Overclockers Australia!
Make us your homepage. Add us to your bookmarks  
Major Sponsors:

News
Current
News Archive
SEND NEWS!

Site
Articles & Reviews
Forums
Wiki
Podcast
Pix
Search
Contact

Team OCAU
Folding Team
Seti@Home Team
Climate Prediction

Misc
OCAU Sponsors
OCAU IRC
Online Vendors
Motorcycle Club

September 2002
OCAU Weekend (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 30-September-2002  03:25:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Meet your fellow OCAU'ers in Sydney in November, for some tenpin bowling, paintball and/or gokarting action! Not to mention The Gathering, a more relaxed eating/drinking event. We'll have some prizes to give out at the various events, but you can win OCAU stuff and Quost hosting simply by signing up and paying your deposit early. Details on the webpage:

www.overclockers.com.au/weekend



4 Everglide Optical mousepads tested.. to destruction! (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 30-September-2002  02:56:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Wolfy has checked out some new mousepads from Everglide. They look pretty cool, being translucent with sparkly bits. He actually reviews 4 different models, but I thought this picture was the most interesting:


Click for the review!

Hmm, I'm sure it didn't look like that when I sent it to him. :)



Archive Updated.. (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 29-September-2002  23:30:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I updated our Article and Review Archive with a couple more recent items - check them out if you missed them earlier:Our Links Page was also totally redone recently.. and don't forget to check out the latest entries in the PC Database.


Sunday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 29-September-2002  22:59:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The ethernet switch that runs my house LAN died on Friday night, so today I wandered down to the computer markets at North Rocks (Sydney) to pick up a replacement. Haven't been there in a couple of years but it seems much the same. Picked up an 8-port 10/100 switch for $60.. bargain! I noticed a lot of Compaq Deskpro EN and EP models there, presumably from a corporate auction.. P2-400's with 128mb of ram, HDD, CDROM etc.. for only $200 or so (no monitor). Perfect for a low-grunt machine, though.

TheHardWire have an article comparing PC's and consoles.. looks like a flamewar waiting to happen.

Rodney spotted this fan that's been running for 20 years!

Ben sent word of Lan-In-A-Box.. some free, Australian software for organising competition ladders at LAN parties.

Decker reports that Dell are apparently moving their Australian helpdesk to India.

Heatseekerz have an article on building a baybus.. interesting stuff on making your own PCB etc.

Jack noticed some 1.4GB CDR's.

Tarrasque sent in what might be the biggest timewaster of them all. :)

Interesting Forum Threads:
How does my mouse start my computer up? in Newbie Lounge.
Best Japanese sports car? (warning, pics) in Motoring.

Reviews:
Coolermaster Ultra Rounded Cables on RadiativeNZ.
Nexland Pro 400 net sharer on AusPCWorld.
Abit Ti4200 OTES video card on TweakTown.
Belkin USB 2.0 Dual-Port adapter card on Bjorn3D.
Dual Colour Cold Cathode case lighting on OCModShop.
Akasa Crystal Ball Fan on CaseTest.
Altec Lansing 321 and XA3021 2.1 speakers on Digit-Life.
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro video card on RageUnderground.
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card on RageUnderground.. our review here.
Abit IT7 Max 2 P4 DDR motherboard on TheNakedReview.
FIC and ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video cards (video review) on 3DGameMan.
Chenming Aluminium Dragon case on OCIA.
Triplex TX-680 GF4 MX440-8X video card on VR-Zone.
Lian Li PC6099 case on PureOC.
Antec HDD Cooler on Bjorn3D.
Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro video card on AMDWorld.
Thermaltake 360W PSU on OCModShop.
Asus GF4 Ti4600 video card on OCClubCanada, our review here.



Saturday Evening (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 28-September-2002  18:51:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg

From Sabot68: I thought this would be of help to anybody plagued with refresh rateitis. Its called RefreshForce and unlike many fixes for this problem is does not matter which version drivers you are using, or if you upgrade to the next beta version, you will not have to run it again, one time fix. No more 60hz for me! It can be found here.

A PC with 37 operating systems on it.. that's handy, thanks Andrew.

From Cliener: Firing Squad have a story about the history and eventual failure of 3dfx including products that never quite got released.

TechnoYard have a roundup of SocketA coolers.

Argent noticed new 40.71 beta drivers (for win2k/xp and winme/95) for NVIDIA-based video cards on their website.

LINUX spotted this article about plans to fit a 100kW laser weapon into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. However, "to get 100 kilowatts of light out, you've got to put a megawatt of electrical power in, so somewhere along the way you've got to deal with 900 kilowatts of cooling".

TheDriver sends word of a security patch for Trillian.

A heap of Linuxy stuff from Gandalf: Open source: More than just free beer, Linux gets a break, Waking up to open source, The State of Linux in 2002, Revenue considers ditching Microsoft.. and Violent Games Good for Kids on slashdot.

Denis noticed this article about CD pricing on PC Magazine.

Win Stuff: CDRW on 4peeps, router on OCMelbourne, EPoX banner on EnvyNews. These are all "join/spam our forums" comps.

Another issue of ZZZ Online is out, complete with spider-goats.

Interesting Forum Threads:
Sniper Rifle in BF1942 in Games.
Homebrew Tips and Tricks in Geek Food.
Processor Listing in Overclocking and Hardware.

Reviews:
The Clutterbuster desk organiser on EnvyNews.
Kazan USB2.0 Drive Enclosure on EnvyNews.
OCZ Goliath II cooler on OCHardware.
Epox 4G4A+ P4 DDR motherboard on TheDDRZone.
ViewSonic VG700 17-inch TFT Display on PCStats.
Antec PerformancePlus 1080AMG fulltower case on TweakNews.
Sandisk 256MB CF Card on EnvyNews.
PleXWriter PX-W4824A CDRW on CDRInfo.
Zalman ZM17CU cooler (dodgy graphs) on OCModShop.
Akasa UV Rounded Cables on PC-Arena.
MSI KT4 Ultra-FISR "ultra fizzer" ..? KT400 based socketA DDR mobo on PCStats.
CPUfx Koolmax watercooled case on Sudhian.



Late Friday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 28-September-2002  01:52:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Interesting stuff here on K-Hardware.de. It's in german, but basically it's about a few Gigabyte boards due mid-October that support P4's at 667MHz FSB. That's 166x4, as opposed to the 133x4 we're currently used to. It certainly explains the name of the SiS648-based GA-8SG667 I bought the other day for a testbed. Not heard anything from Intel about the new FSB, though, so we'll see. Could it be that just as AMD announce their much-anticipated 333MHz FSB (supposedly due October 1st, that's this coming Tuesday) .. Intel will raise the bar once again?

Some quite big news, RC5 has been solved. From Moldy: I wanted to say Congratulations to our team for kicking us to Number 150, out of the thousands of teams. Considering how long our team has been cracking, we've done extremely well. Guess we all have to start folding or something.

ROTFLER send word of some new ATI drivers that fix problems in certain games.. AusGamers have mirrored them here (win2k/XP) and here (winMe/9x).

Kazza is apparently taunting the record companies, thanks Tekka.

BlargOC have been overclocking their P4 2.66GHz CPU "to the max", or so they say. 3.41GHz aircooled.. nice.

Jedi and Klingons have invaded the Shorter Oxford dictionary.. thanks Huron.

From lordCONAN, regarding the recent cancellation of Australian Sci-Fi program Farscape: As part of a world wide movement, Australian fans of the Farscape show are holding a rally in Sydney on Saturday Oct 5th. Information can be found here.

Interesting Forum Threads:
Win2K - Add Multiple User Accounts Script in MS Operating Systems.
P4B533 vs IT7 and BD7-II in Intel Hardware.

Reviews:
Window and Light Kit on ClubOC.
Cold Concept Cview 17W-01 premodded case on TheTechZone.
CH Fighterstick and Pro Throttle USB HOTAS controllers on OCPrices.
Asus A7V8X KT400-based socketA DDR motherboard on A1-Electronics.
Albatron GF4 Ti4200 video card on LANAddict.
IOSS "Cooling After" System on DeviantPC.



Thursday Evening. (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 26-September-2002  18:31:22 (GMT +10) - by Darkness'

I hope you are all coming to the Sydney OCAU weekend... :)

AMD have set their date for the 333MHz FSB Athlon 2700+ and 2800+'s. October 1st. "The chipmaker will unveil its long-awaited 333MHz frontside bus in the 2700+ and 2800+ Athlon XPs, on that date, our sources tell us, pointing to a revival of the chip wars between AMD and Intel in the run-up to the pre-Christmas buying binge."

Apparently, Doom is going to hit the silver screen! Woo! you say? Well, read on :( "Although the video game was controversial because of its violence when it was originally released, the feature film version will aim for a PG-13 rating." Doom the movie with no gore...

Froodogs sent in this cool site where you can design your own shoes and them get them made!

S2YODA sent word of a new redesign of mozilla called 'Phoenix'. "...a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform." More info here.

Invictus has been busy and sent in a few links!
When Bad Viruses Go Good. "Using the malicious power of biological viruses to help build new technology.The researchers soon discovered that virus replication could also build nanosize materials for next-generation optical, electronic and magnetic devices."

How about paying for the shopping by swiping your mobile phone!.. sorta. "Instead of swiping your AMEX/VISA cards you pass your phone near a reader, and enter the pin on your phone."

There is an article about cyber security and what reasons can justify the cost of protection.

Apparently, Microsoft's Chief Security Strategist, Scott Charney, will be the keynote presenter at the 29th Annual Computer Security Conference and Exhibition. "One of the industry's top computer security experts with wide-ranging experience in cyber crime and computer forensics ..."

There has been a warning issued regarding Microsoft's Virtual Machine. Symantec advises:
"Microsoft Virtual Machine contains three vulnerabilities that could allow a remote attacker to execute code on the vulnerable system. Successful exploitation could lead to a complete system compromise."

Are you a hardcore StarWars fan? What about LEGO? yea? Well here is a 1 meter long LEGO Star Destroyer about to be released.

Want to know how to find the best CD-R media?

Apparently, Dell have chosen Lexmark to sell their 're-badged' printers through. More info here and here.

Linux may be more widely spread in the government soon! "Growing demand from government CIO's for critical Linux information has prompted Australia's peak IT advisory body to step in with plans to conduct a government sector Linux seminar by the end of the year."

There is a 4 way PSU roundup here. "four very different power supplies from Antec,Thermaltake, and Vantec. Which is easiest on your wallet and ears, and which is able to provide the most consistent power under load?"

On the subject of roundups, there is a shootout of five I845E motherboards here. "Today we bring you the shoot out of five I845E motherboards. The .. Asus P4B533, Aopen AX4Bpro 533, Abit BD7 II, Abit IT7 and Gigabyte 8IEXP."

Apparently everyone (1.2 million people) who downloaded the UT2003 demo cut the speed of the internet in half!

Funny flash about Keeping your parents off the internet. Thanks BiGstu

Free Stuff :
OCModShop - Free window kit and case badge. As usual, check the international status.

Sorry knowsfords, No sprinkles. :)

Reviews :
Palit Daytona Geforce 4 Ti 4200 @ 3dextreme
VapoChill Premium Edition from hexus
MONSTER ScreenClean Display Cleaning Kit @ futurelooks
Arctic Cooling SuperSilent Pro TC Cooler @ exhardware
Winamp3 @ futurelooks
Switched baybusat RipNet-UK
Macase Galaxy II KA-280W Case Review @ AusPCWorld
Pentium 4 2,80 GHz @ guru3d
MIST Silent Twin heatsink from dwpg
GearGrip - LCD Shield Harness Review by bjorn3d
PC Guardian 2000 review @ Alltechbox
Nostromo N30 Gaming mouse from burnoutpc
Cooler Master ATC-210 DX1 Aluminium Case Review @ BlargOC
MyIE2 browser reviewed at RipNet-UK
ATI and FIC Radeon 9700 Video Card Video Review #217 (Part 1):
NV18 and NV28 GPUs @ digit life
Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 Pro review by digit life
Connect3D Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB from 3d Velocity
ABIT IT7-MAX2 DDR Motherboard VS ASUS P4T533 RDRAM @ tech-pc
Samsung Yepp-90S MP3 Player Review from techwarelabs
Samsung Syncmaster 171p LCD Review @ GideonTech.com
Ontrack In-Lab Data Recovery Service @ explosivelabs
EPoX 4G4A+ i845G P4 Motherboard Review @ mikhailtech
Sky Hawk's Jupiter Aluminum Case @ systemcooling
Neumann's ECS Xabre400 Review @ neoseeker



AGP8X for NVIDIA (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 26-September-2002  13:48:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NVIDIA have announced AGP8X support in their products. GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 MX and nForce2 Processors All Harness the Power of AGP 8X and the Intel AGP 3.0 Specification.

They've also announced that Fujitsu will use their products in some new AGP8X-compatible PC's. Info on cards with the new chipsets from a few manufacturers: Leadtek, Asus on tbreak, and Gainward. Reviews of MX440-8X cards: ProLink's card here on TweakTown and MSI's card here on HardWareZone.



OCAU Weekend - Win stuff by registering! (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 26-September-2002  01:36:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg

You can now win stuff just by registering (and paying) for the OCAU Weekend events! It's easier for us if we get the registrations and payments early on (as it helps with bookings etc) so we've put some stuff up for grabs to encourage you to book and pay early. :) OCAU merchandise and a hosting package from Quost are on offer.

The earlier you register (and pay) the more chances you have to win. The more events you participate in, the more chances you have to win. For full details, follow the link at the bottom of the OCAU Weekend page.



Wednesday Night Short Bits (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 25-September-2002  21:59:02 (GMT +10) - by Torment

Popular Science have brief (unless you buy the mag) look at the uses for Hypersonic sound in such things as speakers. More on that over at their website: popsci.com.

Lanaddict has a DIY Windows Case Mod article to go through. More info @ Lanaddict.com.

Blarg OC & Hardware-Test have reviews of DDR433 (PC3500) Ram which has me thinking (and possibly you) about manufactures not even supporting DDR400. More info can be found @ Blargo OC and Hardware-Test.

Business Week Online has a look at the Intel vs. AMD issue. It talks about what market share AMD and Intel have, the up and coming new chip from AMD the Clawhammer and why it might not be enough to falter Intel. More info @ BusinessWeek.com. (Thanks Jason).

Dan @ Dansdata sends word that his Q&A pages have been updated. You can take a look by going to Dansdata.com.

Something not computer related but I thought was a rather amusing site called Qulture.net Online Tests. One in particular was sent in by "TakingSuggestions" was the link found here. It’s a site that matches you (from other sites) to what movie character you are in particular movies. It also has some other movie bits and pieces. Worth a look if only for a break.

Reviews:
TYAN Tachyon G9000 Graphics Card on Xbitslabs.com.
Black Icemat (Mouse Mat) on PC-Arena.net.
Leadtek WinFast K7N415DA (nForce chipset) on Tech-Pc.
Matsonic MS9068E i845G Motherboard on Active-Hadware.
Soyo's SY-KT400 DRAGON Ultra Motherboard on Tech-Report.
Sony CDP-G520P Monitor on The Tech Zone.
Topower 520watt Power Supply on Tweaktown.com
Hitachi CML190SXWB TFT Monitor on PC Stats.



Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 25-September-2002  02:55:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Apparently the Australian spam-fighter in the news (and maybe the courts) lately is one of our own, namely Joey who's currently #3 in our SETI@Home Team. Good luck, mate.. his homepage is here and has info about the case. Thanks to everyone who updated me on that one.

Jimx sent word of new drivers for Hercules sound cards.. says he needed a few reboots to get them working, tho.

HardOCP reckon the P4 2.5GHz 400MHz FSB chips are good'uns for overclocking. They also reviewed the Gigabyte GA-8IHXP P4 RAMBUS motherboard, which might make a good home for one.

Coupla interesting entries in the PCDB.. Kerrang has a wireless gateway PC in a chest of drawers, while sir_vega has a PC in a briefcase.. with a glowing "picacxu" doll.

Mike sent in this series of pics, of the biggest pothole I've ever seen.

Amiga-heads might be interested in this report about an Amiga Show in Europe.. thanks Jack.

BBSpot have a "Top 11 signs you may be forgetting the difference between your eyes and your GeForce.. and Oosh sent in an older one of theirs about BSOD kills Overclocker.

thetron noticed this death prediction from your genome service.. 'mazing.

AnandTech have an article about the inner workings of ATI and nVIDIA.. thanks XZ. In the same vein, Bit-Tech have info from from nVIDIA and Gainward at ECTS.

SystemCooling have part 2 of their cooling project posted.

A heap of slashdot readers sent word that Google does news now, too.

Tori Lee found Star Wars in Lego.. think we've seen it before.. but not a bad effort.

OCNZ added Corsair XMS3200 to their DDR roundup.

Michael notes that the OfficeXP Subscription licensing system is no more.

Joe_sixpack spotted news that future AMD chips may run considerably cooler.

Reviews:
Tyan Thunder i860 Dual Xeon DDR motherboard on 2CPU.
MSI KT4 Ultra KT400-base socketA DDR motherboard on NeoSeeker.
Antec True Blue 480W PSU on AusPCWorld.
Abit SR7-8X SiS648-based P4 DDR motherboard on TweakTown.
CoolerMaster Blue Neon LED Fan on AusPCWorld.



ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Video Card (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 24-September-2002  17:01:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I've taken a look at this video card sporting ATI's latest high-performance chipset. Is it enough to topple the current king, nVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti4600?


Click for the review!

Turned out to be a fairly wordy review, so you'll need the comfy chair if you want to read it all. :)



Tuesday Afternoon #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 24-September-2002  17:00:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg

If I get another spam email about HGH I may start killing indiscriminately. Does anyone actually buy/use that stuff?!

dljunior says OCAU got a mention on Page 56 of the Oct 2002 issue of PC World. Not sure what kind of mention, but hello to anyone who's come here because of that. :)

Xbit checked out if the stories of problems raiding Barracuda IV HDD's are true.

Sabretooth sent word that an Australian spam fighter may face trial.

Sciby now has a famous jar of Vegemite! Funny article about some Americans trying their first taste of Vegemite. I regained consciousness and lay huddled in a corner until Mike came over and pulled the bread out of my hand. We didn't want to waste the bread, so Jane came up with a plan to dilute the Vegemite with another Kraft product, Pimento spread. The pimento spread diluted the taste of the Vegemite with its own terrible taste. This was like trying to extinguish a burning pile of hair with patchouli oil.

Now you can fake that muscle-car sound in your buzzbox .. and only you can hear it.

A few things from eDust: RAM prices are likely to go up becauase Hynix is in financial trouble. The Australian Consumer's Association has decided that computers are not as reliable as white goods, with 25% needing servicing in a 12 month period. A new type of lithium battery called lithium phospho-olivine will be smaller, lighter, and more powerful. Good for mobile phones, notebooks, etc. This lithium based crystal (lithium niobate) can echo sounds. Freaky. A Linux cluster will be used to simulate nuclear weapons. 1024 machines, dual 2.4GHz Xeons, doing 10 trillion calculations per second.

To fill demand for KT333 product, VIA are apparently going to remark KT400 chips. That sounds at first like a good thing, but it seems the vendors think it's bad.. thanks Sin22.

Interesting Forum Threads:
BattleField 1942 Hints and Tips in Games.
Online Game: Streetwarz in Games.

Reviews:
Corsair PC3200 DDR SDRAM on Hardware-TestDK.
Asus P4T533 P4 DDR motherboard on Inside-Project.
Thermaltake Smart Case Fan on DigitalDomination.
Vantec Thermoflow Fans on ViperLair.
Vantec 470W Stealth PSU on FrostyTech.
Sunbeam Tech Multi-Coloured CCFL case lighting on Tweakers.
Maelstrom Baybus on MonkeyReview.
IBM Rapid Access II Keyboard on Tobitech.



Tuesday Afternoon News (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 24-September-2002  15:22:21 (GMT +10) - by Torment

The Techreport has an interesting look at 64Mb vs 128MB in graphics memory. More info on Techreport.com

IBM are reporting that they have shipped their 10 millionth Gamecube processor to Nintendo, you can find more info on IBM's page here (Thanks Murray).

Seagate, Intel and Silicon Image have unveiled a new Serial ATA II specification. From reading the article it looks like it’s becoming a blend of the old ATA specification and SCSII specification. More info on that @ Seagate.com (Thanks Murray).

Microsoft has put up a guide on how to change the Volume Licensing Product Key on a Windows XP SP1-Based Computer, more info on that on the Microsoft page here (Thanks Smash).

Science Box is reporting that people are sending signals down a coaxial cable @ 4 times the speed of light. More info on that over at Science.box. (Thanks pSYc0de).

There is an interesting article on eweek on IBM and Apple looking into 64-Bit CPU's together, more on that here (Thanks Jack Lee).

Extreme Overclocking have an article titled Overclocking DDR Memory: Truths and Misconceptions A Buyers Guide. Read about it over @ ExtremeOverclocking.com.

For anyone new to the PC Building world, Red&Blackness Mods have a guide on "How to build a computer". More can be found over at their website by going here

3dXtreme have a Logitech Quick Cam Roundup, with 3 in total. More can be found over @ 3dxtreme.org

Gideontech has a look at PC Mods Power Down Protector, full article over at Gideontech.com

A complete list and explanation of all the processes and services running under windows can be found on this site. (Thanks leperMessiah)

Futurelooks.com has an article on a Winamp 3 Review, more info over @ Futurelooks.com.

Reviews:
Ratpads Mouse Pad on Overclocker Warehouse.
Logitech ClickSmart 310 Camera on Overclocker Warehouse.
Creative Inspire 5.1 Sound System on Hardwareeavenue
Prometeia Cooling System - Pt 2 on BlargOC



Audigy 2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 24-September-2002  14:37:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Creative have announced the Sound Blaster Audigy 2, their latest sound card product. Millions of PC users who have a DVD-ROM drive on their PC can use the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 to experience Advanced Resolution™ DVD-Audio with amazing 24-bit/192kHz sound quality. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 delivers 106dB SNR and is the only stand-alone sound card with THX® certification, for cinematic 6.1 surround sound from Dolby Digital® EX movies and unparalleled realism from the hundreds of existing DirectSound® 3D game titles. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 enables 24-bit/96kHz recording, and also provides digital music enthusiasts with the next generation Creative MediaSource™ player for a variety of digital music enhancements, including up-mix of stereo MP3 music into full 6.1 surround sound. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 and Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum are both slated for worldwide shipment in October.

VR-Zone have coverage of the Singapore launch here.



Tuesday Review Day (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 24-September-2002  10:01:40 (GMT +10) - by Torment

Thought I should play some catch-up on the reviews that have been coming in. This should keep you going for a while....

HeatSinks, Fans & Cooling:
Akasa LED Controlled Fans on Systemcooling.
Vantec AeroFlow VA4-C7040 Heatsink and TMD Fan on ClubOverclocker
Thermaltake Volcano 9 Cooler on Blarg OC.
Alien Lasercut Fan Grill on Modtown
Taisol CGK760172 CPU Cooler on ModTown

Motherboards & CPUs
Soltek 75DRV5 KT333 Mainboard on Technoyard.
Chaintech 7VJL Apogee KT333 Mainboard on overclockersonline.
ABIT SR7-8X Mainboard on HotHardware.

Graphics & Video
Albatron GeForce4 Ti4200P-Turbo 128MB Video Card on PC Stats.
11 GeForce 4 Ti4200 card roundup on Benchhouse.
ABIT GF4 Ti4200 OTES Video Card on OCWorkBench.

Cases & PSU
Lian Li PC-6085B Case on M:6 Hardware
Lian Li PC-7323 Full Tower Server Case on overclockerscafe.
Lian Li PC39 Case on Overclockers Online.
Antec Plus 1080 Case on PC Review.
Zalman ZM300A-APF PSU on OCAddiction.

Misc
Plextor PlexWriter 40/12/40A CDR/RW Drive on BlargOC.
Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR400 Memory on PC Stats.com.
MS Wireless IntelliMouse on HWGuru.
Plextor PleXCombo 8/8/24-8U All-In-One DVD/CDR-RW on Hothardware.
Thumbdrive USB x 2 review on OCIA
HighPoint RocketRAID 1520 Controller on 3DGameMan.



OCAU Sydney Weekend! (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 23-September-2002  19:04:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Wolfy has organised a series of get-togethers in early November, in Sydney, for OCAU people. Four separate events are included, being Ten-Pin Bowling, Paintball, Go-Karting and a social get-together called "The Gathering". We'll be arranging some goodies to give away but the main goal is to get together in Real Life and have some fun! Details here:

www.overclockers.com.au/weekend

Also, there's a thread here with more info, to address any questions you may have and discuss transport etc.



Monday Evening (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 23-September-2002  18:36:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A couple of glowing-green machines in the PCDB.. scottbeattie's Biohazard PC and Data-Mine's glowing suitcase with a BP6 inside.

In the UK, a man has been arrested on suspicion of writing and distributing the T0rn rootkit, which dumbs down the process of hacking Linux servers.

Hexus checked out the Abit Siluro OTES Ti4200 card with active cooling, as well as a SiS648-based P4 motherboard from Shuttle.

TheTechZone reviewed an acrylic case (transparent) from Xoxide.

There's no more mail in the newsbox.. so I imagine one of the other newsmonkeys will make a post soon. :)

Interesting Forum Threads:
Watercooling a Radeon 9700 in Video Cards.
ATI acknowledges 9700 AGP8X problem in Video Cards.
Removal of our digital freedom? (Palladium) in Media and Current Events.
Poll: What is your car's country of origin? in Motoring.
Cook-Off: 5-minute meals in Geek Food.



Tasmaniac's Home-made Waterblock (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 23-September-2002  13:29:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Tasmaniac has an interesting PCDB entry, showing how he constructed a waterblock at home (on the BBQ, no less :) ). Nicely finished system, too.


Click for the PCDB entry!

More info and discussion in this thread in our Extreme Cooling forum.



Links page updated! (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 23-September-2002  10:23:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg

After 2 years or more without an update, the links page has finally been updated!

Thanks to Gords for updating and maintaining the links page - thanks also to Sabretooth for the PHP trickery that lets us update pages like that from within the forum system.

If you have (relevant!) link suggestions for that page, email them to links@overclockers.com.au or this forum thread.



Monday Morning Blues. (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 23-September-2002  02:13:17 (GMT +10) - by Darkness'

Not much in the box tonight, So, if you see something interesting whip it off to us!

Jagged sends word that there are some pictures of some upcoming Microsoft Wireless products out and about.

How about a page dedicated to showing how real the physics are depicted in movies. Thanks Ben.

Here is an 11-card Geforce 4 Ti4200 roundup for you. If that's not good enough, Here's a roundup of 13 HardDrives!

Apparently there was an 'Aussie festival' over in the states. They tried vegemite and looked at some of our animals. Crikey! *snigger*

Iroquois has been busy again and sent in a stack of stuff. The International Internet Report 2002. Blizzard have announced a Starcraft sequel. YFI, It's a console only FPS. So, Don't get your hopes up :/ How to use traceroute to estimate the size of the Earth. Also, Wireless internet operators will no longer be charged a $10,000 carrier licence application fee.

Voods let us know that our RC5 team is ranked 150 and has been going for 1500 days now. Going good guys!

Wolfy let us know that the new moon that was mentioned in the news a while back, is in fact space junk!

There are some seriously cool looking speakers out now, Especially these self powered ones which are volume adjustable just by touching them.

In an article titled New Chip Process Fuels 'Fantastic' Products, "researchers announced a breakthrough technology to produce crystalline oxide films that will allow scientists and engineers to "dream up some fantastic products."

Reviews :
V8 Supercar Racedriver PS2 at 3davenue
LindowsOS from newsforge
Gainward Ultra/650TV-Golden Sample @ bit-tech



Antec PerformancePlus 660AMG Mini Tower Case (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 23-September-2002  00:28:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I've checked out this case from Antec. Is there any point going for a more expensive case or is any old cheapy going to do? This case has quite a few extra features that set it apart from the crowd..


Click for the review!

Update: Correct name is 660AMG.



10GHz's PC (not 10GHz PC :) ) (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 22-September-2002  18:14:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Just spotted a seriously tricked-out box from 10GHz in the PCDB. No, the name isn't a reflection of the speed of the PC, it's a 1.4GHz Athlon. Not sure if the overall effect appeals to me, but it certainly shows a lot of effort:


Click for the PCDB entry!



Sunday Afternoon News (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 22-September-2002  16:30:18 (GMT +10) - by Torment

There is an article over @ MSNBC.com about the possible answer to portable power needs, Fuel Cells. Which could be on the commercial market by 2004.

The inquirer reports that the new AMD Opteron won't reject unlicensed content in which a previous news article told us. This was concerning new content from Microsoft name Palladium. This hasn't been confirmed or denied from any AMD Media Release just from an AMD "Representative".

More from AMD, this time DigiTimes reports that the postponed launch of the K8-core processors (Hammer) is indeed due to problems with SOI technology and minor changes in processor design.

News.com reports that Microsoft has (planned) to release new wired and wireless networking products. More info can found over @ News.com.

Physicists in Europe have created atoms made of antimatter, or antiatoms, opening up the possibility of experiments in a realm once reserved for science fiction writers. Such experiments, theorists say, could test some of the basic tenets of modern physics and light the way to a deeper understanding of nature. More info on that over @ News.com.

Geek.com reports that Lindows has released version 2.0 of there operating system. New features include a new GUI, better support for printers and laptops and improved SMB features.

ZDNet has news that the White House has released a draft this week on a plan for cyberspace security. More can be found over @ ZDNet.com.

Scott over @ Club Overclocker has been on a tour of Crucial Technology, and as a result has written up an article about it. More info @ Cluboverclocker.com

Reviews:
Samsung SV1204H With 120 GB @ THG
EPoX 4G4A+ @ DDRZone.com
Shuttle AK37 GTR @ AMD3D.com
AOpen AX4G Pro P4 Mainboard @ Overclockercafe.com
Samsung 171P LCD @ Accelenation.com
Conext 900VA UPS @ Accelenation.com
TwinMOS 512mb PC3200 DDR400 @ Mikhailtech.com
Corsair 256MB XMS PC3200 DDR @ Viperlair.com



Saturday, erm, morning! (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 21-September-2002  03:25:31 (GMT +10) - by Darkness'

This post could be.. interesting.

There is a project rice page up. Basically building an overly bright case with lots of flashy things.

Digit-Life have their monthly Digest out. "Monthly drivers report and popular 3D accelerators comparison."

There is a comparison up of the "top 2 p4 heat sinks". Battle of the Titans: Alpha PAL8942 vs Swiftech MCX4000.

Apparently, there is a self booting linux CD that has support for the SB live and support for a Geforce 2 or better. Thanks HarBinger.

Got dirty windows? (No, not the OS...) How about some self cleaning glass?

Got some spare time? Check out some Lord Of the Rings lego!

Tron sends word that Ut2003 has gone gold.. meh.

Apparently, we tap more phones here in Australia than our US counterparts.. Seems a little weird. Thanks for those Invictus.

Nokia has come down hard on people tapping into wireless networks. "An advisory issued by the handset maker said anyone using bandwidth without the permission of the person paying for it was simply stealing." Ta xmats

There is a four way MX440 Shootout up here.

Looking to move house? How about this one. "For sale: In beautiful Adirondack Park, just 20 minutes from golf courses and ski areas, the ultimate in mountain luxury. Three bedrooms, three baths, septic system, spa and seven-storey underground missile silo designed to absorb the shock of a direct nuclear hit." Sounds cosy.

The Tech Zone plugged a p4 CPU into a liquid cool case and had a look at how far they could OC it.

Reviews :
KT333 Motherboard Roundup @ amdmb
Zalman 300W ZM300A-APF Quiet Power Supply from frostytech
CoolerMaster Aluminum MousePad @ burnout PC
Custom Chenming ATX-601AE @ OCIA
Philips 180MT 18-inch LCD Monitor/TV at the hardwarezone
Leadtek GeForce 4 Ti4600 from the guys at ipkonfig
Albatron GeForce4 Ti 4200 Turbo @ EXHardware
Thermalright SLK-800 heatsink from ocmodshop
Thermaltake HardCano Coolers for HDDs @ X-bit labs
Cold Cathode - Triple Color from tobitech



Got Links? (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 20-September-2002  23:45:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Our links page hasn't been updated in about 2 years now, and Gords has volunteered to do it. Send any links you think should be added to it, with a brief description to links@overclockers.com.au. Relevant stuff only please: Australian and international hardware, overclocking and technical news sites, useful downloads etc. Thanks!


Friday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 20-September-2002  22:15:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg

FREF says you should send your name to Mars.

Digicam28 noticed these silver coated motherboards from Albatron. Seems to be the same kinda thing as the gold coating on Asus GF4 Ti cards.. and again, it's difficult to say how much real-world effect it'll have. They do look pretty cool, tho.

thetron noticed this new copy-protection logo that might start popping up on CD's etc.

Gary_J spotted this guy who takes his model cars waaay too seriously.

Inside-Project have a showdown of no less than 10 thermal compounds including a few I've not heard of before. Long gone are the days of ducking down to Dick Smith or Tandy for a $3 tube of Unick or Radio Shack paste!

Win y'self a big blue case over on OCrCafe.

Dan wants to tell you how not to get electrocuted.. handy.

Kremlin has more pics of the virtual keyboard thing. We've linked that a few times now..

A few people have been really amused by a google search for "go to hell" turning up Microsoft.com as the first link. There's even a TheRegister article about it. Some people are too easily amused. :)

Reviews:
Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on OCTools.
Dr.Thermal Ti V86N socket cooler on BurnoutPC.
Albatron GF4 Ti4400 video card on GotApex.
Abit Siluro GF4 Ti4200 video card on PCHardware.ro.
Zalmans CNPS6000-CU socket cooler on DataFuse.
Zalman Silent Drive HDD enclosure on HWGuru.



Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 20-September-2002  11:57:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

GamingIn3D have an article about building a serious Intel box: they chose the GF4 Ti 4200 over the 9700. The Sis645DX chipset over the 648. The P4 over the Athlon. The LCD over the CRT, and no DDR400.

Dewey sent in this site of an "internet quantifier".. who tries to measure how much stuff will fit inside other stuff. We saw the $1M dollar one a few weeks ago but there's some other interesting stories on there.

Win y'self a motherboard or some cash by thinking up a slogan for EPoX, thanks David.

Some dissapointing news about AMD's Opteron. Apparently, the chip will be part of Microsoft's "Palladium" digital rights management scheme, which pretty much assumes every end-user is a criminal.. thanks Isengard.

If you have a Pioneer DVD writer, you should check out this info about a problem where the drive can damage itself and media.. there's a firmware fix for it.. thanks Submariner.

Scott spotted more info about SiS and VIA's decision to drop DDR400 support.

Marz sent in this quake in real life story. More info about this Australian technology here, thanks Mike.

Info on Intel's upcoming i845PE chipset on TheInq, thanks Willz75.

Reviews:
Lian Li PC6089 aluminium case on TweakTown.
Palit Daytona GF4 Ti4200 video card on IPKonfig.
Gainward Ultra/650 XP Ti4200 video card on DigitalDomination.
Vantec 520W PSU on TheTechZone.
SSI OS Swapper multiboot gadget on TechSeekers.



Thursday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 19-September-2002  13:32:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I built a P4 testbed here yesterday - it's time I had a more powerful machine than the AthlonXP 1600+'s I've been using for the last few months and a P4 setup will let me test other P4 bits. The CPU is a P4 2.0A 400MHz-FSB unit that runs at 533MHz-FSB (2.66GHz) at default voltage and, on an impulse, I picked up Gigabyte's SiS648 board - the GA-8SG667. When I bought this board there were no reviews of it around, but there's been a few SiS648 reviews and the chipset certainly looks promising. After I'd finished building the testbed I noticed AnandTech have posted a review of this motherboard yesterday. Shanib pointed out a couple of reviews of Asus's P4S8X, their SiS648 offering here and here. Still waiting for a more mature BIOS for the Gigabyte board, as the current one is woefully short of voltage and memory timing tweaks, but otherwise the board looks like a good 'un. Will I review it? Maybe.. one of the joys of buying hardware is that I don't have to review it. :)

AnandTech also have an article on the Quad Band Memory technology that was announced yesterday.

LetsGoDigital went to Cebit Bilisim.. a big PC show in Turkey.

thetron noticed that Channel 9 have dropped F1 coverage.. hopefully Channel 10 will pick it up, they seem to do a pretty good job of covering the bike racing (apart from giving the results away before the race in Sports Tonight, grr!)

Our RC5 Team has jumped up a spot, thanks Skit.

Firemoth noticed a few ways to spend a billion dollars.

AMDWorld compared the Intel P4 2.4GHz and AMD AthlonXP 2200+ CPU's. For more comparisons, in my XP2600+ review I compare it to a 2.53GHz P4.

DWPG have an article about socketA SMP on the (relatively) cheap.

Reviews:
LiteOn 48x12x48 CDRW drive on TheTechZone.
FIC VC19 P4 ddr motherboard on NeoSeeker.
Kingston 512MB SODIMM memory on MikhailTech.
Soyo P4X400 Platinum Edition P4 DDR motherboard on Active-Hardware.
Asus GF4 Ti4200 on Riva3D.
Xoxide X300 premodded case on SubZeroTech.
SmartDisk FireLite USB 20GB external HDD on Bjorn3D.
Arkua 848X-6B 1RU P4 heatsink on FrostyTech.
ActionTech 54Mbps wireless gear on PCStats.
CoolerMaster Blue Neon LED Fan on 8Balls.
DFI AD77 Infinity pre-release KT400-based socketA DDR motherboard on Hardware-TestDK.
Antec LED Fans on ModTown, our review here.
Nexland ISB Soho net-sharer on ViperLair.
UV Sensitive Case-Modding bits (fans, PSU cover, cables) on OCIA.
TweakMonster Glowing Light Tape on InsideProject.
Everglide Gaming Mat on BlargOC.
Plextor Plexwriter 40x12x30 on InsideProject.
Whitelite FX100 Flexible Keyboard on TechSeekers.
AOpen AX4B-533 P4 DDR motherboard with tube-based audio (video review) on 3DGameMan.



Thursday Morning News (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 19-September-2002  10:20:27 (GMT +10) - by Torment

There is an article on BBC.uk about P2P networks across the internet and how they account for over 60% of the internet traffic to some of the ISPs. The ISPs in general are unsure on how to proceed over this, some have even blocked access to specific P2P Networks. For more info and the full article over @ BBC.co.uk.

Zdnet Australia is reporting that AOL7 will kick off trials of its new broadband service in Australia soon. They have plans of offering it as a commercial service some time in 2003. From info @ Zdnet.

Digit-Life have a part 1 of their round up of Radeon 9000 cards. Among them is the new card from Tyan. Full Review here.

Betanews is reporting that Apple is set to release an update to Apples Mac OS X version 10.2, this will bring the release to 10.2.1. They report that this will improve such things as compatibility in multimedia devices. From info can be obtained over at BetaNews.

The Guru 3D has an interview with Creative's Brand Manager from Creative's card division. Among the interview they talk about the the new NV30 from Nvidia. More info @ Guru3d.com

Extremetech is reporting that Canesta Inc will demonstrate a working model of its "virtual keyboard" soon (yesterday). This new technology will see its way into the PDA market next year.. More info @ Extremetech.com. I will see if I can find some pictures of the "Virtual Keyboard" in use. If anyone finds some please let me know via e-mail.

A Picture of what it _may_ look like can be seen here Thanks to Tom for sending me the link, its from a Siemens Model but you get the general idea.

THG has a look at 16 Boards with Intel's 845G chipset. From info on that here.

Red Hat has made moves to simplify its desktops environments in their next release of Red Hat by making KDE and GNOME look and act similar at startup. More info @ Eweek.com.



Wednesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 18-September-2002  16:34:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Editondo spotted this article about static electricity, why it's bad for semiconductors, and how nanotechnology can help.

Tyan, more famous for their server-class motherboards, have turned their hand to making a Radeon 9000 Pro video card.. Tech-Report checked it out.

Tim spotted official word from WD that they will cut their HDD warranties to 1 year. The 8MB-cache units will still carry the 3 year warranty, however. This is coming into action on 1st October, which seems to be what the other manufacturers are doing also.

SNTGroup have an article on a HDD window mod.. with video of the completed project working, neato.

Dan has reviewed the RocketRaid 1520 SerialATA RAID controller. I've had one here for a couple of weeks now, but I can't see the point of reviewing it without any SerialATA drives being available on the market yet. Dan's review is more an article about SerialATA in general and an interesting one at that. Gords notes this thread in our forums which has a fair bit of SerialATA info also. Another review of this card here on ActiveHardware.

NeoSeeker have a MSI KT3 Ultra 2 vs Gigabyte 7VRXP KT333 motherboard shootout posted.

Congrats to Hoopstar, who got his HR Holden into Street Machine magazine.. details in this thread in our Motoring forum.

We've seen the coffee-machine PC before, but this article is all about how it was made.. interesting, thanks Gaz.

Simon spotted this online pictionary game.

Digit-Life have posted their coverage of the recent Intel Developer Forum conference.

From Oosh: More on the ABIT video card heat pipe cooler here. It is just a marketing bit but it does give a release date (23rd Sept) for the Siluro GF4 Ti4200 OTES (i guess OTES is the new coolers designation), interesting how they've obscured the photo in this one.

At the other end of the scale, Phalanx notes this passive cooler for a Ti4200 here, babelfished version here.. from Zalman (sigmacom). Bit hard to read, but the pictures say it all :)

MadMike posted some info in our forums here about the Star Wars Exhibition currently on at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Sudhian have an article about AMD's recent Barton and Hammer delays.

Kn'thrak points out this Blu-Ray DVD Player discussion and pics in our Audio Visual forum.

Reviews:
Yamaha CRW-F1 44x24x44 CDRW drive on Sudhian.
Akasa AK-821 heatsink on SystemCooling.
Epox 8K5A3+ KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on OCNZ.
OCSystems P4 System prebuilt overclocked PC on OCAddiction.
PNY Quadro 4 900XGL professional video card on HotHardware.
Antec Performance PLUS660AMG Mini Tower case on 3DVelocity.
Creative TravelSound portable audio on Hexus.
Belkin 7-port USB Hub on Hexus.
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro video card on LANAddict.
Transcend Radeon 7500 video card on OCOnline.
A4 Tech Wireless Optical 3DMouse on PC-Arena, our review here.
Cyber Cooler Neon Blue LED Fans on RipNet.
Corsair 512MB XMS3200 DDR SDRAM on OCModShop.
Vantec CCK-7025 P4 cooler on FrostyTech.
CoolerMaster Neon LED Fan on OCTools.
Bluetake POKE 2 bluetooth adapter on Tweakers.
Razer Boomslang 2000dpi mouse on EliteGuild.



PCDB passes 4000 entries! (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 18-September-2002  14:54:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg

We've passed 4000 entries in the PCDB! Looks like Arachnadactly-1's pictureless entry was the lucky number. I'm amazed at how huge the PC Database has become - thanks to MWP who created and maintains it. Check out the latest entries here, the most popular entries here and the ones voted best overall here.


Tuesday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 17-September-2002  23:56:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg

News of the day seems to be Quad Band Memory. It's not quite QDR, being based on exsting DDR modules. TheDDRZone naturally have put up their take on it.

Apparently selling Telstra would open us up to terrorist attack.. riiight.

PCReview have a review of the ECS i-Buddie 4 "desknote", a notebook that uses some PC components.

TheInq have more on 1 year warranties from HDD manufacturers, thanks Waratt.

Sin22 spotted this motherboard ranking page.. for AMD and Intel boards.

Digit-Life have their Hardware Digest for August posted.

Coupla things from eDust: This guy collects classic Macs and sets up demos at raves and things (in the US), and here's a video of Magic Sand (0.7 MB), that stuff to build sand castles under water :)

Digitimes claim SiS and VIA have both canned their plans for DDR400 chipsets.

From Shanib, some info on a heatpipe-based video card cooler.. here and here. Not English, but nice piccies.

Sin22 noticed you can win some wireless gear over on Linksys's site. Seems to be for Australian people only.

The latest ZZZ Online is out and about, with the usual robots, bombs and guns that scream like babies.

Reviews:
Vantec CCK-7025 copper P4 cooler (video review) on 3DGameMan.
CNPS5700D-Cu duckted P4 heatsink on FrostyTech.
Crucial 128MB MMC flash memory on Bit-Tech.
16MB EasyDisk USB storage on Bjorn3D.
Samsung Syncmaster 171P monitor on MonkeyReview.
Akasa 80mm LED Fans on FrostyTech.
AMD AthlonXP 2400+ socketA CPU on PCStats.. our 2600+ review here.
SiS Xabre400 video chipset on 3DVelocity.
Bynecc NC-500 aluminium notebook cooler on OCdCafe.
Xoxide X300 Super Mid-Tower case on IPKonfig.
ASUS V8420/Deluxe GeForce 4 Ti DVI 4200 video card on GotApex.
Aluminium Condor pre-modded case on LittleWhiteDog.
Antec Hard Drive Cooling System on OCrsClub.
Samsung 40x12x40x CDRW drive on X-OCM.
EPoX 8K5A2+ & 8K5A3+ socketA DDR motherboards on A1 Electronics.
Crucial PC2700 DDR SDRAM on ClubOC.



Tuesday Morning. (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 17-September-2002  03:11:31 (GMT +10) - by Darkness'

Probably the biggest news for today is that ADSL via RIM is planned for March. "Customers unable to get ADSL because their phone line is on a Telstra "RIM" should be able to get broadband by March 2003, if Telstra delivers on its own projections. According to confidential documents obtained by Whirlpool, specifications for the Mini-MUX technology were signed off in May this year, and customer trials will start in February 2003." Cheers Sniper1G.

Apparently there is a new worm that attacks Linux Web servers and has compromised more than 3,500 machines, creating a rogue peer-to-peer network that has been used to attack other computers with a flood of data. The worm seems to spreading fairly rapidly, according to security company Symantec, which early Friday detected about 2,000 infected computers that were actively attacking--a number that climbed to 3,500 late Friday. Thanks Wolfy.

SilentPCreview have taken a walk around at the Intel Developer Forum.

There is an interesting read on whether or not you should shutdown or 'hibernate' your PC at night. Thanks HarBinger

For all you people who suffer from the drug that is online gaming, check out the Guru's Game Awards of 2002. Not a bad read.

Amidst all the Ut2003 craziness there are another 2 tweak guides up here and here. I too thought it was to much like a sluggish Q3 type game.

On another note, if you find yourself low on numbers in a Battlefield 1942 game, try some of this stuff! We tried it the other day and it was a bundle of laughs. People sitting on detpaks is quite funny to watch! (Edit : Some weird link things happening here, if you see a large ad, click the link at the top of the page)

Greg sent this one in. It has been posted before, but it's still cool. The Australian public toilet map!

Just a follow up the RC cars link posted below, Peter sent in some more info. "If anyone is interested in the control line cars as linked to earlier, the Sydney Society of Model Engineers at Luddenham in Sydney has a track where I think they meet monthly. There's also a track at Toombul on Brisbane's north-side (no idea of who to contact though)."

Reviews :
Nexland ISB 800 Pro @ monster hardware
MSI GeForce4 Ti4600-VTD MS-8872 from hardware test
Zalman ZM80-HP at solidmercury
Spire 5F263 Cooler @ 8BallsHardware
Samsung SW-232 CDRW from futurelooks
Vantec's ThermoFlow @ DataFuse
Samsung 40X12X40 CDRW @ GideonTech
12' Multi-Color Cold Cathode Kit from mikhailtech
AMD Socket A - MCX-462+ from systemcooling
Cooler Master ATC-710 Case @ club OCer
Radeon 9700 Pro at Tech Report



Monday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 16-September-2002  13:37:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Happy Birthday to Wolfy, OCAU Admin and event organiser etc.. hopefully feeling better today than he was yesterday. :)

AllTechBox want to tell you how to solder.

Amazing remote-controlled car antics in these videos, thanks erpio. That "tether car" thing is unbelievable!

Futurelooks have a guide to the psychology of eBay. OCAU is part of eBay's affiliate program, so if you do want to join eBay, click here first and we'll get a few shekels.

Computerbase have an article about UT2003 Benchmarks.. in German, but the graphs are readable. OCPrices have reviewed the demo. I'll probably get flamed by the zealots for saying this, but it just looks/feels like Q3 to me.

More HDD woes.. Fujitsu are recalling 300,000 HDD's thanks Christopher.. and it's not just restricted to the Japanese market as initially thought, thanks Daniel.

Raige noticed a little rant about WinXP Media Centre Edition and its anti-DVD-piracy feature.

GeekShelter have a guide to setting up RAID.. check out our own RAID articles here and here.

Reviews:
Thermalright SK6 Plus cooler on SystemCooling.
Iwill DP400 i860-based dual Xeon board with RDRAM on 2CPU.
Corsair PC2700 DDR SDRAM on ViperLair.
Zalman CNPS-6500A&B heatsinks+fans on G3D.
After Dark Icemat mousing surface on OCIA.
XtremeDDR DDR400 SDRAM on ClubOC.
Samsung SP8004H 80G and SP4002H 40G HDD's on TechWareLabs.
Shuttle XPC Athlon mini barebones system on OCPrices.
Coolermaster LED Fan on BurnOutPC.
GamePC PGP X2 dual-athlon pre-built workstation on Tech-Report.



Sunday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 15-September-2002  23:36:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Happy Birthday to Mitch AKA ReaX, who's been involved with AusGamers and OCAU for years now.

Strange things going on with the Hard Disk Drive manufacturers at the moment. Maxtor and WD have both chopped their 3 year warranties down to 1 year. With IBM exiting the market (selling their HDD business to Hitachi) and Seagate strongly rumoured to be chopping their warranty to 1 year also, it certainly doesn't seem like the manufacturers have much confidence in the market (or the longevity of their products, at any rate.)

Bern notes the Linux version of the UT2003 Demo is now available also.. get it here from AusGamers.

Levis are marketing special radiation-proof jeans to protect your, err, "nadgers" from mobile phone emissions.. thanks goofydave.

Interesting Forum Threads:
BX board and HDD size limitations in Newbie Lounge.
Hard Disk Problem - It wont show in Windows in Troubleshooting Help.
SATA, Would it make much difference? in Hardware and Overclocking.
High End Headphone Review: Etymotic ER-4P in Audio Visual.

Reviews:
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card on TweakTown.
AOpen GF4 Ti4200 video card on OCClubCanada.
Albatron GF4 MX440 video card on TweakNews.
MSI KT3 Ultra KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on Tech-PC.
Crystalfontz LCD Screen and Bracket Kit on LANAddict.
Akasa Acoustic Matting on Bit-Tech.
AOpen AX4B-533 P4 DDR motherboard (with Tube Audio) on Hardware-TestDK.



Queensland 500 - V8 Racing Pics (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 15-September-2002  22:28:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Sabretooth was at the QLD 500 race today, a round of the V8 Supercar Championship. He took quite a few pictures, so to save his poor homedir from being hammered I've mirrored them on our server. There's 10 pages, use the navigation thingy at the top-right of the page for more pics.


Click for the pictures!

Update: TuNeS has some more pics and info on his site.



A terabyte in 24 hours? Almost. (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 15-September-2002  22:19:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Our hosts AusGamers had a huge day yesterday. According to our router statistics, the AusGamers Network (which includes OCAU) pushed out over 940 gigabytes of data in the last 24 hours - almost a terabyte of data. Mostly of course due to their mirror of the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo, a 102MB file downloaded over 24,000 times. Big thanks to COMindico.com.au for providing the network infrastructure which brings AusGamers and OCAU to you guys. FYI, OCAU sends out about 500GB every month - this month we will probably serve over 7 million pages. :)


LED Fan PC's (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 15-September-2002  16:19:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg

MrChilled and Gibbon have updated their PCDB entries and both show off the Antec LED Fans to good effect:

   
Click each pic for the PCDB entry!



Sunday Afternoon News (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 15-September-2002  16:11:27 (GMT +10) - by Torment

Looks like Intel will be increasing the performance of notebooks when they release a new 2.2Ghz Pentium 4-M chip on Monday, more info can be found @ Zdnet News.

If you already haven't already heard, Blizzard Entertainment has dropped and banned over 14,000 players from their latest game Warcraft III. More info @ Gamespot. Should have had a perm ban IMO.....

From the THG site there is a review of Creative Labs new Mp3 player called MuVo it also dubs as a USB Diskette. Full review @ Tomshardware

SystemCooling.com have a review of what they claim is the TOP 3 or "World's Best" P4 coolers. This is after they already reviewed and gone through 30 of them. Full Review @ SystemCooling.com

Intel in a press release back a couple of days have Double the current AGP Bus bandwidth with AGP 8x. They will be released on new boards by Mid-2003 when Intel will be releasing there next major Chipsets. Full Press Release over @ Intel.com

The Techreport have an interesting article about Matrox and the incompatibility of the i860 chipset and their Parhelia, more can be found over @ the Techreport.

Also with Intel, DigiTimes is reporting that there won't be another Intel Chipset until Mid-2003 following another price cut in December. While Intel has already 10 chipsets on the market, the new-generation Springdale-P and Springdale-G won't be available until then.

CNN.com have a peice of the new Grand Theft Auto game called "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City more info on that over @ CNN.com. After readin the article I was blown away from seeing that with the PC and Playstation 2 sales of the game reached a staggering 7 million copies sold..... - Thanks to Trog over at Ausgamers for pointing that out .....

Sony are to Unveil a Head-Mounted Display for the Playstation Two with two 0.44 inch LCD panels, providing image equivalent to a 42-inch screen at several meters distance. More over @ PCWorld and Digit-life. A picture of the unit can be found at the Digit-life URL by scrolling down a little.



UT2003 @ GameArena (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 14-September-2002  16:56:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Telstra users looking for some Unreal Tournament 2003 action should grab the latest GameArena client and jump onto one of their 8 servers.

Details here.



Saturday Afternoon #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 14-September-2002  15:36:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Ambush sends word of new VIA 4-in-1 drivers, version 4.43. There's an AusGamers mirror here.

TheTechZone have a guide to cleaning up your case.

Another Apple Switch Ad Parody, thanks Aek.. the original page seems to be too busy, so try one of the mirrors listed at the bottom of the page. The originals are here in case you're confused. They're videos, so dialuppers probably shouldn't bother..

There's a new version of CrystalControl, for people with LCD's in their PC's.

TweakTown have a comparison of 533MHz-FSB P4 motherboard chipsets.

A1 Electronics compared 2 waterblocks.

I'm not even going to pretend to understand this.. He-Man, skeletons and YMCA.. in chinese. Thanks Xizor.. I think. :)

Nutty says China now has google again. Huzzah.

From LeroyPutz: I went looking for model rocket videos after participating in the rocketry forum thread. I found this site - it is AWESOME. I downloaded all 300meg of the footage and have watched them repeatedly since. For the bandwidth challenged there is the option of lower res downloads. Camera shots include onboard, from the ground and from the launch rail. The biggest rocket is 19ft long with a diameter of 11.5". To quote the site "Athos II flew to just under 20000 ft. and was recovered under three 14 ft. parachutes." For those on dialup bust out GetRight and schedule those downloads.

There's some concern over how Microsoft are proposing to handle a recently-discovered security flaw in MS Word, thanks thetron.

BBSpot have an article about the MS / Intel Future of computing.. funny, but some strong language if that bothers you. Thanks Ferror.

Legolas says: If you haven't already heard, those players that participarted in the online RPG "Toontown", the beta is back. But only those that registered last time can play as it is a closed beta.

Reviews:
GlobalWin CAK4-86 cooler on ExtremeOC.
Asus A7V8X KT400-based socketA DDR motherboard on AMD3D.
Chyang Fun P4 CF-S868 mini barebones PC on DansData.
Noritake x64 graphic VFD on Bit-Tech.
Vantec Stealth 520W PSU (video review) on 3DGameMan.
Belkin UPS on HWGN.
Akasa ShinEtsu Thermal Interface Pads on Tech-PC.
CoolerMaster Neon LED Fan on OCWarehouse.
Alpha Ramsinks / GPU Cooler on MikhailTech.



Saturday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 14-September-2002  12:52:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg

From Ben, about babelfish: Just recommending that the google toolbar for IE has an option in it where you just click pageinfo > translate to english. saves having to cut and paste the link and choose the language. I'd been meaning to install that for a while, seeing as I visit Google several times a day already. Had it for a couple of days now, very handy - even has the ability to restrict the search to the site you're currently on (good for sites that don't have their own search feature.)

The ArsMasters explain what all the BIOS trickery really means.

Blizzard have shown that they won't tolerate cheaters.. by banning 14,000 players of Warcraft III for 2 weeks and resetting their scores. If only there was some way to do this in CounterStrike, a game that to my mind has been ruined by hordes of wall-hacking, headshot-scripting kiddies. Battlefield 1942 is officially available today and promises to be the next big hit in online gaming (the demo, with only a single level available, is apparently the 2nd-most-popular online FPS at the moment.) Rumours already abound of BF1942 cheats available.. let's hope they don't destroy that game also.

Speaking of games, the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo is now available on AusGamers. Their server is being hammered at the moment, so it might be a bit slow.

Boky spotted info on Amiga OS 4.

We've seen this before, but it's worth a re-visit.. Chucka sent in the defraggle your motherdisk how-to guide. :)

From Chris: Thought I'd mention that OSX has this ability right in the operating system - no printing to "PDF printers" or whatever, just slam the "Save as PDF" button and you've got a PDF! Note that OSX uses PDF internally for everything from icons to graphics, so hence it's a pretty trivial function for it to export a print job as PDF. From what I've seen of OSX it's something I'd like to spend more time playing with.. it's a shame you need to buy a Mac to be able to use it, and Mac are (from the perspective of a PC freak) expensive and proprietary. Hopefully some good news from the OSX for x86 project soon..

Sudhian have an article titled "Overclocking - Kicking the Habit". Hmm, he makes some good points.. (turns off webserver)

Invictus sent word of tough new anti-hacker legislation in victoria. "Malicious computer hacking or the distribution of computer viruses is not child's play," Mr Hulls said.

Here's an amusing THG Parody, in light of their recent 3.6GHz P4 coverage.. thanks Trev.

Reviews:
ECS L41BAE i845E-based P4 DDR motherboard on Active-Hardware.
CoolerMaster ATC-710 tower case on OCIA.



Saturday Morning Bits (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 14-September-2002  07:30:14 (GMT +10) - by Torment

In recent news there have been talks of a porn company on offer to buy Napster. More info can be found over at News.com. IMO, after reading the article I don't think this will take very well with childrens parents, I could see some more lawsuits around the corner .....

The usual from [H]ard|OCP in a recent article on Why they Hate apple, from info can be found here.

The Tech-Report reports (sorry) that ATI are about to release their new All-In-Wonder card(s) on Monday. More info can be found over at the Tech-Report

Silicon Strategies have an article about Rambus 1,066-MHz. It looks like Intel won't be ditching RDRAM as soon as we thought (or ever).

The Inquirer reports that Intel will be introducing the "Gallatin" Chips (Xeons) a little early than expected (by year end). So we can also expect the 3Ghz and above Xeons just after the desktop release of the P4s @ 3Ghz.

Also at the inquirer AMD are changing (slightly) the PR Rating on their chips to pave the way for there new Barton chips, more over on that here.

HardwareLuxx has a 31 (or 32) chips round up over here. Which includes the new P4 2.8Ghz. It's in another language but the graphs speak for themselves

As reports earlier in the week (IDF Day 1), Tomshardware has a round up on all three days of Intel Developer Forum which can be found here in day 1, day 2 and day 3

And from Zdnet a Microsoft researcher has found the first instance of a Smiley Face used in an e-mail (in 1982), more info over at Zdnet.com.



Friday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 13-September-2002  13:11:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

From eDust: Some clever (and some weird) japanese inventions for the home, like a camera inside a fridge that sends pics to your phone.

LiamC notes that AMD's Hammer and Barton chips have been delayed by a quarter.

There are new ATI Catalyst drivers for Radeon cards, thanks munkiboy.

MikhailTech have an article about painting a logitech keyboard.

From erpio: whilst on the topic of making pdf's a cool feature i found in lycoris, that linux build that was the talk of the town about a week ago, was a pdf printer driver tats about as free as you can get. Personally i thought lycoris was a bit too pudgy but that little feature impressed my socks off. If you would bother installing an os just to print to pdf then go here.

Sudhian have an article titled The P4 in Hindsight.

Eliteguild have a comparison of value CPU's.

Skit noticed that Internet Explorer 6 SP1 is now out. You can grab it from AusGamers here.

TheDDRZone have a rant about AMD, concerned with the "paper launch" of their latest CPU's.

SystemCooling check out what they think are the top 3 P4 coolers around.

More on the "second and third moons" thing: Cruithne (second moon) seems to be a "temporary moon", as it'll only hang around for a few thousand years (10 to 50 ish). More info here, here, here and here, thanks Draffa. Turns out the new third moon is probably just space junk after all, thanks Bill.

Reviews:
Matrox Parhelia-512 video chipset/card on HWZ.
Abit Siluro GF4 Ti4600 video card on 3DVelocity.
Canton LE Series Home Theater Speakers on DesignTechnica.
Intel Celeron 1.8GHz CPU on PCStats.
Melvine HDD VU kit (flashy case thing) on MadShrimps.
Plextor External USB 2.0 PlexWriter 40/12/40U on ExplosiveLabs.
Nexland's ISB SOHO net sharer on DreddNews.
TwinMOS DDR400 SDRAM on TheNakedReview.
DiskOnKey 128MB USB storage on ViperLair.
Yamaha CRW-F1 CDRW drive with image-burning function on Bjorn3D.
Chieftech Dragon Fulltower case on RipNet.
Verax P11T Silent Heatsink on FrostyTech.
OCSystems Enhanced GF4 Ti4200 video card on OCAddiction.
IOSS RD3XP Gladiator Super Shielded ATA133 Cables on TweakTown.
Lian Li PC-6099B case on Guru3D.



Sydney Venue? (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 13-September-2002  02:22:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Wolfy's still looking for ideas for an OCAU Gathering:

What would be ideal is an indoor/outdoor venue, where we can have our own catering, that can hold up to 200 people, that is close to public transport. A location in or close to Parramatta would be good.

Something like a hall, sports ground pavilion or similar would be OK. I've tried a number of clubs (RSL, Bowls etc) but they either don't open till late on Sundays, are booked out, don't have anything suitable, or don't like us to use our own catering.


If you have a suggestion, put it in this thread, thanks!



Thursday Evening (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 12-September-2002  18:07:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Japanese mad lad holicho has surged to the #1 position in MadOnion's 3DMark2001SE benchmark.. with a whopping 21,504 3DMarks. You may be tempted to call shenanigans (especially due to the misreported CPU FSB of 9729 MHz) but he's been doing crazy stuff like dry-ice and liquid nitrogen cooling for ages so I'm tempted to believe it.. here is a picture of the rig used for this latest record. Note the dry-ice cooling of both the P4 CPU and R9700 GPU!

The first private moon landing has been approved. The cost to the public to send something to the lunar surface is $2,500 (£1,600) a gram.

Dave sends word of perhaps Earth's third moon having been discovered. Third?! Earth's second one is called Cruithne. It was discovered in 1986 and it takes a convoluted horseshoe path around our planet as it is tossed about by the Earth's and the Moon's gravity. We've had 2 moons for 16 years?! Nobody tells me anything. :)

Hmm, Java_Boy sent in this ArsForum thread which is vaguely amusing.. except it seems to just be a collection of pictures from around the net tied together by someone into a single story. That "big fan blowing at PC on desk" pic has been around for ages (I think it's even in the PCDB somewhere). A bit of harmless fun perhaps, but those images are still being loaded from various servers around the net and as that story has now been slashdotted.. well, some people who have no idea what's happened could be up for some hefty data charges.

Happy because you got a Radeon 9700, but sad because you have texture weirdness and other problems in DirectX games? ATI have a patch that might cheer you up.

Intel drive another nail into RAMBUS's coffin by confirming (again) they're dropping support for that memory technology in future chipsets. It's a shame, RAMBUS just seemed to be getting interesting again. Intel also announced their 2.6GHz and 2.8GHz P4 Xeon server-class CPU's.

MonkeyReview checked out Antec's trilight LED fans.. and so did we.

Bern says that Nvidia have realeased a new version of their integrated linux driver.

Nigel spotted that the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo should be out very soon. Only a week or so until the version of Battlefield 1942 is released too, apparently.. mmm, tanks.

Canon accidentally let slip that they have an 11.1 million pixel digicam due for release soon, thanks Locker.

A little more info about the WinXP Security Flaw that is, as noted earlier, fixed by SP1.. thanks Bill.

Reviews:
Shatterweb Custom Applique for case windows on OCClub.
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card on LinuxAtHome.
Griffin Powermate Knob controller on Subzerotech.
eBlitz Shuttle MP3 player on Bjorn3D.. won their Bjorn3d Stinker Award. : )
3DForce Xabre400Q 128MB video card (video review) on 3DGameman.
Thermagic Cooling System on ClubOC.



Video Card Cooling (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 12-September-2002  13:09:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

elvis_a_presley's PCDB entry has pics and info on two separate videocard-cooling mods..


Click for the PCDB entry!



Thursday Morning #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 12-September-2002  02:35:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A few people sent word that new versions of Trillian are now available. For your $25, you get a copy of the software, full technical support via an e-mail ticketing system and a year's worth of free upgrades. Not ready to pay for Trillian? Trillian 0.74 has also just been released, and will remain FREE! We are committed to maintaining and supporting a free version of our software for those unable to support our efforts. You can get the latest free version here from AusGamers.

This site says that 2GHz Celerons will arrive next week. It's in German, so perhaps stick this fish in your ear.

From mpot: In today's news, you linked to something which allows you to create 5 PDFs for free. FreePDF is a utility that allows you to create PDF documents on Windows for free. It's a little messy to install (maybe I'll put together a how-to in the forums...), but works in the same way as the expensive Adobe PDF Writer - you can print to a virtual PDF printer driver from any application. In my experience, FreePDF generally creates more accurate and smaller PDFs than Adobe's PDF Writer.

In response to our earlier DIY Subwoofer Enclosure article, pH@tTm@N has made a followup article in the forums, featuring a 15" subwoofer.. some interesting discussion in that thread.

Techwatch have an article all about Serial ATA.

Missed this one earlier in the month, but AnandTech have an article comparing some AthlonMP 2200+ servers.. dual-CPU rackmount boxes. Sounds like just the thing to replace our ageing workhorse Thor. :)

Mike spotted a cool BF1942-themed case in an Argentinean forum.

A little more info about the Intel Developer Forum here, thanks neXus.

GameSmack have a little article checking out the new SP1 for WinXP.

DWPG have made something out of aluminium.. apparently a heatpipe or something, but with 4 banners and only 1 picture per page I couldn't be bothered clicking all the way through to find out what the story was.

Bravo sent word of this watercooling project involving a huge heater core and (on the 2nd page) an interesting approach to waterblock production, apparently based on some info from our own Extreme Cooling forum.

JimX spotted a bizarre, but oddly compelling little flash thingo.

Reviews:
Coolink H2T heatsink on FrostyTech.
Connect3D Radeon 9000 and 9000 Pro video cards on TechSeekers.
Xoxide X300 Super Mid Tower case on GeekShelter.
Danger Den Watercooling Kit on OCClub.
Cooler Master Neon LED Fan on ModFactor.
MSI 648 Max P4 DDR motherboard on AMD3D.
MSI 845E Max2-BLR P3 DDR motherboard on A1 Electronics.
FIC VC19 i845E-based P4 DDR motherboard on TechSpot.
Lian-Li PC6099 case on EliteHW.
CyberDrive CW088D 48x16x48 CDRW drive on CDRInfo.



Thursday Morn. (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 12-September-2002  02:21:09 (GMT +10) - by Darkness'

Just a quickie before I head for the bed. :)

Looks like the RIAA and the MPAA are out for blood... again.

Intel are set to offer some new security features. "In the latest attempt to protect digital information from viruses and hackers, Intel Corp. will integrate advanced security features into its microprocessors and other hardware."

Apparently "Hewlett-Packard researchers have created memory circuits 10 times more dense than today's silicon chips under a process that could be faster and cheaper than current technology".

Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones is coming to Imax! *woo!* .. In America! *aww*

What's this? Warner Bros. are letting people download their movies?! "Films such as "Harry Potter" can be downloaded for a fee of $3.99 for 24-hour viewing. Older films from the Warner Bros. home video library can be downloaded for $2.99 for the same period." Geeze, That's just screaming for piracy isn't it?

Apple are setting the macs to only boot into OS X from 2003. "Apple® today announced that starting in January 2003, all new Mac® models will only boot into Mac® OS X as the start-up operating system, though they will retain the ability to run most Mac OS 9 applications through Apple’s bundled “Classic” software." Cheers for those Eluial. Yes, you should get out more :)

Debugging tools have now been annouced for 64bit processors. "Compuware Corporation (Nasdaq: CPWR) today announced the general availability of DevPartner64, a debugging and automated error-detection solution for the Intel® Itanium® processor family."

John sent in a large list of bad movies. Some funny memory provoking ones there.

Reviews :
ABIT SR7-8X SiS648 Motherboard on PCStats
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP (KT400) on AMDWorld.
Swiftech MCW462/478-UT cooler ExtremeOC.
Shuttle XPC SS51G on Digit-Life.



Wednesday Evening - Short Bits (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 11-September-2002  20:04:49 (GMT +10) - by Torment

Day 1 (of 3) of the Intel Developers Forum has kicked off with Intel showcasing a demo of a Pentium 4 running @ 4.7Ghz, Rambus shows off the new SiS R658, which is a new Pentium 4 chipset that features Rambus. More can be found at THG here.

Also from intel is that their next generation of chips will have antipriacy features on them to protect against or block such things as viruses and hackers...... full article here.

New Scientist have an article about fitting 250 terabits of data per square inch. Makes you wonder don't it :)

From a follow up on the Greek Law passed that banned all video games, BBC.co.uk have an article about two internet cafes winning against the ruling....... more here.

Nvidia have a new DVD player on the market, take a look here. Makes you wonder why they don't release it free for all those Nvidia cards we have bought from them..... maybe the new cards will have them as an extra



Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 11-September-2002  02:24:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg

New 320GB HDD's from Maxtor. The mind boggles.. thanks Mike.

Yaleman spotted this interesting digital photo frame project, which involves ripping a Mac into bits..

LanAddict have an article about setting up your computing environment.

Apparently WinXP has a security problem.. but it's fixed by SP1, thanks Surakshan. Info on SP1 slightly further down this page.

OCIA compared the Thermaltake Volcano 9, Thermalright AX-7 and Sibak AC-02-625T coolers.

eDust says: You can convert documents and web pages to PDF format for free (limit of 5) at this Adobe site.

ExplosiveLabs have a roundup of 5 KT333 motherboards, for socketA CPU's and DDR memory.

OCrCafe compared 4 sticks of high-end DDR memory, from Corsair and XtremeDDR.

Hexus have a "technology overview" of the new Vapochill Premium cooling system.

SolidMercury.com appears to be a new Australian hardware site - they have a review of the Macase Champion Blue fulltower case. No less than 8 pages of insightful comments like "First off an introduction to the company Macase most of you probably hadn't heard of them before and neither had I but it appears that they are a Sydney base Manufacturer/Supplier." This surprised me.. nearly as much, no doubt, as it surprised the 600 employees of that Taiwan-based manufacturer.

Interesting Forum Threads:
Have A Question? Follow These Steps in Site Discussion.
Coffee Machines in Geek Food.
Rockets in Other Toys.
nVidia Chipset Specs in Video Cards.
NSW commences LAMS trial! in Motoring.

Reviews:
CoolerMaster ATC-600 desktop case on OCWarehouse.
Radeon 9700 Pro video card review on Sudhian.
Antec Tri-Light LED Fan on Bit-Tech, our review here.
Gigabyte Maya Pro II Radeon 9700 Pro video card on Hardwarezone.
Custom Chenming fulltower case on ClubOC.
Evergreen Thermagic watercooling system on MonkeyReview.
Everglide Optical Mousepads on TweakTown.
AMD AthlonXP 2200+ CPU on EXHardware.. our 2600+ review here.
PSXAmp Remote Control on MikhailTech.
IOGear Impulse external CDRW on JSIHW.
FIC VC19 P4 DDR motherboard (video review) on 3DGameMan.
SuperDigiBin mobile storage on GotApex.



OCAU Weekend? (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 10-September-2002  22:01:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Wolfy is trying to get an idea of numbers, for who'd be interested in an "OCAU Weekend" consisting of several activities in Sydney. If you'd be interested, indicate your interest (and preferences) in this thread in the forums. Thanks!


Archive Updated (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 10-September-2002  15:37:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

It's been a busy couple of weeks for new content! I've updated our Review and Article Archive with some recent stuff. Check them out if you missed them the first time:The archive really is huge now and has become quite unwieldy. Feel free to email me any suggestions for a better way to organise it. :)


Windows XP SP1 Officially Released (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 10-September-2002  12:44:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg

After much delay and controversy, SP1 is finally released. Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) provides the latest security and reliability updates to the Windows XP family of operating systems. Windows XP SP1 is designed to ensure Windows XP platform compatibility with newly released software and hardware, and includes updates that resolve issues discovered by customers or by Microsoft's internal testing team.

Microsoft's official page for it is here. You can download it here from AusGamers. CNN have an article about it, TheTechZone have a preview article about it and TheDDRZone have an article about slipstreaming it into an XP install.

Thanks to everyone who sent in links and info!



Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 10-September-2002  02:01:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg

TomsHardware have a roundup of KT400-based socketA DDR motherboards. I'm still befuddled by the near-total lack of fanfare regarding the KT400 launch. No big announcement, no rush of day-1 reviews.. I don't even think VIA sent us a press release about it. Bizarre. Maybe they're waiting for 333MHz-FSB socketA CPU's, before making a re-launch of the chipset.

Quite a big day for THG, as they also have a sneak preview of a 3.6GHz P4. Not sure what the deal is there, will have to go have a read m'self, thanks Jimmy.

Interesting little mini ethernet mp3 player from Rebootau.

From Eluial: Remember the Google mirror? Well, it bypasses the Chinese block on Google - read more here. Aussies are winning awards for their work in the Open Source world.. more specifically, Andrew Tridgell for his work on Samba.

HotHardware updated their GF4 Ti4200 video card shootout with 2 new cards.

GamingIn3D have an article titled SiS Xabre 400: The Real Story. They have tested the chipset in a range of games and have quite a few incompatabilities to report.

Peter spotted a real-life baseball team naming themselves after a team from the Simpsons, of all things.. that article smacks almost of satire, hmm.

OCIA interviewed Kyle from [H]ard|OCP.

More silly offtopic stuff.. a judge teaches a youth that drugs really are bad (mm'kay).. by kicking his butt at basketball.

McGyverrr sent in this (seemingly incomplete) press release on Hexus about EPoX's nForce2 motherboard.

From Iroquois: Thermaltake Volcano 9 review, Trillian 1.0 review, new storage technology "iSCSI" moves closer. 18 tips for better WinXP gaming (a bit old, but worth a look) and the universe may collapse when it is twice it's current age. Opera 7 sneak peek, some details of the upcoming Playstation 3 and Warcraft 3 patch 1.02 is available.

Josh sent in this article about mobile phones causing hypnosis.. or some similar symptoms. Certainly explains some of the drivers on Sydney's roads..

Now we're just getting silly: Pilgrims are flocking to a house in Bombay where they believe that Elephant headed Hindu Lord Ganesha has appeared in the shape of a potato.. thanks Pacifist.

From lordCONAN: The US Sci-Fi network has, in a seemingly rash decision, decided not to pick up the Australian produced Farscape for a 5th season. This has come as a great shock to many, and a series of Help Save Farscape pages have started to pop-up all over the net, including here. It has links to a free web based fax service, so it's possible for us Aussies to get our views across. Support needs to be quick, as the final day of shooting is scheduled tomorrow, and the set is due to be torn down within the week.

PCStats have a wireless networking article posted.

On SourceMagazine: ATI’s new Mobility Radeon 9000 preview and a short interview with three of AMD’s guru’s about their push into the enterprise market.

Joshua spotted more info on the Greek gaming lunacy.

Reviews:
Samsung ML-1440 Laser Printer on TweakNews.
RICOH MP5125A DVD+RW drive on HWZ.
Samsung SW-240 and SM-322 CDRW and CDRW/DVD drives on Tech-Report.
Triplex Millennium Silver GF4 Ti4200 video card on RadiativeNZ.
AKASA Silver Mountsain II cooler on PC-Arena.
IR Remote Control on EliteGuild.
Lian Li PC-6085T aluminium case on Tweakers.
Thermaltake Volcano 9 cooler on ViperLair.
64MB SanDisk Cruzer expandable USB storage on Bjorn3D.



OCAU vs Atomic @ Matchrix (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 10-September-2002  00:28:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There was a clan war between OCAU and Atomic last Friday evening. Whitey Ford from Team OCAU has a match report for us:

The first clash of the titans took place at Matchrix in Sydney's north west suburb of Baulkham Hills. Overclockers Australia versus Atomic magazine. 10 players from both sides where pitted against each other with a whole host of onlookers. Team OCAU took out the Counterstrike comp 4-0 with a late comeback by Atomic not being enough to win a single map. Kyocer@~* was our biggest thug with the more kills to his name than any other.

In the second matchup, the two teams ran head-on in a game of Medal Of Honor: Alied Assault, first to 100 frags. OCAU won the first game by only 5 kills. In the second game, Atomic came back and gained an early lead of over 25 kills. Unfortunately due to their huge number of frags, Atomic claimed overall victory in MOH.

The night was declared a tie and the trophy was awarded to both sides. Special mentions go out to Matchrix for hosting the event on a Friday night, usually their biggest night. Many thanks to GameFeeder.NET for providing prizes and entertainment on the night and an extra special mention for Agg who provided each member of Team OCAU with team shirts and a special bonus tin of Penguin mints each to keep us fresh and fragging.
Thanks also to Take2 Interactive and AMD who sponsored the night.

Well done, guys! Here's some pictures from the night:

   

More info and pics in this thread in our forums and supposedly here in Atomic's, but it appears to be down at the moment.



Monday Midday (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 9-September-2002  11:58:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg

LoneWolf spotted this amazing shockwave quake3 game. It's more of a showoff than a game (with nothing to shoot) but, wow, I had no idea Shockwave was capable of that kind of thing.

Cool light show on Blinkenlights, thanks FREF.

RipNet have an article about insuring your PC.

Eman noticed that ACTGN, a LAN group in Canberra, have had to cancel their future lans due to public liability concerns. We haven't closed our doors permanently - we've just put our events on hold until we secure a PLI policy.

TechImo have an article about getting wireless with your coffee.

Bjorn3D want to advise you on LAN party etiquette.

Reviews:
Abit IT7-MAX2 P4 DDR motherboard on Hexus.
Benwin LTS Speakers on CyberKenpo.
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP KT400-based socketA DDR motherboard on TweakTown.
Zalman video cooler on ModTheBox, thanks Aftahours.
Antec Trilite Fans on AusPCWorld, our review here.
Gigabyte MAYA II R9700Pro 128MB video card on Digit-Life.
Acer TravelMate 621XC Notebook on Digit-Life.
VoyeurMods Case on OCAddiction.
Epox 8K5A2+ KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on MikhailTech.
Tomy Bit Char-G mini RC car on CaseJunkiez.
TwinMOS PC3200 DDR400 SDRAM on PCStats.
FrontX Multimedia Ports port relocator on GeekShelter, our review here.
Trust wireless optical desktop on PCReview.
Mitsumi Black Multimedia keyboard on MikhailTech.
Dual-voltage 6-port Baybus on SystemCooling.



Nokia 5510 Mobile Phone + More (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 9-September-2002  03:10:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg

FreeFrag sent in a review of the Nokia 5510 Mobile Phone. This is not your normal mobile phone, sporting a fairly decent keyboard, MP3 playing, FM Radio and it even works as a 64MB USB storage device.


Click for the review!



Billion BIPAC-711CE ADSL Modem / Router (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 8-September-2002  03:09:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I've reviewed an interesting little black box from a company called Billion. It's an ADSL modem that bundles in some impressive features for the price..


Click for the review!



Sunday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 8-September-2002  01:43:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The Pentagon can now lay claim to the fastest AND cutest computer, according to BBSpot.. thanks crispy.

We've seen this before but it's useful.. Lujan sent in the page of bad sounds your IBM HDD might make, and what they mean.

CounterSmurf has some cool PC's.. a HiFi PC and a Slab PC!

From PsyKo Billy: Possibly old news but EarthViewer (also available from nvidia.com) is really really cool. I'm looking at downtown Tokyo right now. :-)

TuNeS took some pics at the Auto Salon in Brisbane this weekend. Mmmm.. shiny.

From HoldenAngel: I found this and thought that with all the people who play Halo and like The Matrix, they'd enjoy this. It's a video.. possibly large.

Apparently the Xbox Live may target hackers, thanks erpio.

From eluial: Some guys are makng a mod of the original Quake source to include stencil shadows and per pixel lights. From the site: "Stencil shadows allow for realistic shadow effects on every object in the game world. Per pixel lighting allows you to have fine surface details correctly lit. These are essentially the same algorithms as used by the new Doom game." Aw baby!

Hurfi sent in a page about New.Net.. an alternate namespace provider, the page reckons there's some things to be careful of.

Rumour has it that Maxtor's warranty may shrink to only 1 year soon.

From VIAArena: A new competition has begun.. the prize being a complete VapoChill case/kit, a VIA P4PB 400 Mainboard and 512MB ofCorsair XMS3200 RAM. The competition URL is here. The URL of the article which entrants will have to read to answer the competition questions is here.

Ted81 sent word of an online funeral for someone who died in real life.

Security woes continue for Microsoft.. from Eluial: The senior vice president in charge of Microsoft's Windows development team, Brian Valentine, is not proud with Windows' security: "I'm not proud,... we really haven't done everything we could to protect our customers ... Our products just aren't engineered for security." Microsoft have no idea as to why their products are so vulnerable. Their latest problem is applicable to all Windows' from 98 onwards. More info here, from Zate.

Coupla interesting things on Wired.. Palm having to fork over refunds for disgruntled Palm purchasers and this Australian solar-power tower, if built, will be twice as tall as the current tallest man-made structure on Earth. Sounds like a load of hot air to me!

Reviews:
Vantec Fans on SystemCooling.
Swiftech MCX4000 P4 cooler on AusPCWorld.
Everglide and Lian-Li Mousmats on DansData.
Belkin Universal UPS 800VA on LanAddict.
ECS AG400T8-D64 Xabre video card on AusPCWorld.
MSI K7T266Pro-R KT266-based socketA DDR motherboard on MikhailTech.
Abit GF4 Ti4600 video card (video review) on 3DGameMan.
Thermaltake Crystal Orb chipset cooler on Modtown.
Epox 8K5A2+ P4 DDR motherboard with Bluetooth on PCStats.
Albatron GF4 Ti4400 video card on HWConnect.
Plextor PlexCombo 20/10/40-12A combo drive on BlargOC.



BF1942 v1.1 Patch Error - FIX! (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 7-September-2002  12:43:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The BF1942 v1.1 Multiplayer Demo patch has been a source of frustration for some. There's reports all over the net of people receiving this error when trying to install it:


TheTron has uncovered a solution, which worked for me:

This requires some registry editing, so be sure you know how to use regedit.exe. Look up the regkey called:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942 Multiplayer Demo

It should contain some values. One of these values is the reason that the patch won't install, so look up the following:

ONLYSERVER REG_DWORD 0x00000001

doubleclick this value, and change the '1' to a '0'.


The usual disclaimers about mangling your registry maybe doing horrible things to your PC apply.. but this fix worked on my PC.



Saturday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 7-September-2002  03:59:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Looks like the NewsMonkeys were all out chasing bananas yesterday..

Speaking of which, a site calling themselves MonkeyReview have an article comparing steel and aluminium fulltowers.

Bjorn3D checked out an enhanced version of Defender of the Crown.. wow, I remember playing that on my Amiga. :)

HardOCP have pic+info on a 333MHz Athlon.. here, thanks Mr Chilled, who also spotted that Maxtor have a few new HDD's on the way.

Denis sends word of new nForce drivers, v1.13.

PCStats checked out a few keyboards.. internet style ones.

Digit-Life compared a range of professional 3d accelerators in the Solid Edge 10 modelling tool.

TheTechZone are showing off the PC's their guests get to use.

MikhailTech are modding a PSU from Seasonic to have a Blue LED Fan in it. Our review of the LED fans is here.

Interesting thing here about using an optical scanner to rip records to digital format, thanks Goth.

NeoSeeker have a WinXP Tweaking guide.

RipNet have an article about kernel patching to support recent hardware under Linux.

From Brian, in response to our recent DIY Subwoofer Enclosure article.. I am including a link to the Home Theater Forum, specifically their page of links to members' subwoofer projects. In addition, I'm including the link to my web pages with my subwoofers on them. I haven't updated it in a while, I suppose I should fix that...

Funny auction here on eBay.. check out the pictures, looks like someone was linking pictures without permission.. thanks Manik.

Jack spotted this NewScientist (seem to be linking them a lot lately) article about musical debugging of programs.

OCOnline want to tell you how to build a LAN box.

Reviews:
Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM on AusPCWorld.
DangerDen Maze 3 watercooling kit on DWPG.
Kiky Joy PS Playstation controller to PC adapter on AllTechBox.
Asus P4S8X SiS648-based P4 DDR motherboard on AMD3D.
Matrox Parhelia video chipset/card on DesignTechnica.
Matrox Parhelia-512 video chipset/card on HardwareMania.
Dynatron Crossflow Blower on OCClubCanada.
Abit IT7 Max i845E-based P4 DDR motherboard on OCNZ.
Compex Wireless Access Point on SubZeroTech.
CoolerMaster Aerodynamic Cables on ModFactor.
Thermaltake Copper GF4 Cooler on OCTools.
Radeon 9700Pro video card on Chillblast.
HighPoint RocketRaid 404 IDE RAID controller on TechWareLabs.
TwinMOS PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM on PCStats.
Samsung SM-332 32x/10x/40x-12X combo drive on HWExtreme.
MSI GF4 Ti4200 VIVO video card on HardCoreWare.
MSI GF4 Ti4600 Champion Edition video card on PCStats.
IOSS RD7-CA Cooling After PC turbo timer on Tweakers.
Zalman CNPS6500B-Cu Pentium 4 heatsink on FrostyTech.



Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 5-September-2002  21:18:04 (GMT +10) - by Lujan

Big Post tonight, whole lot of emails.

Actually.. not as many as I thought. Py7h0n, update your antivirus please. 22 emails alone from you. All deleted by Norton Antivirus.

For those of you who love everything Microsoft, a few people have sent word that Windows Media Player 9 is now in beta release. Although Ozeight points out that it could be weeks at best before we see the full version, as its still using a lot of 8.1 codecs.

AMDs Barton core is due for a October release according to this article sent in by Mr Chilled.

Marz sends word that most companies have finally agreed on a format for DVD version 2.

Considering replacing your conventional fans with magnetic tip ones? ipkonfig Recommends you dont, because it now seems that an industry-wide recall from resellers is occurring because the fan can spin up uncontrollably, and draw enough power to burn up its lead wires. Some suppliers worldwide have returned some or all of the product.

Halo your game? Yavin sent in the preview of Halo 2.

Mikhailtech have a guide to buying a rootin, tootin, dvd playing, 100fps Laptop.

More War Flying on ArsTechnica, Thanks Caesar. But don't get too excited, Alex sent this in.

Skynet is one step closer according to this article on NewScientist. A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver.

Zed wanted you to know that Mame is now available on the Playstation 2.

Google are apparently working with China to get back online there.

Reviews:
Dynatron's 80mm Case Fan on OverclockersClubCanada.
Nexland ISB-Pro800 broadband router on AMDPower.
Thermaltake Volcano 9 on monkeyreview.
Lex Small Form PC on Sudhian.
Swiftech MCX-462+ on SystemCooling.
Antec HDD cooleron OCaddiction.
OCZ™s Goliath 2 SEon OCWarehouse.
GlobalWIN TAK 58 on TobiTech.
X Arcade Controller on 3dgameman.
Power Cooler PCH610T cooler on BurnoutPC.
MSI KT4 Ultra on AMD3D.
Soltek SL-85MIR-L on Tweakers.com.au.
Zalman CNPS6500B-AlCu on FrostyTech.



BF1942 Demo v1.1 Patch (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 5-September-2002  12:21:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Battlefield1942 addicts, the long-rumoured v1.1 patch for the multiplayer demo is now available. Grab it from AusGamers here - 12.7MB.


Even More Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 5-September-2002  03:07:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A few people sent in pics of (what appears to be) a 4x Opteron motherboard. They were hosted on various home-directories out there and Geocities, so I've made local mirrors.. here and here. They're both large pics (>250kb) but it's certainly interesting! At first glance from the huge size and bizarre layout it seems to be a photoshopped fake image (like our earlier 8xSlotA mobo or even the Voodoo5-9000 video card).. but if it is, it's a pretty good one. Exciting stuff if it's real, aiming AMD squarely at the enterprise market. I bet the price tag will be pretty scary, though. The concensus here seems to be that it's fake. Time will tell, I guess.

Decker pointed out this WinXP Media Centre Edition.. WinXP for entertainment PC's.. interesting.

More Folding@Home linkage for us in The Bulletin, with forum-goer Tori Lee's writings appearing in their letters section.. thanks badg3r for pointing it out, and Tori for sending it in!

Brembo noticed this NSW Scanners website.. that lets you stream Police communications etc.

From Lando: Verbatim has unveiled the Digital Vinyl CD-R disc that will give baby boomers a blast from the past, and younger generations a glimpse at yesterday's popular vinyl record format. The new discs combine the look of a 45-rpm record with today's CD production technologies, but the look is as old fashioned as the discs get. Info here and here.

Cool secret-hiding screen from Alex.

Could OS X be coming to a PC near you..? Thanks MiGiSHu.

From Vindaloo: I found this new alpha version of ICQ, called "ICQ Lite". It's only a 1.7 meg download, and is a cut-down version of the latest ICQ release. However, you can still message people, upload and download contact lists, and use the handy ICQ SMS functions. It's all I use ICQ for, and the Lite version is quite slick. I recommend that you try it if you're pining for the early days of ICQ.

Seems there's no Google for China.. for their own good, of course, thanks McDaddy.

Timewasters: Rollercoaster and Monkey Jumping from fxr91, Conversion Kings from Mitchell.

Reviews:
MSI 648 MAX-L SIS648-based P4 DDR motherboard on PCStats.
Albatron GF4MX440 video card on GotApex.
AM-2000 Crystal Blue LED Optical Mouse on MikhailTech.
Verax GmbH P14 Silent Heatsink on FrostyTech.
GEil PC3200 DDR SDRAM on OCdCafe.
Copper Fan Grills on Tweakers.
Jaton 3DForce Xabre400Q video card on TweakersAsylum.
Albatron 4200P GF4 Ti4200 video card on LanAddict.
Samsung SM-332 32x/10x/40x-12x combo DVD/CDRW drive on TheTechZone.



Thursday Morn. (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 5-September-2002  00:38:56 (GMT +10) - by Darkness'

Great, Back from my nice '300mb-over-the-3-gig-cap' effort and now my HDD is making horrid noises. Let's do this quickly then.

With all the hype of the new Detonator drivers, there is another comparison up here. Takes them through the paces and has a look at how they compare. They gave me a extra 600 3Dmarks, too.

Are you one of those paranoid people who is scared to power down your PC incase the CPU gets to hot with no cooling?.. No? Well have a look at this review of a Power Down Protector anyways.

The X-box linux group have managed to get SuSe on an X-box.

Liquid Ninjas(?) have a short detailed "How To" article on slipstreaming the new Windows XP SP1 into Windows XP and creating a new bootable XP CD. A few of them going around at the moment.

RatPad may have finally met its match. Enter the Compad Speed-Pad.

Wokket sends word our DF team is now #10 in the world. Not bad for team of 30 members. :)

In a case modding mood? There is a Case Wire Cleanup Guide and a CD-ROM LED Mod Guide.

Sniper1G sends word of a page comparing 133 and 166FSB's. "Oh, and you need to be able to read german". But, there are a few pics on there :)

Reviews :
Pioneer DVR-A04 R/RW CD-R/RW
Akasa Silver Mountain 2Q
Soyo Dragon Ultra KT333 Motherboard
The PC6085T Case
Dynatron's Socket A Cooler
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro video card
Seagate Barracuda ATA IV RAID
CoolerMaster HSC-V62 AMD Cooler
iRiver SlimX MP3 player
Samsung Tantus LTM1775W 17 inch TV/Monitor
Lost in space LCD
Sunbeam Tech's multi-colored CCFL kit
Sound Activated Cold Cathode
Globalwin CDK38 Copper Heatsink
Abit AT7 Max



From the PCDB.. (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 5-September-2002  00:33:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A couple of interesting new ones. Sandm's little mini-PC is very cool, while Shado4's seems unremarkable at first.. until you read the caption: A terabyte in one convenient box.

   
Click each image for the PCDB entry!



Early Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 5-September-2002  00:15:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A HEAP of people sent word that WinXP SP1 is now out, after much speculation and delay. However, everyone sent this link, which returns a 404 (file not found) error. So, perhaps Microsoft have taken it down again. I guess WinXP users should just keep an eye on Microsoft's Windows XP page to see what they have to say about it. No mention of a service pack at the moment.

TweakTown are undeterred, though.. they've released today a WinXP SP1 Tips and Tweaks Guide. Since Windows XP Service Pack 1 leaked its way onto the Internet people have been asking me regularly how to update when they are promoted during installation that they are running an illegal copy of Windows. This guide will explain how to get around this obstacle – Let’s face it, these users are already running an illegal copy of Windows - can further harm really be done? I'm sure there's an army of lawyers considering that very question as we speak.

From EvolutionR, who works for a large distributor: This is to silence all those people exited about Intel, the 3GHz P4 is not going to be released for quite a while still probably another few months and there is a good chance that it will require a new motherboard standard. The reason there are prices floating around is because Intel gave Disit's prices of the 3 G when the Intel price drop occured. Some customers just decided to advertise that they have the stock when all the only have is a rough price. Pretty much what I thought had happened. So please, stop telling me about the pricing you're seeing around the traps.. unless you actually buy a 3.06GHz P4 and get it in your hand. :)

I don't know if this is a setup or not, but JimX sent in this suspiciously fun item on Amazon. Check out the reader reviews.. funny stuff.

Paul Keating has slammed 4WD's in cities, thanks Andrew. On a similar note, JimX spotted this interesting article that questions the value of speed-limit enforcement.

Gaz noticed the wooden PC in an earlier news post and says: BAH! Check out my one :) The only thing I have not done is stain it, as I'm not sure of the best color. MY PSU also died so I could not take shots of the DVD, power and HDD leds in action. More pics to come I guess.

Now this is clever.. how to use memory on your video card as swap space under Linux.. thanks Tim.

Reviews:
ECS L4IBAE P4 DDR motherboard on AusPCWorld.
Terratec USB Pro webcam on AllTechBox.
Radeon 9700 Pro reference video card on Guru3D.
Chaintech Apogee 9EJL1 i845E-based P4 DDR motherboard on TweakTown.
MSI KT3 Ultra2-BR Bluetooth KT333-based socketA DDR motherboard on PCStats.



Antec LED Fans! (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 4-September-2002  22:55:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I've checked out these ready-made LED fans from Antec. Case-modding goodies that actually have a useful purpose - what will they think of next? :)




Wednesday Early Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 4-September-2002  13:51:58 (GMT +10) - by CoRDS

Monkey Review has an article about finding the right home for your computer. Mine lives next to my recliner chair :)

Dan's ever-expanding Cooler review has been growing again this time adding 2 new Socket A coolers and 2 new P4 coolers

More info on Intel's recent price cuts on News.com.. Intel has halved the list price of some of its Pentium 4 chips. Thanks ReaX.

X-bit labs has posted a comparison of three ATA/133 IDE RAID controllers. The tests of contemporary ATA/133 IDE RAID controllers showed that RAID arrays built of the contemporary IDE HDDs can ensure not only larger storage capacity, but also faster operation.

More info on the illegal gaming insanity in Greece at the moment, thanks YYK - News.com have the goods. The Greek government has banned all electronic games across the country, including those that run on home computers, on Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones. Thousands of tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games.

A new BF1942 movie is doing the rounds. Our pals over at Ausgamers have the file ready for you do download.

Reviews:
Hercules 3DProphet 8500 At Bjorn3d
Everglide optical mousepads at i am not a geek
Geil PC3200 DDR400 at Active-Hardware
MSI KT4 Ultra at Bench house
Codegen server case at Mikhail tech
Xoxide Crystal BLue Led Fan at Burnout Pc
irock 500 digital player at Geek Shelter
Blue Cold cathode at System Cooling
Albatron GF4MX440 at AMD power
KoolPCMods Etched window kit at SubZero Tech
Koolance PC2-C at The Tech Zone
fic ATi Radeon 9000 Pro Tweakers Asylum
MSI 648 MAX-L Motherboard at PC Stats
Lian Li's PC-6087, PC-6089, PC-6099 at Dan's Data
Lian Li LCD thermometers at Dan's Data



Tuesday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 3-September-2002  20:53:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Apparently Australia isn't getting an Intel fab, despite a visit from Intel CEO Craig Barrett and talks with the Federal Govt. TheInq says it's because we don't spend enough on IT and because of our slow adoption of broadband, but suggests he was just sniffing around anyway. While he was in Sydney, he had some stuff to say about the IT industry in general.

Some good news from RedStar, with regards the insurance craziness going on in Australia and particularly NSW at the moment. Both the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald have stories indicating the Govt may be intervening to control the spiralling insurance premiums for public liability.

Several sections of Acts of Gord have been updated. Be warned, if you haven't seen this site before, it's a serious time-sucker. :)

Sabretooth spotted that McDonalds might be looking into the internet cafe business.

Bit-Tech checked out the ECTS Show in London.

HWZ say they have the IWill XP333-R working with DDR400 memory.

Speculator spotted a couple of Cray Supercomputers on Sold. Please note: Do not ask for any technical information. We do not know how to turn them on. What you see is what you get.

On TheInq: An AMD roadmap confirms an October 7th launch, and discusses two Bartons at 2800+ and 3000+.

This french site has some watercooling and other silly stuff happening.

From Josh: A New Zealand company has unveiled software that can turn 802.11b wireless LANs, with a reach of about 100 feet, into an always-on wireless mesh that can blanket hundreds of square kilomters.

Malakai found this wooden PC.

Tee sent in this search engine that does strange things to your brain.

Some timewasting games: Pinkslip Panic (some strong language) thanks "me", Flashteroids thanks crag_v and WebRaced (rego required), thanks Whitey Ford.

Reviews:
Iomega 48x24x48x Internal CD-RW on HWZ.
Antec HDD Cooling System on AntecAsylum.
Dick Smith Electronics CX-5190 case on RadiativeNZ.
Powerleap PL-iP3/T Slot1 to Socket370 adapter (or Slocket/Slotket) on AusPCWorld.

Interesting Forum Threads:
Tag Mclaren, Rotel & B&W.. LONG READ! in Audio Visual.
A Challenge in Team OCAU.
Quick Guide: Maximising all IE Windows in General Software.
Big Sticky List (mostly Tualatin info) in Intel Hardware.



Tuesday Afternoon News (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 3-September-2002  14:45:07 (GMT +10) - by Torment

A little old, but Netscape has released a new browser ..... more details here. Also to note in the article is that Microsoft now has a 96 percent control of the market up from 87 perent last year. I guess its better late than never on netscapes part :)

Tom's Hardware Guide has an insteresting look (3 Part Guide) at storage solutions with IDE and RAID with a bit of history to boot, more on that here, Worth a look if your a novice or just interested in RAID performance coupled with IDE Hard drives.

Extreme Overclocking have a first look at PC3500 DDR 433 RAM, which looks quite promising, you can take a look by going here.

According to Digitimes Intel is reportedly planning to send out samples of its new-generation, Springdale-core chipsets to motherboard clients this month for product design purposes.

Also on Tomshardware and a little late on the uptake (by me) is a column article by Tom himself on the whole Nvidia vs ATI and AMD vs SYSmark issue. More can be found here. Well worth a read IMHO.

Silcon.com have a TOP 10 of Hoax virus warnings and spam scams which can be found over @ there website. I also remember reading an article recently that accounted spam as 36 percent of all e-mail traffic, makes you wonder sometimes....

It also looks like the 333Mhz FSB for the Athlon will be announced "officially" on October 7th. More info here. Makes you wonder why they are waiting for so long......

And for all you 845E Intel based Mobo Fans there is a 6 board round up at Digit Life to have a look at. More info here



Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 3-September-2002  03:35:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg

From Graham: Well, maybe not news but worth while none the less. There is a fund called IT Fund for Kids (Can read about it
here.) It's been around for a couple of years but only just heard about it. The money goes to the Starlight Foundation and Giant Steps. Just thought that considering many of us here are in the IT industry some might like to donate. Now I have done my part for humanity :)

LanAddict have an article about modifying Klipsch Promedia speakers to accept standard speaker wire.. apparently the fiddly stock connections are annoying.

MikhailTech have an editorial about FPS: Fact & Fiction.. how the brain, eyes and monitor work together.

TweakersAsylum updated their DetonatorXP Comparison to include the new 40.41 drivers.

zzzzz says: Nero 5.5.9.9 is out. As usual, you can use the download file to upgrade your version, or as a demo version if you do not currently own Nero. On a similar note, Worlock says: Roxio Easy CD Creator Platinum Update v5.3.1 is available. This web update is designed to update English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese versions of Easy CD Creator 5.xx Platinum to version 5.3.1. It can be installed in All Windows Operating Systems. It has some fixes and adds new drive support, including support for DVD -R/RW and DVD +R/RW. This update will install Windows XP specific drivers and make the necessary registry entries to allow Easy CD Creator to operate correctly in Windows XP.

RipNet have a PC upgrade project article posted.

From PostModern: News from the OCAU Kitchens: The August bake-off has ended with many many excellent coronary-inducing recipes posted. The winners with 5 stars each were egarrad's "Bart's Chocolate Mousse Cake" here and HoldenAngel's "Wicked Chocolate Cake" here. September's Cook-off is "Five Minute Meals" here. Pop into the Geek Food Forum through the month for quick and delish recipe ideas. Post your favourite quicky and you too could end up with news page fame :)

Reviews:
Antec LED Fans and Power Supplies on G3D.
Seasonic PSU's on MikhailTech.
Corsair XMS3200 DDR SDRAM on 3DExtreme.
Jaton 3DForce Xabre400-64Q video card on 3DExtreme.
Black Cold Cathode Light & UV Sensitive Vantec Rounded IDE Cables on 3DExtreme.
EPoX 8K5A3+ socketA DDR motherboard on Hardware-TestDK.
Abit IT7 Max P4 DDR motherboard on OCOnline.
Azzo Cold Cathode case lights on GideonTech.
Sharka Braided Copper Cables on EliteHW.
MSI KT4 ULTRA-BSR KT400-based socketA DDR motherboard on AMDWorld.
VIA KT400 socketA DDR chipset on A1-Electronics.



Secret Agent Suitcase! (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 2-September-2002  23:36:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a very cool briefcase PC from fluid2150. Note the trick LCD display under the handle!


Click for the PCDB entry!

Oh, and we broke the forum record again.. 528 users browsing simultaneously. :) Thanks sabretooth!



New forums theme! (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 2-September-2002  23:19:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg

As many of our forum members have already noticed, a new theme is available on the forums which sabretooth has been working on for a little while now. It has been styled to fit in with the design of the main site body and has received quite a lot of positive feedback from forum members who have noticed its silent appearance in their forum options.

Wondering what the fuss is about? Want to give the new theme a bit of a workout? If you're already a registered member of the forums, click the link below to view the new theme! Want to make the new theme your default theme for viewing the forums? In the forums, click the User CP button. Click Edit Options, scroll down to the bottom and select "sabretooth - OCAU" from the Style Set drop-down list box.

The new theme will more than likely become the default for new users at some stage, but the option to use the default VBulletin theme will still be available if you don't like the new styling.

Click here to enter the new-look forums!

Update: If you for some reason don't like the new theme, click here.



DIY Subwoofer! (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 2-September-2002  19:06:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Quite a day for Do-It-Yourself articles! El_bambino has sent in a guide to making a subwoofer. Much cheaper than buying a professionally-built unit and if you do it right, the sound quality can be comparable..


Click for the article!



Monday Midday (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 2-September-2002  12:33:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Bad weekend to be a cooling fan - the PSU fan in my GF's PC and the videocard fan in my main machine died within hours of each other. Easy fixed. Still looking at alternate email clients.. I've been using FoxMail for a week but have decided it's not for me. Pegasus looks good, but it complains about my printer all the time and I can't seem to type into the body of any messages.. :) I'll keep playing with it.

People keep emailing in links to online stores and scans of ads in newspapers etc, where a mysterious 3.06GHz P4 is available - or at least, where pricing is listed for it. Given that the 2.8GHz parts have only just arrived here, I really think that's just wishful thinking or somewhat dubious marketing by the vendors. I imagine a distributor has put it on their pricelist and the vendors are just listing the pricing without actually having any stock or checking availability. Unless of course, someone wants to send me a 3.06GHz non-overclocked P4 chip to review, in which case I'll send you back a picture of me printing out this newspost and eating it. :)

Rogue spotted a new BOFH episode on TheReg.

A few people sent this in.. just the thing for ducking down to the shops with Old Ben.. thanks happygilmore.

Wokket, infamous for sending in oodles of oddball links for our news page, has a rant about Java on his own page. He invites feedback in this thread.

There's some BETA VIA 4-in-1 drivers out.. version 4.33, thanks Martin. UPDATE: These are really old, so don't install them. No idea why they were sent in as news.

Accelenation checked out the Electronics & Computer Trade Show that was on recently.

Digit-Life compared the P4 2.8GHz and AthlonXP 2600+, current CPU kings. Our XP2600+ review is here, of course.

A bit more info about video games being banned in greece, thanks MiGiSHu. Lauhead spotted more info and stuff to do about it here on OC.com.

Funny personal schedule site from leperMessiah.

There's a LAN in Sydney in a couple of weeks here.

From Spingo: The Powerhouse Museum will present one of the most popular exhibitions of all time, Star Wars: The Magic of Myth. As the Powerhouse is the only venue in Australia, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see original artwork, props, models and characters used to create the Star Wars trilogy - Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) as well as models, costumes and drawings from Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace (1999). The exhibition, which has toured in the USA until now, will display more objects than any other venue, including more than 25 objects from Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones (2002), the latest film in the Star Wars saga. The Magic of Myth explores the archetypal themes and motifs from classical mythology and world culture that are contained within the trilogy. Exhibit runs from September 18 to February 2. Cost is $18 for adults, $9 for children, $45 for family and $8 for seniors. Info here.

Reviews:
Abit IT7 P4 DDR motherboard on TheDDRZone.
TDK veloCD 48x16x48 CD-RW on TweakTown.
CoolerMaster Aluminium Mousepad on AusPCWorld.

Interesting Forum Threads:
Move over Windows, here comes Lycoris in Alternate Operating Systems.
Lets play with Radeon8500 BIOSes! in Video Cards.
WindowsXP Flaw? in Windows Operating Systems.
Tips on cost of living in The Pub.
The effects of detonation (pinging) in Motoring.
Dirtbike Action - Thumper Nats (beware, pics) in Motoring.



DIY LED Fan Mod #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 2-September-2002  00:07:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Sabretooth also sent in a DIY LED Fan Mod article. His is a little more detailed and uses a transparent-bladed fan, for a good effect:


Click for the full article!



DIY LED Fan Mod (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 2-September-2002  00:01:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Brenton sent in a guide to making your own LED Fans. Handy if you want one in a size that's not available pre-made, or you just like doing things yourself:


Click for the full article!



Sunday Morning News (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 1-September-2002  11:00:14 (GMT +10) - by CoRDS

Some quick news and reviews.

First up VR-Zone has done up a shootout on the new GlobalWin CAK4 cooper series coolers like the CAK4-88T, CAK4-76T, CAK4-86 compared with the CAK-II38 and CAK-II58 coolers.

Interesting Read over at Computer World about "War flying" Here's a snip.
"Hobbyist wireless LAN sniffers are now taking their war-driving skills to the air, detecting hundreds of WLAN access points during short trips in private planes cruising at altitudes between 1,500 and 2,500 feet. A Perth, Australia-based "war flier" recently managed to pick up e-mails and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) conversations from an altitude of 1,500 feet."

According to this Microsoft Press release Windows XP SP 1 should be available on September 9.

Now go and say Happy fathers day to your dad or something.

Reviews:
Epox 8K5A3+ Motherboard At 3dGameMan
Epox 4BEAV motherboard at Techware Labs
Zalman CNPS6000-Cu Socket A & Socket 370 cooler at Active Hardware
Hercules XPS 510 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System at Tweak News
Sharka Corp Dual Voltage BayBus at SubZero Tech
GeIL PC3500 DDR Memory at OCAddiction
Fujitsu Siemens Pocket LOOX at Digit life
Nikao Cube Tower at Monkey review
Sante Fe Midtower at eliteHW
Albatron PX845E Pro II at Tweak Town




Advertisement:

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

Hosted by Micron21!
Advertisement:

Recent Content


Mini Server Rack
Gashapon



SpaceX Starlink



T-Force Cardea
Zero Z330 NVMe SSD



Team Group T-Force
Vulcan G SSD



Synology DS720+ NAS



Raspberry Pi 4
Model B 8GB



Retro Extreme!