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April 2002 |
Tuesday Noon - Feeling hungry
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Tuesday, 30-April-2002 12:35:14 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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Prob won't be when i'm done..
It seems soon we will be saying "Bye Bye" to the Duron as AMD decide to retire it next year.
Apple, on the other hand, says "Hello Hello" as they announce the eMac. /me braces himself for Apple ads based upon the E=MC^2 formula
And, (see how i started with "And" -oooh) if you thought you were 133t with your AMD computer, thinking you're sticking it to the big boys. Microsoft and AMD get together and endorse each other's products. Awww, isn't it nice when everyone plays nice?
Macromedia does some housekeeping and releases new versions of Coldfusion, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. However, Adobe decides to rain on Macromedia's parade, by not playing nice and suing them.
To get the true impact of Episode II, I suggest you goto these cinemas and watch them being digitally projected. Only then can you truly feel the desire to digitally scratch your eyes out!
Read more grumbling about Kazza. Apparently, the "secret" software, Altnet, which is installed in Kazza, is about to activated. I wonder if Kazza-lite removes this well.
Cheers to raGneG who got the amazing score of 101,319 in the Collapse game, I linked to earlier. Well Done!
Finally, to end the news in silly way, I ask you "Is your family prepared...?"
Out to get some luchen!
Edit: anonymous_user sent this to me. I don't really know what to say....
We've been FARKed! :)
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Tuesday, 30-April-2002 10:36:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Server instability this morning was caused by the PCDB going crazy due to a link from FARK.com to Volenti's waterfall PC. Quite a little SlashDot, it would seem. Anyway, in the interests of not having everything else on the server die, I've disabled the PCDB and things seem to be back to normal. Must have a look at making the PCDB do less on-the-fly work with images.
Well they say no news is good news right... hmm wait that's bad!
Whirlpool have put up a new site listing broadband availability in Australia. It lists both metro and regional areas including a stack of information on each ISP. Good stuff! If only I could get optus here... Thanks bender. Also on the note of new sites, adslusers.com.au was also launched today. Thanks Richard.
SLCentral.com has another update of their CPU/Memory Watch. This week OEM Athlon XP and MP processors come down in price, while a good amount of PIII's go up. In memory, DDR takes a small drop while PC100 goes up.
If you're a case modding fan then you might want to see this cool router used for making awesome looking perspex windows which light up. ** Warning some cartoon nudity **
AnandTech have a very nice NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400/4600 Roundup. "... We've gathered our IR thermometers and rounded up 11 cards based on the GeForce4 Ti 4400 and GeForce4 Ti 4600 GPUs. If you want the fastest 3D accelerator available today, we'll tell you which one fits the bill."
That recent horrible massacre in Germany has been linked to computer violence. like many others have. "According to Der Spiegel news magazine, Steinhauser spent much of his time playing violent computer video games. His favorite was called "Counterstrike" in which anti-terror units wearing masks battle each other to death." Thanks Cabey.
Vergs has managed to get his P4 1.6A to a nice 2.32Ghz and TweakTown have a new PC Buyers guide up and ready. Apparently Gigabyte's GA-8IRXP isn't the best mobo to choose for overclockers either.
Reaper just got an "invitation" to trial the Telstra Internet phone call system, only it's not a free trial. I don't know about you but a 40¢ flag for first 5 mins and then 12¢ per minute doesn't sound to appealing.
Now for the funnies and this one is a classic. This country's most famous drinking record was set by the legendary Australian Prime Minister Robert (Bob) Hawke in 1955. He drank 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds at University College, Oxford. On'ya Hawke! If that wasn't enough, heres a stack of reviews.
Reviews :
Chenming 601AE Black Server Case from ipkonfig.
Cenatek Rocket Drive SSD from cyberwizard pit.
Stomp INC. RecordNow MAX over at bytesector.
DUPLEX VB Tutorials: 2 in 1 from bytesector again.
Sharp Zaurus SL5500 PDA @ digit-life.
ABIT Siluro GF4 Ti4400 from the same place.
Abit's AT7 legacy-free motherboard delivered at tech-report.
Samsung 210T 21" flat panel display from ratedpc.
ECS A900 Desknote at via hardware.
Hercules Radeon 8500 DV Review @ DeviantPC.
Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack Ultra/700XP Golden Sample from gotapex?
PNY GeForce4 Ti4400 review from accelenation.
Tt HardCano 3 and 5 from tweakers.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 29-April-2002 14:11:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sadly young Liam Magee has been killed during qualifying for the Australian Superbike round at the Mallala circuit in South Australia on the weekend. RIP and condolences to his many friends and family - may we all die as he did, doing something he loved.
Robert X. Cringely, a professional PC-industry insider who wrote the book "Accidental Empires" about the emergence of the PC industry and who has written several magazine/newspaper/online columns for years, suffered a personal tragedy recently when his 74-day-old son died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He thinks that SIDS isn't having enough attention paid to it and is using his PBS column to try and get some geeks involved in research towards solving this problem, thanks Callan. (Yes, I know there's some debate over Mr Cringely's identity, but I think we can leave that aside for now..)
On to less morbid topics.. if you thought building your own PC case was hardcore, check out this guy's DIY rollercoaster.. cool. :)
Wanted a PC but accidentally bought a Mac instead? Maybe this product will help. But, they do not advise buying an emulator just to run PC games. Many will run but many will run at speeds that make playing almost impossible or at least irritatingly slow.
Tweakers have a CPU Database now, which seems very similar in concept to the long-running OC.com CPU Database.
Hotmail is apparently vulnerable to cookie thieves, info here and here.
SourceMag have a USB 2.0 roundup with info on a few devices.
Quite a few nasty virii doing the rounds at the moment, I'm getting 20-30 a day. I could go into details about all the different ones but the basic principle is always the same - don't run any attachments you aren't expecting to receive, even if it seems to be from someone you know. If it is from someone you know, reply and ask them if they sent it. A few new virii will look in address books and pretend to be from someone in there, so I'm even receiving emails that appear to come from me (but are in fact from an infected pc out there somewhere with me in their address book.) Virus writers - get a life.
Reviews:
Variable-speed fans on TechWatch.
Asus P4B533 P4 DDR motherboard on SubZeroTech.
EPoX 8K3A+ KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on MikhailTech.
Just saw 'We were soldiers'. Not as bad as I thought it would for an American war movie :) Anyhoo, onwards! It's time to update your virus scanners again with the new W32.Klez.H@mm virus doing the rounds. It has some pretty nasty features too.
How would you like to add a half-terabyte of storage to your network in less than ten minutes and for less than $9 per gigabyte? Pretty nifty little toy that one.
"Sources close to AMD " have released an estimated price guide on the up comming ClawHammer project. Cheers Mr Chilled.
3D velocity has another hardware prize give away on again. This time you have to fill in a few blank letters and send off an email. More details can be found on their page, I'm not sure about the international requirements but you gotta be in it to win it right?
Zero_g71 sent word that Intel have updated their Application accelerator to v2.2. Does it work? as Zero said, "I wouldn't know, I own an AMD". :)
MPEG-4 may not live to see the light of day with new license plans for it. "The licensing structure is putting the technology on a path to become irrelevant in the PC industry... the plan would require licensees to pay 25 cents for each MPEG-4 product, such as an encoder or decoder, with fees capped at $1 million a year. "
For all you Brisbane dwellers, There is a BBQ meet for OCAU members and friends on the 5th of may. So if your up that way rock up and have a snag or 10. :) Thank for the info JediGuy.
A little info for all the folders for OCAU incase you haven't checked the main folding page, we are actually out producing [H] during our daylight hours but when we all head off to bed and turn our PC's off we lose all that ground. So in a trail run maybe a few more people could fold 24/7 to see how we go. Thanks bollocks.
Reviews :
SOYO KT333 Dragon Ultra Motherboard from tweakers.
Coolermaster PTC-A18 and PTC-F18 rounded cables. Over at the cipher.
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Player. from Ice Hardware.
NoiseControl NoVibes HDD cage. at Burnout PC
Cool Case Mods Baybus from jsi hardware.
Thought I might do some quick news..
The register get a little excited about the new Ericsson Phone/PDA/Camera. Personally I'm not too sure about the design or colour of it. I still like the nokia one
Play too much Evercrack aka Everquest? Need support? There now is salvation. Get help now.
An interesting article about how MS was about to buy Nintendo and other dealings in developing the X-box
I wouldn't mind one of these babies. A tiny PC the size of a paperback novel. Very sexy, but it seems doomed to failure due to the tone of the article
There's been much talk on whether the nude piccies of Anna Kournikova are fake or not. We believe that you should email us the piccies immediatley for a complete analysis. (j/k!!!)
A nice game to kill time with.
Nite all!
Couple of neato PC's spotted in our very own PC Database. Firstly, a PC with a built-in bong cooler that belongs to Fuzzball, and a nice stealth watercooled rig belonging to Wally. Nice work fella's.
If you are the owner of an Abit AT7, your lights are on ... Umm, NO, I mean here is a tweak guide for you to have a squizz at. :)
Imagine watching a white ball bouncing back and forth across a black TV screen, 24 hours a day, for a full week. G4, a new cable channel devoted exclusively to video games that went live on Wednesday, plans to broadcast a live game of "Pong" (widely considered the first consumer video game) for seven days straight. Thanks Gaz.
All you audio-philes can relax now. Just received word (although some of you may already know) that Winamp 2.80 has been released today. Thanks mickeylieu.
Hmmm. Arrested whilst stealing a car ... Justified! Arrested whilst shopping for black market wives ... Justified! Arrested for trying to purchase a GeForce 4???? I think not! Read on.
Intel and Intergraph have settled a patent dispute to the tune of a US$300 million payment to Intergraph from Intel. Intergraph alleged that Intel infringed on 5 of its patents with the Pentium processor line of chips, and forced it out of the microprocessor and computer hardware business. Under the settlement, the 5 patents in question are to be licensed or sold to Intel. Ummm ... OOPS! Thanks LeperMessiah.
Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation (SiS), a leading core logic and graphics chip supplier, today unveiled its brand-new graphics chip - the Xabre400 (pronounced "saber"). The world's first AGP 8X graphics chip and the only one of its class that supports 8x8 (AGP 8X and DirectX 8.1) functions will no doubt become the new standard for the mainstream market. More info here, thanks CerealKiller.
Computer Source takes an in-depth look at the state of motherboard chipsets. The article covers Intel, VIA, SIS, NVIDIA, and even a future glimpse at the ones from ATI. It may be a bit long winded for a Sunday morning, but if your into technology its worth the look.
New Radeon 7.68 reference drivers appear to be out and are available from ATI's page. Cheers cerberos.
Reviews:
MSI GeForce4 MX440-T from TweakersAsylum.
Abit KR7A-RAID KT266A mainboard over on ViperLair.
Epox 8K3A vs Epox 8KHA+ at MadShrimps.
Epox 4BDA 845D mainboard from PlanetSavage.
Lian Li PC-42 Mini Case in video review at 3DGameman.
Samsung SyncMaster 753DF 17 Inch Flat CRT from FutureLooks.
Laser Etched Window Kit & Lazer LED over at HardcoreWear.
Alpha PAL8942 HSF from TweakTown.
Swiftech MCX462 by the crew at OCIA.
Samsung Syncmaster 171MP LCD/TV from TheTechZone.
NoiseControl Sound Dampening mats on BurnoutPC.
Waterfall PC!
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Saturday, 27-April-2002 23:23:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Something different from Volenti, a watercooled machine that uses a waterfall instead of a tower-style bong cooler.. but that's not the only unusual thing:
Click for the PCDB entry!
Yes, those components are right under the water stream.. :)
Those of you concerned with spyware on your pride and joy (that's your PC folks) might find this an interesting read. Thanks SCA_BOY.
TweakTown has just posted something new that they have called the "Heatsink Theory Guide", which gives us a run down of the theory behind heatsinks.
kasi lets us know that a new version of MS Powertoys for Windows XP has been released. Cheers.
Dan's (from Dan's Data) CPU Cooler Comparision has just grown in size, with the addition of the Thermalright SLK-600. Have a read of that here.
ExtremeCooling have posted a Guide on "Making Custom CPU Shims". Just the thing for the person with a garage full of milling equipment, and no job. :)
HeatSeekerz have a review comparing the MSI GeForce4 Ti 4600, and it's Asus counterpart.
In what was probably his final day of testimony at the Microsoft antitrust remedy hearings Bill Gates (pictured), chairman and co-founder, admitted on Wednesday that it might be possible to create a stripped-down version of Windows for personal computers that use one of its existing products. The admission was important because Mr Gates had previously argued that it was not feasible to create such a version of Windows, while maintaining the performance of the world's dominant PC operating system. Hmmm, the plot thickens. Read more here, taa Mibberz.
thedriver sent in this new take on stick figure flash animations. Great little time waster :)
AMDMB.com have a 5 way PC3000 Memory comparo. In it, they pit Corsair, Crucial, Kingmax, Mushkin and OCZ against each other, and we get the results ...
Sony have just released their new range of car audio products .. Their top of the line model features some pretty cool stuff like a 10gig Hard Drive which supports digital storage of approx. 200 CD's and a Memory Stick slot for music playback/transfer to and from a hard drive. Thanks Paul.
Inside Project have a guide to tidying the cables up inside your beloved PC.
Overclocked cafe take a squizz at "WinTask4 Professional". A handy little software utility that let's you take back some control over your OS. From freeing up memory and CPU resources, to removing unnecessary processes instantaneously, to a bevy of other options, it seems to have the 'tasks' covered.
According to Swedish scientists, basic foods eaten by millions around the world such as bread, biscuits, chips and French fries contain alarmingly high quantities of acrylamide, a substance believed to cause cancer. Jebus! Not only am I fat, but I have cancer too? :( Thanks Gary .... I think ...
Reviews:
Casio's new QV4000 digital camera from DesignTechnica.
Samsung 955DF 19" Monitor over on AnandTech.
Samsung MR-A02B DVD-RAM/DVD-R Writer on FutureLooks.
eVGA GeForce4 MX440 by 3DSpotlight.
Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM from HardwarePub.
5 Socket A mainboards supporting DDR333 on VIA KT333 and SiS745 over on XBitLabs.
Vantec HDC-502A HD Cooler from the crew at ExtremeOverclocking.
Nexland ISB SOHO on GideonTech.
SOYO KT333 DRAGON Ultra mainboard by VR-Zone.
Tyan Tiger MPX S2466 Mainboard from Tweakers.
Neteasy NetCam from the nice people at IceHardware.
Cooler Master ATC-201 Case reviewed by OverclockerCafe.
Coolermaster ATC210 Aluminium Case from Virtual-Hideout.
Speeze Copper Heatsink from SLCentral.
So many things to do, so little time..
Plenty of stuff to win, too. Make a logo for the Australian Wireless Association and win y'self a wireless router. Send an email answering a question and win a GF3 Ti500 from OCrCafe. Design some funky fangrills and win them on TechAngel.
A new paperback-sized computer screen that folds like a book will be ideal for Internet users reading online novels, its South Korean inventor said on Tuesday, thanks Deus_Horribilus.
TheImp notes 28.90 Detonators are out and about.
Whirlpool reported that the ACCC ordered Telstra to split into two parts (wholesale and retail) .. But Govt says not true and this article explains it's from an accounting perspective only.. hmm, how much effect will that have, we wonder.. thanks talking_goat.
Overclockers.com (no relation :) ) have an editorial about Opteron confusion.
Thermaltake's Volcano 7+ socket cooler is reviewed on TechAngel and HardwarePub, our own review is here.
VIAHW have a thing about digital film making.
Baker noticed that Hypothermia are going to war against BestBuy for an apparent "bait & switch" deal. BB even had some guy arrested for going down there with a discount voucher.. jeez.
Telstra are trialling internet phone calls.. for a fee, thanks Cassius.
Forget all the other reasons you may have for not liking Apple Macs, Shintaro has the killer: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism. I thought it was just the one-button mouse thing.
Been overclocking your brain a bit much? Maybe you need a peltier hat, thanks Rick.
Counter-Strike 1.4 is out, thanks to a zillion people who sent that in. :)
Won't be long until the adware and anti-adware programs are competing against each other in an almost Darwinistic fashion.. this video player attempts to remove AdAware from your PC on installation.. naughty naughty. It's been discovered and followed with an apology (kinda), thanks Callan.
Lots of people sent in excited emails saying that Powertoys are back!.. which I can only assume means they went away at some point.
This profoundly ugly website has a huge no-images article about HDD and RAID recommendations which also rips into some other websites's reviews of RAID stuff apparently.. I can't read it without my eyeballs feeling like they're going to implode. We have a RAID0 Shootout with ATA100 and ATA133 article here which may well be one of the ones they talk about.
overl0ad spotted info on a 6000-kilometre-long ant "supercolony" in National Geographic. This is the largest cooperative biological unit ever discovered.
Reviews:
Abit KR7A-133R KT266A-based socketA DDR mobo video review on 3DGameMan, our review here.
Soltek SL-75DRV5 KT333-based SocketA DDR motherboard on OCTools.
Viewsonic Airpanel100 on DesignTechnica, wireless monitor allows mobile viewing of files from the host machine.
ANZAC Day Afternoon
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Thursday, 25-April-2002 15:15:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hope you all took a minute to remember why today's a public holiday. Thanks to Darkness for making up a special logo for today. Lest we forget.
The site's very busy today actually, Manaz's HDD Autopsy has attracted quite a bit of attention. It's been a pretty big month already but now we're definitely steaming towards breaking our record yet again. More info early next month when the figures are finalised.
People hanging out in the #overclockers IRC channel last night were treated to an IceCast-streamed concert by Andypoo from SecretNet.. he'd hooked up a midi keyboard and was pumping out the tunes for a couple of hours.. he can really play, too. :)
OCAU major sponsor ComputerAlliance put some info into their latest newsletter about our folding team and encouraging their customers to join. Nice one, Adam! Also, our resident Master of Folding, Martin AKA Bollocks, has been contacted by Australian Personal Computer magazine - they have prepared an article about Folding and OCAU's battle to compete with the top American teams, for their June issue available at the end of May.
AMD have officially announced their SledgeHammer processor now.. and they called it "Opteron". I still think there's a Klingon running around their marketing department. The AMD Opteron™ processor is based on AMD’s 8th-generation processor core, which will represent the landmark introduction of the industry’s first x86-64 technology. The AMD Opteron processor is designed to provide investment protection, running existing 32-bit applications with unsurpassed performance, and offering customers a seamless transition to 64-bit technology. Also: In another key milestone, AMD announced today it is collaborating with Microsoft to incorporate 64-bit support for the future 8th-generation AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors into the Windows® operating system. AMD Opteron processors are also planned to be supported by 64-bit operating systems from major Linux vendors. Anandtech have an in-depth look at what it is and what it means.. so do AMDMB and TomsHardware, thanks Jim. There's a conference call with info on HotHardware and more about Microsoft's involvement on SiliconStrategies, thanks leperMessiah.
Guru3D checked out a couple of GF4 Ti revisions to see if there's any noticeable difference.
Reviews:
videocard with the lot on HardOCP.
Abit SD7-533 SiS645-based P4 DDR motherboard on HotHardware.
Ati Radeon 8500 64MB video card on SLCentral.
Epox 8K3A+ KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on PCHardware.
Matrix Orbital NK204-V budget LCD on Bit-Tech.
Enermax EG365AX-VE FCA power supply on ViperLair.
Soyo Fire P4I P4 DDR mobo on BurnOutPC.
NickLock secure HDD switcher on DansData.
DFI AD73-RAID KT266A-based socketA DDR motherboard on Accelenation.
Corsair XMS3000 DDR memory on EXHardware.
AMD Duron 1 GHz socketA CPU on PCStats.
NaturalPoint TrackIR Hands Free Mouse on SLCentral.
Shuttle SS50 Pentium 4 barebones cube system on Tech-Report.
Chenbro PC610 case on PCScoop.
Blackice's Attache PC
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Wednesday, 24-April-2002 17:20:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Another nice attache-case PC, this time from Blackice. His PCDB entry has a lot of detail about the project - there's some interesting touches including a key-starter.
Click for the PCDB entry!
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 24-April-2002 14:09:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Interesting story here about how Australia ranks in terms of internet access.. thanks McDaddy.
Boky spotted some Amiga OS4 Screenshots showing off some basic features of the interface.
Kinda silly article (with some strong language) here saying that the OSI 7-layer networking model is a sham.
Dan has a rather long and detailed rant about stupid people who (among other things) run websites. Update: A bit more detailed than I realised, he actually lists the sites/reviews he thinks are stupid. This won't win him any friends, which I'm sure bothers him not at all. :)
ExtremeTech have a new section focussing on security.. our clearinghouse of sites, software, and services that test your browser, your system, or your network for security flaws and vulnerabilities.
PCRivals have a comparison of different types of RAM.. while OCNZ have updated their DDR SDRAM guide.
Baker posted some (large and blurry :) ) pics of AMD's new CPU's in the forums.
Reviews:
Coolermaster PTK-001 and HTK-001 thermal compounds on Cipher.
Samsung PC2700 DDR SDRAM on PureOC.
DTI 3D 2015XL flatpanel display on VyW.
Power Cooler PCH147H copper heatsink on MikhailTech.
Zeus Silver Mid-Tower case on GideonTech.
AOpen AX4B Pro P4 DDR motherboard on BlueSmoke.
Hard Drive Anatomy
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Wednesday, 24-April-2002 01:16:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Manaz had an IBM 75GXP die on him (how unusual, I hear you say). In an attempt to find out what the problem was, learn a little about HDD internals and show off his new Nikon digicam, he's graced us with an article detailing the autopsy:
Click for the article!
Time for my newsly duties and this one's a biggie! :) First off U.S. Robotics have doubled the speed of 802.11b wireless LAN gear. Cheers sabertooth.
With the sad loss of the GTRPC (see four posts down) here is a new security system designed for PC's. 'The heart of the PC Tab System is the unique security sensor equipped with a security sticker that you just peel and stick to the equipment you are securing. "
If you at all interested in the upcoming game Neverwinter Nights, you can sign up here to get the beta. Thanks ukei.
If you're worried about security issues in your Windows 2000/XP (& NT4 remotely) systems there is a guide posted to help you sift through problems and how to fix them via Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer. Thanks Julio.
Anandtech have a Radeon 8500 128MB & TV/Capture card roundup.
Well it's that time again, ZZZ is back with issue 125. This week they have, among other things, a tiny airplane (really, really small), a 'silence' machine, and RF mice. As always a weird yet interesting read.
PersianIMMORTAL send word that Nvidia beta detonators 28.90 have been released. On that note the VR-zone has done a review of these and they go on to say " This new set of driver indeed improves the 3DMark2001SE score quite significantly from 11099 3dmarks to 11296 3dmarks and major improvements come from high detail tests and nature test." Check that review out here.
SLCentral.com has updated their CPU/Memory Watch. "This week retail P4's continue to fall, while the Athlons start to slow down. PC100 and PC133 SDRAM make some slight changes in price."
If you have been a little confused with AMD's naming conventions, here is an article which explains the meanings a little more. Also, Getting a tad bored about the look of your Windows system? There is a new version of Ezy Soft.
I spoke to bollocks earlier and he informed me that we only need around 17 more XP's to add to our folding cause to level up the playing field with the almighty [H]! So if you haven't pledged your system to our folding team please do so! Help us fight back! :)
Now for the time wasters. Ryan sent this one in, a 2d stick figure shoot em up game! You actually have to download this one (~500K) but I just had a fang of it then and it's fun in a crappy kinda way :) Also one of my friends with to much time on his hands sent this Potty Putter-Piddle Poop 'N Putt Thanks EvilJack :)
Reviews :
Corsair PC2700 ( PC3000 ) DDR SDRAM at hardware-test.
Sony 24X CDW at the hardware pub.
Vantec CCK6012 Copper 1U Heatsink from frostytech.
Creative 3D Blaster 4 Ti4400 and 3D Blaster 4 MX 420 Cards
ATI 128 Meg All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 from the tech zone.
NVIDIA Quadro4 200 NVS at tweakers.com.au.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 23-April-2002 11:51:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Big news on Wired here: Micron Technology signed a tentative deal worth about $3.4 billion to buy most of the assets of Hynix Semiconductor, in a move that would reshape the world computer memory-chip market. If the purchase goes through, Micron would leapfrog Samsung Electronics to become the world's largest memory chipmaker, and Hynix, currently ranked third, would drop out of the sector.
BurnOutPC have a modding project going on..
WineX 2.0 is out now, thanks Jadlak. It's a nonfree program that lets you play DirectX games on Linux.. presumably in Wine on X, but I have no idea really. :)
Couldn't get enough of the frog-dissection days in high-school biology? Shame about killing all the frogs tho.. that's where frogguts comes in. A flash-based virtual frog dissection is a more environmentally sound educational solution. Still gross I imagine, but at least it won't have the smell. :) Thanks Grimwolge.
From Nick: Looks like XP SE will be released in the first quarter of 2003 and Longhorn (next windows version) in second half of 2004.
VIAHW have their coverage of WinHEC 2002 posted. The main purpose behind this gathering is to get hardware developers online with the Windows driver implementation process.
From Wild: Apparently the Spanish province Extremadura is using Linux in all schools and offices. And here's a Star Wars fan film on a very low budget (the whole 22-minute movie cost $5000 apparently).
DigitalDomination have an article about people people buying PC's faster than they need.. yeah, like that ever happens. :)
Apparently Episode 2: Send in the Clones might not suck as much as we expect it to. I saw "Queen of the Damned" the other day (which was pretty average, but anyway) and there was a preview of Ep2.. not a lot seemed to go on in the preview (compared to the previews for Ep1) and at the end there was a collective "whatever" expressed in pfft's and moans from the audience. :) From the sounds of that article, Mr Lucas knows a few things he did wrong and has tried to address them.
ExtremeCooling have a guide to modding a miniATX case.
From Roland: Anyone disappointed with ABIT TH7II MoBo for overclocking P4 Northwood, look no further! The BIOS found here (TH7H_7C01) is less than a week old and solved all problems I've had with above board. P4 1.8 GHz runs reliably at 2.2 GHz (FSB=122) and reboots every time. I've fixed the PCI speed and used core voltage of 1.7. Temperature has gone up only 3 degrees with no extra cooling. I'm sure it would go further but who needs it?
KyocEr@~* spotted this tiny bluetooth headset.. very cool.
Mad1 noticed that Nintendo Australia have dropped the release price of their GameCube to AUD$329, no doubt in response to the $399 Xbox price announced recently. Still about a month until you can buy one, tho.
Reviews:
Vantec Stealth Fans on Heatseekerz.
Vantec Stealth Fans video review on 3DGameMan.
ATI Radeon 8500 AIW video card with the lot on HotHardware.
ATI Radeon 8500 AIW also on PCParadox.
Creative Labs Personal Cinema capture card on Accelenation.
CaseAce GearGrip CRT monitor carrying wotsit on ViperLair.
Azzo Cold Cathode kit on Virtual-Hideout.
nVIDIA Quadro4 200 NVS pro graphics card on Tweakers.
Zalman ZM17-Cu VGA cooler on 8Balls.
Chaintech GF3 Ti200 128MB video card on HardCoreWare.
nVIDIA Ti4200 reference video card on 3DVelocity.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 22-April-2002 17:04:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Some interesting goings-on in the Microsoft trial at the moment, about that company's relationships with chip manufacturers AMD and Intel. Info here and a full transcript here, thanks leperMessiah.
Dan's been putting stuff into his drive bays. Fans, USB headers, temperature readouts, you name it.
Mikhailtech have an editorial about the state of hardware websites today, in their opinion.
Microsoft are apparently working on a non-uniform memory access system for their .Net server products. This is useful for many-CPU systems and has previously only been seen on high-end unix variants.
TweakTown have an article about AMD vs Intel with an eye on the future.
Reviews:
Creative 3D Blaster Ti4400 video card on Hexus.
Z-Cyber Cool Disk USB flash drive on Tobitech.
All Clear Acrylic PC on Tweakers.
Leadtek A250 GF4 Ti4400-based video card on Bjorn3D.
Kingwin FPT-01S Multifunction Transfer Panel (sounds very Star Trek) on SubZeroTech.
DFI AD73 KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on AMDMB.
Asus GF3 V8200 Deluxe Ti500 video card on IPKonfig.
ColorCases X-Wing case on TheTechZone.
SiS645DX P4 chipset on Xbit.
Terrible news - BlueSmurf's GTRPC, currently leading the PCDB's ingenuity, looks and overall rankings, has been stolen! My house was broken into twice in the last 7 days, and on the second occasion the GTRPC was stolen, even though it was attached to the table with a steel cable and padlocks. In the last 7 days I have has over $20,000 worth of stuff stolen. :(
Click for the PCDB entry!
If you see this amazing PC in the Bunbury or Perth areas of WA, or indeed anywhere - there are no others like it - call the cops and/or email me or BlueSmurf about it!
Archive Updated..
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Monday, 22-April-2002 02:22:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Updated the Content Archive again. There's now very nearly 200 reviews and articles in there, dating back to mid-1999 when this site began. A heap of info there and some funny stuff too.. anyway, the latest updates:Check 'em out if you missed 'em! Also remember that reader reviews are very much welcome at OCAU. If you've got a cool new toy and want to tell the world about it, drop me a note and I'll let you know the procedure.
Big news for today is of course, Soldier Of Fortune 2 Multiplayer Test is out! Yes, right now! Bloody good it is too. :) Surprisingly, Yaleman was the only person to send the link in. Hmmm.
DeviantPC has posted an overview of the upcoming processor technology 'Silicon On Insulator' or more commonly known as SOI. Have a read..
Academics once picked AMD's processors for supercomputing because they were inexpensive and performed well. But while the chips continue to conquer more of the desktop market, their attractiveness for supercomputers may have dimmed, in favour of their counterpart, the P4. Thanks BL/\DE.
Dan from Dan's Data has posted a Techno-Tools guide, covering various hot, pointy, sharp and otherwise desirable devices which have some bearing on the tasks that PC twiddlers have to do. Mmmmm, twiddlin'. :)
Ready to blow a VALVE next week? Counterstrike 1.4 is due for release to the general public. "CS 1.4 introduces several new features to the world's most popular online action game, including new missions (de_chateau, cs_havana), further integration of Valve's spectator technology, and more. The updates also mark the introduction of Valve's anti-cheat network, hosted in partnership with Speakeasy on the ISP's National Broadband Gaming Network. Cheers Zero_g71.
In case you never knew about how to do this, Tweaktown have an article on .jpg compression and how to compress photos for websites, but it should apply to most people. Taa freak.
3DVelocity are having a HUGE competition, with truckloads of prizes. All you have to do is answer a few questions or make up the last line in a limerick to win. No idea how us Aussies fare in the "eligibility to win a prize" stakes, but might you might like to give it a whirl anyway.
Here's another little flash "time waster" sent in by dink. It's a darts game, and my best is winning 5 games of 501 straight. :)
Yet again, there are movies screening at The Overflow at Sydney Olympic Park. Details are here in our forums. Cheers Rik.
Reviews:
ABIT BD7-RAID Motherboard from Tweakers Asylum.
OCSystem HeatSpreaders over on BurnoutPC.
Coolermaster ATC-710-GX1 by Hexus.
Directron 21" FD Trinitron Monitor from MikhailTech.
Bitspower NP60CS Copper Skived Heatsink over on 8-BallsHardWare.
Vantec Stealth Fans from WinHQ.
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 21-April-2002 13:53:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Probably about time I did some news.. btw, hitwise let us know that, as well as ranking #1 for "Computers and Internet - Hardware", overclockers.com.au ranked #4 in the News and Media - IT Media category.. yay us.
Strat spotted this all-in-one box.. The following systems are installed in the Boxx: Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System (8-bit), Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2, a custom PC.
g@z has an extremely shiny PC, while moto's uses an unusual waterblock mount and lives in a massive case.
Speaking of fancy case-mods, Hexus have part 3 of their project black ice posted.
Digit-Life have been playing with professional graphics adapters, comparing the ATI FireGL 8800 against NVIDIA Quadro 4 in 3DS Max.
Wild notes: When you linked to the page saying Darwin has been ported to x86 processors, that's true. You can even download Darwin and run it on your x86 processor. BUT - Darwin is only the underlying unix OS behind OS X - you do not get OS X's functionality or interface, but rather a version of BSD unix. .. fair enuff.
Ninsei has more info about AMD phasing out Duron from their processor line.
Pete has info related to our previous post about the "Nullsoft Installer" seemingly targeted by anti-spyware programs: this is more than likely due to the fact that there is such a product as "nullsoft installer", or as it is more commonly known "Nullsoft SuperPiMP Install System" and is made by those same guys as who make winamp. I'll wager to guess that the reason it uses this is it's free, and you can run cmd line stuff from within the installer. So whatever this fix does, the "installer" runs/does the fix, rather than actually installing something.
Apparently Optus ADSL looms ever closer, thanks Josh.. more info and comments here on Whirlpool.
For the newbies: PCStats have a hard-drive installation guide.
The -NRK- lads have a pc tuning guide that involves a steak knife and the kitchen sink.
Regarding the planetary alignment I posted on Friday, kermit says about the 4 brightest planets making a line across the sky unfortunately we here in australia (at least in melbourne) can only see little bits of it because the line crosses our sky during the day .. thingy adds: Only _just_ applies to the southern hemisphere. Read up on it (no source available) a few weeks ago. Great view from northern hemisphere, but it's only viewable at sunset in a north-westerly direction at a very low altitude, so there's a VERY small gap between when the sun might be low enough, and when they dissapear over the horizon. Bummer.
On the 4th and 5th of may there's a LAN in Far North Queensland.. and you can win a new product from ThrustMaster: The Tactical Board has not been released anywhere in the world yet. We are the first to have it and some lucky punk is gonna win it.
Jackson spotted this thread on another forum which details (at some length!) a watercooling system.. including a very cool "twister" bong cooler thing.. check it out, but you'll need the comfy chair.
Reviews:
Fortis A102 Pro heatsink on BurnOutPC.
Altec Lansing 2100 2.1 speakers on 3DVelocity.
Packard Bell infrared remote+receiver on MaxxData.
Vantec Stealth Fans on OCersClub.
Jadlak informs us that Wine Ver.2 is out. In case you don't know, wine allows you to play Windows games under Linux.
There is a new program compatability update for WinXP - it seems to fix a lot of problems with games and file sharing utilities - including kazaa, a lot of sim games (sim park / simtunes etc) counterstrike, midtown madness and a lot of EA games (most of their new games are listed.) *humps Yaleman* ... OOOPS! I meant THANKS Yaleman :)
A Japanese supercomputer has recorded the fastest "floating point" calculation speed of any computer on the planet. The feat is reported in the latest edition of the Linpack report, a ranking of supercomputer performance. The Earth Simulator at the Marine Science and Technology Center in Kanagawa, notched up 35.61 teraflops - that is over 35 trillion "floating point" calculations per second! Taa Grant. (Unless 924N7 is actually your nick)
MARIJUANA enthusiasts are threatening to smoke a 90cm joint as part of protest action in a central Darwin park tomorrow. Ummmm, o...k, I plan to stay in bed all day with the curtains drawn and protest sunlight. :) Cheers AzonIc.
Looks like the days of the Duron are numbered. AMD’s Chairman W. Jerry Sanders late Wednesday made a sensational announcement that AMD would start phasing out the Duron processor family by the end of the year. Thanks to Waratt.
For all the people who dabble or specialise in making maps for HL/CS, Valve has updated its worldcraft program to a new version called the "Valve Hammer Editor." Taa XG8.
Reviews:
Belkin Nostromo n45 from OCPrices.
Hercules Fortissimo II from SubZeroTech.
Gigabyte GA-8SIML Value Motherboard over at TweakTown.
Labtec Axis-002 Headset by the crew at GaminIn3D.
Western Digital 800BB and 600AB Drives by Digit-Life.
SMC7004ABR - Barricade 4-port Broadband Router from GreenJifa.
4 Switch Variable Speed Baybus on OCIA.
Arkua 628 Copper Core Heatsink from Frosty-Tech.
Samsung SyncMaster 955DF 19 Inch CRT Monitor over on FutureLooks.
Vantec CCK-6012 Cooler in video review by 3D Gameman.
Triplex Millennium Silver GF4 Ti4600 by VR-Zone.
EtherWAN Xpresso 1624E Switch from BlargOC.
Sometimes we get stuff in the PCDB that just defies description.. this is one of those times. :)
Click for the PCDB entry!
People who bought the Xbox at the previously and much higher price than the $399 announced yesterday, will get 2 free games and a free controller from Microsoft, to even things out.. thanks Sovereign.
Look up into the sky, you might see something you won't see again until 2040.. info on wired but hopefully it applies to the southern hemisphere too. I'll look tonight. :)
LHG spotted a mini-PC that can run XP. More info here, thanks Rob.
Tastes just like Kazaa, but no spyware.. mmm. Stuck on dialup I don't even bother with leeching programs, but many do.
NextWish seems to have forgotten that extreme cooling only counts if your CPU is in a motherboard. :) Ahh, perhaps this is why.
Dan's written a guide to fan bearing maintenance.. a drop of Singer Oil in the back does wonders for a Blue Orb, I've found.
Win y'self lots of stuff over on 3DVelocity.
Reviews:
iCute aluminium PSU on OCOnline.
Epox EP-8K3A KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on NeoSeeker.
Pioneer DVR-A04 DVD-R/RW drive on CDRInfo.
OCZ Goliath SE socket cooler on IANAG.
Trouble posting or replying in the forums?
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Friday, 19-April-2002 10:07:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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No, it's not because you're banned. No, it's not because I hate you. :) It's because your email is set to something that is bouncing errors back to the server, most likely. Fix your email, respond to the message the system sends you and you'll be able to post again. More info here.
Here I am as promised :)
Not as smart as you would like to be? Well you're in luck, apparently Australian scientists have invented the thinking cap! “The invention raises the possibility of being able to unlock one's inner genius by reawakening dormant parts of the brain.” Thanks Owen.
AMD and Intel are about to put the boot into their 'value' processors. This all meaning the Pentium 4 'Willamette' processor core will be put into the Celeron line and that AMD will push frequencies up a notch when the company introduces its first 0.13-micron 'Appaloosa' and 'Thoroughbred' cores.
Well it seems everything these days runs via USB so NEC has improved USB 2.0 Efficiency by 20% ”...announced a new enhanced controller that reportedly can "... deliver 20 percent more bandwidth ..." than its predecessor.“
You're pinned down in a big battle in a game over the Internet and you quickly need to give commands to your troops, now you can do that task in a matter of seconds with the Touch Screen LCD from Massworks. GideonTech have a nice review of it.
Well if you're one of the people who like to monitor your system resourses, why not do it with the aid of a tachometer. Yes, the one's that run inside car's... Well now i've seen everything :P
Overclocker Café have a head to head comparison of the AMD XP1800+ and the Intel P4 1.8Ghz Northwood. This is a short to the point write up with a collection of supporting benchmarks as opposed to an exploration of the processor design and architecture.
HEAPS of people sent this in, if you haven't bought an X-box yet and you're still looking out for one, you might just want to hold off for a while because Microsoft Australia today announced from Friday April 26, the Recommended Retail Price of the Xbox will plummet from $649.95 to $399. Not a bad price drop if you ask me!
Viahardware has an article up on why it's time for apple to move to x86.
Got Apex have a GeForce4 Ti4600 three-way comparison with the ASUS, GAINWARD and Leadtek cards.
Well it must be that time of the week again as Telstra is to be investigated again by the competition regulator and the Australian Communications Authority over its use of pair gain technology. "The ACCC and ACA want to hear from members of the public who ordered a new phone line from Telstra specifically for data or internet, and then discovered that Telstra had failed to advise them their internet connection speed would be limited as a result of pair gain. The ACCC is also investigating Telstra's use of RIM technology in cases where customers may have had limited access to certain services such as ADSL. Senator Kate Lundy is appealing for members of the public with first hand experience of the above situations to report it to her Pair Gain Victims website." Information from whirlpool. Way to go Telstra.
Also just an update, a small plane has crashed into a skyscraper in Milan, Italy setting the top floors of the 30-story building on fire.
Here's the humorous part for tonights late news post :) Interested in making some paper models of things like F1 racing cars? Well have a look here to find out just how to go about it! Thanks Leroyputz.
Reviews:
inKline Global PC Booster System Optimizer at tweaktown.
eVGA Geforce4 MX440 at mikhailtech.
PINE's XFX GeForce4 MX 400 from tech-report.
MSI i845 Ultra-ARU Intel i845-D motherboard. at overclocked cafe.
Turtle Beach AudioTron from designtechnica.
Evening all. 90 e-mails in the inbox tonight, so I'll try and get through as many as possible. I do believe Darkness is doing another news post later on, so you'll get the rest of it then :)
I hope I never have to sell my car because of the reason in this advert.
In case you haven't heard by now, IBM this morning sold their hard drive business to Hitachi. Well, 70% of it anyway. More about that here.
Ok. All you Unreal Tournament freaks that are dying for some quality info about Unreal 2003 need look no further. Here is some info on the game, and here are some DIVX 5.01 videos of a CTF match. Enjoy :) Cheers OMAGAN.
Monster-Hardware have just published their latest article. This article deals with 'Microlithography', which as you may or may not know is the process of laying down an image on a silicon wafer. Have a read, fascinating stuff.
The Overclockers Australia Genome@Home team has just climbed another spot, to be ranked #15 in the world! Way to go guys. Quite an acheivement for a team with only 100 or so members. :) Full stats are available here.
Reviews:
VIA KT333 Mainboards Roundup at Digit-Life.
Viewsonic VB50HRTV External TV Tuner from Future Looks.
AOpen AK77-333 Motherboard by Tweakers Asylum.
VIA P4PA motherboard from Accelenation.
Black Hydraulic Midtower Case on OCIA.
ABIT Geforce 4 TI4600 at Hexus.
Asus P4B266-C motherboard from Planet Savage.
MSI StarForce GeForce 4 MX 420 from Viperlair.
Hercules Fortissimo II PCI Sound Card over at HotHardware.
Tt HardCano 2 HDD Cooler Tweakers Australia.
Xoxide Midnight Wind Case in video review from 3DGameman.
Samsung SyncMaster 900IFT Monitor at PCStats.
Soyo SY-K7V DRAGON Plus! from Processor-Emporium.
Visiontek Xtasy GeForce 4 Ti4400 by Deviant-PC.
Bit of a late night news post this one, but better late than never, eh?
Recently, Chris Taylor, designer of Total Annihilation and the newly-released Dungeon Siege made an appearance at his hometown in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Futurelooks had a chance to talk to him.
Interested in buying some toilet paper with a picture of your EX on it, as well as some other zany stuff? Taa Josh.
According to this story, it might not be long before we see things like "Vanilla Coke" on sale. I seem to remember clear Cola drinks from a while ago. Cheers KyocEr@.
Tweakers Australia have pictures of the NVIDIA Quadro4 750 XGL. Head on over and check them out for yourself.
This is perhaps the weirdest cooling device, and yet the most interesting. It's another "bong" type cooler, but this one has been a while in the making, and it's finally finished. And it looks good too guys. Thread in our own forums about it as well. Cheers wokket.
Ummm, o....k. I have seen motorbikes performing stunts, I have seen cars performing stunts.....But never in my life have I seen a TUGBOAT doing stunts! AMazing pics of it all too, cheers Rob. (I have just been informed that this has been posted before, but I like it, and dammit, I post news ... so it's posted again :) )
Ever heard of a rechargable candle? No, me either. Until now! Well, not exactly a candle, but .... bah. Read it for yourself. :)
Reviews:
Ricoh MP7320A and Nero Express from CDR-Info.
DFI AD73 RAID Motherboard over at HotHardware.
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 by Hexus.
ZyXEL Prestige 645R ADSL Router at BlargOC.
Belkin Wireless 802.11b Networking from PCStats.
Labtec Elite 840 Headphones by GaminIn3D.
MSI G3Ti200 PRO-VT/Pro-VT128 from ComputerChaos.
Terminator K7 Barebone System over at The Tech Zone.
Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus KT266A Motherboard by OverclockersNZ.
AOpen MS-900 5.1 Speakers from NeoSeeker.
CD-Burning software RecordNow Max from ThinkTechie.
ThermalTake Volcano 7+ Heatsink from OverclockersClub.
Another large night owl post as usual :) Have fun.
Irish 'Honeynet' is a bait for hackers, the ISP based in Ireland has been setup to study the movements of hackers and their patterns, techniques and other various statistics. Tricky... Cheers Grim.
Big news on the Australian broadband front with a "CONSORTIUM of utility companies is investigating an assault on Telstra's national telecommunications infrastructure monopoly" by launching their own broadband network infrastructure! This could be what we have been waiting for to finally lower Telstra prices and promote some much needed competition.
Tweakers Australia have a lengthy article on Video Card Overclocking & Cooling. "Anyway, for those of us with video cards whether they be PCI or AGP, this article will show you how to get the most speed out of your card and how to cool the GPU and RAM. Here is a table showing the different theoretical bandwidth speeds between AGP and PCI."
Via Hardware have posted an article that discusses the current video card chipsets and compares them to each other to see which is the best choice for you as a consumer. Could be a handy thing if you are thinking about upgrading for all those new games out there :)
It looks like Microsoft may escape another penalty filed against them. "In its antitrust settlement with the Justice Department and nine states, Microsoft promised to publish technology that would allow competing products to interoperate with Windows. But Microsoft has sidestepped the penalty by crafting a technology license that excludes the company's only viable competitor." Cheers theone333.
In regards to the Intel wireless network information we posted previously, Denis has sent word that Compaq did it on Windows 95/98/NT/2000 more than 12 months ago and the Linux-wlan project did it even before then!
Cipher.be are celebrating their reopening by giving away the Zalman CNPS600A ALCU Pentium 4 HSF, and the itspower NP80D Cooler for Socket A/370 processors. Although it does require for you to register in their forums and post in a related thread.
If you're looking for a good time wasting read, this bloke claims to be the man behind the original idea from the famous Rocket Car Crashes Into Side Of the Mountain incident. Certainly is very detailed. Thanks jaw174.
Ahh the funny part again and it doesn't get much better than this. A few people send this one in, It's from a column in the latest Atomic written by Dan. Harvey norman have great ram prices. Also, do you want to be a ninja?. Where do these people come from... :P Thanks Ash for that one.
Reviews :
Silver FacePioneer DVD-106S from club overclocker.
CrazyPC Lazer LED's at SubZeroTech.
WinTasks 4 Utility from overclockers cafe.
Quadro4 XGL and NVS by cg channel.
Actiontec 802.11b wireless USB adapter over at the hard avenue.
FeelingPC Ice Hole at SL central.
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 from Hexus.net.
Lian Li PC-35 by twearkers asylum.
ECS L4S5A mainboard review from accelenation.
Gigabyte AR64S-H review from Pc hardware.
A4 Tech Wireless Optical 3DMouse
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Tuesday, 16-April-2002 19:09:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Wild has checked out this mouse from A4Tech. It's no ordinary rodent, though.. it's RF cordless for a start, it recharges from your PC using USB and it's cheaper than the competition. What's not to like?
Click for the review!
Tuesday Afternoon #2
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Tuesday, 16-April-2002 16:05:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Issue #73 of PC PowerPlay mag, which I wrote some stuff for, is now out and about apparently. I haven't seen a copy yet (*ahem*) but haven't been flamed too badly for my contributions. :)
People are leaving each other because they use the internet too much.. surely not.
Maybe they should try this game that JimX discovered: Progress Quest - the game for the person with no time for games. The world's first truly non-interactive computer role playing game.
ZDNet's eWeek reckon that Apache 2.0 is better than IIS.. if you ask me I reckon Apache 1.x is a fair bit better than IIS, too.
From mpot: Tonight you linked to a page describing how to modify a Galaxy dish for wireless use. You might want to link to here which describes a different way of modifying the dish, with better results. I've done a variation on this, but have yet to test it. Also, on the subject of orange guns and flouro tube guns, you will definitely want to link to the SpudGun Technology Center!
Dan has republished on his site some columns he wrote for Atomic mag a while ago: The first one's my "Ground Zero" one page rant; this one's about the many reasons why computer hardware depreciation is a good thing. The second one's my "I/O" letters column, in which people ask me questions and I give them answers as insulting and unhelpful as I can get away with.
Michael found some info on 'osx for x86' as mentioned the other day.
A couple of other webmasters mentioned they see the same Shonen Knife referer link coming through to their sites (as mentioned in my last news post).. Greg explains it's because there's a proxying program out there that anonymises people by making it look like they came from the Shonen Knife site. :) No, I'm not going to link it, because another thing it does is block banner ads. Promoting that kind of product is the financial equivalent of shooting myself in the head.. and if you already use a banner-blocker when viewing OCAU (I know there are some that do), no matter how you justify it, you're stealing.
VR-Zone have a high-performance DDR SDRAM roundup posted, featuring Corsair, Mushkin, Samsung, KingMax, Micron and Winbond. They also have a preview of the Triplex Millennium Silver GF4 Ti4600, which has to be one of the coolest-looking video cards around.. not to mention the little handbag you get with it, perfect for clubbing. :)
Some people are unhappy with a particular gigabyte product, says Mr Chilled.
From ^lave: Might not rate as news, but the link you have on new spyware reported by lonewolf on 15 april is very wishy washy about the source of the spyware, quoting unnown apps are installing it and that even computer savvy people cannot work it out. I downloaded the uninstaller from the link you posted and found it calls itself a nullsoft installer when operating, and actually contains the words winamp and nullsoft within the code itself. I draw my own conclusions from this and thought others might be interested as well. Hmmm.
Win an Asus A7V333 and an XP1900+ over on 4peeps.. anyone can enter, a simple email required.
These hospital stories are getting scarier and scarier.. thanks HT.
Reviews:
El Light Kit case illumination by TechnoYard.
MSI GeForce 4 MX 440 on ViperLair.
Zalman 6000 Copper / Alu socket cooler on BurnOutPC.
NengTyi XPC5000 copper socket cooler on FrostyTech.
Vantec 6040H/6040 preproduction copper cooler on FrostyTech.
OCZ Goliath SE cooler video review on 3DGameMan.
MindStor PSS-1705 Digital Wallet on ExtremeCooling.
Coolermaster Rounded Cables on HardwarePub, our cheapy option here.
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 16-April-2002 13:38:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Right, time for a little news-catchup.
Firstly, a few links about a worrying Security Systems Standards and Certification Act in the USA. Part of this proposed law makes it unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security system standards. Talk about big brother. :( More info here, here and here, thanks Peter. Fortunately, it seems like it will be rejected in its current form.
Digit-Life have compared pentium4 chipsets.. you will see how well Intel 850, Intel 845, Intel 845 B-Step (Intel 845D), VIA P4X266, VIA P4X266A, SiS 645 A1 and A2 revisions, and ALi Aladdin-P4 can perform with Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz (on 0.13micron Northwood core).
DeviantPC have a beginners guide to benchmarking PC’s.
SushiMOO spotted a cumulative security patch for Microsoft's IIS webserver product, good to see more of their new security focus from them.
Sciby found an article about Sports Illustrated using pro digital cameras for their magazine with good effect. No swimsuit shots, sadly. :)
VIAArena have an interesting article about DDR333 memory tweaking, where they explain what a lot of the mysterious BIOS settings mean. Should answer a few questions I’ve seen in the forums lately.
Win y’self a fancy-looking radiator for watercooling over on HWLabs, makers of the Black Ice we reviewed here a while ago.
Amiga games for Windows should be available soon according to the Reg.
Japanese mad lad Holicho has his P4 2.4 @ 4.11GHz.. you might be tempted to suspect a WCPUID screenshot in isolation as a speed cheat but over on his homepage there’s a lot more info.. he and another guy called Bunny have been doing this crazy liquid-nitrogen stuff for years now so I tend to believe their results no matter how insane.
Very interesting news: they’ve found huge stores of hydrogen in the earth’s crust. Could this herald a new era of clean power? Still, I dunno if ripping up huge chunks of the earth’s crust is such a good idea either.
If you can hack this Korean webserver they’ll give you $100,000.. nice.
A long-standing OCAU mystery: this site keeps showing up in our referer logs but has no links to us. It’s been cropping up from time to time, for probably a couple of years now. It’s a site for the japanese all-girl band Shonen Knife. I’ve heard some of their stuff and some of it’s pretty cool.. no idea how or why people keep going from there to here, tho. :) Maybe our man-in-Japan Chainbolt is a fan!
Plenty more news to come..
Reviews:
MSI GeForce4 Ti4600 video card on HardOCP.
PC-Pitstop HDD cooler on SubZeroTech.
Klipsch Promedia 4.2 speakers with monster cable upgrade on EXHardware.
Visiontek Xstacy GF4 Ti4400 and Ti4600 video cards on 3DSpotlight.
Abit AT7 “legacy free" KT333 socketA DDR motherboard on HardCoreWare.
Abit AT7 “legacy free" motherboard on TweakTown, too.
Just a small post for now. *Looks at the clock.. 4am you say?* Here we go :)
3DVelocity have kicked off a month with their biggest giveaway yet. "Up for grabs are everything from laptop bags to free Crucial memory upgrades, GeForce 4 t-shirts to graphics cards and fleece jackets to AMD CPUs." Jump over, answer one question and email the answer. Not to shabby!
Digit-Life have posted an indepth roundup of video cards using 3D Studio MAX 4.26
Bjorn3D has a case moding competition. Which could win you a new eVGA GeForce4 MX 440! "...there remains a hard-core group of PC owners that need more individuality than you can buy off the shelf. Show us your case, and you could win a new eVGA GeForce4 MX 440."
SLCentral has posted an update to their weekly CPU/Memory watch. In this update they list the retail P4 and OEM Athlon XP make the big price drops. PC800 Rambus also falls a couple dollars.
For all the all the window users out there thinking of converting to linux or even just to see what all the hype is about, how bout trying the brand new lycoris distribution designed to "bring linux to the masses" with a very windows like GUI etc.
If you need to find a specific motherboard review, 8dimensional has compiled a 1000+ list of reviews for various boards. All which have multiple reviews. Sweet.
Dan has sent in a top secret mac machine. So secret, no one knows anything about it!
MWP has just put up a new version of CrystalControl V0.91 which mainly consists of bug fixes, but also now has support for the CF633 LCD. Also guides on how to set up parallel/serial LCDs are avaliable.
Not to leave without my funny part, PnP forums have this classic picture of the staff's repsonce when a pretty lady walks through their LAN. Very slick guys. :P Oh and also, Rio de Janeiro takes legal action against the simpsons and the 'Bert and Ernie gay theory' has been put to rest. Thank god for that hehe. Cheers gaz.
Reviews :
Elle P computer housing at heatseekerz
OCSonic Modded Enermax 10 at burnoutpc
AOpen AX45-V SiS645 Motherboard from overclockers online
Thermaltake Hardcano II Review at jsi hardware
Kingwin Multifunction Transfer Panel written by teksector
Thermaltake HardCano II by tweaktown
Plextor PlexWriter 40/12/40A CDRW from the guys at designtechnica
CoolerMaster DAF-B82 Thermal Controlled Case Fan again from teksector
Chaintech A-GT61 SE (NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600) from digit life
Abit AT7 MAX motherboard over at via hardware
Hercules 3d Prophet III Ti500@ RadiativeNZ
No doubt some of you have either made or know of someone who has made a PVC "orange gun". This guy takes the same principle to a whole new level, and has made a flouro tube gun...Madness. Cheers jaw174. (And kids, don't try that at home)
Madshrimps have just published a custom watercooling "howto" using a Porsche radiator and other (budget?) items, to make one cool system. Check it out.
Rumours abound here on the upcoming NV30 GPU from nVIDIA. Interesting, but take it with a grain of salt till it's confirmed. Thanks DotDKay.
Merlin sends word : Another adware program that seems to be installing on computers without their owners realising, I like to think of myself as fairly knowledgable about computers and I didn't even realise I had it until I noticed that I had been getting popup windows all over the place and everytime I opened more than one internet explorer window at a time I was getting an error that forced me to close them all. Read more about it here.
sync_array sent in a few links. First, Intel wants to turn PCs into wireless LAN access points, secondly, if you are using wireless internet, here is how to mod a Galaxy dish (paytv) to suit and finally, 18,000 mile-per-hour speeds are way to slow for NASA, so they're planning on using nuclear and/or ION propulsion for the next wave of deep space satellites.
If you are a gadget loving geek (like Sciby :) ) and use your PC for reproducing digital pictures, (or pretty much anything at all really) you might find this useful. Hell! I want one and all I do is play games! :)
Not much has changed in the last 20 years. Kids are still kids. The activities have gone from blue boxes and password hacking, to nukes and home page defacing to DDOS attacks, but the reasoning behind them appears to be the same. Thanks Decker.
Here's your chance to muck around with the source code for Return To Castle Wolfenstein ... OI! Come back here, haven't finished news yet.... Taa SoVeReIgN.
Another LAN coming up in Sydney soon. Sat, May 11, 2002 in Chatswood, Sydney. Max. Attendance: 75 and the cost will be $20.00. More info here. Taa Neo.
The Register had an article about the XP Search Assistant. Apparently if you use it's "search the internet" function, it sends microsoft your IP, search terms and some other information. Also, when connected to the internet and you use SA, it fetches files that it wants from Microsoft. Had a quick look for the article, but couldn't find it. Perhaps isengard (the mailer) could help us out here?And here it is thanks to an ever diligent OCAU reader, Jaani. :)
Reviews:
EPoX 8K3A+ Motherboard from Tweakers Asylum and also Hexus.
VIA P4PA-UL Mainboard over on MB Review. (Naturally)
Asus A7V266-E RAID Motherboard also from Hexus.
Asus V8460 Ultra (GeForce4 Ti4600) review!
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Monday, 15-April-2002 21:03:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you don't know what GeForce4 Ti4600 is, you've been asleep for far too long. This card from Asus is the first (of hopefully many!) that I've looked at.. and it turned out to be pretty good:
Click for the full review!
The PCDB just breezed past 3300 entries.. MonK's great paintjob and cool window decal was the entry in question. Also, Artofkicking has some home-made watercooling happening.
FreeFrag spotted this article about HardOCP's servers.. see what powers their site. Quite a bit more than what powers our site. :)
HardwareZone reviewed some HDD coolers including the Macase Hermannator we reviewed here a few months ago. We also had a couple of other hdd coolers ages ago. Update: Just realised that site is in Hebrew or something, gah. Oh well, just read our reviews if you can't read theirs. :)
Some mysterious deals going on.. between VIA and Kyro thanks leperMessiah.. and Intel investing in AMD, thanks Josh.
Another internet speed test thing from Josh.. This one, although not exactly Australian-based does include a speed check to a server in Brisbane which means we get pretty decent results.
Hmm, whoops.
Reviews:
nVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 video card on Bjorn3D.
Power Devices thermal goop on DansData.
Soyo P4I Fire Dragon motherboard video review on 3DGameMan.
Hitachi CML181SXW 18.1" TFT screen on PCStats.
Chaintech GF3 Ti200 Special Edition 128MB video card on Bench-House.
Nostromo N50 Game Pad controller on Monster-Hardware.
DELL Dimension 4300S pre-built P4 1.6GHz system on EXHardware.
Enermax Whisper EG351P-VE PSU on ExplosiveHardware.
Asus GF4 Ti4600 & 4400 video cards on OCPlus.
ATI Radeon 8500 video card on NeoSeeker.
Shuttle AK35GTR v2.2 KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on AMD3D.
Atech Digilog Inc USB 2.0 hdd enclosure on ClubOC, similar products here and here.
EPoX 8K3A+ KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on MikhailTech.
Promise FastTrack TX2000 ATA133 RAID card on HardDiskInfo.
EL Custom Shop LightStrip case lighting on GideonTech.
Antec Performance Plus 1080B fileserver on AMDMB.
Chaintech 7VJDA KT266A-based socketA DDR motherboard on PlanetSavage.
Archive Updated..
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Sunday, 14-April-2002 01:55:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's been a busy coupla weeks for articles and reviews.. nothing totally revolutionary, but some interesting stuff. I've updated the archive with these recent items:
nVIDIA overclocking with CoolBits how-to guide.
Quake3 "Slayer" Demo standard benchmark.
Andrea NC1212 Pro Gamer Headphones with noise-cancelling microphone.
Sony CRX1600LEK FireWire/i.Link external CDRW drive.
Wacom Graphire2 graphics tablet with pen.
Amplifier PC's!
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Saturday, 13-April-2002 16:07:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This post was originally just about one amplifier PC project, but due to a lot of interest I've added a couple more from the PCDB: NHD's from about a week ago, Merlin's which is new today and Daemon's, which I think was the first one I saw, from a fair while ago now:
This kind of home-grown project is just what I like to see. :)
Here we are again. Another late night/early morning, and all you people clamouring over each other in eager anticipation of a news post .... well, maybe not :)
VIA Hardware have posted an article on the possibility of seeing an x86-compatible version of OSX, Apple's latest-and-greatest operating system. If you think OSX is something you'd like to run, or your just interested in what it could offer to Apple (or how it could hurt them badly), head on over and check it out.
sync_array sent in a couple of good links. Firstly, a new form of matter has supposedly been found, and secondly, here is the perfect partner for a wireless LAN system, a wireless monitor. :)
Seems Sun have released some new "Budget" servers, not that we'll be seeing many of these in desktops any time soon. Better get your order in now and beat the rush. Thanks leperMessiah.
Accelenation held an interview with Samuel Kang, Epox's product marketing manager, and it's available for your viewing pleasure here.
PowerVR has released a new set of drivers for the PowerVR series of cards (PVR250, Kyro 1/2/SE). If you would like them, click here, and for more information on the distro's, click here. :) Cheers Damien.
It would appear that HyDrA has been digging deep into his favourites folder, and found this little gem to once again brighten our day.....Never get tired of that :)
Well, all I got to say is, I'm glad it wasn't mine :( That's GOTTA hurt the hip pocket, if not your pride .... Thanks Andypoo.
Putting plastic-faced CD-ROM's and DVD's in a cool aluminum case looks worse than a "Baby on Board" sign on a Lamborghini Diablo. However, if you want to keep the coolness factor of your aluminum wonder, you can hide those ugly drives with more aluminum. To that end, here is a short guide on the Stealth modding of a Lian-Li case.
Spikeman sends this in, and asks the question "is this a gf4mx 440 with bga memory or the ill-fated gf4mx 460?"
Game maker Blizzard Entertainment, along with its parent company Vivendi Universal Games, late Friday sued a small Internet Service Provider and its owner for distributing free software that emulates Blizzard's free Battle.net gaming service.
Tweakers Australia has just posted a short article on the latest ATI Reference driver for the Radeon series, v7.68. They compare it to the two previous revisions, so if ATI is your thing, check it out.
Reviews:
Logitech Z-560 Speaker system on LivePC.
Alpha 8942 P4 HSF from Virtual-Hideout.
Samsung F.A. Porsche Design 171P LCD Display over at PCStats.
Enermax CS-5190AL-061/CSX-61 case from the crew at GideonTech.
ANTEC SX-635 computer case on Overclockers Club.
Apollo Devil Monster II 8500LE Pro Graphics card by ExHardware.
APC Back-UPS Pro 650 over at Tweakers.com.
Apex 2400FT-P4 from ExtremeCooling.
Compex NetPassage 16 Internet Gateway by NeoSeeker.
NextGadget's RipFlash Digital Audio Player from Coolhardwarez.
ABIT AT7 mainboard by the gang at OC Workbench.
Shuttle AK35GTR VIA KT266A mainboard over on Planet Savage.
Xoxide ClearStorm on SubZeroTech.
Kingwin Multifunction Transfer Panel from Rizenet.
Soltek SL-85DRS2 Motherboard review!
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Saturday, 13-April-2002 01:46:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Today we have a review of Soltek's SL-85DRS2. That's right - it's OCAU's first P4 motherboard review! This board supports DDR333 memory, courtesy of the SiS645 (A2) chipset.
Click for the review!
A quick further note on this review: I personally don't know a whole lot about the P4 side of things and I have no other P4 motherboards here to compare this new Soltek to - so I enlisted the help of Asher "Acid" Moses, who is a regular contributor to Tweaktown and PC PowerPlay and has been an active member of our Forums for years. He's compared this new board to a couple of other P4 motherboards in this 3-page review.
Some DNS weirdness going on, the Users Online counter thinks everyone is the same person. Hmm, turned it off while I look at what's happening.
Check out this very nice waterblock over in a Hungarian forum.
From Manaz: Need reason to secure your Internet connected PC? Linux (RedHat) and Windows NT4.. interesting reading.
3DAvenue have a Jedi Knight II walkthrough guide posted.
Another funny metallica hates napster parody, thanks Groomy.. not as funny as the original, tho. :)
PCHardware.ro have a competition where you can win stuff by knowing stuff.. you have to sign up for forums etc also, tho.
Mike spotted an interview with Linus Torvalds where they ask him about everything except Linux.
Reviews:
CasEdge LX734A mid-tower case on ArsTechnica.
Ati Radeon 8500 video card on ThinkTechie.
Fellowes WriteRight PDA screen protector on SLCentral.
DFI NB70-SC i845D P4 DDR motherboard on OCdCafe.
EPoX EP-8K3A+ KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on AMD3D.
Leadtek GeForce 4 Ti 4600 video card on PureOC.
Intel P4 Northwood CPU on OCOnline.
Abit BD7-RAID i845D-based P4 DDR motherboard on VR-Zone.
GeForce4MX GPU on ViperLair.
Abit AT7 legacy-free KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on HCW.
Apex 2400FT-P4 case on ExtremeCooling.
Thermaltake Volcano 7+ socket cooler on CoolHardWarez, our review here.
Matrox G200 Multi-Monitor video card on Digit-Life.
EL Flatlight case lighting on SubZeroTech.
Logitech Mouseman Dual Optical mouse on G3D.
This isn't really a proper article, just a quick page about the Q3 demo we'll be using as one of our standard benchmarks in reviews from now on. I'll link to this rather than put explanatory blurb in each review..
Click for info!
I think this is the first time ive posted news before midnight! So hold on tight because here we go!
First off from our PCDB yet another water-cooled machine, with some clever safety precautions inbuilt.
ViperLair have a guide to setting up Windows XP ICS. "This is a step by step setup of how you get Windows XP to use Internet Connection sharing when you have a Cable Modem connection with the computer connected to the cable modem via NIC (1) and NIC (2) going to a hub (or a crossover cable to the other computer) and then having the secondary computer plugged into the hub also."
Rex one of our case mod'ers from OCAU has placed 4th in a world wide case mod'ing competition with his HQ08 case. Well done and I must say his case is truly awesome.
Microsoft may cripple Office .NET unless users pay a fee! "Microsoft officials have resuscitated the idea that the company will move to a subscription pricing model for versions of its next Office suite, Office.NET or Office NGO. One of the proposals? If you don't pay, expect your Office features to be turned off."
A report from the FBI reports that internet forum fraud is the most common case of net scam so far and it's bound to get worse.
Pacific internet are offering ADSL for what look like reasonable prices, with the option of having unlimited downloads between 1.00 am and 8.00 am and over the weekend, unlimited as long as you don't download more than 10 gig a month during those time periods. seems like a good deal.
Dan has added the Thermaltake Volcano 7+ CPU cooler to his Brobdingnagian cooler comparison. He has one review here and another here. Both those reviews show the different modes of the volcano.
McPcPro are giving away a Tyan Trinity 510 which is shown in this review Cool.
Hexus have taken a look at the Coolcasemods Window Kit. "This isn't a hard mod, but people generally are scared of attacking an expensive case just in case it goes wrong. The results are definitely worth it particularly when combined with a cold cathode light."
The Register has an article about how X-Box could be failing. Some people might be happy with that. As for me, I'm neutral :)
Supermicro have specs up about their quad xeon motherboard (serverworks HE) Cheers Braden
Well another month, another edition of ZZZ It has one of the weirdest "boomboxes" I have ever seen on there.
Agnitum has released Outpost Firewall. "A personal firewall that can eliminate threats from cookies, banner ads, email viruses, spyware, and other Internet dangers. Outpost performs Web filtering to let parents control computer content. Outpost can prevent dangerous attachments from executing. You can get free updates to Outpost by using the program's built-in update utility. Outpost Firewall runs on Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows Me, and Windows 9x systems." The best bit being, It's FREE!
Technoyard have a round up of wireless networks and bluetooth devices. "... looking at Bluetooth technology as well as 802.11b wireless networking and products in their respective categories."
As always, here is the funny section. How would you like to build your own monorail! Well this guy did, around his house and backyard. Thanks Owen. Or if you need a quick refresh on the ShotGun Rules you might want to have a peek at that site.
Reviews :
Soyo P4I Fire Dragon Motherboard At Tweakers.com.au.
Bitspower NP 80D Skived Heatsink over at 8Balls Hardware.
USB 2.0 5-port PCI Host Card on Overclockers Club.
Creative Sound Blaster Extigy review from Digit-life.
Gigabyte Maya AP64D Radeon 8500 Pro Review from the hardware pub.
OCZ DDR PC3200 (DDR400) and PC3000 VIDEO review from 3d GameMan
Mushkin 512MB Hi Perf "LEVEL 2" CAS 222 PC2100 DDR at Octools
Koolance Liquid Cooling Cases from AMDmb.
Visiontek Geforce4 Ti4400 AGP over at Bjorn3d.
Logitech MOMO FormulaForce Steering Wheel racing around at Windy City Racers.
Lot of news posting lately, hope you can keep up!
Lindsay sends a link on how to remove 'brilliant' software/spyware.
Apparently there is a new breed of spam-filtering technology "... that combines peer-to-peer communications with machine learning could intercept nearly all unwanted email" Cheers ropable
Via Arena are giving away a trip to Computex Taipei 2002. Could be a nice prize! Thanks Mr Grimm
Anthrox sent a link to an article on thermoelectric materials and their uses. Very interesting read. A snip : "These materials, which can directly convert heat into electricity (and vice versa), could be a boon for everything from power generation to microprocessor cooling".
Also Silicon Valley may soon have to change its name. Here's why : "A team of scientists led by Matthias Schreck of the University of Augsburg in Germany has developed a crystalline diamond film that could produce more resilient semiconductor chips than those made from silicon. Manufacturers plan to build a diamond chip that can withstand temperatures of 500 °C, compared to only about 150 °C for silicon chips."
SLCentral.com have an article entitled Foveon X3 Technology In-Depth. The article talks about Foveon's new X3 technology for image sensors which is said to produce 2-3 times the image-producing power of an image sensor now. "... it can capture three colors per pixel ... the Foveon X3 image sensor uses three separate layers which can absorb different wavelengths of light at different depths with each layer capturing a different color." Thanks Dave
There seems to be an updated driver available for the KyroII for Windows XP users. The new version is 15.020. Thanks Jarrod.
Tony has sent an Australian version of a download speed tester. It then goes on to then comparing the results to other ISPs and their relevant caps and other restrictions.
For all you MS mouse users there is a program/driver update and C-Media sound card drivers for the A7V266-EA. Thankya' Yaleman
The OC Work bench have a gallery of preview pictures of the upcoming Abit AT7 motherboard.
Well as always, here is something a bit 'zany' and cool. How would you like to make your own coke-a-cola? Well now you can from opencola, a website devoted to "open source cola". Now you can finally make 'the real thing' at home!
Reviews :
The Volcano 7+ over at extreme cooling.
The ASUS P4S533 at the OC work bench.
Wednesday Evening
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Wednesday, 10-April-2002 18:09:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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[H]ard|OCP have been busy with video cards today, posting a review of the Hercules 3D Prophet 8500LE and a more detailed part 2 of their GeForce4 Ti4200 preview.
Tech-Report have some interesting info on Ti4200's and whether or not Ti4400/Ti4600's will end up using the smaller PCB's we've seen on the lower-powered cards.
FTO found an article about Australian Wireless Broadband.. would be nice.
3DSpotlight have a guide to tweaking your sound card and speakers.
Reviews:
MAYA 7.1 & MAYA 7.1 Gold sound cards on NeoSeeker.
Samsung DVDL100 portable multimedia on DesignTechnica.
VisionTek's XTasy GeForce4 Ti 4400 video card on HotHardware.
Leadtek Gf4ti4400 & ti4600 video cards on OCPlus.
Empire Hero Flexible Keyboard & Hands-Free Mouse on FutureLooks.
nVIDIA Video Card Overclocking with CoolBits
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Wednesday, 10-April-2002 14:43:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's been a while, but yes, I've written an article. Expect more from me this week and next, too! Anyway, this one answers in some detail a question I get asked often, how to overclock nVIDIA-based video cards. CoolBits is a simple, free tool that takes almost zero time to download (it's only 100 bytes!).
I know CoolBits isn't the newest idea around and I certainly didn't invent it, but I think there's a need for a decent article explaining how to use it. I've got some examples using a GeForce4 Ti4600 and a TNT2 Ultra and a few tips from my experiences with it. Enjoy!
Click for the full article!
Wednesday Morning #2
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Wednesday, 10-April-2002 10:16:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It seems Microsoft are acting on their recent promise to focus on security in their products: Microsoft has created a new tool, the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA), to analyze Windows systems for common security misconfigurations. Version 1.0 of MBSA includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems. MBSA runs on Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems and will scan for missing hotfixes and vulnerabilities in the following products: Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 and 5.0, SQL Server 7.0 and 2000, Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 and later, and Office 2000 and XP. Thanks Peter and YYK.
Wired have an article about spy satellite usage being more widespread than it once was.
There are whispers of AMD Clawhammer running OSX.. Well, that would be a turnip for the book that would make the Intel boys cringe more than a little., thanks leperMessiah.
Isengard spotted this article about a DDoS issue that has arisen due to some software recently bundled with KaZaA.. more info here on TheReg. CNN say DDoS attacks are on the rise aready.. anyone using oz.org a couple of weeks ago should be screaming "WELL, DUH!" now.. thanks arkenstone.
SocketA CPU's are dropping in price soon apparently.. And to show how fast the industry is moving, the Duron 1GHz product has reached the end of its life (EOL), and is being phased out. Thanks Roger.
Digit-Life have their monthly 3D digest for March posted.
In more cutting-edge technical news, apparently Lara Croft's outfit is up for auction, thanks Peter, college drinking isn't as cool as you might think, thanks Arkenstone.. and from Decker: Skeet shooting is fun, but who the hell wants to pick off clay discs? You need to blast something with spirit... like a teenage boy band!
Reviews:
Silver keyboards on DansData.
AOpen AK77 Pro(A)-133 KT266A-based motherboard on Accelenation.
Lian-Li PC60 case on BurnOutPC.
Matrix-Orbital 20x2 LCD w/ Keypad on Virtual-Hideout.
Swiftech Quiet Power PS020-H2OC barebones liquidcooled case on FrostyTech.
eVGA GF4MX440 video card on BurnOutPC.
Cheapo prebuilt PC on DWPG.
Visiontek GeForce4 Ti 4600 video card on TekBug.
Vantec Stealth Fans on OCOnline.
COMPEX DSR2216 16 Port 10/100 rackmount LAN switch on PCStats.
Congrats' to Agg on running the number #1 'Computers and Internet - Hardware' web site in the country, and I get to post on it! *dances*. Ahem, onto the massive amount of news for tonight.
3d GameMan have a VIDEO review of the Highpoint RocketRAID 133 PCI Controller A quick grab : "This RAID controller supports up to 4 ATA133 IDE hard drives and provides multi level RAID support including RAID 0, 1, 0/1, and JBOD." We covered the 372 and 374 models in our RAID0 shootout with ATA100 + ATA133 article.
3d Velocity have a guide to turning your CD-RW into a virtual business card maker.
xerubus sent in a VERY cool toolbox computer mod. Very nicely done indeed.
Sync_array has sent in a few items today, Apparently the playstation 2 emotion engine and graphics synthesizer can now be combined into the one chip. Should Apple turn to intel? Finally, The U.S. Prepares to Invade Your Hard Drive with a new copy protection bill.
Now if you thought you were handy with code, a 14 year old "hacker" has created a program to fetch news headlines via his iPOD. If your a little rusty on what an iPOD is, check out our iPOD review! I can't even remember what I was doing at 14...
An Australian super network has been given the green light with a $58m kick-start. "GrangeNet (GRid And Next GEneration Network) will form a 10 gigabit per second broadband backbone linking universities and research groups in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, with a 5Gbps link to Brisbane" Now that's fast.
Tuppaware found this over at slashdot. "Cray, a well known vendor of extremely fast supercomputing hardware, has introduced a storage system with a 224 GB capacity. The large size seems impressive, but the device can also transfer an unprecedented 80GB(!!) a second" Read more here
Video compression provider DivXNetworks has teamed with the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics to develop a system to protect digital video and audio from copyright violations.
Apparently there are several vulnerabilities in ZoneAlarm 3.0 MailSafe. The vulnerabilities allow the bypassing of ZoneAlarm's e-mail protection. On that note here is a series of monthly charts counting down the tenmost frequently occurring viruses as compiled by Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection. Thanks Ubeek for all that.
Designtechnica discusses the future of e-mail, including the possibilities of true multimedia in the e-mail. "Does this lead to a new world of spam? Imagine receiving a video that automatically plays without you wanting it too. Will advertisers take advantage of multimedia in e-mail? We list advantages of multimedia in e-mail including rich media.". Interesting subject that.
DeviantPC have an article concerning the Windows 2000/XP Registry. This is the introduction of a four part series spread over the coming weeks. Here's a snip : "If you are anything like me you will have no doubt found yourself digging around Windows attempting to know what exactly makes the whole thing tick. Sooner or later you will stumble across what is known as the Windows Registry..."
HardOCP have an article on Pentium 4 1.6A overclocking. "A quick tour through eight Pentium 4 mainboards with a OCing and 3D Benchmarks as our primary goal. Now that the 1.6A P4 is under US$150, you will need a mainboard to go with it."
arknstone sends a link to AMD's new chip and it's first low-power PDA CPU.
Not to leave you without something funny, Nextwish has taken the term "to fry your CPU" one step further...on a BBQ with some snags! Pics here and here! Making me feel quite the hungy now! Also, expect another big news post tomorrow, or today as there is plenty in the box!
Reviews :
Silvermesh rounded cables over at BurnOutPc.
Altec Lansing 641 Speakers reviewed at the Tech Zone.
3D Prophet FDX8500LE reviewed over at MGON
From January - March 2002, www.overclockers.com.au was ranked #1 in the Hitwise Australia 'Computers and Internet - Hardware' category based on number of visits.
Click for details!
This ranking is based on Australia based visitors visiting Australia sites.
That is now 15 months in a row that we have been in one of the top 2 spots. Not only that, but we just broke the Forum record again: Most users ever online was 422 on 9th April 2002 at 09:55 PM. The previous record was 404.
Many thanks to the entire Admin Team for keeping the place running, to our Major Sponsors (Computer Alliance and Altech), to AusGamers for hosting our box and of course to all of you for being such an awesome community, making the site what it is and making it all worthwhile. Onward and upward! :)
Sony CRX1600LEK CDRW review!
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Tuesday, 9-April-2002 20:48:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Why is Takai reviewing a 12X CDRW in this era of 40X drives, you wonder? Because this one is connected via FireWire and comes in its own external caddy..
Click for the full review!
On another note, looks like we'll go close to hitting the Forum Users Online record again tonight.. so jump in and be part of history. :)
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 9-April-2002 15:22:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The PCDB Gallery is being updated almost faster than I can keep up with, lately.. great to see people from all over checking out the latest entries and adding their own PC's. Just in the last day or so there's been a couple of very nice stealth watercooling systems added here and here.. and this isn't exactly the tidiest briefcase mod we've seen. :)
CaseModdersOz have been modding a case, as you'd expect. This time they continue torturing an innocent Enermax unit. They have a new look, too.. nice banners. :)
I thought CeBIT 2002 had been over for a little while now.. anyway, Digit-Life have their coverage posted, as do bench-house.
HardCoreWare have reviewed the SkyHawk MSR4610 aluminium case. I wasn't too impressed with the 4388 of theirs I reviewed some time ago, hopefully the new ones are better.
Fbleagh found a cool wearable PC.. more info here.
Apparently money isn't the only thing ex-One.Tel managers should be worried about, thanks Anthony.
HWExtreme have a couple of video cards in a GF4 MX440 shootout.
Dan's been playing with, yes, even more flashy light things.
A site calling itself MadShrimps and claiming to be the one true HW site out there has a comparative review of two rheobus products.. we checked out the PCMods one here ages ago, still pretty cool.
Reviews:
Soltek SL-75DRV5 KT333-based SocketA DDR motherboard on OCNZ.
Lazer LED case lighting on OCrCafe.
Leadtek Winfast TV 2000XP TV capture/tuner card on OCPrices.
Epox SiS 645 4SDA P4 motherboard on Hexus.
Northward Graphics E-Z Window kit on JSIHardware.
TEAC CD-W540E 40x12x48 CDRW drive on CDRInfo.
A couple of behind-the-scenes updates from Panadol, who wrote the system that powers the site's new look:- The News Archive script has been updated with some smarter SQL (thanks MWP!) that has greatly sped it up. I did some quick tests - the server reported that the Last 7 Days view took between 4 and 9 seconds to build before the update, now it's taking between 0.3 and 0.6 seconds.
- The Monthly News Archive script has been updated and now properly displays all months back to March 2000, when we first started using NewsPro - the entire historical NewsPro database has been inhaled into the new system of course. For news prior to that, see this big text file.
- The script that displays new forum threads on the site body (at bottom left of this page for example) has had a bug fixed that was occasionally causing text/background to wander outside the border and look weird.
Thanks Panadol! Actually, cruising around the News Archive is pretty cool, some funny stuff back in the earlier days of the site.. how far we've come. :)
Trouble posting or replying in Forums?
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Tuesday, 9-April-2002 12:40:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A few people have complained of this lately - of being able to log in and view the forums fine but not post or reply. It's because your email isn't set in UserCP correctly. You need to set a valid address then respond to the confirmation email the system will send you. If you've changed ISP's, remember to update your email in UserCP to prevent this problem occurring.
More info in this announcement in the Forums.
Well here I am again and would you look at the time, no wonder my sleeping patterns are outa whack. But without further delay, here's the news!
First off Tweakers Asylum have a review of the Inno3D GeForce4 MX 440. "A The Inno3D Tornado GeForce4 MX 440 is angled as a value gamer card. But I found the performance and overall use to be crisp, clean and very impressive. Being an MX card I did not have high hopes in way of performance or features"
The Guru of 3D has posted a massive Detonator driver performance overview with all recent Detonator releases included. Spanning around 276 tests, the benchmarks were done in combination with a GeForce3 Ti500 and WindowsXP. Included in this first test run are detonators: 20.80, 21.81, 21.83, 21.85, 21.88, 22.40, 22.50, 22.80, 23.11, 23.12, 26.25, 26.53, 27.00, 27.10, 27.20, 27.23, 27.30, 27.42, 27.50, 27.51, 27.52, 27.70 and 28.32.
Also they have just received a new version of Ray's BIOS editor which is now build 221. The new version fixed some problems with build200 and GF4MX, and made some improvements for support GF4MX BIOS' and new GF4 Ti BIOS' which have new NVIDIA Control block location. Thanks Hilbert from Guru3D.com for all that.
Chay sends in a link to a site allowing you to access your POP3 mail through a web interface. He goes on to say it is better than the previous one we linked with other options like secure login and access to IMAP mail. Might be worth checking out of your on the road a lot.
3DAvenue have an article on Online gaming wars: Consoles to take the PC's final feature? Thanks Nathan.
Well it turns out that we may have a resident OCAU'er on big brother! "...I'm an avid reader an user of the site and my second cousin Damian is on Big Brother. Hoping I might drum up some support and votes to keep him on there..." Well although I'm not a fan, he would get my vote to stay or as B5lurker suggested, we should send him an OCAU t-shirt. Thanks Thingy.
GreenJifa.Com have a nice review of ATI's Radeon 8500 64mb. Here's a funny snip: "If I could pick a piece of hardware to turn into a woman and bare my children, it would, without a doubt, be the Radeon 8500. Although, I may just be getting influenced by the hot 3D girl in the reviewer's guide." They also have reviewed the eVGA e-GeForce4
EXHardware has reviewed the Shuttle SV24 Mini Barebone system, The Shuttle SV24 is an amazing little unit that comes in an aluminum case with a whole bunch of features built into it's compact dimensions. "From the extensive list of features above, it's clear that Shuttle designed the SV24 as an all-in-one system."
Are you an online gamer? If so Viper Lair may have a mouse technique to give you the edge, Mouse Skatez!
VR-Zone has done up a review on the AOpen AK77-333 board based on the VIA KT333CE chipset.
FoderMe sends a handy large linux command reference page.
TweakTown have a review of the Enermax 710B black steel case. Here's a snip: "Since 1989, Enermax have been known for producing their high quality range of power supplies and case fans. Sometimes not as highlighted are their cases, which are equally as impressive in their own right."
B5lurker told me earlier there is a new Folding@home2 protein out, 602_BBAW_hairpin, which seems to be hammering along at around 38 seconds a frame on his Athlon XP 1600+ linux box. Of course if that all means nothing, maybe you should check out our folding page and join up. :)
Well, it seems to be my trade mark sign off at the moment, none other that flash games or in this case... a giant cursor loving rabbit Quick little bugger too. Thanks groomy.
Time for another news installment, so away we go :)
Wanna see Sticks, Junkz and Klif-e smash hardware with swords and concrete blocks? Sure you do, and why wouldn't you :) Download this then. It's 10meg all up, and you'll need DIVX 5.0 to watch it. Bloody funny stuff.
This would have to be the BEST, homemade waterblock I think I have ever seen. Thanks titan^Ù.
A page detailing Internet access charge details has been issued by the ACCC, and is available for viewing here. Thanks Minion.
Hmmm. What is it with people making bong looking objects, that are PC related? Here's another one. :)
If you would like somewhere to gauge how fast your internet connection is, look no further. It's Australian too. Taa Michael. (Just been informed, that this utility is for Internode ISP's customers ONLY..sorry)
And now for the truly bizzare. A computer case, that's not really a computer case. It's an alcohol storage compartment. Thanks Jaw174, and a toolbox PC sent in by THX1138 ... told ya :)
Ronald Mallett, a physicist at the University of Connecticut, believes he knows how to build a time machine - an actual device that could send something or someone from the future to the past, or vice versa. And the scary part? He's not joking! Thanks Andrew.
And finally tonight, here's a guide on making a glass mouse mat, complete with lights. Enjoy :)
Reviews:
AOpen H600A Super Tower Case from Overclockers Online.
QDI USB Disk over at TobiTech.
Samsung ML-1210 Laser Printer from the guys at GideonTech.
Custom-built Baybus on BlargOC.
March 2002 Hardware Digest and SPEC CPU2000 from who else but Digit-Life.
EPoX 8K3A+ KT333 Motherboard from Tweakers.com.
ATi All in Wonder Radeon 7500 over on SubZerotech.
Cooler Master HHC-001 Heat Pipe Heatsink by ExplosiveHardware.
Aopen AX4BS-Pro Mainboard from The Tech Zone.
FIC VC15 i845 DDR motherboard on 3D Spotlight.
ATi AIW Radeon 8500 DV at the Hardware Pub.
Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP from Got Apex? Well..Do ya? :)
Vantec CCK-6012 Mini-Copper Cooler from Tweaknews.
NDH's Hi-Fi PC
Another cool PCDB entry, this time from NHD. These projects are becoming more common, converting an old Hi-Fi chassis into a PC case. This one turned out pretty cool, not what you'd normally expect to see at a LAN..
Click for the PCDB entry!
Well I survived another weekend away and I'm here again to bring you yet another grave yard shift edition of the news as promised :)
Cougar mailed in news that Whirlpool shows that there is a new ADSL competitor by the name of Apple Communications, providing a (much) cheaper alternative to Telstra's 3gig plan. Most people are on Telstra 3gig plan, and pay around $90per month, Apple is offering a 3gig adsl plan for $64.
TweakTown have a review of the Coolink H2T HSF. Here's a snip: "With so many folks today wanting less noise out of their heatsink's, it is becoming a growing trend for manufacturers to try to accommodate. Some succeed, and others fail. Come join TweakTown as they take a look at a newcomer in the performance cooling game. The Coolink H2T comes with two fans, but produces less noise than most others that are available. Come see if it can cool as well as remain silent."
There is only 1 week left to win yourself a Geforce3 Ti200 video card from 4peeps. I would love to get my hands on one of those...
Tek Sector have a new review up for you, they take a look at the CoolerMaster CoolDrive 4002. A quick grab : "Hard drives are an essential element in the makeup of a computer system. Without hard drives, life would be a spiraling decent into a world of restrictions, limitations, and confinement. These devices are necessary for survival, and without them we would be utterly doomed, which is why taking up a little bit of insurance on your hard drive is very important, not to mention a good idea."
Hadamona sends word that Ad-aware 5.71 has been released. "Ad-aware is a free multi spyware removal utility that scans your memory, registry, and hard drives for known spyware components and lets you remove them safely." Not a bad program to have around in this day and age.
Jarod sent in a quick mail to say that Quake3 Fortress 2 has been released. (This is a modification for Quake3, not a new game). From a few reports it's supposed to be pretty fun too!
On more serious note, A young football player by the name of Jason Watson has died in hospital after a collision with another player in the U19's game of AFL in Adelaide yesterday. Our thoughts and feelings go out to his family and friends. Thanks to Cryogenic for the link.
Bollocks our folding master, sent in some information about the battle between OCAU and [H]ardOCP in regards to folding@home V2. "We are having an XP Countdown which refers to how many XP processors we need running 24/7 to catch up to the [H] teams output. Information can be found here in this thread or on our dedicated page. Of course if you don't know what folding@home is, have a look at our folding page and join up! It's all for a good cause. Just remember, Team 24 :)
Apparently Intel were the man behind the mask of a white paper released bad mouthing AMD about their performance rating's. A snip: "It has surfaced that a white paper published by Aberdeen Group, trashing AMD for the misleading use of the (P)erformance (R)ating, was financed by Intel... The paper pounded AMD's decision to use PR as "taking a step down a slippery slope of bad science." Hmmm.
Someone has actually managed to create a gameboy advance web server! Running TCP/IP/PPP as well as a web server. Very impressive. Cheers lordbeef
FreeFrag sent a link to a few Unreal Tournament 2003 Screenshots. The up-coming PC game looks very impressive from what i've seen of it so far!
Never to leave you without some form of entertainment, here is Fling The Cow and Kill Frog. Fling the cow being a shockwave game and killfrog has some funny short flash movies. See 'ya!
In case you didn't already know, nVIDIA has released ChameleonMark. It's a performance tool for measuring pixel shader performance for a variety of shaders. It is based upon the popular "Chameleon" demo released by NVIDIA with the introduction of the GeForce3 line of GPUs.
Erm, story here letting everyone know that it's.....ummm....ok to marry your first cousin, as far as genetic birth defects go. o.....k :) Thanks patdman.
Another video card overclocking utility here, called nVHardPage. Basically CoolBits and more. Still beta though, so exercise some caution.
Flecktone tells us that for the first time, the epic cinematics from StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War have been collected onto one disc and digitally remastered for enhanced picture quality on your DVD player. Finally, you can witness the struggle for galactic domination in its full, uninterrupted glory. (Think this was mentioned a while ago)
Well, I wondered how long it was going to be until it was the dialup internet users turn to get shafted....Appears I didn't have to wait long, thanks Dicey.
Reviews:
NVIDIA ChameleonMark from Tweakers.
Seagate Cheetah 36ES SCSI Hard Drive over on TweakTown.
Gainward PowerPack GeForce4 Ultra/700XP (GF4 Ti 4400) and GeForce4 Ultra/750XP (GF4 Ti 4600) over at Digit-Life.
Tt Hardcano 3 & Hardcano 5 from OverclockerCafe.
MSI GF4Ti4400-VTD by AMD3D.com.
Logitech z560 Speaker System from GaminIn3D?
Soltek 75DRV5 KT333 over on AmdMb.com.
Kingston ValueRAM 256mb DDR on MikhailTech.
Huge Custom Perspex Case
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Saturday, 6-April-2002 20:53:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From Piers: Thought you might like to take a look at my new custom Perspex case. Only things not Perspex are the Hinges, brass screws, case handles and door fasteners (oh, and the case contents 8-) ). Both sides and the top open. Perspex for the six sides was cut to order locally. Reservoir was custom made from 10mm perspex.
Click for the PCDB entry!
btw, the red HDD LED is super bright. Makes a spot on the wall 6 feet away when the drives are going crazy.
Saturday Afternoon Gargantu-Post
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Saturday, 6-April-2002 13:21:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Ben sends word that NVIDIA are changing GF4 MX420 to use DDR SDRAM instead of SDR. This is mostly because the MX420 is supposed to be the cheapo bottom-end value chip, but SDRAM prices are continuing to rise as production moves to DDR. DDR will be cheaper and probably also give a small speed boost to these cards.
Big news today seems to be reviews of the Shuttle AK35GTR Ver 2.2 socketA DDR motherboard. Why is it interesting? Because it uses the KT333CE chipset. Why is that interesting? I dunno, but after you've read the reviews by PC-Stats, OCWB and VR-Zone, I'm sure you'll be able to tell me.
Got spammed with another of those Microsoft Security Update emails today.. the executable attached to which is almost certainly some kind of horrible virus. I wish virus writers would all get girlfriends or find something else to do with their creative urges..
Dan's compared a couple of Thrustmaster controllers and, of course, couldn't resist tearing them into small peices.
HardcoreWare have an AMD vs Intel CPU battle going on.
d00bie and Wired want to tell us about things in space.. big secret things that spy on us and socking great huge things that will kill us all, 878 years from now.. maybe.
ThinkTechie have a guide to making a plexi reservoir for watercooling.
Want to get back into old-style gaming..? Too late, you shoulda bid more than $12,200 USD for this lot.. someone's garage just got a lot more crowded, thanks unix.
DesignTechnica wonder if consoles running linux are really consoles at all..
Mitch says this website is good for checking your POP3 email from pretty much anywhere.
Zia spotted this new 3d benchmark. Requirements: * DirectX 8.1 * PixelShader support in hardware (GeForce 3, GeForce 4 Ti, Radeon 8500) * A minimum of 512MB RAM running Windows XP, 2000 or ME is recommended. ooo, will have to check that one out.
Hogwash noticed that the Powerstrip videocard overclocking (among other things) software has been updated and that there are new Linux NVIDIA drivers.
I think we've seen this before, but Schrambo notes Intel free training about why they think AMD sucks, or something. They're still in court about MMX, too, thanks.. uhhm.. I deleted the email and forgot who it was from. Thanks anyway. :)
Heatseekerz have an LCD Soldering guide in their forums. Still incredibly popular, months after posting, is Wolfy's DIY Parallel-Cable LCD guide.
HotHardware have been doing some clockgen swapping on their Abit THII-RAID motherboard.
TheInq fear Microsoft's tendrils may soon extend well into graphics processor territory, thanks F1DarkFlash.
Elvis spotted another fan in the mouse mod, for the sweaty-palmed.
Callan says this is an interesting (if self-aggrandizing) article on reverse-engineering the protocols used on electronic management systems in cars.
Zero_g71 found this petition about ethical use of distributed computing project time and data. BTW, our resident Master of Folding, Bollocks, seems to be updating the OCAU Folding page pretty much daily now with news and info about our World Number One, damnit, World Number Two folding team.
Time-sucking Silliness:
SFCave worm game (we've seen it before) from OzzyFudd.
Clicking championships game (gets boring rapidly) from zzapped.
Reviews:
Soltek SL-75DRV5 KT333-based SocketA DDR motherboard on PCStats.
OCZ DDR400 SDRAM on IANAG.
CompuCable FireXpress 350 HDD enclosure on Inside-Hardware. Similar devices here and here.
Thermal Integration TI-V77N socket cooler on FrostyTech.
Chaintech GT61 "Golden Sample" GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB DDR video card on OCTools.
Belkin Wireless LAN bits on Accelenation.
Neolec Northstar 478 & Northstar II P4 coolers on SubZeroTech.
Cooler Master ACT-210 case on BlueSmoke.
Arkua 868 P4 HSF on Tweakers.
Joytech and Hercules Radeon8500LE video cards on Digit-Life.
Samsung Spinpoint P Series HDD on TheTechZone.
Radeon 8500 video card on Accelenation.
EPoX EP-4BDA2+ i845D-based P4 DDR motherboard on CPU3D.
Harman Kardon HK695 speakers on MikhailTech.
Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM on GyroTweak.
Easydisk USB storage gadget on Inside-Hardware.
SMC Barricade broadband router on Guru3D.
Bitspower NP60CD socket cooler on Coolerhut.
AMD AthlonXP 2000+ socketA CPU on ViperLair.
Senfu Tech Station on BurnOutPC, our review here.
Samsung SyncMaster 210T 21" flatpanel display on FutureLooks.
MSI GF4 MX440 video card on Bench-House.
Fire-i Digital Camera video review on 3DGameMan.
ClearPC case on NeoSeeker.
Akasa Silver Mountain 2 HSF on ClubOC.
I really should start to goto bed at a reasonable hour. Oh well, 4am here I come.
First off Adam, has posted a guide that he likes to call, the Shinny Boy project. In short, it's a good guide on how to replace one of your side case panels with a sheet of perspex plastic and then install some fans and handles. Not a bad job either!
Mark from PCrivals sent in a good word about some speakers he just purchased and reviewed. The 400W THX 4.1 certified setup, wouldn't mind a set of those myself. While on the subject of audio, Designtechnica have a look at the Onkyo HTS-L5 Home Theater Package. A quick snip: Onkyo has introduced a complete home theater system that is as easy to use as an all-in-one unit, but provides the performance and capabilities of a high-end component system."
Futurelooks checks out some software that will help you keep track of all your PC's via Absolute Software's AbsoluteTrack Asset Monitoring Software. Here's a quick grab: "Whether your company has 5 PC's or 1000, the need to keep track of those machines is very important. Absolute Software's AbsoluteTrack is a software program designed to help make PC inventory control much easier for the IT administrator."
Viahardware have posted a review on the Epox 8K3A+ motherboard based on the VIA KT333 chipset. Their latest boards have been very packed with the types of features that cater to the PC enthusiast. The 8K3A+ seems to be just a step beyond that.
RadiativeNZ has just finished having a play with the Thermaltake Volcano 7+ One of the most obvious features of the Volcano 7+ is that it is universal, meaning that it can attach to both Socket A/370 (AMD) and Socket 478 (P4).
ViperLair have taken a look into the world of CD burning software, specifically Recmax.
If you haven't already got yourself a copy of Jedi Knight 2, here's your chance! Hypothermia are giving 5 copies away in a competition they are currently running! They will draw 5 winners over the next week. I must admit this game has drawn a fair bit of my time lately and a lot of the other admins as well :)
BlargOC have a Tualatin Overclocking & Voltage Mod Guide "the Tualatin, as BlargOC find out that it's a stunning overclocker, especially when you perform a small modification on the motherboard or cpu..." Could be interesting.
How would you like some FREE new music cd's? EMI give you the chance with their online survey event There is actually a few good cd's there!
Iroquois sends word that 10Gigabit Ethernet has atlast been implemented. Also of another MS versus the little guy court case.
Apparently the new Celine Dion CD will crash your computer. I think I'm fairly safe here.
Ever thought of reducing your PC to a small rectangle or cube? Well now you can with Shuttle's new SS50 Pentium 4 board
Phew, what a post. Not to leave without something whacky and fun, If your looking for some time wasters, try these small flash games. Thanks Zero_g71. Or if you're a crocodile hunter fan you might be interested in this Steve Irwin talking keychain.
Well now I'm off to prepare for a nice weekend away down the coast. Enjoy.
Reviews :
WinTasks 4 Professional. Reviewd ath DWPG.org
MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU Socket A motherboard over at NeoSeeker.
Looks like a new reference version radeon driver has been released. ver 7.67, and you can download them from here. Cheers cerberos.
A couple of neat, watercooled b0xen spotted in the PCDB belonging to cruro and Macka. Nice job guys :)
VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced the worldwide availability of its ultra-compact, highly-integrated EPIA Mini-ITX mainboard through the "VIA Platform Solutions Division". For the full story, click the link :)
Interested in knowing more about the AMD Thoroughbred? Visit the thoroughbred Roadmap and a write-up about the 1700+ thoroughbred being tested.
If you are on a bit of a budget, and let's face it, most of us are, you might like to have a look at the "Sub $100 Budget Videocard Roundup" on PCStats.
OverclockersClub have an article up at the moment, exposing a new hack for Half Life and ALL HL mods that makes the "hitbox" a lot larger. This means, the cheater, can shoot you a few inches off and still hit you! Will the lamers never leave this game alone? :(
It would appear that Micro$oft are planning to base their next OS on OpenBSD, which as you may or may not know is a freely available operating system, like Linux. Wonder how much of a price tag this one will get... (EDIT : *sigh* Before anymore people e-mail my personal mailbox, I already KNOW this is an April Fool's type thing. Thank you all for your concern ... )
Tropfest and Intel are giving away $15,000 worth of computer and DV gear, and its open to Aussie residents only (WOO HOO). It's a "give us your details to enter" competition, but be careful. If you click the "if you want us to
fill your inbox with stuff" it signs you up, so if you don't want to sign up, don't click. (It's usually the opposite, usually you have to unclick to stop the inbox filling, very sneaky). Anyway here's the link. Cheers Michael.
If your mainboard has an AMD northbridge, then you are probably waiting for some new AGP miniport drivers. well, wait no more. :)
The upcoming V8 challenge game from EA has been delayed due to licensing problems, but if you are dying to see some V8 action, get a load of these screenshots.
LinuxJewellery are giving away free Linux case badges! Way more groovy than those neon case badges which every boring overclocker has :) Go here for more info..
Someone spent hours constructing a Beretta 9mm .... out of Lego! Now, can someone give me directions to the nearest Legoland liquor store please? :) Thanks JimX.
Reviews:
Chaintech GF4 Ti4600 Special Edition 128MB from OCWorkbench.
Chaintech Geforce2 Ti Video Card over on MikhailTech.
Lian Li PC-50 Aluminum Case (with USB 2 Front Ports) in video review from 3D Gameman.
Plaskolite Plexicutter at GideonTech.
ABIT TH7-II from Hexus.
Samsung Syncmaster 181T 18.1 inch TFT LCD Display over on PCStats.
GeForce4 Ti4200 from [H]ardOCP.
Abit KR7A-133R KT266A mainboard from the peeps at AMDMB.
Stomp Inc DiskSavers on MikhailTech.
Thermaltake 'Hardcano' 2 on HardcoreWear.
Gigabyte AP64D-H Radeon 8500 Video Card on TweakTown.
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 over at Hothardware.
Plextor USB 2.0 CD Writer at TheTechZone.
Vantec Stealth Case Fan's from TweakNews.
Wacom Graphire2 Tablet
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Thursday, 4-April-2002 14:00:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Takai checked out this graphics tablet from Wacom. At the budget end of the line, it still shares a few features with the higher-end tablets. Sadly for me, artistic skill is something they can't include in the box..
Click for the full review!
Duron950 sent in this pic of his, err, Duron950 overclocked to 1.2GHz. Nice effort but hardly newsworthy, you wonder..? Well, the odd thing is that WCPUID reports it as a DuronMP (look at the top field in the screenshot):
Click to enlarge!
This is one of those things where I don't know if it's old news or not.. no doubt you'll all let me know if it is. :)
Well we meet again, now with the butterflies gone from my stomach this one should be less painful :)
Digit-Life have an article on Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2100+ and their predecessors. They also announced their own CPU benchmarking tool , CPU RightMark, an open source project. Another interesting thing coming from Digit-Life is their new specialized interface for voice access to the site's information via phone. Now, using a usual telephone, our visitors can listen to announcement of the latest articles and news published on our site and, if desired, listen to the entire contents of materials. Cool huh?
Hexus.net have a review of the MSI SiS 645 Ultra. Here is a snip :
"The pricing of the 645 Ultra is keen, too. We've been scouring the online retailing community and have seen it as low as £76, an excellent price for such a well performing board. If you're interested in a board that performs well at stock speeds, then the 645 Ultra should most definitely be on your shortlist."
hardCOREware.net have a massive 5 page review on basically the entire lineup of Belkin Wireless Products. They cover a wide range of topics including security and even how to setup the products under windows AND linux. A very good read if your interested.
Well, If it's one thing Telstra didn't want, it's more bad publicity and im sure they are going to get a bit more from their latest incident. According to whirlpool telstra have deleted all customer websites from its Bigpond Broadband web hosting servers. Oops!
Overclockers Cafe are having a nice contest to win an AMD 2000XP+. All you have to do is whip a mail off to them, so no forum spaming is required AND it's open to international entrants. Cheers Hendot.
F1DarkFlash sends word of a new Microsoft patch intended to fix a data binding flaw in IE, which enables a script to call executables on your Windows machine using the object tag, does not protect against malicious files launched from a local directory.
How would you like a nice 170mm * 170MM Fully integrated motherboard. Well we've got more info right here in our forums. VIA have just released one, would make a very nice DVD machine or similar. Thanks again leppermessiah.
Now to leave you with something weird yet strangely appealing, parts from the body mouse! I don't know about you but that's just... weird. Not a bad render though. Thanks Graham.
Reviews:
Intel Pentium4 "Northwood" @ 2.4Ghz over at Serial Addiction.
Geforce2 Ti Video Card Review from Chaintech
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 at tweaknews.
Lian-Li PC30 Mini-Tower case. Over at tweaktown.
Time for another installment of OCAU nooz, so here goes.....
CCGL (Central Coast Gamer's League) Lan is being held on the 13th and 14th of April, at the Gosford race course. It's a 120 person event, so get in early. More info available here.
Hmmm, this is going a tad too far. If you ride a pushbike, perhaps you would like to mod it with some "Hokey Spokes". Thanks Gnuthad.
Hogwash tells us that there is a new Winamp out, Beta3 Build 470. Don't precisely know what's new in it, but that wouldn't stop you from downloading it anyway, would it? :)
Raylight Studio's have developed a revolutionary new graphics engine for the Gameboy Advance. Makes it just as good as a PC...except smaller...and not as leet... :) Cheers munkiboy.
A California company has quietly attached its software to millions of downloads of the popular Kazaa file-trading program and plans to remotely "turn on" people's PCs, welding them into a new network of its own. Full story here. Courtesy of Talking_Goat.
For all the "rice" fanatics out there (cars, not food) here is a Honda to drool over. Well, all except for the PC in the boot running Windows 98. :) (Large pics, so be warned) Thaks F1DarkFlash.
Own a Mac? Perhaps you have been eagerly awaiting Escape Velocity NOVA for a while now. Well, it's out!! Cheers SoVeReIgN.
And that's it from me for another night. See you all again tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel. :)
Reviews:
Nexlands ISB Soho Personal Router/Firewall from DesignTechnica.
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 3-April-2002 14:16:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I don't believe it, I think I've got the flu again.. worst thing is, I think I caught it from my girlfriend's dog! Egad, I've got Kennel Cough. :(
A few comparos/roundups today.. OCTools compared 64MB and 128MB versions of GF3 Ti200 video cards. There's a P4 chipset roundup happening on BlueSmoke and a mousepad roundup on OCPrices.
ExtremeTech set Intel's new P4 2.4GHz against AMD's XP2100+ in a high-end CPU shootout. VR-Zone have reviewed the new P4 2.4GHz CPU, while JC's News has started a review rating system for 2.4GHz P4 reviews.
AzonIc spotted this article about how CD-copying machines installed in Adelaide convenience stores make the illegal copying of the latest CDs and computer software – which costs artists and software designers millions of dollars – as easy as buying a loaf of bread.
JimX found this article about how addictive EverQuest can be. I remember a couple of friends who were addicted to "EverCrack" years ago, it's amazing how compelling these things are for some people. I spent a fair bit of time in text-based MUDs years ago and I guess there's people who probably consider themselves addicted to the Forums.. just gotta remember to log off and go outside sometimes!
Reviews:
Hercules AIW Radeon 8500 DV video card on HeatSeekerz.
NoiseControl NoVibes HDD sound insulator on PCStats.
Lian-Li PC75 case on BlargOC.
Shuttle AB40 Intel 845 B-Step DDR P4 motherboard on Accelenation.
Abit SD7-533 SIS645-based P4 DDR motherboard on OCNZ.
Archive Updated..
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Wednesday, 3-April-2002 11:36:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Updated the Archive with content from last month:
Tip-Magnetic Driven Fan from Y.S.Tech, check this one out if you missed it.
IceCube FireWire HDD enclosure.
Themaltake Volcano 7+ socket cooler.
Bit of a quiet month, March.. lots of stuff lined up for April though, so stay tuned.
Everglide Gaming Mats Review
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Wednesday, 3-April-2002 00:23:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sciby checked out these new products from Everglide. They look pretty cool, but will your mouse like them..?
Click for the full review!
UBER news posting from me tonight, with STACKS of reviews, and a little humour. So here goes.....
First up tonight, LAN Addict.com is at it again with an article concerning PC Gaming 'Burnout'. It provides tips for people who may be spending too much time playing computer games. You can spend too much time in front of the PC? Weird... :)
It appears that a website that has lain dormant for a long while, CPUReview.com, is back in the swing of things once more. They let us know that MemTach v0.93 Alpha has been released, and that you can download it off their site. Cheers for that, and welcome back guys :)
Vindaloo sends word on what to buy that special someone for their next birthday. A goldmine! Go on...I own one, so what's stopping you :)
SoVeReIgN sent in this link, telling us that PORN movies and programs in Hebrew are being broadcast by Israeli troops who have taken over three Palestinian television stations. Hmmm, A hebrew version of The Price Is Right, or pr0n....Where's the remote! :)
Some more software for your enjoyment, this time in the form of RivaTuner 2.0 RC 10.1. Follow the link for more info.
"Langalist" (website) claims to have found a LEGAL workaround for Windows XP product activation. It's not a crack or a malicious way to foil Windows Product Activation (WPA), but rather a way that legitimate users of XP software can avoid having to reactivate the software after a full, fresh install. Cheers rifraf.
No doubt by now, all of you (or at least most of you) know about Jedi Knight 2 : Jedi Outcast, the latest installment from the crew at LucasArts and Raven. PCRivals have a write-up about it, in case you haven't seen the game yet.
If you read Wolfy's review of the Andrea NC-1212 Pro Gamer headset (and if you didn't, you're off my Christmas Card list) and thought you wouldn't mind some of that speech-to-text action for yourself, try this out. Text To Speech IRC. Thanks Matt. (Edit : I downloaded this, and the only option for speech of any kind that I could find, was "DCC Chat" which isn't really converting speech to text. Seems to be a dud, but feel free to experiment)
Played Command & Conquer : Renegade yet? Of course you have... Wanna guide to tweaking it? Of course you do... :)
I know April Fools day was yesterday, but no April Fools day would be complete, without a dose of ZZZ Online. (Just remember what I said ... :) )
The 1st of April has passed but this was funny enough to warrant a mention... Tom's Hardware reports that NVidia has bought AMD with the new company to be called amVidia (not to be confused with Amway). The story is here. Kinda scary if it did happen...
VooDoo tells of a server running 6 x P2 Overdrive 333's, and here it is here in all it's glory, from start to amazing finish.
Toms Hardware have the final showdown between an Intel P4 2.4 and an AMD XP 2100+. With a a 666 MHz core clock advantage over the Athlon XP, you tell me who won. :)
xjc8 sends word of a new version of "HWINFO" that is out now, and available for download ... Cheers.
Reviews:
Leadtek Geforce4 MX A170DDR-T from TheDDRZone (written by me :) )
Kingwin FPT-01S Multifunction Transfer Panel from MikhailTech.
Object Desktop review from InsideProject.
Badglelite BLUE Light Case Mod from FutureLooks.
Asus A7V266-E KT266A Mainboard over on ViperLair.
Innovatek Water Cooler innovaCool Rev.3 at TobiTech.
Lian-Li PC-65 Aluminium Case by BlargOC.
Swiftech MCX478 Cooler in video review, from 3DGameman.
Visiontek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti4400 from Hexus.
eVGA Geforce4 Ti 4600 over on 3DVelocity.
Swiftech Quiet Power Watercooled Case on ExplosiveHardware.
Coolink U1P2 Heatsink/Fan by TweakTown.
ABIT Siluro GeForce4 MX440 by the gang at OverclockerCafe.
OCZ PC3200 Memory from ViaHardware.
Belkin Onmiview 4 Port KVM Switch on NeoSeeker.
Everglide Gaming Pads from EXHardware.
ATI Radeon 8500 from the lads at DeviantPC.
SiS645DX Chipset on PCParadox.
Intel Pentium IV 2.4GHz
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Tuesday, 2-April-2002 22:50:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Intel have released their 2.4GHz P4 CPU, based on the Northwood core and using the same 400MHz (100x4) FSB as the previous parts. Of course, we have the usual rush of reviews - in no particular order:More news on the way..
Unusual Radiators..
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Tuesday, 2-April-2002 20:38:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Wild spotted an interesting PCDB entry and I found some other new ones last night.. interesting to see the different home-made radiator setups people are using. These four entries were added or updated in the last couple of weeks:
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 2-April-2002 02:19:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I take no responsibility if any of the stuff linked today turns out to be a complete lie. :) In fact, that's one of the things that annoys me about April Fool's Day.. people these days seem to treat it like "Blatant Lie Day", rather than constructing clever ruses or parodies. Emailing everyone with "OMG, (celebrity name) is dead! Check CNN!" then laughing when they load CNN.com.. just isn't funny. It's old and tired. There is some clever stuff out there though, like on ThinkGeek and Google and to a lesser extent FreshMeat. Or maybe I just don't get the spirit of April Fool's.. suggestions for what OCAU should do next year welcome. :)
Simon Wright over on Whirlpool got plenty of people with his story about Optus@Home dramatically lowering the data cap on their cable service.. 4 or 5 people emailed us, frantic with the news.. only to immediately follow with another email saying "AARGH, they got me!" or similar. :)
A couple of interesting recent PCDB entries.. Nemast2 has an interesting 3-way status LED setup, among other things.. alexm's Ferrari PC we saw recently but his PCDB entry has more info. For something totally different, there's a Mac 5500 in there too.
Decryption spotted this clear case mod for an iBook.. on a site calling itself the chamber of fussiest people.
From Peter: There's been increasing news of people coming across CD's that won't play or (heaven forbid) rip in their computer. The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting story on how Philips and Sony are saying that these new CD's may not legally be CD's any more and how Sony Electronics is not happy with Sony Music for being one of the instigators.
Vaempyr found this Motherboard Manufacturer Comparison.. which is literally a review/article about each of the manufacturers of motherboards. A fair bit of info there, but I don't think you can really boil down a manufacturer's history of products to a couple of sentences. I mean, Asus make more motherboards than anyone and have produced both excellent and woeful boards - and boards like the P3V4X that are either or both, depending who you ask. The same with Abit, who have made class-leading motherboards like their KA7 from the SlotA days and more current KR7A series.. but ask people who owned KT7A's and they'll tell you Abit are evil. Still, it's an interesting read in places, if oversimplified IMHO.
OCLabs have their Athlon XP 1700+ AGOIA 1467 @ 1962Mhz, which is not too shabby.. but it's in non-English so you'll need a fish.
NASA's Ames Research Center has a new image gallery online, some cool stuff in there.
Need a TV guide? Mike reminded me of this one which used to be on Sofcom but is now hosted by Yahoo.
Office without Windows? Sounds interesting.
OCOnline have their CeBIT 2002 coverage posted.
It seems Lombers has himself a dual Tualatin system - he's posted some benchmarks in the forums.
Reviews:
Abit NV7-133R nForce-based socketA DDR motherboard on HardOCP.
Antec 400W PSU on Gaming-Media.
Dynatron DY1206BH-625 copper heatsink on FrostyTech.
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV video card on Buddhacon.
Andrea NC-1212 Pro Gamer headset!
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Monday, 1-April-2002 18:02:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Wolfy reviewed these headphones. Aimed at gamers rather than audiophiles, they include a noise-cancelling microphone for voice-recognition and voice-enabled gaming. This 3-page review covers them in some depth and was in fact mostly written using the headset and voice-recognition software!
Click for the full review!
I hate April Fools day. :) Actually, we did have plans for a little something on OCAU but we didn't get it off the ground. From the number of gags I've been sent so far today I'm actually kinda glad about that now, most people seem to share my "urrgh, not again" sentiment. :) So, take everything you read today with a grain of salt, especially on overseas sites that may only just be entering April 1 now.
There's been another earthquake in Taiwan. Although there seems to be a lot of damage there are not many casualies - nowhere near as many as during the major quake they had in 1999 - so that's some small comfort.
Hellfire discovered that the films on BMWfilms.com have extra info in a second soundtrack - in that forum thread he explains how to listen to it. Those films are cool, lots of driving stunts etc. "Star" is my favourite. :)
Guru3D have updated their NVIDIA BIOS editor program, adding support for GF4MX. Be careful though, don't fool around with it if you don't know what you are doing or getting into!
Got a few unwanted AOL CD's lying around? Send them to these guys, who are going to save up a million of them then make our quest across America to give them all back to their rightful owner, AOL and say "stop doing this". Thanks BBQ_69 and FreeFrag.
Alex has a Ferrari PC. All products & bits I felt I needed were learnt from reading pages and reviews linked from your site to take me from complete novice to what you see here in my first project.. Cool. :)
Japanese mad lad Holicho has been playing with liquid nitrogen again, cracking 4GHz from a 2.4GHz P4.. of course, this news was sent in by a reader called Cryogenic. :)
From F1DarkFlash: AT&T invites you to download the new AT&T Privacy Bird software for free. This software will help Internet users stay informed about how information they provide to Web sites could be used. Seems to rely on the websites adhering to the P3P privacy standard, which I doubt the morally challenged will be doing.
Digit-Life have been busy, with articles about P4 Xeon HyperThreading, ATI @ CeBIT 2002 and OpenGL 2.0.
CoolerHut have a guide to hooking a switch up to your CMOS reset jumper.. handy if you're sick of fishing around on your motherboard after an over-enthusiastic overclocking effort.
Reviews:
Swiftech MCXC370 socket cooler on MikhailTech.
Sound-sensitive Cold Cathode case lights on TechnoYard.
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 video chipset on BlargOC.
You've probably noticed the slightly different site layout for this month - we have a couple more advertisers and had to make some room. :)
Firstly, Altech Computers have come onboard as a major sponsor. They're a distributor with offices in Brisbane and Sydney who carry brands such as Soltek, X-Micro and Asus, among others.
Of course, ComputerAlliance are a long-standing major sponsor. A retailer in Brisbane, they have been supporting the site for a long time now and continue to do so - it's much appreciated.
Finally, ECS Elitegroup, a Taiwanese manufacturer of motherboards etc, have decided to advertise on OCAU for a while (in case you missed their ad on the right of the screen :) ).
This is all good news for us and good news for you too, as more stable finances means we can continue to provide the news, reviews and forums that make OCAU the #1 PC Hardware site in Australia..
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