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May 2000 |
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 31-May-2000 23:28:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Urgh! Got caught up in stuff, just getting to the news now, better make it a quick one tonight love..
PlanetHardware checked out the "Tornado 1000" case.. so called, because it sucks hard! No no, because it's got lots of fans in it..
Apparently people complained that the "Hubs vs Switches" article on TE was not detailed enough.. well, now it is, apparently.
Sverre sent in a few extreme rig links, thanks dude! First up is Duckman's C466 @ 735MHz (shame about the page colours, urg!) then check out dual P3-500E @ 1GHz (each :) ) .. and finally Hillbilly's dual C400 @ 660.. seen that last one before, but someone mentioned looking for it in the forums the other day. Feel inspired now..? :)
TechReport try to suck you in with another crafty headline.. "Why 702MHz is better than 728MHz" .. see, you can't help clicking, can you?
Linux good. Half-life good. Half-life for linux would be awesome. If you agree, so sign this petition! Even if you don't, go sign it anyway. They made me say that.
RAMBUS might be getting cheaper. No time to check this stuff for you tonight guys, so some of these links might be bollocks.
Looks like Telstra has been training companies in the US in customer service. Definitely some classic Telstra tricks in this story..
Another review of the card cooler.
VisionTek. Geforce 2. Beta review.
We've looked at some of the Evergreen cpu upgrades in the past, seem to work pretty well. There's a review of the Performa 500 on PCStats..
InsaneHardware have scooped on Asus again, this time specs on the A7V.. also a thing on an Athlon going pop.
HardDrive roundup on TweakMax..
"Networking with photons" thing on Electic.com. Hmm, instead of electronics we'd have photonics? Photonic engineering, hmm, nice ring to it, very Star Trek..
Celeron 400 @ 618 on JSI Hardware.. pah, amateurs! :)
Gateway will apparently use Transmeta chips in net terminals..
PCNewsCenter have reviewed a Gigabyte GeForce card..
Hmm, Abit just sent a quick sneak-preview (no pics) of their new speaker range.. they're really expanding lately, linux distributions, speakers.. cool. Official announcement soon apparently.
Whoops, broken link yesterday to VRZone's C2-566 at 966ish.. the correct on is here, thanks Ben.
OCWorkbench has reviewed the Asus P3V4X Slot1 Apollo Pro 133A motherboard.. lots of people out there with a real love-hate relationship with that board. :)
Overclockin.com reassures us they're not dead, they've just been resting. To prove it, they offer this review of a Mosel Vitalic CAS2 PC133 128Mb memory stick.. impressive speeds reached. Those memory markings are the same on my PC100 "mystery stick" I picked up in Bangkok a few months ago.. (yes, that was all I picked up in Bangkok, thankyou) .. now I know who made it.
Neoseeker manage to squeeze 6 pages out of a socket370 cooler review. Well done, lads. It's the RDJD K601.
OCManila have reviewed the Globalwin FKP-32. Smaller than many, cooler than many.
Once you've gotten sick of aircooling, you look at liquidcooling. When that gets boring, you look at vapour cooling. What after that? Well, you find ways to overclock your vapour-cooler..
Dan's a man who's not afraid to crank his Celeron in public.
PCHardwareRomania have reviewed the Transcend AWE1 mobo. It's slot1, Intel 810-E chipset.
EuroGamer explore some theories about why the CeleronII is slower than the PIII. Is it just the smaller L2 cache?
Magic torch, little white dog and now trainwrecker. What is the story here? At least extremehotfasthardwareinsanityclubbenchclockmasters.com gives you a clue as to what the website is about. Sheesh. :) HardwareFrogs is borderline. Anyway, trainwrecker has put up an article about upgrading to a GTS2 card.. "your computer will be faster and your wallet will be lighter" .. allrighty then. Actually, all testing for that article was done on an Asus P3V4X, so should be interesting. To be fair, here's a link to littlewhitedog and one to MagicTorch. What happened to that nude overclockers site? That was just plain weird.
Hmm, must be time for bed. :)
Tuesday Night Quickie...YAY ME!
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Tuesday, 30-May-2000 23:05:20 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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Many apologies for the no posts...law essays to write
This site was sent to me by JC. Someone explain cause I'm not sure what it is or does... Are they trying ot sell me something????
BBC article about how Bees and Ants are going to invade the internet and then they will take over your computer, slowly taking control of your mind, and then they will have control of the world, the galaxy, the UNIVERSE!!! ......
On a lighter note your toilet might be run by your poo and Mr. Arthur C. Clarke, a brilliant man, of one time questionable character, got knighted YAY HIM!
Amusing piccy of a tv show that always amused me.......
Off to the musicals now...
Bye Bye
Feeling a bit better now, thanks to everyone who sent "Get Well!" emails.. awwww... :)
Some clever people in the P3V4X forum here have figured out a solution to the "Phantom FSB" problem.. cooling the ICS clock generator chip.
FiringSquad have a guide to overclocking the CeleronII 533A.
Apparently the new creative video card drivers are based on the "leaked" (who are you kidding) 5.22 detonators and therefore enable FSAA on the appropriate cards.. get 'em here.
Silly stuff in the US as cable competition heats up.
ChipOnline, an aussie tech news site, has move addresses to here.
Win yourself an Arctic Circle cooler by clicking on a few links here.
This is kinda old news now (4 days old :) ) but a few people sent it in, in case you missed it, 3DFX are delaying/recalling their Voodoo5 products.
Brenden sent along a cautionary tale:
Yesterday I went to the computer fair at Newcastle with the purpose of buying an Athlon processor/motherboard etc. One of the dealers there were selling Athlon 700's much cheaper than anybody else (about $370). I jokingly asked them if they were one of the dodgy Athlons that had appeared in WA. I was told that 'yes, it has been rebadged'. Of course I did not go to them to buy anything.
Well, at least they're honest.. :) As usual, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
A clash of dinosaurs in OcManila, TNT2U vs Voodoo3.. actually, I still have a TNT2U card in my main machine here.
InsaneHardware have gotten their 15 minutes of fame, Fairfax IT has a story about the rebadged Athlon thing.
EasyOC have info on a P3-700 @ over a gig here.
Apparently the new 6-2-2 stepping Athlons have some trouble with their L2 cache unless your BIOS knows about them. This might explain the bad Athlons Jim was posting to the news a few weeks ago. Info in the forums here.
Interesting stuff here, someone hacking his BP6 to accept FC-PGA, no powerleaps required.. hmm! Fairly serious hacking and not 100% results yet, but interesting..
VR-Zone got their C2-566 to 966MHz, with the retail fan! I bet that lasts a long time. :)
PCIndex got past the magic 1G mark, an Athlon 700 @ 1.07GHz..
Finally.. if you're only going to have 1 case fan, make sure it's a big one. Thanks Ben! (pic originally on CTNews3D)
Urgh, got some horrible flu thing.. slept all day today. What a waste, was supposed to do the KA7 review.. hmm.
Hagar has put a "buyer beware" notice in the forums, remember to be careful if you're buying stuff in the trading forums here (or anywhere online, really)..
Manaz has started a SETI@HOME group for this site. I used to be really into it but stopped for a while.. now it's winter again I might leave the various boxes cranking away again. If you're interested in signing up and using your spare CPU cycles to look for little green men, go here..
Very slow night newswise..
Warning Sticker
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Saturday, 27-May-2000 22:45:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Mike sent this in:
Bizarre.
Just saw "American Pie".. hehehehe. Funny movie.
HotHardware have reviewed the Elsa Gloria II Quadro. This is a video card designed more for the CAD/CAM market than gaming, but it's an interesting read regardless..
Guru3D have an article up on setting up a LAN Party .. hmm, there's an idea.. :)
PCStats have a review of an interesting little plug-in server thing, running Linux.
Oh dear. Anyone who leaves a water-cooled PC with a 120W peltier in it unattended all night is a fool. Nasty pictures, looks like the water boiled inside the jacket.. yeeghs.
UGHardware have updated their Recommended Systems guide..
These people are apparently the exclusive Australian distributor for ASETEK vapour-cooling systems, as reviewed on www.hardocp.com recently.
On the EasyOCGuide, they detail their journey to 733MHz.. Senfu gear on a Katmai P3-600.
A review of the Belinea (?) 19" monitor at Magic Torch Overclocking (?) ..
PCInsight have reviewed the Rage Fury MAXX.. 2 CPU's, 64MB RAM.. sounds more like a PC than just a video card!
Dan has checked out some cheapy webcams.
New drivers for your Creative GeForce and TNT cards..
IBM are building the world's fastest supercomputer.. again.
Wow, AMEX have said they will no longer extend merchant services to commercial porn sites, too many credit disputes..
Ok, more off-topic stuff but it's interesting and Australian - dunno if you've been following this but there's a crime database site in Victoria which is copping a lot of heat lately because of their role in a murder case being thrown out of court. Latest info on wired here.
InsaneHardware have info on AMD swapping a CPU for a remarking victim..
I really hit a sore point with some people saying that case yesterday was ugly. Quite a few emails from people saying they liked it, including Wilson:
Don't you be calling that CoolerMaster ATC-200 case ugly. I have one, and I go to sleep curled up around it every night. If it wasn't illegal where I live, I'd probably marry it.
Well, fine. I think it's ugly. :)
HardOCP always get the coolest toys to play with..
Soyo always seem to release their BIOS updates in big groups. Anyway, there's been a stack more released today.
The potato-powered puter was a late April's fool gag, according to the Register.. damn. What the hell am I gonna do with all these spuds now!?
Interesting piece on CNET - "Unsung Heroes of Computing". Thanks Jeremy.
PCCritix have a review of the Intellimouse Optical up. Has the funky laser of the Explorer but not the sometimes problematic ergonomics..
Wow! Kickass Athlon Beowulf cluster here.
Some Duron info, pics here and WCPUID screenshots here.
More off-topic but interesting stuff, somebody clever has invented a pen-like device that can purify water.. so just carry it around with you when camping, neato. You remember camping, it's when you sleep outside. You remember outside, it's that big room where the ceiling is sometimes blue and sometimes black and there aren't any keyboards.
Hexus have reviewed a new coolermaster case, pretty funky but ugly!
TechJunkie have interviewed a man from VIA. Mmm, can't wait for DDR266 memory..
Hmm, performance comparison of switches vs hubs here.. not the most scientific testing but interesting nontheless.
I think my sleep debt is finally catching up to me, I've been humming this to the tune of RawHide:
Forums Forums Forums,
They can cure your boredom,
Forums Forums Forums, Online!
Uuurrgghh... sleep now. :)
Ok, the reports are coming in that some people are getting the new site at this domain now which is good. Everyone should be getting it by Friday night and then I can start messing with the cool stuff on the new server.
BTW, there's a scheduled outage of my server (typical, the day after I transfer it they notify me :) ) .. on the weekend for a couple of hours. So if you can't get through to the site (including the forums) go play quake for a couple of hours and try again. :)
Tech-Report have a bit of a strange comparo up.. a dual BX system vs a single-CPU VIA chipset box. Turns out to be an interesting read..
PCExtremes reviewed a wireless mouse.. it uses infra-red, which I suspect would not be very useful on my desk, knee-deep in junk as it is..
ExtremeOC took a look at a few mounting methods for FC-PGA heatsinks and show you a fairly dodgy way to make spacers from electrical tape. :)
ArsTechnica have updated their system guide. This is always interesting.
LockedTarget.com have reviewed the Viper II video card, based on the Savage2000 chipset.
iXBT have pumped out another review, this time the Soyo SY-7VCA gets the going over. It's an FC-PGA Apollo Pro 133A mobo.
Some people have way too much time on their hands. I've thought about it and I've tried to care.. but I just don't.
JSI hardware have a guide to cooling your case.
InsaneHardware have a picture of the words "Intel" and "AMD" on the same chip..
LostCircuits have reviewed the MSI-8809 AGPhantom.. a GeForce video card.
325 registered peeps in the new forums!
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 24-May-2000 23:00:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Definitely some strangeness happening with the domain now. :) Zip kindly broke it this morning for me, which was not actually related to the move. At some point during the next 48 hours you will start hitting the new server instead of Zip.. hopefully everything will be working on the new server when you get there - there's a lot of stuff I can't test properly until the domain is there. :)
This person is giving away a Northwind GFD.. enter your email address for a shot at it.
FiringSquad have updated their FSAA comparo thingy again.
Soyo's KX133 board, the SY-K7AIA, is reviewed here. Not so friendly to the overclockers..
Orthello from NZ has updated his water-cooling site here. Definitely one of the most extreme guys in the Southern Hemisphere..
I warn you guys regularly, but you never listen. If you overclock too far, Bad Things can happen.
iXBT has checked out the Aureal SQ2500 sound card. Gawd, we looked at that months ago. :)
Unsurprisingly, the P3-933EB does not overclock very well..
Tobias sent word of an L2 cache adjustment program for the Athlon. My problem with this kind of thing is that my machine won't even POST unless I've set the cache to 1/3 in the BIOS. But if your motherboard doesn't have that in the BIOS and you don't have a GFD that can do it, this program could be your solution.. the page is in German but you can get the proggy here.
Forget expensive UPS systems, just power your webserver using potatoes. Thanks Feek. :)
ArsTechnica have another article on another preview of the Mac OS X. I'm sure somebody out there still cares..
AthlonOC think that the new Biostar Athlon board is really boring..
Perchance your peltier is not pre-potted, peruse this publication for a perfect peltier-potting procedure.
iXBT take a really expensive video card and stick it in their freezer ..
HardOCP have checked out the KA7-100.
Seems FSAA isn't quite the FPS killer it used to be, with the 5.22 Detonator drivers.. info here.
Corsair announces PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
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Tuesday, 23-May-2000 22:24:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Jim Baker from Realtime Systems sent a very interesting press release from Corsair:
128MByte PC133 CAS 2 modules shipping today
Corsair Memory Inc., the industry leader in high density DRAM Dual In-Line Memory Modules (DIMMs) has announced that it is now shipping fully qualified production units of 128MByte PC133 CAS 2 memory modules. These modules have passed Corsair’s extensive qualification procedure.
The 128Mbyte PC133 CAS 2 modules from Corsair use the latest PC133 CAS 2 compliant MICRON MT48LC8M8A2TG-7E RAMs. These PC133 CAS 2 modules are a natural fit with the latest AMD Athlon processors, as well as the latest VIA Technologies KX133 chipset.
Jim adds:
Retail price in Australia will be in the order of $395 owing to the lousy conversion at the moment. They are rated by Micron to 143Mhz at CAS3 and 133Mhz at CAS2 with a 5.4ns access time, and standard 7.5 ns clock cycle. Specs make it look a very impressive module as Micron typically underate their components quite a bit.
Sounds pretty tasty! Gimme a test stick, Jim. :)
I think my email is broken at the moment. This is due to the domain switching over to the new server and things not quite being synchronized yet. If you need to email me send it to agg@zip.com.au. Ta. There may also be some odd things happening over the next 48 hours as the DNS change replicates around the world. You will know if you're on the new server because the "forums" link on the menu will get you to the new forums. The redesign will be a little later on. On with the news..
UGHardware have compared the last few versions of leaked Detonator drivers, to see which are best for performance..
EuroGamer has reviewed the Celly2-566 and, of course, overclocked it.
Electic.com have taken a look at the Handspring Visor Deluxe, a new PDA using the Palm OS.
CTNews have put up part 3 of their Athlon overclocking guide. This time it's about cooling.
OcShoot have reviewed a quite serious-looking server tower from Addtronics, the 7896A.
IBM have announced some new chips based on "Silicon on Insulator" technology, which run cooler..
This was on HardOCP a few days ago but in case you missed it, AMD have announced their new chip in the K7 line.. after the Athlon and the Duron comes the "Moron".
Guru3D have reviewed the Guillemot (aka Hercules) 3D Prophet II GTS..
OCManila have done a 5-way socket cooler roundup.
InsaneHardware have some more info (scroll down) on the remarked Athlons in WA. This time it's AMD's official word on the subject..
This is the strangest thing I've read in ages. One guy's theory on mind control, little invisible people that tell you to kill people. Right.
"L.A. Woman" by the Doors is a damned fine album.
I keep getting lots of spam in chinese. Seriously. I've got no idea what they're trying to tell me, or sell me, or whatever..
Tech-report have reviewed the Razer Boomslang 2000 uber-mouse..
Something I've quietly lusted after for a while now.. FrostyTech review the SuperMicro 750A fulltower case..
Mattie from Tassie sent a link to pics of his water-cooled machine (under "Articles"). Go the cable-ties! :)
LightSpeed2000 (phwoar) took their C2-566 to 978 air-cooled.. the last page of that article is parnipplelarly interbreasting.
TweakMax have reviewed a 60mm fan that does 38CFM.. it's really loud.
CPU-Burn have an article about turning an old PC into a network server. "As I recently moved in with my girlfriend, we have had some adventurous goals, which have necessitated a network server." .. that sentence was looking really good until the 2nd comma, dang..
InsaneHardware, ever the scoopsters, have preview info on a new dual FC-PGA board from Asus. At AUD$1400 it's no BP6 replacement, though..
Detonator 5.22 leaked..
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Sunday, 21-May-2000 18:53:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Noticed this in the forums, thanks Officer. Here is another thread where PL details the performance he experienced with them compared to other versions.
It's so cold in this room my fingers are stiff so my typing is really bad.. aarg! Good for overclocking though. :)
Idly surfing, I found this site listing dumb laws in Australia.
Another review of another Alpha cooler here. This time it's the CO-6030MFC for socketed chips.
TweakTown have put up an article titled "How to Install a Hard Drive", in case you were wondering.
OCManila have reviewed the ever-popular Asus P3V4X..
The rampaging russians at iXBT Labs have reviewed the Leadtek GeForce2 GTS card.
InsaneHardware obviously thought our new forums were so cool, they got some of their own. :) You can win stuff just by going there and signing up..
G3D have reviewed the Diamond MX400 sound card.
Wondered what browsers will look like in a few years? These people have some theories..
IPKonfig have reviewed the Kodak DC290 digital camera. It's ugly but seems like a good one..
FiringSquad have reviewed the Asus V7700 GeForce2 card here. There is supposed to be one of these winging it's way to me as we speak.. have to give it back afterwards, though.. :(
Another RatzPad review. This one is supposed to be different to all the rest, though. I can't be bothered going to look. :)
TweakTown have updated their BIOS flashing guide. It's really not all that hard, or all that dangerous. However, if you get a power outage during it, you've probably got a frisbee..
An interesting spin on the privacy hullabuloo going on at the moment: You know how banks and other agencies like to use your mother's maiden name to prove your identity? Now think about all those on-line family-tree systems that let you look up stuff.. like other people's mother's maiden names.. :) Story on Wired here.
Celly 633 and 667's now available in Japan..
ComputerNerd have announced a new line of coolers.. I dunno, but the configuration they show there looks like it would be really loud to me..
HardOCP have checked out the HP ArctiCooler. Looks pretty snazzy.
Mr Bill sent this in:
Windows 2000 Now Adds Support For Cuneiform, Hieroglyphics
In the wake of the Windows 2000 launch, Microsoft engineers have been working feverishly to make the product applicable to as many languages as possible. Their latest triumph: versions that support Mesopotamian cuneiform writing and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Now, scholars and aficionados alike can apply the power and reliability of Windows 2000 to unravel some of the greatest mysteries of the dawn of history, whether they concern Akkad's conquest of Sumer or the unraveling of Tutankhamen's teen-age love trysts. Fun for the whole family!
188 people have signed up for the new forums! We now have some moderators on board, too.. not that you should notice them. :)
Hooking up a remote LAN LED..
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Friday, 19-May-2000 23:03:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Tim sent in another simple but interesting hardware hack, attaching a remote LED to your LAN card, no more scrabbling around the back of your PC to see what's going on!
Click here for the full article..
Chris over at TerabytePC has a new article up, with some CPU price curves. He also wants people to let him know what they think of the new design. I preferred the old one.. [shrug]
TE have gazed into their crystal ball and made some predictions about Willamette vs the new Athlons here.
ClubOC have reviewed the Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X mobo. It's another Apollo Pro 133A jobbie with an FC-PGA socket.
Forgot to post this yesterday, the Register in usual style, the article is titled "Intel to cut prices on non-existent boxed chips".. :)
May as well kick Intel while they're down, a meeting where Intel tried to pursuade DRAM makers to make more RDRAM went quite badly for them..
FrostyTech have an interesting article up, measuring the surface flatness of an athlon to see if it's worthwhile lapping.
PCHardware in Romania have reviewed the DFI PW65-E mobo. This is an i810-based board, Slot1.
InsaneOC have fallen out of a time-warp clutching a BX motherboard comparison.. oh, how nineties. :) BX is still good if you can get your system happening around it, also Celly2's will revive this chipset I bet..
PCStats have reviewed a teeny-tiny DVD drive here. Speaking of which, I rang 6 shops yesterday looking for someone who had a name-brand DVD-ROM drive in stock. How many did? Zero! Apparently there's a major shortage of lots of stuff in Oz at the moment..
Win a 2CoolPC cooler by artificially inflating a website's pageview count here.. :) Speaking of which, 116,000 so far this week here - I'm stunned, it's going to be another record week, thanks guys!
If you've got a spare old machine lying around, it's always fun to install Linux on it. If that machine happens to be a socking great mainframe, don't despair, you can still do it! Slashdot had a thing on this a couple of months ago, but it's still an amazing concept.
Dan has reviewed the Leadtek Winfast GeForce2 GTS card. Pretty much as you'd expect, it's mind-wobblingly fast.
IBM has issued a recall on certain models of power adapters for their Thinkpad range of laptops. The reason? Oh, nothing major.. they just burst into flames from time to time. :)
New Forums are GO!
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Thursday, 18-May-2000 22:05:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Ok, the testing has gone spectacularly well, all the technical issues are resolved. Next week I will be moving the domain from the old Zip server to the new server (hosted with vservers.com in the US). This is how the forums will work during the transition:
- The UBB forums are currently at a temporary address on nightmachines.net (my testing domain), here:
http://www.nightmachines.net/cgi-bin/oc/ubb/Ultimate.cgi
- The address you're used to going to the forums at, "www.overclockers.com.au/forums" will point to the NEW forums on the new server. This will be the same place as the nightmachines.net address, the same data that is there now.
- The current (old) forums will be available on the new server at a different address. These will be READ ONLY, for archival purposes. All the old data will be there except for the trading forums which will be restarted from scratch. There will probably be a period of a couple of days between the domain moving to the new server and the old forum archive coming online, because there are technical issues to be resolved there. The new forums will of course be available immediately (they are available now and being used quite a bit already).
What does this mean for you?
- From now on, please post new threads to the NEW forums at their temporary nightmachines.net address here. This is so that your threads will be alive in the future. If you start a new thread in the old forums now, it will be unavailable for a couple of days and then it will be read only! So make the transition now!
- Old threads can continue in the old forums but be aware that sometime next week they will vanish for a couple of days and then become read only.
FORUM REGULARS: I would appreciate it if you could make this clear to other folks in the forums, there will be a lot of people who don't realise. I will post this message to each forum but I'm sure people won't see/read/understand. Don't be rude, just gently advise they should move their thread to the new forums for a better chance of a response. Thanks guys!
Aaarrgh, too much to do. So busy.. :(
AthlonOC have a guide to overclocking the Athlon here.
FiringSquad have seen how good the P3-800E is for overclocking..
Jim said I should link to silly wwaasszzuupp site. Lots of videos to download, not looked at them yet.. apparently very funny.
There's a new site up called LiquidCool.org, don't know much about them but worth a look.. I shoulda bought that domain, dang. :)
AMDExtreme review the Alpha P7125 monster Athlon cooler here.
Magic Torch Overclocking (no, I've no idea either) only managed to get their P3-550E to 825MHz. Wooses! :)
There's a new beta BIOS for the BP6 here. Not sure what it fixes or adds. Coppermine support? We can only dream. :)
AthlonOC also have a guide to tweaking your KA7..
If you were a real Ferrari-head, you'd have a PC that looked like this, wouldn't you?
If you wanted to be hardcore, if you think GFD-users are taking the woosy way out and insist on soldering your Athlon's voltage and multiplier settings then this page will be extremely useful to you.
Wednesday Night #3
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Wednesday, 17-May-2000 22:40:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Certainly no shortage of stuff going on tonight!
A review of the Leadtek GeForce2 card (mentioned in the last news post as available in Oz now) here on Guru3D.
TweakTown have checked out the QuickCam Express, a USB video-conferencing camera..
InsaneHardware have the updated K7V bios (v 1005a), ready-hacked for different L2 cache ratios.. get 'em here
OCTools have taken a crack at overclocking their 600E..
Les shared an interesting observation about Athlon cache chips: Talking of heat plates, I put a 25mm x 25mm hole stright through mine the other day, and modified my water block so it protruded through the hole directly onto the core. I have can now keep the core within 4 or 5 deg of ambient unber full load (measured at the core). I have also experimented with cooling the cache and no ammount of cooling would let me overclock them significantly. The produce very little heat of their own, a get heated by the core via the heatplate more than anything else. While it is probably critical to at least have a reasonably small gap from the heatplate to the cache chips, as long as theres some heatsink compound in the gap, and as long as the heatplate is not heating them, there is very little to gain by spending time shimming them etc. This was prompted by my observation that the cache chips on my Athlon are not touching the cold plate at all (there's a visible air gap). Seems that may be a good thing sometimes. It's stable a 1GHz @ 1.7v, 1/3 L2 cache ratio with basically no cache cooling - the cache chips are within spec at 1/3 of course, but still..
90 people have signed up for the new forums so far!
Wednesday Night #2
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Wednesday, 17-May-2000 22:09:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hmm, that XFiles was a creepy one..
Some more info about E3, the big entertainment show in the US. Tech-report have a summary of a lot of the new hardware there (that MP3 thing from Turtle Beach looks v.cool), ShugaShack have a look at 10 in-progress games on demo there and of course the Booth Babes were very thoroughly reported on. :) Mmmm.. Lara..
A site called LatestUpdates has reviewed the funkymouse, also known as the Intellimouse Explorer. Jim reviewed one of these ages ago for us here, a funny read..
If you're in the UK and looking for some extreme cooling gear, check out CDTech.
FastMHz have info on a neat way of keeping dust outta your case..
A head-to-head Asus Geforce comparo on PCStats..
ArsTechnica have an interesting article about wiring a house for LAN. I know a couple of people who have done this.. I just have CAT5 stuck to the floor all over my place. :)
FrostyTech have more info on their full-copper heatsink, overclocking info this time..
InsaneHardware say they have info on the Leadtek GeForce2 cards available in Perth now. I think Zip are serving me an old version of their page, I can't see the info there. Actually today I noticed Eyo have them in Sydney, too.
Speaking of Perth, Marcus pointed out this site which seems to be an often-updated list of dealers and prices there.
This page is supposed to be an article on how NOT to overclock your K6-2, but it's not loading for me.
Win2K apparently is not as secure as it claims to be.
More in a bit..
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 17-May-2000 19:24:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Lotsa case action today. Firstly Tom has a review of the most profoundly ugly case I've ever seen. I stole the link to this one from HardOCP - it's very cool. However these are just plain silly (Peter emailed it to me, but HardOCP had already put 'em up). I do quite like the Psychotic Robot Cat in that last one though.
Surprise surprise, BattleField Earth is possibly the worst science fiction film of all time. Worse even than Mission to Mars. That is impressive. Anyone else seen "Bad Taste" ..? I used to love that film. :)
Big thanks to Philippe for pointing this out in the forums - a registry fix that restores AGP 4X capability to the 5.16 Detonator drivers. This has helped a lot of people and attracted a LOT of interest.
G3D have reviewed the Senfu water-cooling kit here. Senfu are apparently sending me the new mounting hardware because I complained loudly about the old stuff. :)
Hmm, more later. Food..
Anand and RAMBUS
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Wednesday, 17-May-2000 15:02:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Well, it's good to see some action in the hardware scene today. Anand posted an adverti.. [cough] .. *article* on why RAMBUS doesn't really suck as hard as everyone says it does. Strangely, he forgot to mention the latency issue, which is the main reason it's so slow in real-world usage. That and the fact that it's 3 times as expensive as something which runs at much the same speed. And, the more you add to a system, the slower it gets. And, it gets incredibly hot during usage. Anyways.. unsurprisingly enough, the community has bitch-slapped him pretty hard over this. First into the fray is Overclockers.com, with a stinging editorial about Anand's article. You can join discussions on this heated issue here in HardOCP's forums and here in Anand's..
TNT2 Cooler Mod
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Wednesday, 17-May-2000 00:03:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Well, Timothy wasted no time getting his article in. :) He's modified his Asus V3800 TNT2 card to use an old Celeron cooler instead of the crappy stock one:
Click here for the full article..
Well, the new forum test is going very well, don't forget to go reserve your name..
I thought you guys all knew this but I've been asked it a few times over the last few days: Do we accept reader-submitted articles? The answer is of course, yes! There's quite a few in the archive, in fact. As long as they're relevant, reasonably well-written (I can tidy them up a bit if needed) and don't contain any obvious errors or bias, I'll happily host them and give you full credit. It's good if you can include pics or screenshots. They don't have to be new product reviews, just something you whipped up to cool your video card or some cool case mod or something.. whatever. :)
Anyway, a fair bit of news today..
Electic send word of a new .inf file for VIA chipsets under MS operating systems..
Jim pointed out that 3DChipset have some info and registry entries for enabling 4X AGP on your KX133 boards..
ArsTechnica have a review of the Asus K7V, KX133-based Athlon board - they really like it.
HardOCP have some scoopy stuff on the Intel i820 motherboard swap story.
AMDExtreme have reviewed the TweakDevice2, a teeny-tiny GFD. Hmm, I want one!
YYK send word of Toshiba's new tiny hard drives, 2GB on a PCMCIA card! Info here on ZDNet and here on Toshi's site.
PCCritix have reviewed the Abit KA7, another KX133 Athlon board. I've got one here but it's acting a little flakily at the moment, having some trouble getting it going. Hopefully get some time to check it out on the weekend.
They also claim that the new AGP driver from VIA fixes the slowdown issue with the 4.20 drivers we explored here a couple of months ago. I'm sure the regulars in the P3V4X forum would be interested to try that out.. seems that board gets a free speed increase every week or so. :)
JSI have reviewed the 2CoolPC Plus, a scoopy ducted thing for keeping your system cool..
This is pretty interesting, someone has compared a Katmai P3 and a Coppermine P3 at the same speed to see if there's any performance improvement..
Flashback time.. remember when YOU first took a C400 to 600MHz? Those wild, crazy days.. hexus.com are living up the past again. Not a bad performer, I had one in my games box until recently.. the 1GHz Athlon stomps it bigtime. :)
Dan has a very interesting article on building a box on the fairly cheap, for someone who doesn't have to be on the bleeding edge. A good read as usual.
Ok ok, it's a macintosh article, but it's got links to a few interestingly hacked and upgraded machines.
TechWatch have reviewed a really weird looking keyboard. :) It may be ergonomic, but it looks like it was designed for Species 8372 from Star Trek: Voyager.
Chris "Mr Popup" Jermyn of TerabytePC has put up another article, this time his musings on video cards..
Finally, Alista sent an email bragging about his system, a P3-650E at a blistering 897MHz (138MHz FSB).. on a BX motherboard! He writes:
i am using abit BE-6II
ram 128mb micron pc 133mhz
vga matrox G400 max dual head
Ibm hard disk ATA 66 7200 rpm
diamond monster sound card
heatshink alpha P3 125 M60
cd rom aopen 48x ide
There's life in those old boards yet..
New UBB Forums TEST
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Tuesday, 16-May-2000 14:55:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Ok, I've got a test UBB working. At the moment I've done no customization, it's all standard colours and layout etc. I'd appreciate if people can go test it out:
http://www.nightmachines.net/cgi-bin/oc/ubb/Ultimate.cgi
Thanks. At the moment I'm mostly interested in:
- Error messages (500 errors etc)
- Odd behaviour, like your messages not appearing after posting (after posting, if you hit the "I don't want to wait" link you may need to refresh your page to see the new msgs, this is a UBB thing so normal).
- SPEED! Let me know if it's slow or whatever. This is the server the whole site is going to move to, so if it's slow the time to complain is NOW.
- I know the email features aren't working at the moment. I'm looking into it.
I'm also interested in people's suggestions for forums. I've currently got the forum structure the same as the current Phorum ones, but this will change if people have better ideas. Or just suggest an additional forum or something.
Finally, it's conceivable that all messages may be erased from this test system at some point (I'm not planning to, but if there's a major structure change etc, it might be required) but I will make every attempt to retain the members database. So, if you really want to reserve your current username in the new system, now is the time to go register it. Registration is not required for posting, though.
That URL again: http://www.nightmachines.net/cgi-bin/oc/ubb/Ultimate.cgi
Your comments are welcome in this current forum thread.
Argh, nearly cut the end off my finger today, stupid me. Excuse any typos, my left index finger is encased in a band-aid construction of serious proportions. Add to that the parking nazi's stopping me from leaving my bike in my favourite sneaky spot this morning and it has not been a good day. :)
Leith let us know that the wrong HDD's were used in the "Ultimate System" linked to yesterday, obviously they shoulda been these 15,000rpm babies.
There's a review of the BX6 here. No, you've not dropped into a spatial anomaly and arrived in a parallel universe that's a year out of sync with this one, apparently this isn't the Abit BX6 we know and love[d], it's the EPOX BX6. Ahh. I don't know either. It uses BX, anyway.
PCIndex have reviewed the IWill WS133 motherboard here. It uses Intel's i810 chipset..
Pics of Leadtek's GeForce2 card on sale in Japan here, and a bunch of other interesting pics too, japanese text.
I noticed Beast has updated his Asus P3V4X site with a bunch of stuff in the last few days, turned out to be quite a popular niche site, that one.
Speeeeedy 3333333D have reviewed the OCD-33333 full tower case. Funky flip-out motherboard tray.
Andrew passed on a new "honour system virus":
If you are running a Macintosh, OS/2, Unix or Linux computer, please randomly delete several files from your hard disk drive and forward this message to everyone you know. .. :)
Another review of the big hunka-chunka Voodoo5 6000 here on 3DHardware..
FragMagnet sent in his own 3DMark2000 screenshot, too big to re-post, but it's a P3-650 @ 975 with a GeForce DDR pulling in 7624 of the big ones..
Les Tutt's video voltage tweak sparked a bit of comment, here's another voltage hack, an older motherboard this time.
Some interesting articles in the internet press…
Firstly space related news BBC reports that 8 new planets have been discovered . This brings the tally to forty planets outside our solar system.
A mouse that squeaks when you squeeze to hard... Didn't Agg do a review on this subject matter? Anyway, it prevents RSI and helps gamers... the mouse IS defiantly evolving.
Article stating that ICANN may legally take away your domain name by their own decree. Ie you don't own it. Article also lists ways to get around this.
Photo of the Moment winner was announced. Steve Ringman won $1 million with this picture taken 17 years ago.
More on Dud Athlon 700's.
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Sunday, 14-May-2000 18:21:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Skull tells me he pulled apart one of these dud 700's and found what looks like a missing component on the PCB. If this is the case, the dud CPU may be able to be fixed by soldering the relevant component back on (we don't know what it's supposed to be yet). He writes:
I bought one just before Easter and opened the case to put a GFD on and the component at location c153 on right hand-side of pcb behind where the cache chip is looked as if it had been put on then removed, there are no other signs of tampering ala rebadged cpu's just this one anomaly, it almost looks as if the resistor or capacitor (not sure - little brown thing in technical terms) was soldered on during assembly and either didn't take properly and the machine pulled it off again or it was removed before finally assembly.
Addendum: He tells me that he doesn't necessarily have one of the "duds", his CPU does work, but does not overclock at all. So this may not be the cause of the other CPU's failing.
Addendum #2: Got another email on the subject, filling me in on the mystery component. Note that this may not fix a "true" dud, but it would probably help a CPU in the same boat as Skull's. FragMagnet writes:
The missing component is a grey or green capacitor. I broke a pair of these, tightening a K7 500 to a pelt block. Just measure the capacitance of the other side, and replace the missing one. I bought Qty 25 for the heavy sum of $2 U.S. These are a different spec. than my .25 micron CPU, as I compared them to my 550 .18, so measure whacha got !!
Addendum #3:
Fragmagnet updates:
after rereading it (it was late last night!) the capacitor colour should be grey or yellow (NOT green)
So don't look for green :)
Some interesting stuff today. Don't forget to ring your mother, or you'll get in trouble. :)
Seems I was wrong, and this guy has the 3DMark2000 record, thanks Kristoffer.
A bit more on Tom's site about the MTH problem on i820 boards. Actually, this was written before the one I posted last night. :) The other one corrects some stuff in this one. But I've been getting a fair bit of mail from i820 owners, so there's some more info for you.
The race for space in Oz will be starting real soon - we will have our own launch facility on Christmas Island in a few years. Info here.
Chris "Chip" Jermyn from TerabytePC has put up an article on what he thinks is the ultimate system from bits available today. The good news is, it'll only set you back a shade over $12,000. :)
OCShoot have tested the various leaked Detonator drivers (5.13, 5.14, 5.16) on a Creative Annihilator Pro. Newer means faster, right? Maybe not..
Dud Athlon 700's?
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Sunday, 14-May-2000 09:44:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There seem to be a few dud Athlon 700's floating around Sydney at the moment, maybe in other areas too. These aren't fake (from what I can tell) but seem to have broken L2 cache. Tarrasque tells me that in the computer shop he works at he's found around 4 duds so far, which all work fine (albeit a lot more slowly) when the L2 is disabled. I bought a dud 700 from a different shop yesterday (before I knew of this), and it would not even complete a scandisk before locking up or getting a runtime error. I took it back to the shop and exchanged it for a 750 and paid the difference, and so far so good. So if you're in the market for a 700 (which seems to be the best value Athlon at the moment) double-check it before you break that warranty sticker, preferably before you leave the shop with it.
Jim Baker from Realtime Systems has written up an article which explains lots of terms you often hear in relation to RAM technology. An interesting read.
It looks like the owners of motherboards based around the Apollo Pro 133A chipset are finally getting their revenge on the diehard BX owners. This memory interleaving option which is appearing in the BIOSes of a lot of motherboards seems to give a real boost to that chipset's much publicized Achilles heel, the memory throughput. I've put up some links earlier this week but here's a couple more, one on OCWorkbench showing a 38% increase and a huge one by Dr Ffreeze on ClubOC, which covers quite a few settings including interleaving.
A couple of people sent this link in - with all these virus outbreaks lately you often hear that the FBI is chasing the baddies.. more likely, the FBI is getting these guys to chase 'em.
DimensionX is a great place to get the daily hardware review headlines, now they've moved to their own domain at PCNewsCenter.com..
A new BIOS update for Abit BM6 owners..
Dan has checked out some speakers with a USB jack in them. But they're not USB speakers. Hmm!
HotHardware have gotten hold of the retail release of the Voodoo5 drivers and done a load of benchmarking with them.
Speaking of drivers, I found this page on MadOnion.com's site today, loads of vendor driver site links.
This page shows probably the current 3DMark2000 record. 7488!
PCWorld have an interesting article up for Palm addicts like me, a bunch of tips and useful utils..
Tom has put up what he thinks about the whole Intel MTH business.
Saturday morning
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Saturday, 13-May-2000 10:38:05 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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I feel I've been neglecting this page big time. So here I am writing again, but only as I fear the big time wrath of Agg, who incidentally knows where I work/live/eat/hang a... Anyway, some interesting articles today, most are more interesting than amusing, but that's not to say you cannot find it amusing, by all means laugh!
All the glitz and glamour of the Webbys are over for yet another year and the winners have been announced.
Speaking of awards, JC sent me this article about the 5K awards.
BBC news have just realised that Sc-Fi got it all first. Writing things up such as fax machines which, apparently, was thought up in the 1890s. The interesting thing about this is that NASA regularly consults Sc-Fi writers for brainstorms… and your folks said you couldn't get a job with a B.A. HA!
After I'm finished at uni, I'll be going to San Francisco State University for a semester. According to Wired there's a new course on the sexier side of the net.
Wired has discovered some new games at E3 … it seems that Diablo II is really coming in July and Warcarft III is coming in the winter…. Sure it is, just keep telling yourself that.
Wanna marry Tom Arnold? I know I don't, but you know he's rich, has nice houses, makes bad movies, has a low sperm count, maybe we can work something out... we can just talk. This is a legit site, I saw this on the very humorous Late night with Conan So if you think you've got what it takes, give him a yell!
I need to redecorate my office at work
Last but not least, one for Agg who is loves his does of carbon chemistry, caffine, and mountain dew/spew... I give you permission to read/enjoy it too...
Anyone got any amusing links/sites/stuff send em over and I'll post 'em
Off to the beach now...YAY!
Les voltage-hacks his video card.. neato.
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Saturday, 13-May-2000 09:19:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hi Agg,
Have emailed you a couple of times before with my homegrown watercooling experiments (k6 2/450 @ 517 then my K7 500 @ 875). Everyone has been tweaking their core voltages for years to enhance their core speeds and this is nothing new. I have just experimented with raising the memory voltage on my Guillemot Banshee PCI. This card would overclock in very cool weather and with very large heatsinks but became ver flakey rapidly when working the card hard in 3D. I could regularly get the 100/100 board to 125/125 but would be flakey when thrashed. It was rock solid at 118/121 though (mem/core). I decided the card was old enough to start hacking around. I found it used in Infinity 8483 3 pin regulator to generate the 3.5v memory voltage. By going to the Infinity site and getting the spec sheet, I was able to change 1 (yes 1 ) 1mm surface mount resistor and raise the mem voltage from 3.5v to 3.75v. I didn't even bother to chech whether this voltage is used for the core. Now the card is rock solid after many hrs 3D at 125/125. The core is more soklid as well but I am not sure if this is because of the sharpened timing of the ram to the core, or if I have actually raised the core as well. Though this might be of interest as I have never seen info on the net about this (and I live in overclocking forums and sites). Obviously this particular banshee is a dog, as many of them overclock way past my specs absolutely standard. The principle seems valid and works in the real world.
CYA
Les Tutt
Boyd Moody came to the rescue, answering my question about Coppermine SMP steppings by pointing out this excellent list on Overclockers.com. Reaper and James Barsing also sent some good info, thanks guys!
ClubOC have another GFD review up, this time it's the "Tweaking Device 2" .. is this a record for the smallest GFD?
Info on Intel's MTH woes here on their site and here on overclockers.com.
ExtremeHW have some pics and info from E3, the big entertainment show in the US. New microsoft gaming h/w offerings etc..
PCStats have a dually review of the Soundblaster Live Platinum and the Cambridge Desktop Theatre 2500..
Intel and Micron are apparently teaming up to take a crack at the .1 micron barrier.
3DFX and NVIDIA, of course, are NOT teaming up on anything, in fact they're looking to find better ways to show how much they slap each other around.
Another Alpha P3125 vs Globalwin VOS32 clash here.
Kyle loves baiting people for flame-mails.. now he's on holy ground again, with his spin on the Voodoo5 vs GeForce2 debate..
AnandTech have reviewed the Asus V7700 GeForce2 card.
Do-it-yourself card-cooler instructions here .. actually quite well done.
Dan's updated his review of a cheapy geforce.
Remember, defacing currency is a serious crime! But this is for a good cause.. ram cooling!
Anyway, sorry I'm a little late with the news tonight, been dicking around with a "special" Athlon that Jai over at InsaneHardware hooked me up with. How special? It says 750 on the box (and it's genuine) but I'll let the screenshot tell the story:
Still some work to be done, obviously - my GFD allows 1050MHz. :)
Late Night Oddities
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Friday, 12-May-2000 23:37:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I'm something of a cat person. I like cats a lot. My GF is a dog person. I just never kinda got the whole dog thing. Cats are great because they show affection by staying the hell out of your way and letting you get on with your life. I can't take a step around the backyard without a dog lying on it's back underfoot. Anyway, I don't like cats quite this much, however.
This thing made everyone at work laugh more than anything I can remember in recent history. People getting prank names called over Heathrow Airport's PA system.. very clever and very, very funny. It's (for some reason) a 500KB word doc, so be warned. Get it here. You'll need sound to get the full effect!
PCExtremes have tried out the "leaked" Detonator 5.16 drivers here.
J3r3My $3Nds W0rD 0Ph 4 5ILLY l1++lE J4V@5crIpt PRo9r@M +0 TURN yoUr N0Rm4L 5PeeCH iNTO L33T HaX0R d00D 5peecH. phEAr my 5K1ll5!
ExtremeHW have an interesting look at Full Screen Anti-Aliasing here.
Hey, can anyone remember where to go to see which batches of P3-550E's are the new stepping? The SMP-capable ones? Drop me a note pls..
ExtremeOC have taken a look at the new Soyo SY-7VCA and SY-6VCA BIOSes, which enable memory interleaving on those boards. Certainly seems to have made an improvement - I've heard of a couple of other VIA-chipset boards having this feature appear in later BIOSes too, so might be worth looking into.
TE have some info, some guidelines of sorts, for building monster dual-cpu boxes.
A debate up on FiringSquad over whether to buy an off-the-shelf system or buy one in bits and build it yourself.
Anyway, gotta run off early tonight, stuff to do..
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 11-May-2000 08:10:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Just a quickie..
TweakTown have updated their Alpha cooler review from last night, more useful information now than before.
iXBT have reviewed the NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS, not a specific card but a look at the chipset itself. An interesting read as usual from the Russians.
Intel released a software developers guide to the Itanium today, info on how to best take advantage of the new architecture.
Another interesting press release from Intel today, they have accepted that the Memory Translator Hub used to allow i820-based motherboards to use SDRAM (instead of RDRAM) is causing problems such as resets and hangs. They are even going so far as to replace motherboards with the unit on them.. not sure if that's EVERY board made since November with a MTH in it..? Owch.
Dan's following my lead again. First he reviews the Senfu kit, and now he reviews the ultra-funky Palm Portable Keyboard. My review here for comparison.. what's the bet Dan does a K7V or Golden Orb next? :)
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 10-May-2000 20:10:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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DocHardware have reviewed the Celly2 566 here.
A PSU head-to-head on UGHardware here.
ClubOverclocker send word that there's a new BIOS for the Abit BE6-II..
TweakTown have a review of the Alpha PAL-35T. Instead of comparing it to another cooler, they compare it to itself with the fan turned off. Unsurprisingly, it's much colder with the fan turned on. Umm..
The easy overclocking guide have a review of the Soyo SY-7VCA up. This is an FC-PGA Apollo Pro 133A board.
Electic have reviewed the FrontX Multimedia Ports, carries your sound card jacks to the front of your machine to save cable hassle.
CTNews have an article listing their 10 Rules For Building Athlon Systems. Pretty basic stuff really, but worth a read.
CPUBurn have a preview of MS Media Player 7..
Dominic McWilliam sent some inspiring news:
Just thought you would like to know, i bought a athlon 600 from the computer markets in canberra, for $370 and i now have it clocked to 900MHZ, running at 1.9V, using 133 kingmax ram, and abit ka7 board with a GFD and a soldering iron for the cache mods .. nice one!
TE have reviewed the Asus V7700 GeForce2 card.
InsaneOC have a taken a look at some interesting approaches to HDD cooling..
I'm off to get food before the XFiles. :)
New Creative CD-ROM Drive
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Wednesday, 10-May-2000 19:14:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Creative Labs just sent me an interesting press release about their new 52X CD-ROM. Ok, 52X is nothing too unusual, but this unit is designed to rip digital audio at 20X:
The iNFRA52X also effortlessly 'rips' CD audio tracks at an accelerated 20X maximum Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) rate, and can therefore create compressed digital audio files in various popular formats, such as MP3, WMA or WAV, at a much higher throughput than most past-generation CD-ROM drives. The iNFRA52X is also ideal for use with portable MP3 digital audio players, such as Creative's NOMADÔ family.
No details on their website that I can find, but they say it'll be on the streets in Oz at approx $129 in late May. Just the thing to boost your MP3 collection. :)
FiringSquad has some info on the new P3 steppings, cB0. These are the SMP-capable jobbies - they ask: are they more overclockable than the old stepping?
Soyo have shipped a bunch more BIOS'es.. notably absent is the SY-6VBA-133, but pretty much everything else is updated.
FrostyTech have a new heatsink design up, solid copper, it's a bit of a monster..
Got an Athlon and a GFD but not sure how to connect 'em together? This article will show you how to do it..
There's an anybody-in-the-world competition running here, it's simple enough. The prize is a Soyo SY-6VBA-133 motherboard, not the newest peice of kit on the block but I've got one in my games box.. a P3-550E 100% stable at 853MHz is not too bad at all.
CTNews have a review of the Asus K7V Athlon motherboard here, they compare it to Abit's KA7..
ClubOC have reviewed the IWill VD133 Pro motherboard here. It's another Apollo Pro 133A unit.. with IDE RAID on board! Looking at the board though, what a terrible place to put the extra IDE headers..
I've not had a chance to look at this properly yet but it looks pretty cool - a tool that analyses an NT box's event log for restart notices and can provide you with uptime statistics (uptime 95% etc) and a bunch of other interesting stuff. It apparently works with NT4 and Win2K (server and wks) and it's free, get it here. Link stolen from arstechnica.
This is interesting, BXBoards send word of a beta BIOS for the Abit KA7 which allows L2 cache adjustment from the BIOS.
My fellow corporate slaves will relate to this, a study has shown it's not uncommon for silicon valley IT-worker cubicles to be smaller than the pens that house veal calves..
Daniel Rutter and a hot, wet, naked Athlon - what a mental picture that is. Dan has sorted out his Senfu woes to some extent, his review of their water-cooling kit is a great read as usual.
More info on the current hot topic, Remarked Athlons in Oz, over on InsaneHardware.
Blue Dingo sends word (and a pic) that his Athlon is capable of running it's L2 cache 100% stable at 412MHz (ie 1/2 ratio at 825 MHz core). I've not really been paying attention but that's quite a bit higher than they can normally do it, apparently. This is a good thing for sure!
NeoSeeker have a review of the Alpha PAL-6032 socket370 uber-cooler here.
Some overclocking action from Nuh Zuh Lund here, eh. Pretty extreme, water, peltiers etc.
An interview with someone from Rambus here on FiringSquad. I've not read it, but I bet he doesn't say "You're right, it really IS expensive and slow".
Which animal most reminds you of a helicopter? Dragonfly? Hummingbird, maybe? I'm damned sure it's not an alligator. It's a review of a game that lets you fly one. An alligator. I don't know either..
I've been watching this technology for a while but been dissapointed so far - however, a 4GB solid-state HDD capable of sustaining 18MB/sec transfer is pretty cool.. and pretty non-cheap, I would expect.
Tech-Report have put their spin on the problem with T-Birds and KX133 chipsets, worth a read..
PCCritix have reviewed a water-cooling jacket from 2CoolPC..
TE have reviewed a beta of the Voodoo5.. I dunno, this whole "my video card is bigger than yours" thing is getting a little old. Maybe I'm just a bitter TNT2U owner.. :)
Speaking of bigger than others, this site has 2 of the biggest Athlon coolers going head to head, but also the most pointlessly long URL I've seen in ages, check it out:
http://www.pctweaker.co.uk/articles/alpha-p7125_vs_gw-vos32/alpha-p7125_vs_gw-vos32.htm
..now that's extreme! :)
I got sent this thing by about 6 different websites yesterday. It's a BIOS patch for changing your Athlon's L2 cache ratio. H-Oda is requiring registration or something now, and this freebie spanish patch does the same thing apparently. First out of the gate was InsaneHardware but I will also link to the author's site here.
Techwatch got some more info on the fake athlon in Oz, but their server woosed out so it's mirrored here on OcWorkbench. Pics and stuff.
Guys, I'd appreciate it if you could read this post in the forums and join the thread, let me know your thoughts about the forums. Especially if you're a forum regular, but everyone is invited to contribute.
Workin' on the nightly news now.. :)
New Forum Server TEST
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Sunday, 7-May-2000 17:57:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hey guys, can you head on over to here:
http://www.nightmachines.net/oc/forums/index.php3
..and try out the forums? I know there's a few broken images but the basic forum functionality should be there. ANYTHING YOU POST WILL BE DELETED AT A LATER STAGE. So post any proper messages into the real forums, but these test forums you can let your true feelings out. :)
I'm interested in error messages, response time etc. Basically response time is the big one I guess, as the new server is in the US and I want to see if people get good load times from it.
Let me know how you go. Thanks!
Ok, the forums are back again. Sheesh.
Managed to get my P3-550E stable at 850 on my Soyo SY-6VBA-133 over the last couple of days. I've got the Senfu water-cooler on it.. 95.7fps in Q3 (fastest settings) is not too shabby for a machine with a TNT2U-based videocard at default clock.
Actually, if you remember my review of the Senfu Water-Cooling Kit a week or so ago, you'll recall I complained about the useless instructions and bizarre ways of mounting the unit onto various CPU's. Dan from DansData and I have been swapping email lately because he has been working on a review of the same kit and is running into similar problems as I had. His review (current working title "Dan's Damp Athlon Adventure" does not sound healthy) will be up in a few days but I thought I'd share a preview of it, one of his wilder attempts to get the unit mounted on a naked Athlon:
Needless to say, this is NOT the recommended method. Dan commented it was actually too heavy and pulled the CPU out of the slot.. hmm. :) Hope to see his review next week sometime.
TechWatch have issued a warning about some fake Athlons on the Australian market..
AMDExtreme have reviewed a new GFD, uses dials like the Afterburner.. they also have a review of a new Athlon mobo from a company called BCM (?) ..
G3D have info on a new Epox EP-7KXA BIOS Update, fixes some issues with that board. More interesting on that page is the news that nVidia are suing Elsa for reselling reference boards and shipping premature drivers, among other things. They don't quote their sources so collect your grain of salt at the door..
The conspiracy loonies have come boiling out of the woodwork again, this time about the ILOVEYOU virus.. it's either the RIAA, Metallica or Bill Gates behind it. Riiight.
This must be Athlon news day or something. Now BXboards have reviewed the new Gigabyte KX133 board.
Some silly stuff on InsaneHardware, firstly they have some modified detonator drivers that give you a babe on your screen and their logo.. also they got the Q3 logo up on their mobile phone.
I wonder if we'll be seeing more of this in the future, a new (I think it's new?) BX-based FC-PGA board. Obviously meant for the Celly2, for which BX is fine. I think this cpu-chipset combo will make for some sleeper boxes which may surprise people with their performance.. anyway, the review's here.
TweakTown have some info on speeding up your Win2K machine.
#@%!@#$%#$%$##@!#$!@#% forums.
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Sunday, 7-May-2000 12:40:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Nope, they're still broken. Sigh.
I sound like a broken record.
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Sunday, 7-May-2000 12:13:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Forums were broken slightly this morning (ta again Zip) so they were restored from the 12:30am backup this morning. So if your message is mysteriously missing, pls post it again.
The good news is I have 99% worked out how to put the forums on the new server. So this will all be a thing of the past soon..
Nothing broke. Yay.
Forums Unwell (again)
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Saturday, 6-May-2000 16:15:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Thank you once again Zip. We'll see what's broken when it comes back up. I can't get the db server to even show me the structure at present. However, I took a full backup yesterday so worst case I'll set them all back to there.
I've been working on making the forums work on the new server today, coincidentally, as Zip seem to be having this problem on a weekly basis. If I can make it work I will move the forums before the rest of the site (and the domain proper). This is complicated a little by Zip using a different database program to the new server, so it's taking a little fiddling to get going.
I'll keep you posted.
Saturday Morning
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Saturday, 6-May-2000 11:12:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Unless you've had your head under a rock for the last 48 hours, you already know more about the ILOVEYOU virus than you need to, so I'm not going to regurgitate it all here. Update your virus protection, go get some if you don't have any.
Jeff McLuckie sent in a review of a quite funky item, Diamond's Homefree Phoneline 10Mbps networking kit. This runs a network over your home's phoneline system - and voice calls can still ring in and continue while the network is in use! Neato.
Click here for the full review
Some cool stuff happening in the skies lately. The NASA press release mailing list is actually really interesting sometimes.
Interesting article here on Linux on the Alpha platform.
I remember reading a while ago about how, when DEC was inhaled by Compaq, loads of their harcore chip engineers (who were responsible for the Alpha) went to AMD. This article explains the similarities between DEC's Alpha and AMD's Athlon (and a fair bit of other stuff too, Willamette, Transmeta etc).
Abit seem to be really pushing ahead with this Gentus Linux thing. The new version offers UDMA/66 and ATA-100 support, full support for VIA chipsets, software overclocking tools etc.. hmm!
Tech-Junkie now have videos of themselves shooting old crappy computers. I think they really need to get out more.. or stay in more, or something.
Another review of the Boomslang 2000 here.
Techwatch have some Oz pricing info on a couple of GeForce GTS2 cards.. not on the shelves yet, though.
Interesting article on Overclockin.com, they have part 3 of their Ram Roundup posted. This covers the Kingmax TinyBGA stuff and Corsair, both available in Oz. Some surprises there..
TweakMax demonstrate that P3-600E + PEP66 = 846MHz.
Review of a super-cheapy video card here.
Win an Abit VT6X4 here..
Very interesting read here on how these guys (nicely) hacked the Apache.org server. I saw the link here on MaximumPC.
TweakTown checked out a pretty cool thing here, carries your soundcard ports to the front of your case.. simple but useful..
The big cat picture from a few days ago prompted a fair bit of discussion, here's a really big dog courtesy of xlr8r.. I dunno, I'm just not comfortable with pets that can kill and eat you if you piss them off.
iXBT have reviewed the Celery 566. No sign of them in Oz yet..
Dan has reviewed another funky laser-mouse..
Think you're a crack-shot at computer security? Take this quiz at ISS and see how much you know.. I got 2 out of 8 on the advanced one.. dang.
Anand has an AMD 2000 Roadmap up, interesting read but these things are known to change..
Not much else happened today, as far as I can tell. However, Tom sent in something that might be useful to you guys. Been overclocking your body too much? Starting to steam and smoke at the edges? You need a phase-change cooling jacket for your body..
Artichokes and George
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Thursday, 4-May-2000 01:09:56 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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Here I am (again) to waste your ever-valuable time. But, with all the time saving innovations that technology has created for us, you don't need to worry! Think of it as catch up!
According to the ABC news , the Spanish are using a much greener method of electricity... artichokes ...more interesting than that, is the bit about what the Irish were about to do...woah...
Ever wonder how far your money travels? No? Well.....me neither!
But some people can't sleep without wondering what adventures they get upto. Hollywood, being what it is made a small movie about it; the brilliant Simpsons did a small thing with it, now the website called: "Where's George?" is there for your monetary pleasure.
Enough for today...but i will say this: Let's see, 25,000 page views on the day I start posting…. Coincidence? I think so….!
Wednesday Night #2
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Thursday, 4-May-2000 00:32:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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25,000 pageviews today. I'm stunned. Thanks guys..
Some late-nite news for you, more stuff came in and I'm still feeling perky so here it is..
OcMax have a challenge up, can you beat their Sandra Disk benchmark?
InsaneHardware have got an Asus V7700 GeForce2 card to give away.. go hammer their server for a while. :)
Info on EuroGamer about how gaming can be hazardous to your health..
On Slashdot, a scary article about Australian criminal records being available on the web for $6.00 ..
It's that time of the month, AllAdvantage coughed up again. I still get email from people saying "Why do you have AllAdvantage links on your site, it's a big scam" .. as long as these keep arriving I don't see a scam:
Thanks again to everyone who's signed up under me - I can see that some of you have a lot of signups yourselves - I hope you all got your cheques too!
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 3-May-2000 23:13:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Ok, I bought the HP CD-Writer Plus 9100i.. the drivers on the CD don't work inder Win2K, so I go to the website to look for Win2K drivers.. they say they are available for PURCHASE ..? WTF is the story with selling hardware then selling the drivers separately?
Peter sends word that Optus@Home is available in Brisbane, he read in the Courier Mail that they just rolled out to 100,000 homes and launched the service yesterday..
Tweaktown checked out the Inclose BayCooler II, a hard-drive cooler sporting 3 fans..
NeoSeeker have reviewed a couple of big Socket370 coolers. One of them they claim is the biggest heatsink ever made.. hmm, someone should point out to them it's just an FDP-32 with a bigger fan on top.
Tech-Report put up a purely mathematical examination of the Voodoo5 vs GeForce2 argument.. they think the drivers are not telling the full story yet.
In case you're wondering what to get me for Christmas, you might want to read this article on ArsTechnica about this device the size of a walkman that contains a full x86 PC.. that can run Linux, or Win98, or whatever you like. 128MB ram, 12GB HDD, can take PPGA or FC-PGA CPU's.. gimme!
This is almost as cool, 4.8GB of MP3's you can carry around with you. Thanks Andre. Shame it'll only take 1/3 of my collection.. :)
Club Overclocker have reviewed a stick of Micron Crucial PC133 CAS2 memory.. and gave it 10/10..
Apparently, Creative have some new Win2K drivers for their GeForce Pro card which let Quake3 and UT work properly..
Intellimouse Explorer review here. They say it never needs cleaning, but I've had one for a few months and it's looking decidedly skanky on the little slidey pads. Our review here, anyway.
An article about setting up a home lan here on PCInsight.
Info on VIA here on ChicksHardware.. past present and future of a company that's brought us some very cool chipsets recently.
ChicksHardware (blatantly trying to hook geeks by their sex drive, I say) also checked out a swirly-faced HDD cooler..
Wow... My First Little Post...
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Wednesday, 3-May-2000 22:52:15 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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Many apologies for the lateness of my post. But I have been busy, really I have!
I have been unable to sleep. Two questions have been running through my little head...
Like most, i have been wondering "what kind of washing machine defines me as a person?"
And what exactly is "the local event that is turning into a national past time" in the good old US of A?
Now I can sleep easy! Right??? : )
Finally finished my review of Asus's KX133-based Athlon board, the K7V. I wasn't as impressed with it as a lot of other webmasters seem to have been, but it's by no means a bad unit..
Read the full review here..
Uurrgh, been up since 6am, I hate early shift.. gonna post a lot of this stuff without reading it, so if it's bollocks, sorry. :)
This is oldish news but you may have felt the effects recently so I'll post it again. AOpen shipped a bunch of driver CD's with the CIH virus on them earlier this year. This virus does it's evil work on the 26th of April so if your poota died then and you've an AOpen, might be worth looking into.
TE have checked out the Tornado 1000 case.. from the title, I guess it has lots of fans..
Hardware hacks, that's what we wanna see more of. This one shows how to modify your Epox EP-7KXA to give yourself more FSB options..
FiringSquad have an article up about Full-Screen Auto-Aliasing, another modern video-card trick..
TweakTown (another Aussie site) have a new look and some new wallpaper for you..
Dan has reviewed 2 Samsung 19" monitors in his usual style..
Hardware Corner took a look at Globalwin's FKP-32, a decent Socket370 cooler for its size..
Interesting article on sealing your peltier rigs so that condensation doesn't kill them here..
Check out Ars-Technica's take on the whole GeForce2 GTS thing here..
This guy's PC got friend by a kitty accident, so he built another one on the cheap. Quality budget component recommendations here..
Sneak preview of Windows ME here.
iXBT have cranked out another review - this time it's the MSI MS-8809 SDR GeForce card.
Electic send word of a P3 Pen Computer, whatever that is..
This french site has info (including plans) for modifying a slot-1 Alpha to use a big duct.. I'm sure I've seen this somewhere before..
iXBT have reviewed the Asus K7V. They are unexcited about it, but they don't think it sucks, either.
Hexus.com have checked out the Razer Boomslang 100 & 2000 uber-mice. They also took a look at the 2CoolPC Plus, an air scoop inside your PC. Our review here for comparison.
Shaun sends word that "Weird Al" Yankovic's latest video, "It's All About the Pentiums", is a parody of Puff Daddy's "It's All About the Benjamins". Okey-dokey.
DimensionX let us know that EverGlide are now branding their mousing surfaces with logos from various games and mouse manufacturers.. and dropping prices by 20%. Press release here.
UkGamer have reviewed the Globalwin 802 Mid-tower Case.
Rage Fury MAXX review here on HardCoreWare. They find it sluggish for the price.
Anandtech reviewed the Elsa Gladiac GeForce2GTS.. this is the first GeForce2-based card to hit the market.
US-based readers will be interested in this price comparison of various coolers at various online stores.. interesting info.
Ever had the urge to rip a Furby apart? This person did.. with surgical precision. Link stolen from slashdot.
Last week I had the beaver shot for you, this time it's a pic of a big pussy (looks a bit fake to me):
If it ISN'T fake, I'm scared. Imagine that thing jumping onto your chest in the middle of the night.
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