOC.
Possibly the coolest news tonight comes from Andys.. residents of Sydney can now order Pizza Hut Pizza online. Sure, it's probably easier to order it over the phone, and probably quicker too.. and then they give you an idea of how long. But it does rate right up there on the Geek scale.
BeachSideTech have a guide to building a Value PC.. the funny thing is, at the price point of what was considered a Value PC a year and half ago (even accounting for inflation) you will build yourself a high quality 1.4GHz Athlon.. which I would hardly class as a "budget" system :)
Ace's hardware is having a bit of a Dually Duel: 1.2GHz AthlonMP SMP vs 1.7GHz Xeon SMP. Just a limited amount of processing power there.. *cough*. What was that? Run Folding? For OCAU? Heh.. Anyway, I doubt most of us could afford either setup, but it's nice to dream. Incidently, I noticed that 1.2GHz AthlonMP prices are about the same as 1.4GHz T'Bird prices - is anyone buying these for single processor workstation use? How do they overclock? let me know :)
Jackal and Farrod pointed out that Creative now have a new range of Sound Cards out: the Audigy series. Most interesting thing to note is the inclusion of a Firewire hub as a part of the card.. sort of a two birds with one stone job. Anyone have pricing for these in aus? Once again - let me know :)
HardOCP have checked out the Asus 8200 Deluxe GeForce3 card.. and in classic Asus Deluxe style it goes right out and includes every little thing you could possibly think of.. including a rather large price tag.
vegeta points out this spoof site of counter-strike.net: counter-spoof.net.. if you've been playing CS for a while you'll find some of the jokes made there quite amusing.. if not, then there is always newgrounds.
sniper points out this article which talks about how in the future there may be an annoying animated voice bugging you while you drive your car.. sort of like the motoring version of popup adds. It's all for a good cause tho, that being to keep fatigued drivers awake.. I know on long trips an annoying passanger has actually been an assett to me.
Rik points out that the Victorian government has given permission to Telco's to use the railway corridors as routes for laying broadband cables. The advantage of this? lower costs to run pipes out west, so ~maybe~ more broadband for the bush. Or maybe the same amount of broadband at a lower cost to telco's. Bit of an either/or situation: which do reckon the telco's will choose?
Finally tonight, Hexus have checked out one of the Leadtek GeForce2 Pro cards.. best thing about these is they can be had for a rather low (~$330) price on the Australian market at the moment.. giving a good alternative for users who can afford a bit more than the standard MX.
Reviews:
Fortis A92 + A102 coolers on HardAvenue.
Logitech Cordless Freedom Optical mouse on G3D.
Soyo Dragon KT266 board on AMDmb.
GlowWire Case-Mod Kit on GideonTech.
ABIT KT7E cheapy socket-a board on OCcafe.
IWill BD133U universal socket-370 board on ClubOC.
Compaq 3650 PDA on NeoSeeker.
CH Pro Throttle USB joystick on Max3D.
DLink DI714 cable/dsl router on Electic.
Promise Fasttrak 100 TX2 IDE RAID controller on PCHardware.RO
Not much happening in the OC world this morning.. Manaz seems to of cleaned it all up last night. In case you missed it, I highly recomend you listen to vrod.mp3 which was originally a 2 stroke bike but could quite easily be a Honda Civic ;)
Wokket has found a pretty cool Babelfish Fun Toy.. it takes what you put it into the form, takes it off to the 'Fish and translates it through 12 languages and returns it to English.. a tad obscured. That's been a bored-past time of mine for a while now, you can get some quite funny results. This is just the lazy way of doing it :)
Electic has a small blurb up about ALi planning to use AMD's HyperTransport protocl in it's next line of chipsets. Via also said they where "looking into it" or words to that effect in an interview with Anand recently.. so it may become fairly wide spread. For those not in the know, HyperTransport is a method for the North Bridge and South Bridge to communicate.. at present it's done through the PCI bus or through standards like Via's V.Link.
Agg is going to give away a free OCAU shirt to the person with the best "how many overclockers does it take to change a light bulb" joke.. meanwhile if lightbulb jokes are your thing, and you went to a Brisbane or Sydney secondary school you might want to check this thread.
Martin wrote in about the nVidia image quality mod that has been discussed in the forums a bit.. he's performed it on his GF2 and then compared it to the 2D-Quality King - Matrox with some digital camera pics. Nice work :)
Getting to OCAU seems a bit slow at the moment from my O@H node, and other users on different ISP's tell me they are getting the same slow response.. As far as I can tell Odin is coping OK (we havn't been slashdotted again) so I'd say it's just an issue at our host. Should be fixed soon, not much to worry about. Forums seem ok tho, which is strange. *pokes Agg*
Reviews:
Xitel MD-PORT AN1 as on DansData yesterday on G3D.
Seagate Baracude ATA IV 80Gb Drive on SourceMagazine.
DiskOnKey USB Flash storage on HWDaily.
Samsung 170MP 17" LCD on NeoSeeker.
Easy USB flash storage device on RizeNet.
Palit Daytona GeForce3 on Digit-Life.
Wednesday night/Thursday morning
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Thursday, 23-August-2001 01:00:04 (GMT +10) - by Manaz
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I have a cold, I've worked 12 hours a day for the past 3 days, and I feel like my head is going to explode. And yet, here I sit, doing the news for you guys. Is this dedication or what? As a bonus this evening, if you pick my pet hate from the newspost tonight, I'll mention your name in my next news post - email me. Dedication to the OCAU cause, and giving away the opportunity to be (relatively) famous - what more could you want from me? :)
Herbo, Hadamona and Dan all wrote in to tell us that version 4 of DivX has been released - all the details should be available over on the DivX website.
Firestone wrote in to say that AKIBA PC Hotline! have come across the EPoX EP-4B2A motherboard (based on the i845 chipset), and the first of the new Matrox G550 video cards ( direct link for the Matrox cards) in Japan. The fish is your friend (though he's a bit hard to understand at times)...
Ian pointed out this water-windowed case on Ebay Germany. You might want to throw a fish at it for some understanding (because it's in German, surprise surprise).
Xtreme PC UK attended the launch of Creative Lab's new Soundblaster product - called the "Sound Blaster Audigy". They've got a few teaser shots up at the moment, but promise more of the full story shortly.
Electic are reporting that there are new drivers available for the Matrox G400 and G450 graphic cards. You should be able to grab them from the Matrox website.
It seems that every man and their dog is doing a heatsink/fan roundup (we did ours ages ago). Bluesmoke have joined the club with their variation on the theme - a Copper HSF roundup.
TweakTown have published a Internet Security and Firewalls Guide. Like any guide on the Internet (especially one about security), read, learn, and adapt to suit your own particular circumstances and needs. And don't come crying to us (or TweakTown for that matter) if someone still gets into your PC - you're on the Internet, it's a risk you take unfortunately...
PCMag.com are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the PC. Some interesting reading there...
Australian scientists have discovered the "tasty steak" gene. Makes me proud to be an Aussie *wipes tear from eye*. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Though it is an interesting story if you'r at all interested in or concerned about genetic research and it's applications.
Do you feel like learning to fly a helicopter? If so, why not go all out and buy this, a (reportedly) genuine ex-US Army AH-1F Cobra. There's no point messing around, right?
Finally, tonight's Wokket report includes interesting stories such as the "scared shiftless" keyboard, and a US attack on the poor, defenceless bees of Cuba.
Reviews:
Cappuccino PC on FutureLooks - and no, it doesn't make coffee.
Antec Jet Cool HSF on TweakTown.
Soyo K7 Dragon motherboard on AwareMag.
NanoTherm Thermal Compound (and some of those sometimes misleading "Let's not start the scale at zero" graphs) on OverclockersClub.
Elsa Gladiac 920 GeForce3 video card on NewsForge. (Update: It's down at the moment, try again later).
Romtec Trios Multiple IDE Hard Drive Selector on Hardware Extreme.
ECS K7S5A motherboard on The TechZone.
Via C3 733MHz on OCWorkBench.
The 1GHz Morgan (Duron) reviews are still flowing in at a healthy rate, with NewsForge having one here, and SourceMag one here. Most interesting thing I've noticed from the reviews is that a Morgan Duron will keep up with a Thunderbird Athlon in a lot of benchmarks.. Which is pretty damn impressive. Take into account that a Spitfire Duron is almost a fair match of a P3 and you can see how much competition Intel has on their hands.. Can't wait until these things filter down to the retail market. With Duron 950's selling for about $170, and T'Bird 1GH'z for $200 from the more price competitive Australian online retailers I'm guessing a price point of about $185.. which isn't too shabby at all.
OCmod has an guide to modding your standard ATX PSU to get 17V out of it.. they're basically just joining the 12V and 5V lines together.. be good for those power hungry Peltiers. I'd be treading softly tho, of the things that can hurt you inside your PC, a faulty PSU is way up there with 80mm monster Delta fans.
I'm starting to wonder what it is with motherbords getting Ricey Names, like the IWill KK266 Plus R that VR-Zone has reviewed. This isn't the first 'R' motherboard I've seen, and I'm pretty sure there has been a 'Type-R' product as well.. if I see V-TEK I'll be scared, very scared.. Meanwhile in the Motoring forum, wazza has pointed out 9 easy ways to cook rice, which is incredibly amusing.. the sound effects are a killer.
Dan has reviewed the Xitel MD-Ports which are a fancy USB way of outputting audio to your MD recorder.. but they're not that special in that they're just a USB audio device and work in the same way as a sound card. So, if you've got a sound card (unless you need the TOSLINK output that one unit has), you won't need one.
PCHardware.RO has added a new chapter to their rather in-depth Mastering a Network series. This one is about OSI Layer 2 Data Link and covers MAC addresses, network topologies, standards, encapsulation, specifications and layer 2 devices like bridges and switch. See what I mean?
Finally this morning, TweakTown has taken a look at the upcomming WindowsXP. I think I've already mentioned this before, but the best thing about it for myself and a few other people is the support for Vortex2 sound cards and Via chipsets.. thanks to all those people that emailed me confirmation of this a while back!
Reviews:
CrazyPC Window Mod Kit on ClubOC.
Via C3 on PLE133 Chipset on Digit-Life.
TweakMonster Copper Ramsinks on BSOD.
DFI Ak76SN AMD761 board on Radeonic.
COOLPC Video-1-120 Graphics Card Cooler on RojakPot.
Early Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 22-August-2001 02:07:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Right, lets see if I can clear out the backlog in the news box.. been caught up in a bunch of other stuff these last few days.
A few reviews of the new AMD Morgan 1GHz.. this is, as mentioned earlier, the new Duron core. Info here on Tech-Report, here on Hexus, here on TomsHardware, here on FlingingSquids.. and no doubt more to come.
AnandTech surprisingly don't have a 1GHz Duron article up, but they do have a SocketA Chipset Roundup..
If you're after GeForce3 reviews you can find a heap here, thanks Mike.
Hellfire noticed this review that uses PC Neon stuff on light up a toilet.. no, really. If that's not bad enough, soon there may be even more flashy lights on your PC. Dan would be proud.
There's rumours flying around (here for example, thanks Troy), that the GF3U and GF3MX will be released soon (Friday 24), but NVIDIA are flatly denying it. The 3 places I've seen the rumours are all using the same text, so I guess it all came from the same place (wherever or whoever that was). Doesn't mean it's not true tho, of course.
Hmm, wonder if I can squeeze this radiator into my case.. from who else but The Riceman himself, Alchemy (update: apparently Spectral found it, okey dokey.)
Speaking of cars, Jeff has a guide on how NOT to paint one.. nice shirt btw. :)
Guru3D compared a couple of coolers, the Thermalright SK6 vs The Core.
DDRZone have an article up about one of their monster PC's.
Soc noticed this nonfree service which can send Windows alerts to your mobile via SMS..
Nice to see Abit giving up any pretense of not supporting overclocking. There are some goodies on the way here from Abit actually..
We've seen this before but it's not a bad little project, converting a filing cabinet into a file server.
Turns out hotmail has security holes.. who woulda thought. I guess you get what you pay for.. thanks Nigel.
Digit-Life have posted their monthly Storage Digest for July.
Some nicely tricked out boxes from Mikeling, Cascaman and Sunflower in the PCDB.
In a surprise move, Palm Inc has acquired BeOS. They are doing a survey of the community to gauge the need for support/development of BeOS - so if you're a fan of this "alternative" operating system, stand up and Be counted!
JimX points out this fix for fuzzy nvidia-based video cards. It's the RF filter mod we've seen before, but lots of info on this page. Newer cards down the bottom.
AOL are axing jobs too, thanks Sniper770.
Wokket notes that computers are turning us into zombies.. but he was just lulling us into a false sense of security before hitting us with the concept of a naked Bill Clinton picture book.. egad.
Reviews:
EPoX 8KHA KT266-based SocketA DDR motherboard on VR-Zone.
Zalman CNPS5000-AL socket cooler on Inside-Hardware.
Acorp 7KTA1 KT133A-based SocketA motherboard on MrPCPro.
AGP Airlift back-of-video cooler on BSOD.
ATI Radeon 8500 video card on SourceMagazine.
ColorCases Cybermirror case on Radeonic.
Samsung CD-YEPP MP3 player on PCStats.
Abit ST6-RAID Tualatin motherboard on HardwareUnlimited.
Windtunnel III case on OCOnline.
Vantec 6035D socket cooler on SystemLogic.
CompuNurse thermal probe (with mod) on ExtremeOC.
Palm M505 colour PDA on FutureLooks.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Legionnaires disease from bong coolers? in Extreme Cooling.
Motorcycle Noise Simulator (funny) in Motoring.
P3V4X Tips & Tweaks in VIA Hardware.
Attack of the Snails in Other Other Toys.
Tuesday Night
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Wednesday, 22-August-2001 00:17:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Firemoth pointed out these amazing crop circles that have been appearing lately. Regardless of how you feel about their origins, you have to be amazed by the creation of something like this in a single night. The mind boggles.
Digit-Life have a KT266 motherboard roundup.. DDR SocketA, of course.
A few people mentioned this article saying Excite@Home may be going under. Does this affect Optus@Home users in Australia? A quick jump over to our favourite broadband-info site whirlpool.net.au reveals this ZDNet article where Optus say they are not too worried about their future here. While on Whirlpool I noticed that due to the Telstra ADSL problems of the last few months, Primus ADSL will be free of charge for existing users in September. That's me, yay!
Some definitely uncool stuff going on with browser plugins that can hijack visitors away from websites.. more info here.
Aus3D wanna tell you all about TV Tuner cards.
Jeremy sent word that the 1GHz morgan-based Duron has been announced. I remember Andypoo having a minor rant about this a few months ago.. pretty hard for AMD to keep calling it a value chip, a chip for machines that don't need high-performance.. when it's steaming along at a gig. :)
RizeNet have a high-performance heatsink roundup posted.
RobsGT4 notes that the next person to join our SETI@HOME Team will be #300.. while VooDoo sent in some stats for the RC5 Team: Overclockers Australia completed 129,107 blocks yesterday at a sustained rate of 401,121 Kkeys/second! Overclockers Australia is ranked #36 for yesterday! The odds are 1 in 349 that this team will find the key before anyone else does. Cranking! Apparently we have a United Devices Team now too.
Get your weekly dose of the bizarre in the latest issue of ZZZ Online.
There is a HEAP more news to come..
*ahem* Monday Night
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Tuesday, 21-August-2001 02:03:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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TweakMax have an article up about modern servers, focussing on a Dell rackmount jobbie.
How to make a floppy drive robot. Almost all the instructions needed (you can work out the rest) to turn a floppy drive into a little whizzing-around robot car thing. Too much spare time, some people.. thanks Lockturne.
Epoch sent in this funny story about spam..
Sniper770 sent word of Ozemail cutting staff.
Hardcore graphics on the move? KngtRider points out the Quadro2Go and says NVIDIA to crush (pun? -Agg) mobile market now ATI has mobile radeon and r200 parts on the way?. I dunno, the Quadro was never that exciting a variant of any of the previous chipsets.. some allegedly fancy features, but no greater performance. Remember the spate of mods for GF1 and GF2 cards? Once the benchmarks started flying people mostly put their soldering irons away.. that's not to say they won't dominate the market anyway.
Bezerk sent in this list of Online PC Vendors, so I put it into the What/Where forum and made it sticky. Very useful, thanks!
From Little Erve: This link shows new sis 735 chipset mobos set to come out - including one from Leadtek, Asus, Gigabyte. (note: there's no info about these boards on the manafacturers websites).
HardOCP have a heatsink roundup.. at 1.6GHz.
A1-Electronics have a heatsink roundup too, and some results from slapping deltas onto various heatsinks.
TheTechZone had some lan party action in Canada..
Courtesy of THX1138, take a peek into the exciting world of bread bag tags and the passionate folk who collect them. Well, that one guy.
SystemLogic have a few pictures of things gone horribly wrong.. PC-wise, that is.
Lokturne noticed this cool fanlight mod.. neato but a little fiddly to make.
Nice Gorb Fan Adapter idea in the forums from MadMax..
Dan's written a guide to being an Annoying Bastard in Tribes2. Grrrreat.
Reviews:
Asus A7M266 AMD760-based DDR SocketA mobo on RatedPC. We covered it in our 3-way roundup.
Soyo SY-TISU (bless you!) Tualatin motherboard on HotHardware.
PlanTronics Gaming Headset on Bit-Tech.
Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 on OCTools.
Golden Gate socket cooler on GideonTech.
Sunday Night #2
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Sunday, 19-August-2001 23:08:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Alchemy again..
Manaz has pointed out this easter egg for Mad Onion's 3D Mark 2001. You get to wage war against menacing flying cows! Excellent.
David points out this site where you can win an Acer FP581 Flat-Panel screen.. the best part about it? It's open to Australian residents only :)
Wolfy found this official MS site that will test your NT4/2K box for security holes and then patch them up for you.. rather usefull for newbies. However the idea of Microsoft patching bugs for you remotely? eh.. I wouldn't rely on it is probably what I'm trying to say :)
hendot has customized his Nokia 6110 operator logo - to an OCAU one! Looks rather cool, and it's possible to do it to almost all Nokia phones so long as you have a data cable or an IR on both your phone and a computer. Almost as good as the case badges :)
Finally tonight, Wokket keeps us entertained with 30 fun things to do in a lift, an unkillable cow and an American perspective on avoiding traffic fines.
Reviews:
Rounded IDE Cables on Tech-Planet, our similar review here.
Swiftech MCX370-0A monster hs/f on GideonTech.
ATI TV Wonder USB on Hardware-Extreme.
Noise Control Silverado hs/f on OCopolis.
LiteOn 16/10/40 CD-RW on RojakPot.
This news is actually by Alchemy, but NewsPro is having a tizzy fit so I'm having to spoonfeed it. No idea what's going on. Bloody computers. :)
AtlantaOC have a rather beastie raid-0 review happening.. they compare the performance of a pair of Maxtor DX540 80gig 5,400rpm drives to that of a pair of Maxtor DMP45 46gig 7,200rpm drives. Either way, it's one huge speedy array of drive space they have there.
OCWorkbench has a small blurb up on their news page about Socket-A DDR chipsets. They reckon that there is a new B0 stepping of the ALi MAGiK1 chipset due out soon that will crown it the performance king.. even above the upcomming SiS735. They've posted a heap of marketing material scans from a MSI K735 SiS735 board in their forums. They also reckon there is a rev2 of the Via KT266 chipset due out, but I've been well informed that there is no such thing, so who know's what to think? Apparently the new "revision" of the Via chipset involved changing the resistor/trace layout design on the boards, rather than an update to the chipset itself.
Meanwhile LegionHardware are trying to sort out the title holder for the current crop of chipsets with a SiS735 vs VIA KT266 showdown.
BeachsideTech is covering the story of Dave McOwen - the guy who is getting sued for running the distributed.net client on computers without proper permission. Bit of an American extreme story there - but a good point to be learnt: always make sure you have permission to use PC's.
>From the ever-growing PCDB comes this extreme purple dome case thing - the best way to find out what I mean is to view the pics. Quite unique isn't it? There is more info here (in Finnish) - nice work cape :)
CaseJunkiez have been busy whipping up new content for their readers: Lombers has checked out some CoolPC rounded IDE cables (while we reviewed a similar product here) and Junkz has looked into a PCCaseGear Dual Neon Light setup.
Digit-Life has a small article up regarding nVidia's release of the Quadro2 Go graphics chipset for portable PC's. It's really just an evolution of the existing GeForce2 Go chipset, but for users of graphics intensive programs in the field it's probably a quite crucial release. For us gamers tho, it means diddly squat.
DrClaw reminds us all of the IBM Drive Fitness Test, a tool for checking the health of your drive - it's also useful for repairing some minor damage and diagnosing errors. There is also an option to exercise your drive.. good for bringing errors to the surface I suppose. If you don't have an IBM drive there is no need to stress - WD have a similar tool here, Maxtor/Quantum has one here.
SiS635 spotted in Japan
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Sunday, 19-August-2001 14:03:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From Chainbolt: it seems the much expected SiS635 (for Intel socket 370) boards are now emerging in Japan. This is the ECS P6S5AT. A main vendor is displaying several boards now. They take orders, but don't tell, when the board is arriving or the price.
 
click pics to enlarge..
Note the dual RAM capability - black slots for SDR, blue for DDR - not at the same time, presumably. Also, spot the southbridge! There isn't one, of course - this is a one-chip solution.
Saturday Evening
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Saturday, 18-August-2001 17:42:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From Wokket: Apparently there's a second moon in a U-shaped orbit around the earth - and there may be more. How to kill 70,000 phones with just one spanner.. bizarre alcohol laws from the USA.
IBM have made the world's fastest computer.. again.
Digit-Life have a roundup of Apollo Pro 266 motherboards. I checked out a couple of boards based on that Socket370 DDR chipset right here a few weeks ago. Fairly unexciting performance, sadly.
TheRegister seems to be down for me at the moment, but apparently on this page they say Intel are releasing their 2GHz P4 on Aug 27.
From Ashley: Majestic is different, a conspiracy-theory game that is dynamically tailored to each player. It is played through the web, by phone, fax and email. Sounds like paranoia city to me.
Mr Bill points out these sexy black IBM TFT widescreen monitors.. mmm, very droolworthy.
If you're into distributing pirate software and movies via Optus@Home your days may be numbered, according to this article on Whirlpool, thanks Daniel.
HWExtreme have a Gadget Showcase.. lots of interesting goodies there.
If your girlfriend says she's feeling horny, let's hope this isn't what she meant, thanks DarkP3.
Klif-e sent in this great flash anim of WindowsRG.. it's an interactive piss-take of Windows. Lots of little in jokes and things to play with. :)
NVIDIA have released 12.41 Detonator drivers for their range of video chipsets. Choose your O/S from the menu at left on that page.
LeperMessiah noticed this Intel CPU Stepping Codes chart.
For a trip down OCAU memory lane, check out oldnews.shtml, which is what we had before we started using NewsPro to manage the news on this site. It's a big file (250kb of text) but there is some funny stuff buried in there from way back in 1999 when the site first started and into early 2000.
Reviews::
2CoolPC Plus and Turbo system coolers on OCrCafe, our reviews here and here.
Compex LinkPort/UE202A USB Ethernet adaptor on 2FastCPU.
Koolance Liquid-Cooled Case on ComputerSource.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Planning two-stage watercooling in EC.
Peltier Lunacy in EC.
Pink Smiley PC Bits in Intel Hardware.
Tualatin - Not for Desktops in IH.
Volvo Cop Car?
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Saturday, 18-August-2001 16:47:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sneaky.. this was spotted in Chatswood, NSW earlier this week, thanks Boky:
Click to enlarge..
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 18-August-2001 16:43:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Matt noticed this Linux Hardware Database which contains reader-submitted reviews of hardware with an emphasis on how well it works with Linux.
Apparently Intel are warning people away from VIA's P4X266 chipset, thanks Firemoth.
If you run an IIS4 or IIS5 webserver, you should upgrade to Apache.. err, sorry, no, you should install this security patch from Microsoft, thanks Alan.
John noticed this interesting thread over on AMDMB's forums about adjusting PSU output via dials inside the unit. Only some have them, but you could defray a PSU upgrade or make your machine more stable with a bit more juice on vital lines. Of course, playing around inside your PSU is a really good way to get yourself killed, so make sure it's turned off, left plugged in for an hour then unplugged and left for a good while too before you even think about opening it up.
Some info about Evil Smart Tags and how they're bad for websites.
ProCooling have a Radiator Roundup posted. We've reviewed a few radiators here in the past, including the Black Ice, Cool-Computers and Senfu units.
There's a quite surreal but strangely compelling article here on ARSTechnica. It's pretending to be a mouse review but it digresses a lot and is quite funny in parts.
Willmeister revealed the secret link between Calvin & Hobbes and Fight Club.
Samsung are apparently producing 333MHz DDR SDRAM.. that's 166x2, of course.
There's an article on a couple of IDE RAID cards on StorageReview as well as an IDE RAID vs SCSI RAID comparison on GamePC, thanks Nigel.
Reviews::
Abit TH7II-RAID Pentium4 motherboard on HotHardware.
Labtec Pulse424 speakers on G3D.
Dynatron heatsinks on VYW.
Samsung Baby Yepp MP3 player on IANAG.
DiskOnKey USB storage keyring on SystemLogic.
Netblaster II 802.11b wireless network kit on SystemLogic.
Thermalright CB-6L socket cooler on Bit-Tech.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Bong Cooling Tower in Extreme Cooling.
Home Made Waterblocks using old heatsinks and perspex in EC.
Monster Memory Bandwidth on KG7-Lite in AMD Hardware.
Enable 32-bit colour in CS in Software Stuff.
Do-It-Yourself Vapochill in EC.
What's wrong with this DVD? in Audio Visual.
Performance Boost and Theories about leaked Detonators in OC & HW.
RAM Drives and crunching in Team OCAU.
Home-made Monitor Cooler
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Saturday, 18-August-2001 15:16:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This from FourtyFive: I have all my computer stuff down here in my basement. Which is cooler than outside, but still kinda warm. I was dusting off my screen and saw a fair amount of lint and stuff on the back of the monitor. When I went to wipe it off, I found out just how hot a monitor can get. I have a few fans of different sorts laying around usually. So I rigged this on up to sit on the top rear of the monitor and blow into the case. It took about a day, mostly for the epoxy to dry. The total cost would be around US$25.
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Saturday Morning
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Saturday, 18-August-2001 02:25:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The Folding@Home team keeps powering ahead, moving up a place into 15th overall today. However, fast approaching in our mirrors are the SAGoons from SomethingAwful.com (some strong language there, if you're bothered by that kinda thing). So if you've been thinking of joining Team OCAU's folding effort, here's how - it's easy.
Interesting water-cooled machine from GrunzWunz.
IANAG have a contest happening. No need to do anything too horrible, just populate their review database with links. It doesn't say whether or not it's open to international visitors, tho..
54Mbps wireless? It's apparently on the way, thanks Nigel.
Heatsink-Guide have some info on the new Kanie Wing cooler. Looks like a beefy copper version of the Super Dual we reviewed over a year ago.
Dan sent in Death Clock, a site that lets you track your own expiration date. :)
Reviews:
Intel P3-1GHz socket370 CPU on ClubOC.
AOpen CRW1232 Pro on 8balls.. our review of the non-Pro model here.
VideoLogic DigiTheatre speakers on ChicksHardware.
AMD Athlon 1.3GHz socketA CPU on ClubOC.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Team OCAU stats for various distributed computing projects.
JimX set us up the new AYBABTU Tbird stepping in AMD Hardware.
In praise of SMP and SCSI in SMP & Clustering.
Memory Bandwidth of P4X266 in OC & HW.
Top of the news box this morning is this interview with a Marketing Director from Via Technologies. Obviously, most of the talk centres around Via's new P4X266 chipset for the P4.. and just on that topic it appears me missed a P4X266 write up from a site new to the scene - TheDDRZone. You might want to head over and give their article a looksee and have a poke around their new site.. it looks good :)
Dave from Razor Prices points out that he has started a new section of his site called Razor Trader, a place where you can trade (duh) your surplus hardware. It's sort of like the Swap+Shop forum but a bit more regulated.. he's written a bit about it in the forums here.
EXHardware has a guide to cleaning all the dust out of your PC. Meanwhile Hexus have further explanation about the IBM hard drive issues that have been surfacing lately.
TheTechZone are continuing their How To Start A Tech Site guide with a look at their webserver's backend. Basically, the backend is where the webmaster/writers go to post articles to the site. Because they have had a professional ASP developer code up their site it is rather swanky.. but ASP = IIS = EWW.
Dan has found more shiny peripherals to review - this time a silver IR keyboard designed for sitting-on-the-couch operation. Good for people that are making DiVX boxes and the like.. it's down the bottom of his already-existing shiny stuff review.
If you're interesting in Peltier cooling OCprices has interviewed a US company, PelTEC who specialises in selling Peltier elements.. some handy information in there. You might also want to check out our original Peltier Experiment and a few other Peltier articles in the article list.
In the Off-Topic department this morning, Chris points out this flash-game version of Cricket on the BBC.uk site. It appears they've given up hope of beating us for real, and will have to settle for a bit of numeric keypad revenge. Meanwhile Dan points out that Sesame Street's Bert may be evil, and WardoG points out this amusing flash animation concering WindowsXP on flash-comedy site Newgrounds. inoshiro has found a all your base animation he reckons is finally worth watching, and Wokket has sent in a whole host of stuff including a site dedicated to Australia's worst cricketers, a how-to on becomming a human guinea pig, a list of weird and offensive foods from yesteryear, and finally news of Vancouver residents being terrorized by bullfrogs.. and I thought the Canadians wouldn't stand for terrorism.
RizeNet has updated their case mod gallery, meanwhile our PCDB is always in a state of change 24/7 with the users doing their own updating :)
TechExtreme has news that AMD will cease production of 486, 586 and K6 series processors ahead of the planned July 2003 date. Comes as a bit of a suprise to me that they where evn still producing them..
In case mod news PCHardware has a guide to giving our case paint a mirror finish, and Icrontic reckon they've found The Next Big Thing in spray painting your PCB's. Hmm, maybe the next big thing in warranty refusals?
Finally today, TechWatch has reviewed some of the Dual Neon Kits you can easily obtain in Australia.
Reviews:
AthlonMP shim on IANAG.
LinkSys EtherFast Cable/DSL Router on OCCafe.
Rioworks SDVIC-LAR SMP P3 DDR Board on 2CPU.
Chaintech SIS735 board on OCWorkbench.
EvergreenTech RumbleFX force-feedback headphones on GideonTech.
MSI KT266 Pro-R KT266 DDR AMD mobo on Accelenation.
NetPassage 15B router on PCHardware.RO
New ATi Cards on Digit-Life.
Elsa GeForce2 Ultra on Hexus.
PC Mods Rounded Cable on Midnight Cafe, our similar review here.
Thursday Evening
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Thursday, 16-August-2001 21:30:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Spent a very pleasant half-day at Eastern Creek on my R6 today.. pleasant until I blew the engine up, that is. D'oh! Sounds like the camchain has jumped a tooth. Fortunately, my mechanic reckons the camchain tensioner spring snapped, which means it's all covered under warranty. Phew! If you're in Sydney and looking for a good bike mechanic, give Rod at BikeBiz Parramatta a ring and say "James with the R6" sent you.. I've been going to him for over 8 years now. Anyway, before my bike started making horrible noises, I managed to have a lot of fun, so the day wasn't a total loss.
SysOpt have launched a new Overclocking Database. It's more like the Overclockers.com CPU Database than our own PC Database, but it has a nicer interface than the OC.com one. Not a lot of entries there yet and I note they have the average overclock for a Duron 750MHz listed at 1.9GHz.. I'll have one of those, please! Something to keep an eye on, anyway.
BluesNews has a demo available of the upcoming Aliens vs Predator2 game.
RipNet checked out a couple of Elsa GeForce video cards.
For the James Bond fans, Digit-Life have reviewed a wristwatch with a camera in it!
ExtremePCUK have a GeForce3 Tweaking Guide, as if they're not fast enough already.
Just noticed this in the PCDB.. check this out:
Click for the PCDB entry!
Cool. :)
Neoseeker is having a rather serious OCZ Giveaway, with a suped up OCZ GeForce3 card first price, an Iwill KK266/OCZ Gladiator/1.7GHz Athlon combo as second prize and 512Mb of OCZ 'Enhanced' PC150 SDRAM as third. Quite serious indeed. Of course, you need to sacrafice yourself to their forum database, and there are a few popup adds to contend with.. but that is a rather serious giveaway.
Redback has been musing over the design of the PS2 shell.. it's strikingly similar to the Atari MicroBox.. hmm, maybe Sony have some explaining to do ?
I noticed this rather helpful thread explaining just what, exactly, folding@home does. Also on the subject of forum threads, I started this poll to find out how many people have had IBM GXP series hard drives fail. I understand that some may see it as defecient in that I don't have a poll option to say "I have a GXP and it's fine", but my intention isn't to find out how many are fine, it's to find out how many are dead. Meanwhile in the PCDB, SusanK has uploaded pics of his/her(?) swanking looking silver case.
tn1 points out that this month is the 10th birthday of the Linux Kernel.. it was 10 years ago this month that a 21-year-old Linus Torvalds sent an e-mail to the open-source software community saying an experimental version of the Linux kernel, the core technology that would end up embodied in Linux operating systems, was up and running.
Things are looking up for ATi, the manufacturer behind the Raedon chipsets. ATi is quite like the late 3dfx or the still-kicking Matrox in that they produce their own cards in house.. unline nVidia which just produces the chipset and a reference design. Obviously the nVidia method works best, and ATi seems to of caught on.. they will be outsourcing some board manufacture to budget mobo company DFI.
Finally (for now), AusGamers hardware have reviewed the Hercules KyroII video card. Go and check it out, ReaX wants you to :)
More in a bit, need to cook dinner..
Reviews:
Swiftech MC462-A psycho hs/f on OCaddiction.
Tyan Thunder K7 SMP AMD board, our review here.
Zalman CNPS3100 hs/f on Neoseeker.
HP Vectra P4 1.5GHz OEM PC on TechExtreme.
Plextor 12/10/30 IDE CD-RW on MikhailTech.
KingMax PC166 SDRAM
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Thursday, 16-August-2001 00:49:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Wolfy and VooDoo reviewed this new offering from Kingmax. We've checked out a lot of their stuff before and been impressed. KingMax rate these sticks to 166MHz @ CAS3 - if that doesn't say "overclockers" then I don't know what does..
Click for the full review!
Another one from VooDoo.. unsurprisingly, this warranty claim was declined:
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Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 15-August-2001 14:49:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Mike has start an unofficial OCAU Tribes2 tribe. From within tribes2, if you search for either [Zalahuk] (that's me), or [OCAU], or Overclockers Australia, it should bring up the details of the tribe, and how to join etc. They're keen to get anyone of any level to join it..
Found some cool airbrushed cases out there, from people do who it for a fee. More in the sci-fi section.
VIA's P4X266 is now out, this is their P4 DDR motherboard chipset. This has been widely anticipated, because people are wondering how the P4 will go with a decent (aka, non-RAMBUS) memory subsystem. HardOCP are first up with a review this morning, followed closely by AnandTech, Digit-Life, VIAHardware and FiringSquad.
There's a German article here about a home-made aircooler that apparently beats every commercial one they've compared it to..
Interesting technical thread here from Chris Nolan, regarding the improvement in the memory bandwidth for AMD CPUs from using SSE instructions, available in a beta version of Sandra.
Confused about HDD terminology? This guide might come in handy.
Apparently ATI are gaining market share back from NVIDIA, thanks tn1.
News from Wokket: There's a badass llama that protects sheep and a pigeon has been grounded after smuggling drugs.
Reviews:
Vantec CCK-6035D socket cooler on HWDaily.
Abit KG7-RAID on OCWB.
Copper Ramsinks on DreddNews.
Soyo DRAGON integrated SocketA motherboard on NewsForge.
Dragon Orb 3 socket cooler on JSIHardware.
MSI 850 Pro 2 P4 motherboard on PCStats.
Polk AMR 150 4.1 digital surround speakers on AwareMag.
Macase MS-10 Hard Drive Cooler
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Wednesday, 15-August-2001 03:36:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The curiously-named "Hermannator" is a pretty serious-looking cooling unit for high-speed HDD's. It's basically a beefy aluminium heatsink with 2 40mm fans blowing on it. I whacked a 10,000rpm SCSI drive into it to see if it's as cool as it claims to be..
Click for the full review!
The big news tonight seems to be the release of the Raedon2, or Raedon 8500 and 7500 as it is officially named. Anandtech have previewed it, whilst Tom's Hardware have compared it to the GeForce3. Gamespot also have a blurb up about it, as do Rage3D and numerous other places as well. Thanks to Headless Turkey, Matt and sw1tch for the links.
PCStats have reviewed the Handspring Visor Prism, pretty much Handsprings version of the color Palm Pilot.. a rather nifty device, but it seems to me like more of a marketing revolution rather than a usability evolution.
ArsTechnica have a rather in-depth guide to the Compaq Accredited Systems Engineer (ASE) certification. Going from the subject material it's a tad more than a "I know Compaq Stuff" badge, but rather a quite serious industry qualification. Haven't really heard that much about it in Australia where it's mostly MS this and MS that. If you're organisation does a bit of business with Compaq it might be one worth looking into tho.. and still worth a read even if you're just in grade 12 wondering what to do next year. My advice: Organise it now, after schoolies -everything- will be blurry.
AMDmb have a Ultimate System Guide up, using a pair of Palomino's as the heart of a 760MP system. Incidentally, seeing those Tyan Thunder K7 lite boards for $566 is quite good.. sure, it's a hell of a lot of money.. but it's over half what the original boards cost... now, who is going to be first? :)
Microsoft are trying to own the keyboard, again. As if adding the three "Windows Keys" wasn't enough, they now want to add OfficeXP keys. I can understand from the usability perspectives and all that, and MS keyboards are actually quite good.. but jeez, what next - a get-out-of-antitrust-case-for-free button?
Siddarth pointed out this incredibly amusing hax0r language pack for Google. Nice work finding that one - it's pretty cool :)
Devinet pointed out that the Optus@Home FTP proxy has returned - after first being introduced in a rather.. untested form and causing all sorts of hassles, it's now been thoroughly tested (or so we're told), and should be ready for mainstream. If you're having any problems tho, best to share them here.
Morjo points out this Reg article which talks about a mobile phone that has been gutted and the insides replaced with four 22mm rounds and a firing pin. Those Yugoslavs are sure creative in giving us new ways to communicate :)
klif-e found this rather amusing article concerning the worlds first "internet ready" park bench that MSN revealed in London a few weeks back.. apparently some kids figured out that they could plug a normal phone handset into the unit and make overseas phone calls free of charge, well.. with MSN picking up the charge actually. Can't complain about that.. almost as good as a Maccas straw :o In other MS-exploit news, the hacker that purchased Bill Gates viagra has escaped prison on mental grounds.
Mitch points out this alternate GF2MX400 roundup, this time on French site Puces3D. Being a French site, the article is (of course) in French, so you might want to visit the 'fish to make sense of it. 7 cards get the going over in an article about 16 pages long.. so fairly lengthy :)
I know, I know - you've already seen this cool PC-in-a-car mod. What you haven't seen is the hugely detailed "How we did it" page packed with new info. I know this because the creator has only just put it on the net and, coz he's an Aussie, he told us about it first. So go check it out before they get slashdotted. :)
Tuesday Midday
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Tuesday, 14-August-2001 12:31:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's all happening in Dual Athlon land today - Akiba have pics and info on a minimal version of the Tyan Thunder K7. It differs from the server-oriented version that we reviewed in a number of important ways - no onboard SCSI, video, Ethernet etc which should lower the cost of the board dramatically. Also, note that the special 2-connector ATX power requirement is gone - this new board has the normal ATX power connector we've been using for ages which implies the specialised PSU is not needed. I'd imagine you'd still need a high-quality unit, though. Akiba say about this new board, according to the magic fish, "As for the person that from height of the degree of attention, from immediately after the appearing it is expected, would like to procure simultaneously with sale that it becomes shortage of goods state, it probably is secure to do reservation proposal." - I'm inclined to agree. However, ReaX noticed that New Millennium have what seems to be this new board (they call it the Tyan Thunder Basic) listed for AUD$566, still very pricey. IANAG last night reviewed the fully-featured version (same as our review) and they say something interesting: While no other motherboard makers currently have plans to produce a board with the 760MP chipset, there are many that will be producing boards based on the new 760MPX chipset due out very soon. Boards based on the 760MPX chipset will probably run at least $100[USD] cheaper, then the non-SCSI version of this board. Something to keep an eye out for! SourceMagazine reviewed it today too. So did Radeonic - and they overclocked it. Must be time to pimp our own review again. :)
Dan compared a couple of KT133A motherboards.
Falkor noted this flash movie, pretty cool in the ultraviolent action flick style, nicely put together but silly ending. :)
RivaStation compared 7 MX400-based video cards, thanks Nigel.
LoneWolf sent in this massive list of links to pretty much everything PC-related.
Spanky says the Qld One.Tel auction (plasma screens, get 'em while they're hot) info is here.
Brendan says there's a new Netscape 6.1 out and it seems less buggy than the last version.
Reviews:
Abit TH7II-RAID P4 motherboard on FiringSquad, thanks Nigel.
FrontX multimedia ports on HWExtreme, our review here.
Epox EP-4T2A i850-based P4 motherboard on PCHardware.
Seagate U6 IDE HDD on Digit-Life.
Neon String on SpodesAbode.
Blue Orb chipset cooler on Mikhailtech, our lapping info here, chipset cooler roundup here.
Sizzle sizzle..
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Tuesday, 14-August-2001 11:13:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From VooDoo: This guy told us he "knows everything there is to know" about building computers. He then got abusive when the computer wasn't stable and crashed. His was a whole system sent back to us because of our faulty parts. Client built it all himself.
  
Yup, I think I see the problem..
Sure, 1.6GHz Athlon AYHJA-R chips are special. I mean, 1.6GHz is nothing to be sneezed at right? Well.. right up until the point Anandtech sticks a Kyrotech Super G2 on an Athlon and scores a massive 1.866GHz out of it. Sure, it costs a hell of a lot, but it's damn cool. Pardon the pun.
Also over at Anandtech they have gotten their hands on the new nVidia Detonator 4 driver set, which bears a version number of 20.xx. Havn't seen those ones around.. they apparently bring quite a decent performance increase, so might be worth checking out when they (inevitably) leak.
A lot of you might not of realised, but Tyan make more than just the beast Thunder K7 SMP board for AMD processors (like we reviewed here).. they also make a few KT133A boards like the Trinity KT-A, which PC-Stats have reviewed. If you're looking for an overclocking board they are almost definitely not for you, but they are very very stable.. which is what an increasing number of people are looking for these days.
If you've got a laptop, now definitely seems to be the time to upgrade the RAM in it.. with pc133 prices plumeting, SODIMM prices have taken a dive as well.. which means GideonTech's guide to adding SODIMMS comes at a rather oppurtune time.
Andypoo pointed out this rather extensive list of defective R4 dvd discs.. which is extensive indeed. Yet more reason why the R4-only rule is about to be abolished by the ACCC.. He also pointed out this analysis of the Code-RedII virus.
elvis points out something that everyone appears to of missed: PowerStrip 3.01 is now out. For those not in the know, PowerStrip is an incredibly usefull tray-based application for changing your display settings and overclocking your mem/core speeds.
If you're of the technical mindset, NiCH points out this 104 page technical document concerning the mobile Athlon4 processors. Quite a healthy read there for you.. he also sent this link suggesting that HP may be bailing out of the PC business.
Wokket points out this site that compares operating systems to beer. Quite amusing, and quite true. He also points out this rather cool text-to-speech (TTS) engine.
Scott pointed out this press release which hints at a Quake4 and the upcomming version of DOOM.
Finally, FiringSquad have an updated version of their heatsink physics guide up explaing how heatsinks work, and what makes a good heatsink. Worth a read..
Reviews:
Trek USB Thumbdrive on TechWatch.
Intel Tualatin 1.2GHz Preview on TheTechZone. Tekheads Rounded IDE Cables on OCprices. Our review of a similar product here, DIY guide here.
AVGS SC-GM01 mid-tower case on Bit-Tech.
The cool PCDB entries keep pouring in, check out the mottled blue paintjob and other goodies on APOVIS's machine, Wedge's very tidily modified Lian-Li and Subside's cool paintjob/logo.
Case Badges are sold out! .. looks like we way underestimated demand, despite ordering double what we thought we'd need. Don't panic if you haven't heard from Tim yet as he's kinda swamped with orders. Please don't email him to check if your order got in in time, he will respond to every email but adding another one to the pile won't speed that process up. But if you haven't ordered yet, don't bother, you missed the boat! In a week or so when the orders are confirmed I will put up a poll asking if there are more people wanting some, in which case we'll get more made up.
Guru3D have updated their Detonator Dbase which lists performance stats for various versions of the NVIDIA drivers.
If you like Win2K but don't like how it looks, Nigel sent in this article which gives you some options..
Andypoo noticed this new Western Digital 100GB ATA-100 HDD reviewed on StorageReview.. yikes. SR is a really good site if you're looking for HDD info btw, check out their leaderboard etc.
Futurelooks reviewed Gran Tourismo 3 for the PS2. There's been a lot of ads for this driving game on TV lately.. which reminds me - what the hell does "Playstation 2: The Third Place" mean? Seems like suicide marketing to me, the only impression I get from that phrase is that there are 2 things better (ie, in 1st and 2nd place) than the PS2. Can anyone who speaks Marketing translate it for me please, ta. Update: Lots of people have lots of theories. Go to this thread if you reckon you know!
Digit-Life have their Monthly Hardware Digest for July posted. This is different to the 3D one from yesterday.
From Wolff: on 10AM wednesday 22 August at Ross Auction there is the Perth One.Tel auction including: 80+ Dell 15" Flat panel LCD Monitors, 2 x SONY 108cm Widescreen flat panel Plasma screens and no doubt plenty more stuff..
Interesting/scary thing from Narkov, the potential for virii to spread much faster than Code Red did. I'm a bit skeptical about this article but I can't put my finger on why.
This from DarthWindu: just thought I'd drop a line and tell you about the 2 products I recieved in the mail from Germany today, from www.noisecontrol.de - a Noisecontrol Silverado hs/fan that is basically inaudible (haven't fully tested cooling capabilities yet, but initial check looks good, and THG was impressed with it a while back) and more significantly for people concerned with PC noise reduction, the No Vibes hard drive mount that basically secures your HDD into a 5 1/4" slot with a metal frame and some "rubber bands" to dampen vibration. This device is freaky and disturbing: my 7200rpm IBM 75gxp HDD makes virtually no noise - you can defrag and not even hear anything. This is particularly significant since the rest of my setup is rigged for silence - the above Silverado, a low speed Panaflow 80mm PSU fan, and no other blowers aside from the negligable 40mm fan on the GF3... I recommend everyone to check this out - $US22 postage, but to me by far my best PC purchace ever. Overkill if you're running a delta, since you probably don't know that HDDs even make noise, but for mere mortals... very nice.
Catch your weekly dose of the bizarre over on ZZZ Online..
Reviews:
TwinMOS PC166 sdram on PCStats, thanks Nigel.
Evergreen 3D Sound Amplifier on SoundCardCentral.
Alpha PAL8045 socket cooler on ClubOC.
Samsung 1100P-plus 21-inch CRT monitor on PCStats.
nPOWER NP60D socket cooler on OCNZ.
This from Chainbolt: interesting pics from a new TURBO Cooling kit, new on sale in Japan, around 70 AUD (including 2x60mm fans):
 
 
click pics to enlarge..
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 12-August-2001 16:02:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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In a similar vein to the Hubble pics I linked a few days ago, NASA have put up some cool images taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and John sent in the link to NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day archive including this amazing Earth picture we linked a while ago.
A few people pointed out that the PCDB has hit 2000 entries! There's some dissent about which entry was the magic number though - some say gbm31, some say HariSingh3k while I thought it was Abit667. None of those entries have pics, but here's a couple of new ones that do and look great, from FoderMe and Scout255.
Apparently TheHungerSite was another victim of the internet ad-market slump.. which affected more people than the dissapearance of most other sites.
Given Microsoft's legal situation it seems crazy that they'd still be doing things like this.. thanks V8R.
Some cool pics from Astro's Lan.. go the window-modded monitor. :)
OZEight noticed this new technology that might replace audio CD's.
There's some concern that PDF files could start carrying virii soon, thanks Craig.
xbit have compared all the modern SocketA chipsets..
TheTechZone have updated their How to Start a Tech Site article.
There's a new version of Motherboard Monitor aka MBM out, thanks Scott. 5.09, but I'm still running 4.18 because I prefer the interface.
PappaSmurf posted his theory about IBM HDD's and the VP6
Digit-Life have their Monthly 3D Roundup for June posted.
Another mention of Internet over power lines, thanks Morjo.
HardAvenue have a Value/Performance PC Buyers Guide happening.
TheInquirer note Athlon4 multipliers will go to 18X, possibly opening up a heap of overclockability presuming the new cores can handle it, which seems likely given the success with the current cores.. thanks X_phile.
Random idea: If I have a URL in my clipboard when opening a new browser window, the browser should open that URL.
Reviews:
Macpower DigiDoc5 temp monitor & fan controller on OCOnline - our review here.
PCMods Rheobus Kit fan controller on Slautech, our review here.
Swiftech MXC-370 socket cooler on OCrCafe.
Delta 60mm 51CFM fan on VYW.
MA600 Infrared Transciever on 4bitterguys.
Coolerguys WindTunnel III case on HardAvenue.
MSI K7 Master-S SocketA DDR motherboard on AMDMB.
Enermax CS-688AL-01 case also on AMDMB.
ECS K7AMA socketA motherboard on TempleOfTech.
Vantec CCK-6035D socket cooler on TweakTown.
The Claw gaming controller on ClubOC.
Matrox Marvel G450 eTV connector-bristling video card on SysOpt.
ECS K7S5A SiS 735S based SocketA motherboard also on SysOpt.
Acer CRW 1208A and Sony CRX160E-RP IDE CDRW drives on Digit-Life.
Laserbay drivebay lighting thingy on Bit-Tech.
Saturday Evening
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Saturday, 11-August-2001 18:49:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I know we've given this a fair bit of plugging lately, but apparently the GTRPC, PC-in-model-car thing is actually Australian! Cool. It's even appeared in the PCDB. UngratefulNinja noticed a company selling a similar thing.. that Cobra PC looks great. :)
Some other cool stuff has appeared in the PCDB in the last few days - check out Bob_Squad's custom wooden case with very cool VU-meters in the front, Trust7's bright yellow and black box, very tidy work and Beldurra's.. interesting colour scheme.. :)
The ArsMasters tell us what they think of Max Payne.
HardwareMania checked out the Tyan Thunder K7 dual socketA motherboard. Remember, we brought you the first in-depth preview of it right here on OCAU!
From OneArmedMan: My Athlon AYHJA 1Ghz stock makes it easy to 1.55Ghz Air cooled with FOP-38 @ 1.85Volts (for now) have to get some better ram and I'll probably be able to go faster.. It's all Multiplier ATM, when I get my PC-150 we'll see about a bit more speed =)
Reviews:
Epox 8K7A+ AMD761+686B DDR SocketA motherboard on HotHardware.
Shuttle AK31 Rev2 VIA KT266 DDR SocketA motherboard on AMDMB.
Cooler Master ATC-200 case on ChicksHW.
Dynatron Model-R 1U copper microfin heatsink on FrostyTech.
PCMods Rheobus on MikhailTech.. our review here
Vantec CCK-6035D HSF on DreddNews.
Fortis Heatsinks on ClubOC.
Been trawling thru the forums and came up with a few interesting threads for you all :)
How OCAU looks in 7 different browsers in Site Disucssion.
AusGamers catching up with us in Folding on Team OCAU.
Genone Team flying along in Team OCAU.
200 Mad Folders in Team OCAU.
Comparing Chip Speeds in OC+HW.
IBM 75/60GXP Reliability in OC+HW.
Articooler HACA-0002's in OC+HW.
Your OC'ing History in OC+HW.
IDE RAID Poll in OC+HW.
Limiting Factors in Overclocked Systems in OC+HW.
B-I-G Case in Case Mods.
Dual Neons vs Single Cathode in Case Mods.
Cool Looking Case Window in Case Mods.
Sand-Blasted Window Etching in Case Mods. Looks great Amorphous!
I think that'll about do it for now.. but there is a l-o-t more cool stuff that I might post tommorrow when I get the time. Have fun :)
Sometimes I just don't know why I bother.. wake up at 7, go to uni for a WHOLE FIFTY MINUTES, before getting on a bus to come home, write news, and go to work. At least I get to drink lots of vodka with lots of women tonight, if I couldn't there'd be trouble.
This from a CQU mailing list via Sciby..
CNET just reported that MS has given PC makers the OK to ship WXP as a whole month early. The official launch date was Oct. 25-th but it looks like at least four of the large PC builders can start shipping late September. For the industry this is good news. WXP requires powerful hardware and the new
goodies included might sway people to trash their old PC's. That could make total Q4 PC sales look a little better, as total PC sales declined about 8% the last quarter.
There is a little blurb about it at the bottom of this Inq article, and here is the original CNET article.
Bit-Tech has a quick guide to spray painting your case.. which seems to be a fairly popular case mod these days. Just on case mods, Farrod pointed out more pics of that incredibly insane PC-inside-a-RC that was in the HardForum a few days ago.. Once again, fwoar. Ricey PC :) Finally, CoolHardWarez have a guide to using LED lights instead of Neons inside your case.
I linked to a stupidly short blurb the other day about Radeon 2 sample/testing boards being sent out to developers for a look-see. Well, here are the pics of the board. All the text is Korean (' fish it if you want), but the pics are pretty tasty. It's a fairly 'busy' looking board design, and interesting to note the ommision of ramsinks.
Apparently the EPoX 8K7A+ AMD 761 board is particulary sensitive to +5 and +12 voltages, and Scarifier points out this forum thread that's offering a PSU mod as a solution. I'd recomend buying a better PSU than modding your old one tho.. PSU's come in a case for a reason :)
If you want to win one of ten Vantec CCK-6035D all-copper heatsinks, OConline is giving a heap of them away.
In case you havn't noticed, Dan has a serious fetish for LED-based flashlights. This is his fourth review of a number of the things, and these ones are much cheaper and much smaller. And much more I-want-one.
RojakPot has updated their Bios Optimization Guide to v6.20, and made it available in PDF format as well. Probably worth a gander if you're new to BIOS tweaking, or if a new board/BIOS has settings you don't recognise.
For anyone that still has a 3dfx Voodoo card in use, there is a new tweak for them over on the x3dfx forums.
Finally today, apparently IBM is having big problems with the reliability of their 75GXP and 60GXP series of drives. Some people swear by IBM drives, and others curse their very being. I'm in the later camp, after having 4 of the buggers die on me in the space of a fortnight, I'm now a Western Digital fan.
Reviews:
Abit Siluro MX400 on 3DSpotlight.
IWill KK266+ RAID on ClubOC.
Lexmark Z22 color inkjet printer on NeoSeeker.
Enermax Temp Rack on OCcafe.
Archos Jukebox 6000 HDD-based MP3 player on MrPCPro.
Akasa Silver Mountain hs/f on 8BallsHardware.
Mouse Bungee Crystal Pro on HWextreme. Our review here.
Envision EN5100 15" LCD Screen on GideonTech.
MSI StarForce 822 GeForce3 on PCHardware.ro.
Lian Li PC60-USB case on BlargOC.
Antec 1030B black ATX case on BSOD.
Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers on TechExtreme.
Samsung Cyber Beetle Mouse!
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Friday, 10-August-2001 02:53:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A quick review from Lujan of this corded optical mouse from Samsung. I didn't even know Samsung made mice! Anyway, a couple of interesting features:
Click for the full review!
PC's for Kids
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Thursday, 9-August-2001 13:35:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Anthony reminded me about this - got an old (legal) copy of Win 3.11, Dos 6.22, Windows 95 or 98 lying around? You're not using that old stuff anymore, give it to some kids who need it. Chuck them in the mail to:
Colin Bayes
Pc's For Kids Inc
Post Office Box 69
Belmont Vic 3216
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 9-August-2001 13:33:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Code Red continues to bother people - there's a list of probably-infected IP's affecting one forum user here - if you recognize any of yours, get yourself sorted!
Rik noticed these two custom wooden cases here and here.
It's always good when people rediscover a species that was thought to be extinct. Even more so when they discover they taste good! Thanks Wokket. :)
Wow. Herbo noticed this cooling system using the cold ground (8 feet under) to cool your CPU.. the mind boggles.
Like the look of the Apple G4 towers but can't bring yourself to use a Mac? SystemLogic have just the case mod for you.
This is apparently some cheap videocard cooling but the site is mind-numbingly slow for me so no idea really..
Paul sent in the link to this Speed Racer parody cartoon. I guess it's mroe funny if you watched Speed Racer as a kid, which I didn't. :)
AMDMB have a guide to heat transfer.
Coupla cool PCDB machines, DeathZone_2 has a monster Chenbro watercooled box while the internals of Sabien's look like something from Alien.
Shaun wonders if any OCAU readers know the answer to this question about Internet-connectivity maps of Oz.
Reviews:
KDS USB CD Organiser (looks cool!) on ClubOC.
PowerCooler PCH-137 copper socket cooler on AMDZone.
New Philips Sound Cards on Digit-Life.
OCZ Gladiator socket cooler on Guru3D.
GlobalWin WBK38 socket cooler on TE.
Soyo SY-TISU i815 Socket370 motherboard on NewsForge.
OCAU Case Badges!
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Thursday, 9-August-2001 02:11:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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They're finally available!
Click for full details!
Please address any questions about the badges to Tim at badges@overclockers.com.au - thanks to Tim for organising it all!
Ack, last minute news. Again! But don't worry.. it'll still be all right. I promise :)
Well, in case you didn't notice on that Akiba page we linked to a few days ago, USB 2.0 is pretty much out, man. Maxtor has a USB2 Hard Drive on the market.. and the cards to run it are also starting to filter down, as are the drivers. In case you've been living in a hole, the good thing about USB2.0 is the backwards compatibility with the already widespread USB1. And the 480Mb/sec isn't bad either.
Hmm, 3Dspotlight are giving stuff away to people who sign up to their mailing list. Giving away a GF2MX card to be precise, which in today's market isn't that much.. but still, it's free! And so are the Vantec CCK-6035D hs/f's that ExtremeOC are giving away. Novel idea that, giving away stuff..
You think those 60mm Delta fans are hardcore.. wait until you see the 80mm units. How about 64cfm in your case. How about the noise 64cfm makes in your ears. Yes, serious cooling. Serious Noise. What else do you expect from delta? Meanwhile in the fan world, OCcafe have checked out some pre-production fans due on the market soon.
In case you didn't already know, George pointed out how a video card works. And it sure isn't without a great deal of tech stuff these days.
Ungrateful Ninja points out this computer aptitude test.. now I must admit to partaking in a few bourbons tonight.. but to me it just seems to be a HAHAHAHA bet this will make you spew type thing. I'm not too sure.. way beyond my level of comprehension atm.
VooDoo points out this extremely insane case mod.. and when I say insane, I mean, INSANE!
Tech Report is having a rant about Macs.
In the hard drive world, it appears the almost redundant-in-practice ATA/100 standard has already been superseded by ATA/133. Which all seems a bit stupid to me, as hard drives can't even reach speeds where ATA/100 is necesarry, let alone ATA/133 speeds. Supposedly Intel is ignoring all this ATA/133 stuff and heading straight for Serial/ATA, which seems to be the way to go.
Kyrocea points out that Handspring Visors are now retailing for as little as A$160 in Japan at the moment.. which is damn cheap considering the cost of a Palm equivalent in Australia at the moment is quite a deal more than that.. so if you're heading over to Japan soon, please let me give you $160 :)
OcPrices have been doing the water cooling and peltier thing, meanwhile we did that ages ago *totally*.. you can read about Agg's experience with this sort of gear here and here.
Any webmaster out there has no doubt read this latest article on Anandtech. It talks about their latest server upgrade, to a dual 1.2GHz Athlon 1ru machine. I sure wish I could ring up Corsair and request 2Gb of DDR ECC RAM. On a smaller scale of course, of course, our server contains 512MB of Corsair memory kindly donated by Realtime Systems. Which is greatly appreciated - Thanks Jim :)
Finally tonight, XenOfEx have checked out a rather inovative solution to solving BIOS flash problems.. a little device which sits in your BIOS chip slot and keeps a backup of your original bios. Quite cool.. it's called the RD1 Bios Savior.
Reviews:
SonicBlue aka Diamond RioVolt CD-MP3 Player on PCstats.
OCZ Goliath copper hs/f on ClubOC.
Tt Dragon Orb 3 on TechPlanet.
Thermalright SK-6 on TechPlanet.
Vantec Bay Freezer on TacoNuts.
Elsa Gladiac GF2/Pro on Hardware One.
Kanie 294M Hedgehog on OCShoot.
PCMods Blue Cold Cathode Tube on Rizenet.
A4 Tech Optical 2-Wheel Mouse on RipNet UK.
RomTec Trios HDD Selector on OConline.
TwinMOS 265Mb PC133 SDRAM on PCStats.
Rumble FX Force-Feedback Headphones on AMDpower.
Labtec Pulse 424 speaker set on VyW.
CQGL LAN mini review!
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Wednesday, 8-August-2001 22:09:48 (GMT +10) - by Sciby
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On Sunday, 5th August (Sunday just gone, for you non-calendar people), The Central Queensland Gamers League (CQGL), had a good ol' fashioned gaming LAN day. 81 people waltzed through the doors at the Main Roads building on Bruce Highway in North Rockhampton, with a max of 75 PC's hooked up during the day. Not too shabby for a regional city with a smallish population.
Deejay and I went along, followed closely by my faithful PC, Muffy, to check it out and having a bit of a blast with the other ner-... guys. A couple of CS servers were running, along with a Quake 3: Rocket Arena match happening and I caught a glimpse of Diablo 2 on one or two screens.
The only thing that I found a bit disappointing was the lack of modded cases. No pretty lights, no obvious water cooling rigs, in fact, I think I was the only one with a blow hole... anyway, I had a blast on CS (and was owning at one point, w00t!), and Deejay walked around and took these photos and generally stuck his nose into everything. Yes, that's me in the bottom right shot, I think I was being a camping AWP'er bitch. Pics are clickable of course..
 
 
 
Was good fun, will be back for the next for sure. I'll be the geek in the OCAU shirt, trying to AWP some poor guy.
PCCG Site SNAFU
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Wednesday, 8-August-2001 21:52:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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With spectacularly bad timing, PCCaseGear's order system was screwing up today - of course, directly after we posted our review of their rounded cables. If you ordered from them today (Wednesday) it might have looked like it went through OK, but probably didn't - so you should jump back over there and re-submit your order.
EEEEeeepp.. we're almost drowning in news here! There is over two times the amount there usually is. S'pose that's good for you, and means more news posts for me :) I'll see what I can manage from uni.
Now while we're issuing some well-deserved smackdown to the AusGamers Folding@Home Team, our Genone@Home team has been pretty busy issuing out some smackdown of their own.. they broke the world Top 50 last week. Congratulations to everyone running Genome, it's a great result. The stats are here. Also, all the folding guys pointed out that the proper stats page is now here.
sabretooth pointed out this reg article which talks about the new anti-piracy system for CD's. It works by encoding some really weird frequencies onto the CD that we can't here, but makes it pretty impossible to rip the CD without it sounding like crap. Problem is, those frequencies also have the potential, to, oh, make your hifi EXPLODE! Wouldn't be very nice if you where the frenchman with the insane stereo room we linked to a while back. The fact that the record companies arnt advising consumers about this shortfall of the system could have some interesting consequences.
Interesting article over on Salon pointed out to us by Ashley.. talks about a Mercury mine that just happens to be dangerously close to Silicon Valley.. fun! Now you can take the left overs of your bankrupt dotcom and spend them on health care.
SourceMagazine have taken a look at the upcomming nForce chipset form nVidia.. of course, if the rumors we have heard the past few weeks are true (and we don't have proof either way yet) that article may need a bit of editing :)
I linked to some new det's yesterday, and there are more new ones _already_! Electic has 14.40's for you to download and try out.. Meanwhile Guru3D point out their detonator destroyer freeware utility which will.. destroy your detonators. Good if the drivers suck the proverbial.
The guys over at Digit-Life have been fairly busy.. not only have they interviewed a representitive of Seagate, they've checked out some small presents for your mates and reviewed the Gainward GF2/Pro Golden Sample.. they're a bit behind the times on the last one tho, our man in Japan chainbolt reviewed the GeForce3 Golden Sample a few months ago..
AtlantaOC seem to be running some sort of contest to see who can render a PovRayTrace image in the quickest possible time. There are no prizes, just eternal fame and all that jazz.. but personaly, I'd rather you did something productive with your cycles.. like folding!
There is a rather timely article over on wired.com talking about a man who runs a website dedicated to debunking virus myths. Very timely indeed, with every clueless newbie ringing ISP support lines to ask if they have Code Red.
OCAddiction have a rather handy KT7A BIOS tweak guide up.. and those Abit boards are rather tweakable - finding the right settings will give you quite a boost.
Firemoth pointed out that you can now get a clip-on GPS unit for your Visor Handspring.. which is pretty damn cool. Those PDA things are becomming better all the time.
Anyone who even half-regulary watches the news at night on TV would probably remember the Telstra Calling Card debacle where an MP spent over $25,000 on phone calls, with tax payers picking up the tab.. Well, it turned out that it wasn't the MP making the calls, but his son's ex-girlfriend. Well, now there is a new scandal in parliment, and this time it's involving the hacking into of a MP's personal computer. And it seems no lessons where learnt from the previous episode, with another MP's kids possibly involved in the whole mess.
Finally this morning, HotHardware has some pics of the upcomming mPGA s478 Pentium4 CPU up, along with pics of the Abit TH7-II-RAID board.
Reviews:
Cordless Optical Mouse Roundup on BSOD.
Icemat glass mousemat on JSIhardware.
Budget Keyboard Roundup on GamingIn3D.
ECS K7S5A SiS735 DDR mainboard on OCworkbench.
EPoX 8K7A+ socket-a AMD 761 board on TempleOfTech.
PCCG Rounded Cables
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Wednesday, 8-August-2001 01:25:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I checked out some colourful, rounded IDE and floppy cables today. Not a whole lot to say about them, but they work and they're cheaper than most:
Click for the review!
Tuesday Evening
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Tuesday, 7-August-2001 18:27:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Send in the clones!  My first thought was "OMG, how B-grade!" .. but really, the titles of the first few movies could be seen as pretty weak too, but the story and the film itself made them into almost revered phrases. So I guess we'll see. Maybe "The Clone Wars" would have been a better title, but if Jar Jar dies a violent death during the opening credits I'll buy a copy in every format they release. Some funny (and some rude) comments about the title announcement on Slashdot.
Also spotted on slashdot, an article about whether high-end CPU's are worth it. Interesting reader comments there too.
From Sonic: Apparently PC makers are experiencing a slump while IBM are working on self-healing networks. More info on David McOwen who might face charges because of his involvement with distributed computing projects.. Dell says there's not enough demand for Linux on desktop machines. MicroSoft may be employing a delaying legal tactic to stop the monopoly case interfering with the launch of XP and apparently the internet causes stress.
Poly noticed this live micromachine cam..
There's yet another variation of Code Red floating around.
Reviews:
AOpen AX3S Plus, socket370 i815E motherboard on BlueSmoke.
Dragon Orb 3 socket cooler on OCdCafe.
Samsung SM-308 DVD/CDRW drive on NeoSeeker.
Tues Arvo - Star Wars Ep II
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Tuesday, 7-August-2001 16:38:04 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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A very quick one whilst I run between consulting jobs...
A press release announced on the offical Star Wars website stated that a title has been given to the next Star Wars movie.
Yes it is as bad, nay worse, than the Phantom Menace.
It is: --- Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones
Yes, we thought it was a joke as well...
Quite a bit happening in the OC scene atm..
WAZ sends in this reg link talking about secret MS plans to stop non-WHQL drivers working with XP.. there are already deterrents against using these drivers in 2K/ME, so it wouldn't be a huge suprise to see official support removed.. as always with MS software, give it a week and there will be a way around it :)
What used to be XOOM and then became NBCi has now stopped offering hosting. They where one of those geocities-like free homepage hosting places.. quite crap nowdays anyway. If you had anything hosted there, it'll still be there.. but you can't update your content. Thanks to Vorkun_Hull for pointing that out. Also in the hosting world, the Atomic Rhino network that hosted quite a few hardware sites, now, well, doesn't. They decided all sites that don't receive over 3,000 impressions/day have 48hrs to find new hosting, and then they're deleted.. which is a bit stiff.
K6Plus have a neat little guide on upping the quality of the subwoofer unit in the Creative FPS-1000 4.1 speaker set. Little plastic subwoofers don't sound too good, as they soon found out. Need something like this for real bass.
I announce with great pleasure, this milestone in OCAU folding history.. We're currently beating AusGamers!! Sometime yesterday we passed them by a healthy 400 packets, and are projected to continue issuing them smackdown in some healthy aussie folding competition. If you're not running folding yet, we are always in need of more help, and keeping us ahead of AusGamers is always a good reason to run it. Stats are here, you can find support in the Team OCAU forum, and handy setup guide from postal here. Thanks to Baz for sending me in the right direction.
A realllllly short blurb on Reactor Critical pointed out to be by Antonius reckons that developers are now receiving ATi Radeon2 boards for evaluation.. which is pretty decent news. Competition is always good :)
For all the desktop junkies out there, Stasis points out this litestep distro aimed at the newbies.. good if you're a junkie without smack :)
The latest issue of ZZZ online is up, number 91. In this issue there is talk of emotion based user interfaces for computer systems, self focusing eye glasses, a new image search engine and a hybrid bus and tram. Always a good place to find a dose of the scientifically absurd.
Wayne pointed out an news item on Whirlpool which suggests that Telstra BPA may be infeceted with the Code Red IIS worm.. oh dear. Meanwhile, in light of all the recent ADSL problems the Aussie network has been experiencing, one of the Telstra resellers, iPrimus have taken a rather innovative step of offering their customers a dialup account to use whilst Telstra get their act together. Nice work.
For your daily dose of alpha-beta-stuff-stuff-your-system-up software Electic have leaked versions of the detonator 14.10 driver set and Internet Explorer 2530.1 for Win9X/Me.
Bit-Tech have reviewed the Matrix Orbital LCD screen kit. They are a rather funky 5.25"-bay mountable screen with some control buttons on either side of the screen. It connects via a loopback cable to your PC's serial port and youc an send it all sorts of funky messages. They are leet.
Finally this morning, Dan has an review up of the ToPower TOP-420P4 420W ATX power supply. In fine dansdata tradition he wrote over 3000 words about it, and didn't just talk about the power supply. If you've been wondering where all those figures on the side of the unit come from, and how some less reputable manufacturers fudge them, this article is worth your time. Dan rocks.
Reviews:
AOpen AX3S i815E based motherboard on BlueSmoke.
DFI AK76-SN AMD 761 DDR board on 2FastCPU.
AMD Duron 950 socket-a CPU on NewsForge.
IWill KA266 ALi-based AMD DDR board on PCStats.
PC Mods Dual Lighting Setup on TechPlanet.
AOpen CRW1632 16/10/32 IDE BurnProof/JustSpeed burner on CDRinfo.
Street Glow PC-Neon Connector Kit on Radeonic.
Compex DS1216 16 port 10/100 Ethernet Switch on Guru3D.
Atec 630/635 cases on TheTechZone.
Arg! Went to turn my Nikon CP990 digicam on a couple of days ago and the whole power switch assembly fell apart. Took it to Maxwells (Nikon dealer) today and they said 10-day turnaround to fix it.. but they're doing it under warranty even tho it expired a couple of weeks ago, so I can't complain too much. Still.. will have to go back to the Kodak DC210 Plus Zoom for a couple of weeks.. noooooo......
Nice watercooling project story on OC.com, thanks Epoch.
Spotted in the aus.motorcycles forum - Victoria has some new plain-clothes motorcycle cops..
There is some cool lego stuff on this page, I suspect borrowed from HardOCP by Mike. The big crawler crane is very very cool.
Over in the HardForums there's a car case.. has to be seen to be believed. :)
Lauhead noticed this clear case on FiringSquad..
Neato little case here in the PCDB. Not sure what it is, very cute tho.
SystemLogic have an article comparing Mandrake Linux and Windows XP from an aesthetic perspective. Bit of an odd premise for an article, but it's an interesting read and funny in places. If you want a do-it-yourself OCAU version, read our Mandrake 7 and WinXP articles which go into slightly more detail.
Ooh, hackers in Parliament, the Premier is very grumpy about it, all very exciting. I hope this doesn't lead to another round of unenforceable Internet laws.
A bunch of interesting new stuff on Akiba PC, thanks Kyocera.. use the magic fish if you want the details.
IPKonfig have an article on modding the Blue Orb to fit a larger fan. Fairly dodgy graph in that article. Once you've done that, you could lap it, too.
ClubOC decided to check out exactly what makes an AMD approved PSU.. or at least, AMD-capable.
There's another Kevin Smith film on the way - this time it's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.. heh, can't wait for that one, thanks Pax.
Dan's added 8 more coolers to his comparo..
NASA have a new robot that uses Linux and a P3 and assists astronauts.. I guess the last thing you want while spacewalking is a BSOD, thanks Barry.
Reviews:
Icemat chopping board and mousing surface on GideonTech.
Dragon Orb 3 socket cooler on CHW.
Thermaltake Memory Cooling Kit on OCTools.
Aron Black Mouse on MikhailTech.
Wahoo Computer Lanster case on IPKonfig.
Thermalright CB-6L socket cooler on AMDMB.
Archive Updated..
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Sunday, 5-August-2001 23:31:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Added a few recent things to the Article and Review Archive:
RheoBus Kit, fan control with super-bright LED's.
HighSpeedPC Fan Adapter for using 80mm fans on 60mm heatsinks.
Apollo Pro 266 - a couple of DDR Socket370 motherboards using this chipset.
Windows XP - an overclocker's perspective of MS's latest Operating System.
Automotive rheostat for controlling lots of case fans.
GideonTech have an article on powering up an ATX PSU without using a motherboard. Handy if you're using one to run peltiers or wotnot.
From Menizzy, the top 15 computer nerd alcoholic beverages... hmm, sunday night geek humour.
CNET have an article on the Code Red panic, thanks Sonic. Also, an article on life after Napster, discussing how big corporations can make zillions of dollars flogging music online. Reader comments on that one are interesting..
OCOpolis have an old vs new thing happening with HDD's.. spoiler: the new one's faster. sorry.
ARP have updated their BIOS Guide yet again.. good if you're wondering what all those mysterious settings mean.
Rob points out this Scientific American article on Do-It-Yourself Supercomputers, Beowulf and the like.
Darmok noticed an article on a new bus technology likely to become PCI 3.0.
There's an OpenSource, multiplatform answer to DirectX, namely SDL. It's being ported on everything from Macs to BeOS to the PS2.. interesting, thanks Kyocera.
Radeonic have an optimization guide for, surprisingly enough, ATI Radeon cards.
Digit-Life have a quick article about how Intel's failure to consistently hit 0.13 microns is at least partly due to supplier problems.
If you're into flightsims, Rich reckons you should check out Warbirds III, an online multiplayer one. It's a free download of 80 megs - and you can play for free during August.
ExtremePC.UK have a guide to system tweaking. Containing such gems of wisdom as overclocking is seen as an unnecessary risk and An example of overclocking is running your 800MHz processor at 1000MHz. The 25% increase in CPU speed would obviously be a massive boost; on the other hand it will be much more unstable than running it at the standard speed. It will also void any warranty you have on the part if it breaks as a result.. Yes.. very "ExtremePC"..
(deep breath) They've found bugs in space but don't know if they're going up or down. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (wrote Sherlock Holmes) may have murdered another writer and stolen his ideas. Swimming with hippos is a bad idea, while a sea monster has washed up in Canada. A programmer who thinks he's a tiger wants a fur graft. All from Wokket, duh.
Reviews:
LinkSys Phone Networking kit on Digit-Life.
Soyo K7V Dragon socketA DDR motherboard on SocketA.
SystemLogic have reviewed the 1.7GHz P4 processor - they also have a technical overview article on the P4 posted.
Another crappy bike game on the scene, it seems, Gamitopia reviewing Ducati World Racing Challenge and not thinking much of it.
Interesting use for the HighSpeedPC Fan Adapter we reviewed a few weeks ago - to cool the back of your video card.. they call it the AGP Airlift and OCrCafe checked it out.
This is a very cool setup from RDVN. Interesting idea for a case handle from Draebor.
Hubble's taken another great shot, of two galaxies colliding. There are some more amazing pictures here.. I just changed my wallpaper. :)
There's a cooler shootout here on OCOnline and another here on AtlantaOC.
Sonic points out this interesting LCD "Digi Bus" project - more info here in our Case Mods forum.
Reviews:
Kodak DC3400 digicam on AllTechBox.
SGI 1600SW Flat Panel display on HotHardware.
Silent Saturn cooler on Oc.DK.
Matrox Marvel G450 video card on Accelenation.
Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-R/CD-RW drive on SourceMagazine.
Swiftech MCX370 socket cooler on VYW.
Zalman copper chipset cooler on RipNet.
Dynatron Model-O copper heatsink on FrostyTech.
Iwill BD133u Tualatin motherboard on Accelenation.
Agate Q-Drive on DreddNews.
Transcend TS-AK4/A KT133A motherboard on OCNZ.
Lian-Li PC60 aluminium case on HWExtreme.
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 4-August-2001 14:08:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I haven't read this in detail yet but a few people including my Dad sent it in - Robert X. Cringely has written an article about internet security and Microsoft.. looks like an interesting one.
G3D have a 60mm fan comparison article posted.
Chris notes that there's a new NVClock out - this is a program to overclock your NVIDIA-based card under Linux, of course..
SysOpt are tweaking the BX chipset.
The Terapin Mine is a new handheld device with 10GB of storage on board, thanks Tim.
Apparently ATI have their own motherboard-chipset-with-inbuilt-graphics on the way, similar to NVIDIA's nForce. They're calling it A3 and it contains a cutdown Radeon2 core, thanks Morjo.
On their front page, IPKonfig have info about manually assigning IRQ's under Win2K. Orange advises against this approach here in our forums.
IE5.5 Service Pack 2 has been released.
Very interesting article about measuring CPU temperatures accurately over on SwiftNets site, thanks Auenf.
Pics of a 2GHz P4 over in the HardForum.
Hmm, interesting idea from IBM who are building server farms around the world in anticpation of a future "compting power" grid like an electricity grid, with people buying CPU grunt as they need it.
StratosFear put up some info about this Vcool program in the forums. Apparently it's like CPUIdle but better. Might be worth a shot..
Reviews:
Abit KT7E KT133E-based SocketA motherboard on Tech-Report.
Abit KT7E KT133E-based motherboard also on TweakTown.
nPower NP60D socket cooler on ClubOC.
OCZ Titan GeForce3 video card on NeoSeeker.
Vantec CCK-6035D compared to a prototype on ExtremeOC.
Shuttle AK31 socketA ddr motherboard on TweakTown.
Altec Lansing ADA890 speakers on TweakTown - the 5th review from them today!
The Funnel fan atapter on IANAG. Compare this and these.
Saturday Midday #2
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Saturday, 4-August-2001 12:47:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This update is from YYK, but his web access is broken at the moment:
Congrats to Grant Hackett who broke his own record today! A mighty achievement.
Big Russ and his bizarrely named band are playing at Coffs Harbour, in order to support the pub there.
Something that everyone knew, the ARIAs are sometimes rigged.
Speaking of rigged, the Missile Defence Shield that was supposedly a success, was rigged.
A very cool photo of a shark here.
Guess which newspaper YYK reads.. :)
Saturday Midday
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Saturday, 4-August-2001 12:45:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sorry about the lack of news yesterday, got caught up in other stuff. Configuring mailing-list software is not a whole lot of fun. Alchemy is moving house as we speak, too!
Interesting thread from Gandalf explaining how OCAU looks in 7 different browsers. We do ok, but that's not surprising given our retro-1997 design. :)
We've seen this before but it's something I get asked about pretty often - the infamous PC in a fridge project.
From V8R: just a quicky, got some 766's in today, hitting 955 np.. "SL4QF" Malay FPO/Batch: Q112A522 .. celerons, of course.
From Hoopstar: Seems the LCDcenter now supports HD44780 parallel setups.. should make it cheaper and easier for everyone to get there LCD's into there rigs! That software looks pretty cool actually..
Bit-tech made a baybus for CPU fan..
OcOpolis are pondering what it is that makes a good heatsink.
"Golden Brown" by The Stranglers is a most excellent ditty. First released in 1981, it reappeared in the recent film "Snatch". Its unusual rolling beat is due to it being in 3/4 time - which makes it a waltz - and it's rumoured to be about the drug heroin. Completely unrelated to this is Kingsley Brown, the website by the person of the same name, from the forums, which has a competition to win a mystery prize (which may or may not be heroin) by emailing them something in a silly accent. Yeess.
ComputerSource wrap up their 3-day Mobile Supremacy article by taking a look at Transmeta.
Apparently the recent appeals court ruling hasn't really changed anything about Microsoft's antitrust case.
There is a HEAP more news to come, so stay tuned..
Reviews:
Seagate U Series 6 ATA-100 HDD on xbit.
Epox 8KTA3Pro socketA kt133a motherboard on Accelenation.
MSI StarForce 882 GeForce3-based video caed on Digit-Life.
Kanie Hedgehog 294M heatsink/fan review on TweakTown.
Antec EasyUSB port relocator also on TweakTown.
Athlon 1400MHz on AMDPower.
Ever since Aureal dropped of the scene the sound card market has been pretty tame, with the SB Live range of cards dominating the market and corrupting your HDD data. The Herc Game Theatre XP brought a bit of excitement, and the Audiophile 2496 looks set to bring even more. It's a high level sound card, and TweakMax has the review. The CaseJunkiez crew also got along to a Phillips product launch and had a gander at a new sound card in the pipes from Phillips.. looks terribly like a SB Live to me, but I'm assured it's not. Finally, for people still hanging onto Vortex2 cards (which rock incredibly hard), there is rumor of WindowsXP supporting them.. anyone with a copy of RC-1 and a Vortex2 want to test it out for me?
Fwoaaaaar burners are getting fast. Really fast. 24X CD-R Write Speed Fast. That is Really Really Fast. CD-R info have reviewed a Plextor 24x IDE unit, which you can pretty easily claim to be the king of the burning world for now.
Rizenet have checked out a DTI3D 2015XL Virtual Window Display which is a rather longwinded name for a 15" LCD Screen. However, it's an LCD Screen with a difference. The pixels supposedly do some "tricky stuff" that presents a slightly seperate image to each eye, giving the illusion that the image is 3D, without the need of special glasses or a second screen. Most previous 3D efforts have failed because they have been fairly complicated to use, but all that appears to hamper this unit is a small viewing angle. With LCD prices comming down I can't help but wonder..
That reminds me of an extremeley cool WinAmp plugin that follows in the footsteps of the already damn popular geiss plugin.. it is in fact made by the same people. Anyway, if you've seen Geiss before (or Drempels, its cousin) you'll probably be interested in MilkDrop.. it's damn trippy. Coolest thing about it are the 3D textures, which seem to be begging for a pair of 3D glasses.. trip to Imax anyone? ;)
Nigel sent in this link to some Extreme Geforce3 techniques on OC.com.. hmm, sounds like a certain madman we know around here *cough* DrR0M :)
Bit-Tech have been modding a Lian-Li PC70 full tower case.. to fit a VapoChill inside! Pretty mad, but I'd be interested to see what they thought was wrong with the original VapoChill case.
Jab pointed out this article in which an Intel rep pretty much writes RAMBUS out of Intel's future after i845 hits the shelves. Didn't see that comming (not at all..)
Draffa points out yet another instance of over-reacting Journalists.. this time a Melbourne Journo reckons Half-Life: Blue Shift will lead to people attacking Security Guards. Yeah, right.. i'll just grab an AK47 from the SAS soldier protecting the Alien Spawn I hand grenaded to death and go and shoot a security guard. Well, it was in the game.... officer? Yeah, right.. As if code red worm bollocks wasn't enough.
Finally, feedback on the Interesting Forum Threads has been pretty positive, so I think I will continue it.. because of time constraints it won't be a daily thing, but it will be pretty regular. The people have also spoken, and it will continue in it's original form, except below the Reviews instead of above. Too easy.
Reviews:
Gyration's Wireless GyroMouse Pro on TechExtreme.
Zalman CNPS5000-Plus cooler on RojakPot.
Hitachi CM828 21" CRT on PCStats.
MaPower MAP-63C External USB HDD Case.
PocketMail Backflip for Palm on FutureLooks.
VideoLogic Vivid!XS KyroII card on 3D Spotlight.
Cool-View Acrylic Window Kit on TheTechZone.
Antec SX635 Mid-Tower Case on VyW.
Enermax EG651P 550W PSU on IANAG.
Lian Li PC60USB Mid-Tower case on EXHardare.
Congrats to us!
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Thursday, 2-August-2001 20:55:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Dear James,
CONGRATULATIONS!
Every quarter, Hitwise ranks the Top10 websites according to user visits, across each of its 150 industry categories and awards each qualified site with a Hitwise Top10 Award logo in recognition of this achievement.
We are pleased to announce that www.overclockers.com.au has been ranked No. 1 by Hitwise Australia in the Computers and Internet - Hardware category and are awarding you the Hitwise Top10 logo. This logo may be displayed on your homepage, identifying your website as a Top10 site in the Computers and Internet - Hardware category for the period April - June 2001.
Woo! This is the third quarter in a row that we have received this award. We were ranked #6 in Oct-Dec 2000 but I can't remember/find our rank for Jan-Mar 2001. To rank 1st in a quarter that included having the forums down for 6 weeks is something to be proud of - way to go, guys!
To give you some perspective, last month the overclockers.com.au domain served 3.35 million pages totalling 106.44GB of outbound HTTP.
If you'd like to advertise on the busiest hardware site in Australia, drop me a note! :)
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 2-August-2001 16:12:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This from Chris:
Hi there,
just thought that I'd let you know that sometimes it does pay to click on banners on websites. (Yours especially!) I clicked on a seek.com banner around late April (I think) did a search for jobs in Sth. Aus. etc. To get to the point I ended up getting a new job and more than doubled my salary, all as a result of bothering to click on the banner. I started the new job last week.
So thanks in a roundabout way.
Bye for now,
Chris
Cool. :)
I had a funny conversation via email over the last couple of days, bit long for the news page so I put it into a forum thread.
Another funny thread, Chainbolt showing off another new car, not quite his usual standard though.
Interesting thing on an Open Source Convention on wired.
Yet another super-fast future chip technology article, but this time they actually have a working die, thanks Monkiboy. Update: Wojtek points out it's not that exciting, apparently.
VYW have magically reappeared on their new host and have an article about a port relocator from SkyHawks. This is interesting - I have been toying with the idea of ripping out the front-port assembly from the SkyHawks case and trying to fit it into a drive bay in another case, but it seems they are selling them separately now anyway, like the much-reviewed FrontX Multimedia Ports. Anyhoo, VYW also have a 16X Plextor burner on review.
Daemon from Techwatch pointed out this funny error msg on MSI's website. It might be fixed by the time you get there..
This nice little box looks just the thing for a home gateway server.. if the sound of 62 HDD's wouldn't keep you awake, thanks Liquid Carbon.
OCAU hosted site CaseModders Australia have some new goodies up, firstly a look at Shafted Lan, some interesting cases there.. and some new Philips products.
An article about baiting hackers on TE.
FutureLooks delve into the Gaming Console world with a comparison of the 3 big future players.. GameCube vs. PS2 vs. Xbox.
Here's an article about the dreaded electromigration, thanks Sabrtooth.
Someone made the mistake of giving some Logitech controllers to Dan, who pulled them to bits, as he does.
In something that sounds like an excerpt from the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (RIP Douglas Adams), British scientists have a supercomputer pondering fundamental questions about the universe.
Ahh! Ramil from OCTools pointed out that the socket mod (pics below) was first done by Joe Kelly here on ProCooling.
Reviews:
Alpha PAL8045 new socket cooler on HardOCP.
Antec EasyUSB front-panel USB ports on SystemLogic.
Iwill KD266 and BD133 motherboards on Digit-Life.
AMD CPU unlocking kit on IANAG. (Agg hands you a pencil)
Matrox G550 video chipset preview on Guru3D.
ECS K7VTA3 socketA DDR motherboard on Accelenation.
Sono Hawk KT133 (non-A) board on MrPCPro.
WinXP - An Overclocker's Perspective
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Thursday, 2-August-2001 01:12:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Jeff McLuckie sent in his feelings about Windows XP, Microsoft's new do-everything O/S. He answers a few questions about game and hardware compatability among other things:
Click for the full article!
Wednesday Night.. Something New!
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Thursday, 2-August-2001 00:07:23 (GMT +10) - by alchemy
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Today AMD shipped its 10 millionth processor based off the Athlon core. Fwoar. Project Red Worm also turned out to be an over hyped media frenzy, whilst news of confirmation that CPIP (Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol) resurfaced, with proof that windows is still causing problems in the IT world.
And from Wokket.. The European Union is apparently not confined to meetings in regards to a common currency, free trade, or economic reform. Hampsters matter too. And only-in-America.. a man (pretty much embalmed at the time) blew 0.43!! when caught drink driving. Finally, if the Hampsters were not enough for you, what about some killer squirrells?
Intel seem to be pretty quick getting the mobile version of the Tualatin CPU's to market.. they only lifted the NDA for reviews a few days ago :) Looks like there is going to be a big turf war in the mobile processor market with AMD and Intel having top-rank players (for the first time ever I believe).
Finally tonight, I'm going to try something a little different.. in addition to the Reviews section that you normally find below, I'm going to (for now) include a section linking to some forum threads that I reckon are pretty interesting. This is a totally personal thing, and I don't intend on linking to many threads from The Pub or Swap and Shop.. but we'll see how it goes. As always, your feedback is encouraged, and you can make yourself heard in this forum thread, or directly to me via email.
Interesting Forum Threads..
Can our avatars be in breach of copyright.? in Site Discussion.
New Color Scheme also in Site Discussion.
OCAU will pass Ausgamers in 18 days in Team OCAU.
Which Hard Disk? Seagate, Ibm, Quantum, Or Werstern digital? in OC+Hardware Discussion.
Most excellent journalism - how we are informed RE: nFORCE in OC+Hardware Discussion.
Best Window Kit? in Case Modding.
6-Way SMP in SMP+Clustering.
Tyan S4260 CHEAP! Tyan! AMD SMP! in SMP+Clustering.
Brisbane Community Net/Mesh in Networking.
Networking over Phone lines in Networking.
EPoX 8K7A Stability in AMD.
Problems with AMD + Max Payne in AMD.
News of a FCPGA1->FCPGA2 converter in Intel!
Best P3 Boards also in Intel.
A7V133 vs KT7A in Via.
4in1 Driver Queries in Via.
Reviews:
Abit Siluro T400 64Mb SDR GFMX400 on X-Bit Labs.
Crazy PC Non-Conductive Shim on G3D.
FREE LANBAGS (woo!) on TacoNuts.
Dynatron Model L Microfin Heatsink on FrostyTech.
AMD Athlon 1.4GHz TBird Processor on NewsForge.
Dragon Orb 3 at The Cold Shop.
HiSpeed PC Window Mod Kit on DreddNews.
Zalman hs/f roundup at GideonTech.
I attacked my A7V with a dremel the other day. I'm doing a SocketA cooler roundup and wanted to measure the CPU temperature more accurately than the A7V's onboard hardware allows. I could slide a thermister up against the side of the core but I'm concerned about that moving around as I install and remove coolers. So I did this instead (click pics to enlarge):
 
 
The thermister is monitored by a DigiDoc5. More info in the upcoming comparison - I'm expecting a couple more coolers to arrive in the next couple of days, so the article should be early next week. Thought you might be interested in the meantime, though.
Note that I am in no way claiming to have invented this mod - I saw it on a cooler comparison we linked to a fair while ago but I can't find it in the news archive now. If you're thinking of doing it yourself.. obviously you are throwing your warranty out the window and there's probably a fair chance of mangling your mobo beyond repair. But it works fine for me.
Early Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 1-August-2001 02:17:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you can read this, then I guess Code Red didn't kill the internet after all. If you can't read it, then you won't see how wrong my sarcasm is. :)
TheInquirer have some info on new P4 chipsets from ALI and SIS, thanks Nigel.
A couple of very cool finished projects in the Case Modding forum - Rex's tiger case with amazing paintwork and Beannie's big red box. Also, bright blue keyboard LEDs and flush fan grills (scroll down, more pics here).
HardOCP checked out the Asus A7A266. This is an ALI-based DDR board that allows SDR or DDR SDRAM to be used with a SocketA processor. Linked from there is an article I hadn't noticed before, a DDR Overview, explains it pretty well.
Flacco pointed out an interesting article about chips for a buck, which talks about embedded devices using tiny network-capable chips..
Apparently ArsTechnica have an interview with some people involved with Final Fantasy (the movie, I presume) but their server seems to be down for me.. maybe Code Red related. :)
There's a new site hoping to be an index of hardware/overclocking links.. looks like some interesting custom software driving it all. They say they've added a lot of our articles but I don't see any in there.. quite a lot of other stuff, tho. Anyway, check it out here. Webmasters from that site, feel free to inhale links from our archive and the PCDB should go nicely in your Case Modding section too. :)
James sent in this article about GAME AI..
There's a Security Update for NT4, including all patches since SP6a.. thanks Shaun.
A couple of people sent in this Ninja story site which is kinda cool, a cartoon story about a little ninja kid wandering around, a little low on plot but I found myself watching all 4 episodes.
AnandTech have a roundup of motherboards that use the B-revision i815 chipset.. and hence support the new Tualatin .13 micron P3 processor.
Lucky I got to this link before Alchemy or he probably would have gone completely feral.. it's a modified car show. We all know Alchemy loves his Rice..
A more on-topic but equally over-the-top modification is this Kyro II job on ProCooling. Actually turned out pretty well.
Win some stuff by signing up for a newsletter on 3DSpotlight. No geographic limitations!
CSM have an article on the battle for portable power.. CPU power, that is.
5-way SDR SDRAM roundup on Overclocking.DK .. in English.
HyperTransport on a Mac site? Apparently so, this article covers this AMD/AMI technology, already seen in NVIDIA's GeForce chipset and probably coming to a PC (and Mac!) near you within a couple of years.
Speaking of which, Morjo notes TheReg linking an article about Overclocking a G4 Mac up to a gig. It's a resistor mod on the motherboard so fairly fiddling and moderately high fzzzt potential. They also say Processor makers test each chip at all speeds and sell it at the highest speed at which it will run completely without malfunction. which is not strictly true. If a manufacturer makes consistently high-speed-capable chips, some will HAVE to be sold as lower-speed units to avoid abandoning the lower end of the market. As you should all know, one of the major goals of overclockers is to find batches of chips that are currently being under-badged in this way, buy them cheaply then crank them up - safely and sensibly - to the higher speed and beyond..
Superintelligent racoons, lightning survivors and the latest in junkie fashion from who else but Wokket.
Reviews:
Thermaltake ramsinks on WildAndyC.
AKG K 1000 headphones on AcidHW.
DFI AK76-SN DDR SocketA motherboard on Digit-Life.
Foldable washable keyboard on SystemLogic.
Samsung DVD V-1000, it's a DVD player, it's a VCR, on IANAG.
Adonised fan grills on Bit-Tech.
Klipsch ProMedia 4.1 speakers on 3DSoundSurge, thanks Nicholas.
Altech Lansing ATP5 speakers on NeoSeeker.
Machine rounded cables on GideonTech, our cheapy version here.
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