November 2000

Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 30-November-2000  09:05:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg I just made a Networking and Internet Forum, seems to be a lot of interest in that kinda stuff lately. Someone think of a better forum description. :) A few people sent in this link to an overclocked P4 on a Japanese site. Overclocked to 1.8GHz.. notice he's using one of those Kendon coolers, too. HighSpeedPC have a guide to using Arctic Silver Epoxy, not quite as simple as normal paste apparently. An artle about Superconductors on ZZZ Online. MrPCPro reviewed a cheap but not so nasty Afreey DVD drive.. Quick CPU cooler comparo on this German site. Mmmm, duct tape. Is this the first time we've seen duct tape being used for ducting? Results not too good but some interesting ideas there.. Wednesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 30-November-2000  00:29:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg Funny story here, about some funny money. KnightRider sent word of a non-funny article about a levy on CD burners being added in Germany, to recompense artists who's material is illegally copied on these drives. This is lunacy. Serious water-cooling project on extremecooling.org, the new website from one of the most experienced watercoolers in the scene, Orthello from NZ. GeekThings.net pointed out that there's now Japanese -> English translation software. Someone should stick this on the web somewhere so we can all read Akiba. :) A few interesting things on AnandTech - motherboards in 2001 preview part 1 and part 2.. info on the first DDR chipset to be available, from ALI - also a look at their new DDR chipset the MAGiK 1. Thanks alchemy! Buyer's Guides: Ultimate AMD Gaming Rig on TE. Recommended Systems on ARS-Technica. Good Deals on FiringSquad. Reviews: Iwill DDR motherboard on OCWB. HP 932C printer on TE. Intel Celeron 733 CPU on OCOnline. Mouse Bungee also on OCOnline. Wednesday Midday (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 29-November-2000  12:37:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg Lombers pointed out this amazing eBay auction, some guy selling his console and game collection. The auction is closed now and at $70,000 USD the reserve was not met.. errrr.. Wow, a GFD review, I thought they were long dead. :) EXHardware reviewed the Innovatek GFD. If you're after more GFD reviews check our 7-way comparo here. Systemlogic reviewed the fUnc mousing surface. There's a petition trying to get Paramount to release Star Trek TV Episodes in digital form. OzEight sent it in but didn't think I'd post it.. he obviously isn't aware of the full extent of my Trekkiness. :) Chaintech Desperado GF2MX video card on TechZone. VooDoo pointed out an interesting 19-inch monitor comparison and review page. Wed Morn - Kinda bored (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 29-November-2000  12:30:57 (GMT +10) - by YYK Ello... Lucky escape for a guy who had to land his plane on the main highway of Silicon Valley Aussie Cops in NSW are getting off too lightly when caught for spreading porn. David Beckham gets a tattoo of his wife’s name, Victoria, but spells it wrong. Why am I not surprised? You run the risk of having a heart attack if you have too much sex. Is this the way to go? Soon you will be able to trek across the vast continent of Australia and find the nearest dunny (toilet) with your GPS In MS’ brief to the appeals court, they call Judge Jackson big bad names. Only in Japan… Japanese men are dating virtual girlfriends… and having a stressful time at it! Tuesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 28-November-2000  21:51:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg Nearly 100 entries added to the PCDB in the last 24 hours. PCStats have info on a bunch of interesting prototypes that appeared at Comdex.. heaps of new goodies. Tweak3D have a guide to tweaking airflow through your case. More funny stuff on BBSpot as usual. Thanks Ben. Shane points out that on Win98Central they have an interesting "BX North Bridge Tune" program which apparently makes a big memory speed difference to boards using that chipset. BX has always been famously strong in the memory speed area anyway.. I don't have a BX system here (except my GF's - but I've learned my lesson about using her machine as a testbed before!) ..so I can't test it. Shane says it worked for him. Probably worth a shot then! Pull up a comfy chair, hook up your caffeine drip and wade through this What's DDR All About? article on HardOCP. Lots of info, probably worth bookmarking so you can digest it in brain-sized peices. Small lan party in Sydney, 10th Dec. Info here. HardOCP also have Part 1 of their Case Modding 101 posted. xbit-labs have a hefty review of the first commercial DDR motherboard, the Iwill KA266-R for SocketA chips. Morjo points out some Grand Tourismo 3 Movies.. yeah, it's a PS2 game, but it's apparently the best-looking racing game ever. Reviews: Sanyo CRD-BP4/1400P (16/10/40) CD drive on CDRInfo. Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy on ClubOC. Not the Paste you have read a bazillion reviews of already. Intel Pentium 200MHz on GU. No, I'm not kidding. :) Creative GeForce2 Ultra card on TE. Taisol Heatsinks on AwareMag. Antec SX830 Full Tower case on NeoSeeker. MSI K7T Pro 2 SocketA mobo on PCHardware. Can cC0 CeleronII's do SMP? (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 28-November-2000  21:10:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg BF's been doing some sleuthing around to see if this is true. You might want to read this thread and this one for a little background info. If anyone has any futher info or proof, please join the thread here in the SMP and Clustering Forum. Could be big news if it turns out to be true.. Tuesday Morning #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 28-November-2000  10:59:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg Wow, check out the paintjob and funky glow on this machine! Mike points out this case which seems to be made from mostly copper.. Some cooler overkill for SECC1 pr SEPP cpu's on Max3D. Netkills reviewed the CompuNurse Thermal Probe. Kinda ranty review of the Abit KT7-RAID on SystemLogic. TechnoYard checked out a funky new palmpilot.. PCHardware reviewed the MSI K7T Pro 2 SocketA KT133 mobo. Early Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 28-November-2000  00:46:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg Lord Djna says Just want to say that there's a Computer Fair on at Parramatta, this Saturday, at the townhall near Westfield / the train station. Aetherone sends word of an Adelaide LAN this weekend.. Crusher says The Newcastle Gamers League (NGL) are holding their next event on the 9-10th December 2000 at the Lambton High School MPC, Newcastle. Info here. Anand reviewed the Celeron2 766MHz.. 11.5x multiplier, yeeghs! Tech-Report have info on Transmeta-based devices from Comdex. TweakHardware have a guide to modifying on-board Promise controllers for RAID. Interesting stuff, A7V is overed, among others. TheTechZone has a Christmas Gift Guide for the geek in your life. Damn, I'm the geek in my life. Hehe, an overclocker solution to an overheating cablemodem powersupply in the forums, funny stuff.. thanks alchemy. In the RojakPot there's a Win2K Tips & Tweaks Guide. It's all happening in Japan as usual. DDR SDRAM, P4 and CyrixIII's all on sale now. Heh, space invader case window is cool. How-to guide on that site.. Monday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 28-November-2000  00:00:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg The PC Database was officially opened today - the beta is over, things seem to be going well in there. 330+ entries already. I have announced it to the other sites so we should see how our server copes with a bit of database load over the next few days. I predict it won't even notice it, like everything else I throw at it. :) Speaking of the PCDB, some cool new entries recently - Xaagone's fully rack-mounted LAN-day system here, a very tidy gloss black tower with window and neon from Puffmosis here and Ogier's ducted BP6 system here. Old-timers will remember Ogier's system was in one of the first reader-submitted things we put up on this site, over a year ago.. Blood-Eye points out this interesting article on ZDNet UK. It's about a new NVIDIA GPU that is supposedly 7x faster than.. something. Hard to work out exactly what they're on about in that article, if it's the NV15 that's faster than the NV20, or vice versa, or some unnamed chip that's faster than both. Maybe it's just someone trying to inflate NVIDIA's stock a little more. The ever-modest Tech-Gods have an Intel CPU Roundup happening. InsaneHardware have some info on their front page about A7V's not handling high-speed Athlons well. I should be able to check this tomorrow when my A7V arrives and I fire up my 1.1GHz Tbird on it. :) This looks like it could be big news - From BZD: Bari soldered 27, 100nF SMD capacitators onto his C566. The cpu runs @ 1064MHz stable. (before the job only 1034). An other dude soldered his CPU too, his C600 runs @ 1200. (1288 with a big TEC). Pics here, page is in Hungarian. Brave stuff. ProCooling have a copper waterblock project. The usual crazy stuff on ZZZ Online.. Reviews: Super Orb on IPKonfig. GeForce2 Ultra on 3DPulpit. Dell XPS B 1GHz system on TE. Rio 500 portable MP3 player on 3DSpotlight. Sunday Afternoon #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 26-November-2000  18:36:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg Interesting thing from Wolfy: http://www.jinx.com.au - Free broadband (cable) access here in Australia. The theory sounds good .. but I hope the quality of their www page is nothing to go by. Aaaaah! My eyes! OCTools has a simple guide to modding the ALpha PEP66 for SocketA use. TomsHardware have looked at the P4's performance yet again. According to this article on GameCenter, pretty much every rumour you've heard about 3DFX lately is untrue. AUS3D have a rant here about Voodoo TV Tuner cards not being imported into Oz. Another rant here, this time about a DOA Tbird. Sounds like another crunched core to me.. sounds like it might also be something for the Fair Trade Tribunal to sort out. Gary sends word that there's a new WCPUID out - version 2.8c-B5. Sounds like a beta - if your computer spontaneously explodes, not my problem. Ooo, nanocopters in your blood. Me first! Reviews: Midiland MLi-490 Speakers on SysReview. The Claw gaming controller on G3D. Intel Pentium 4 on x-bit labs. YAP Internet Phone on MrPCPro. Sunday Afternoon - News Slacker Edition (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 26-November-2000  17:50:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg Sorry about the lack of news yesterday, was at the track all morning and at a buck's night all afternoon/night.. uurrggh, feel like a zombie now. :) A few people pointed out that the Penrith Computer Fair was Sunday, not Saturday, according to ComputerFairs.com.au. Looks like I was misinformed. Looking for a LAN day or want to promote yours? Try landatabase.com. It's an international thing, supports Australia. Thanks Redback. VIAHardware have a possible 4X AGP fix for VIA-chipset boards, it involves changing the AGP driving value via WCPREDIT.. There's an nterview with Ken Silverman, creator of the Build engine (that powered Duke3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior etc), about his new project, here. Thanks Kazashi. Anandtech have their AMD Roadmap article posted. An interesting read, with references to Intel's Roadmap which they recently covered. Gary points out that there seems to be a new newsgroup - alt.comp.case-mods - no messages at yet, but might be worth keeping an eye on. Remember we have a Case Mods Forum here, and of course the PC Database contains a lot of modified case pics etc. Speaking of modified cases, a great first attempt from Icarus in the forum. Reviews: Asus A7V on ClubOC. Napa DAV309 CD/MP3 Player on PCStats. Pioneer 105S 16X DVD-ROM on InsideHardware. AOpen HX-08 Fulltower case on TheTechZone. Friday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 24-November-2000  18:44:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg Spwny points out lots of P4 pics on Akiba - here and here. Chris sends word that there's a computer fair in Penrith NSW this Saturday, at the Police Citizen's Club. Flight noticed that buried inside FiringSquad's Comdex report are some pics and benches of the now-cancelled Voodoo5 6000. x-bit labs have collected lots of NV20 rumours..unsubstantiated stuff about NVIDIA's next big thing. Some NV20 info on ReactorCritical too.. looks like their webserver is about to go critical at the moment, tho. Multiplaycity have a guide to modding a Senfu temp probe, to display Fahrenheit instead of Celcius or vice versa. Click the link on that page, frames, grr. Cars, booth babes and a little PC info on TheTechZone, covering some car accessories show. A bunch of P4 benchmarks.. "borrowed" from other sites and compared on that page. More vapochill info on Overclocking.dk. Hypothermia is giving away some copies of Q3 Team Arena. Damn, those guys don't seem to be able to hold onto anything.. Reviews: Alpha P612TM60 Slot-1 cooler on Max3D. 3D Prophet II GTS Pro on GD, thanks OZeight. Saitek GM2 Pad & Mouse on TechExtreme. Finally, Paul shows us some good reasons for always having the latest version of a benchmark :)    700MHz    900MHz Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 24-November-2000  01:10:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg Finished off last year's tax today. It was pretty cool going through all the old receipts and stuff from back when I was selling overclocked C366's, back when this site first started in July last year. Lots of familiar names there, people who are still on the site now, using the forums etc.. amazing to see what the site has grown into today. Thanks guys. :) FrostyTech had a fan die in fairly spectacular fashion. Buy.com.au is no more. Hubert points out an interesting read, A review of MacOS X from the perspective of a FreeBSD developer.. TomsHardware has revisited the MPEG4 performance of the P4 and declares it "horrible". Some other P4 info on JC's. The guy who wrote PING was killed in a recent car crash. Ooh, turn your Palm into a Gameboy.. Apparently some Intel mobos had bad code.. thanks B5lurker. Reviews: Complete Everglide range on TweakTown. MSI K7T Pro 2 on TweakTown. SocketA KT133 mobo. Epox 3VCA2+ on NeoSeeker. Socket370 mobo. Tennmax Chipset Cooler on TweakMeister. Netgear RT314 Router on TheTechZone. NEC FE-700 Monitor on TechExtreme. Asus CUSL2 on OCWB. Remember we have a dedicated forum for this mobo. LG Flatron 577LH LCD Monitor on BarrysWorld. Mambo-X CD/MP3 player preview on CaseJunkiez. Thurs Arvo - A really quick one! (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 23-November-2000  13:08:39 (GMT +10) - by YYK Back from the dead! Well exams… Canon has showed people a digital display that is slightly thicker than a sheet of paper. But don’t hold your breath, it’s due out 2007 The Darwin (a city in aussie) Lord Mayor made some serious threats today. We were expecting it and yes it will be done, Paramount will be making a movie of the US 2000 election. On the wish list might be Harrison Ford/Jeff Bridges as Gore and Robert Redford as Bush and Barbra Streisand as Hillary. China has decided to go to space and get there cheap cheap! Women in the UK declare Geri Halliwell has the best breasts. It’s going badly when three year olds get busted with drugs Compaq’s ProLiant servers can now be pre-installed with Linux Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 23-November-2000  11:22:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg Big news of the day - go look at Hexus's Sandra2001 comparison of 1.35GHz TBird vs 1.5GHz P4. Yes yes, maybe the benchmarks are not optimized, it's early days yet yada yada.. but you have to admit those are some interesting numbers.. We now have a dedicated forum for discussion of the PC Database and entries within it. Ssssh! The The Twice-Annual Secret Aussie ICQ Meet is on this Sunday at Centennial Park in Sydney. Not very secret any more. :) Actually it's organized by SecretNet, hence the name. Dastardly Dan has been stripped of his P4 Powers, now reduced to normal human like the rest of us, living off scraps and reviewing laptops. It's an Asus L8400, cheaper than many, less annoying than many. Apparently tomorrow is International Buy Nothing Day. GideonTech have a guide to making aluminium spacers/shims for Durons. Remember kids, the little metal bridges on the top of your SocketA CPU must NOT be shorted against each other. Instant and silent CPU-death will occur. So make sure you insulate your shim or get ones that have spaces cut out.. or if you're like me and have already fried a 1GHz+ CPU, don't use them at all. Dual P3 @ 933, MSI 694D mobo, twin FOP-38's.. sound good? Score it for free on ClubOC. Speaking of freebies, turns out those fans from yesterday are nonfree. Need the 7-digit serial number and they're only shipping to North America. I'm shocked that so many of you tried that. :) G3D have an explanation of Virtual Memory up.. Reviews: Creative GeForce2 Ultra on IANAG. Gorb on low-end Athlon on DreddNews. BusStation USB 7 Port Hub on LittleWhiteDog. Mouse Bungee on JSIHardware. Massive LAN Party Pic (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 23-November-2000  10:34:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg Remember this from the other day? Christian sent some info about it: Hey just thought I'd throw some info on that pic your way. It's from The Gathering '99. This IS the worlds biggest lan party it got into the Guiness Book Of Records in 99 or 98 under worlds biggest temporary network with aprox. 3200 nodes or something like that. I've been attending it for the last three years and it's quite spectacular. It's held in Hamar, Noway in something called the Viking Ship which is a olympic sports hall made for the winter olympics back in '96 held in Lillehammer, Norway. This lanparty is more or less just amazing. It used to be a scene party, and in some aspects it still is, but the focus as been more and more towards games. There are large compos with neat prices to win in all sorts of categories like Q3a, FastDemo, 3d animation, fastmod, fast webdesign and so on. You mentioned the power cords; they are big. Very big. Long, heavy and fat. In 99 one of them actually burned up and some electritian fixed it and the whole cable was put inside a fence. Mucho entertaining ;) Anyway, more info can (should) be available at www.gathering.org. There are several people from other coutries, so will I see you there? ;) Get Sandra Here (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 23-November-2000  00:23:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg Looking for Sandra 2001 Shareware? Sabretooth sends word that ZDNet have updated their mirror: ftp://zdftp.zdnet.com/pub/private/sWlIB/utilities/hardware_utilities/sandra.zip Wednesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 22-November-2000  22:23:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg Tidying up my computer room today because I'm doing last year's tax.. I found my Everglide Breast! My wrist feels better already. :) AthlonOC have a water-cooling project happening. Hypothermia are giving away a 1GHz P3 and mobo.. Beefy water-cooled system on ProCooling. Definitely worth checking out. Some ways to improve Win2k on 3DSpotlight. InsaneHardware have news that Asus are now recommending Chrome/Super Orbs for their A7V motherboards. Submariner says that anyone with a dodgy fan on a Hercules video card should go here and request a replacement. If you were feeling particularly scruple-free, you might observe that, on that form, there's not really any requirement for you to prove you currently even have a Hercules card.. Reviews: Largan Easy800 Digicam on TheTechZone. ATI Radeon 32MB DDR on Rizenet. Plextor 12/10/32A CD-RW drive on SystemLogic. Arctic Silver thermal paste on EXHardware. New A7V beta 1005-003E BIOS (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 22-November-2000  21:50:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg Pac sends word of a fixed beta 1005-003E BIOS, get it here: Released yesterday as an update to last weeks 'sad' 1005-003D bios. Looks like it fixes lockups using 'Optimal' mode in bios. Comments on the Asus newsgroup seem to be positive but it's early yet. Certainly fixed any problem I had. Important points: 1. Flashes using dos only. 2. After flash make sure you go straight into BIOS and set to defaults, THEN change to suit yr system. Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 22-November-2000  09:27:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Tillman over at Anandtech has whipped up a pretty hefty SocketA & Socket370 Heatsink Comparison. Pretty good stuff, all the current big players are there, worth checking out. You can compare results with our similar recent comparo. Sabretooth points out new Promise FastTrack66 drivers for Linux. He thinks they'll work in RedHat 7, but isn't sure. So if it kills your system, no forming an angry mob outside his place like last time. TheRegister have info on 8x AGP.. not happening 'till 2003? TechnoYard reviewed the ELSA GLADIAC ULTRA 64MB GeForce2 Ultra video card. Got a KT7? Scared to go into the BIOS? ApusHardware will hold your hand with their KT7 BIOS Guide. CPUReview have some Comdex action too. Tuesday night... damnit, Wednesday morning. (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 22-November-2000  01:20:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg Where does the time go? Been stuffing my face with ribs all night, didn't realise it was so late.. [burp] Wow, Sabretooth pointed out this massive LAN party photo.. and I mean MASSIVE. Imagine how much power that room/stadium would be drawing?! TechReport have an article on DVD RW.. wars between manufacturers. Bit of a ranty article about Windows ME on SystemLogic. A few people pointed out that Optus is in trouble.. with the ACCC, for advertising their Optus@Home product as "unlimited" when it obviously isn't. Looks like they will have to change their ads soon. OC@QGL have a poll (left hand side of screen, scroll down a little) on broadband usage in Oz. PCExtremes have a thing on Abit motherboards at Comdex. Very interesting thing on Sysreview - a review of the SIS 370S Chipset.. a new "low end Athlon chipset" which supports among other things, 266MHz DDR FSB. Andypoo sent along this update from Telstra re the cable cut: The Big Pond core stability has been restored. The International Link failure will still cause some congestion within the Big Pond Network. ************* Update. 80% Capacity has been restored. Cable has been cut approx. 70 KM out of Singapore Cause of cable cut unknown. Possible earthquake. Estimated time to repair cable 5-7 Days. Reviews: Razer Boomslang 2000 on Rizenet. Mushkin Enhanced PC150 HSDRAM on Inside-Hardware. Abit KT7 on ClubOC. Saitek Cyborg Gold USB Joystick on NeoSeeker. Abit SA6R on OCWB. Looks like a nice board, i815E. Abit KT7 on AthlonMB. More info on major internet failure (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 21-November-2000  14:51:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg OK, a couple of people from within Telstra and some who aren't, contacted me this morning with info on the current problem with international internet access out of Australia. Let me quote some info: Telstra’s Internet connections to the United States and other parts of the world has been severely affected by a major fault in the South East Asia – Middle East – Western Europe3 (SE-ME-WE3) submarine cable at a point between Singapore and China. This SE-ME-WE3 cable is one of the cables that Telstra and other major operators of Internet backbone networks in Australia rely on to get direct connections to the Internet backbone in the United States. No cause is yet known nor is an exact location of the failure pinpointed but this investigation is being urgently undertaken by cable owners at the moment. It is know that the failure or “cable cut” as it is often called lies between the 2nd and 3rd repeaters on this cable between Singapore and China. This places the “cable cut” between 140km and 210km out of Singapore. Our Southern Cross cable capacity to the United States is not yet activated and initial capacity scheduled for activation in mid December 2000. ..snip.. Actions: Cable Repair : There is an expectation of up to one (1) week repair time as a cable repair ship has to set sail to the position of the cable cut, pick the cable and make repairs and replace the cable into operation. Telstra: We are urgently implementing changes in the backbone Internet network to make all remaining capacity available for our customers to minimise negative impacts. Impact Alleviation Plan: Several options are being evaluated at the present time including: A. Seeking co-operation of Telstra employees to themselves minimise accessing overseas web sites/content sites whilst at home or at work during the next week; B. Actively encouraging Big Pond customers to point their web browsers to the Big Pond Direct proxy cache to minimise downloads from overseas web sites; Full word document here (27KB). This is an internal Telstra document, but I believe it was also sent to major customers of theirs. I can't name the people who sent it to me. Thanks for the info guys. Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 21-November-2000  09:54:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg KngtRider sent word that Sandra 2001 is now out! More Pentium4 stuff - here on ZDNet, here on AcesHardware, here on TomsHardware, here on Wired.. Dan's article on AustralianIT is back up here and his somewhat more rambling DansData article is here. Worth reading that last one, particularly the extra benchmarks it includes.. There's been a lot of Intel-bashing over the last few weeks - I'm not partial to one camp or the other, I'll go for whoever can give me the fastest CPU on the day, at a decent price. For the last few months AMD have definitely been kicking Intel around with their Tbird and Duron products, but don't forget it's not been that long since AMD were a bit of a joke among the performance-PC enthusiast community. People seem to be getting waaaay too excited over something that is very cyclical - who knows what the market will be like in a year, or even 6 months. However, anyone who's thinking of buying a P4 should seriously sit and remember the Pentium Pro and all the poor sods who were left holding first-and-only-generation Socket8 technology when Intel switched to Slot1/Slot2. Rumour has it that Socket423 is going to be superceded next year sometime by Socket478. CaseModdersOz reviewed the Everglide Large Attack Pad and Mouse Bungee. Beddoestech reviewed the DFI CA64-EC motherboard, Socket370, Apollo Pro 133A, 686B southbridge so ATA-100 support. The PCDB was due to be officially launched last night, but with these internet problems Oz is experiencing at the moment I'm going to delay it for a week. Some cool stuff happening in there anyway, check out this cool blue tower, and this fellow member of the bucket of water next to the PC club. :) There's even some macs in there! Monday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 21-November-2000  00:01:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Dunno how many of these links you will be able to actually get to, what with the net being screwy at the moment.. More P4 stuff - here on PlanetHardware, here on GamersDepot, here (not only P4 stuff) on TechReport, here on FiringSquad. I am not even reading this stuff yet, there's just too much of it. Maybe in a month when the benchmarks have been optimized for the P4 I will start seriously looking at numbers. In the meantime, I just got hooked up with some 1.1GHz Tbird action, so I'm happy. JC's has compiled all the leaked P4 benchmarks.. someone buy that man a lawyer. PCScoop went to Comdex like everyone else, saw some babes, got bitten by a robot dog, the usual stuff. Most of us are happy if we can clock up to 1GHz, but Hexus STARTED there and got a fair way above it. We're not worthy. Sabretooth has been digging for the weird stuff lately.. now he's discovered a Sim holding a LAN party. ProCooling have an article on mouting a radiator on a case.. Some DDR pics up on AkibaPC. ClubOC reckon that Sandra2001 will be available from SiSoft's HomePage sometime today. It's not there as I write this, but Kyle used a version of Sandra that had P4 comparative benchmarks in it, for his P4 Review earlier today.. so keep an eye out. Reviews: Corsair Value Select 64MB PC133 SDRAM on GideonTech. GlobalWin FOP-38 cooler on ClubOC. Be warned, these things are LOUD. AOpen MS-810 Speaker on TechExtreme. MSI Starforce 816 (GF2MX) video card on Beddoestech. AOpen DVD1640 Pro on TechZone.. this is a 16X DVD, 40X CD. Abit BE6-II v2.1 on ExtremeOverclocking. Slow Net (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 20-November-2000  22:55:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg Dunno if you'll even be able to read this, as many people in the IRC channel are complaining of not being able to reach the OCAU server - but apparently there has been a major failure of one of Australia's major internet links to the rest of the world. This is why you may be having trouble accessing international sites - apparently it is having a logjam effect which is affecting domestic internet access as well. UPDATE: More info on InsaneHardware. No news of a fix as yet. Today is Pentium4 Day.. (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 20-November-2000  17:47:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg Lots of info starting to pop up on the net as Intel's NDA lifts: Official info on Intel's site. HardOCP compare to a 1.1GHz Athlon. Anand has both 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz parts. Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 20-November-2000  11:04:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg InsaneHardware have covered a recent Computer Show in Perth. Not exactly Comdex, but some interesting stuff.. TheCoolRepublic have a pic of slime.. what happens when you forget to put some cheap vodka or antifreeze into your water-cooling system. Another Pentium IV review pops up. Things things will be exploding all over the next in the next 12 hours or so, you just watch. :) Anand has his full Comdex report posted. Wow. Sabretooth pointed out this star wars in lego site. Is this the King of "too much time on my hands"..? CoolZone.DK pointed out this Silverado Cooler.. this is a heatsink made of silver? Looks pretty wild. OC@QGL have a little hack to put a remote volume control onto your sound card. Silly Barbie PC thing on EuroGamer. A case mod article on G3D. NVNews have a GeForce2 Roundup. More interesting/weird stuff on ZZZ Online.. Reviews: Creative GeForce2 Ultra on GA-Hardware. Athlon 1.2GHz on GameSpy. Mouse Bungee on Apu'sHardware. IWill KA266R DDR mobo Preview on OCWB. Super Orb on Rizenet. Duron 900MHz on ReTel. Gorb Mangling (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 19-November-2000  17:46:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg I linked to this forum thread before but it seems to be generating a lot of interest today, HardOCP linked to it this morning too. I dunno if the term "Aussie ingenuity" or "dodgy brothers" best describes it.. :) but Vegeta529 was determined to get his Golden Orb onto his video card: Click here for more pics! Sunday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 19-November-2000  16:46:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Far out, more ads than race in the coverage of the Bathurst 1000 today.. jeez. Asus have released a new BIOS 1005 for the A7V - this includes multiplier selection in bios! Woo. Mirrored here on AthlonMB. Scarifier pointed out this mirror on Asus's german site. A couple more cool cases appeared in the forum - this silver lian-li unit and this other one with a funky window. Anand has an Intel CPU and Chipset Roadmap posted. Apparently this page has SPEC CFP2000 performance comparison between the Pentium 4 and Athlon Thunderbird. Bren pointed out this page which has Lego depictions of scenes from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.. bwahaha. :) OverclockersCafe killed a GeForce DDR. Bummer. TheTechZone have their Comdex Writeup finished.. Adrian's Rojak Pot updated their Maxtor Silent Store info page. Apu's has a custom bios for the KT7 which lets you enable/disable APCI support in bios. There's an interesting thread in their forum explaining how it was done with a neato BIOS editing utility. How to make an automatic baybus controller on Hexus. Some more preliminary P4 benchmarks on JC-News. Remember, official P4 launch is tomorrow, USA time. Reviews: Frag Tape on UKGamer. Case LED kit on PCReview. Duron 600 @ 1000MHz on TheFragLimit. GlobalWin FOP-38 on JSI. Mouse Bungee on ClubOC. 2CoolPC on ColdShop. Saturday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 18-November-2000  19:24:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg Bathurst weekend! SecretSquirrel points out that Aussie distributor Synnex have these goodies listed: CP BX80528JK140GR PENTIUM 4,1.4GHZ WITH 2 64MB PC800 NON-ECC RAMBUS MEMORY.. A$2273 CP BX80528JK150GR PENTIUM 4,1.5GHZ WITH TWO 64MB PC800 NON-ECC RAMBUS MEM.. A$2709 Arne points out these blistering Sandra memory benchmarks on an Abit KT7-RAID. I'm about to buy a SocketA board m'self and have been tending towards the KT7 because the KA7 (reviewed here) was so good. Seems the KT7 is a worthy successor, if these benchmarks are any indication.. anyone seen any killer A7V benches? FoamySuds reviewed a game called No One Lives Forever.. spy movie type FPS. TweakTown have exclusive pics of a new IWill DDR board! ..and so do OCWorkbench. :) Guru3D reviewed the Creative GeForce2 Ultra video card.. mmmmm. Morgan sent word of an interesting, if pricy, flashmem USB drive. Looks like a drive letter, plugs into USB, flash mem storage. PCDB pics and picture quality mod? (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 18-November-2000  18:50:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg MWP, who actually created the PCDB, has updated the case pics in his entry. Custom wood case with watercooled CPU and video card, great stuff. Click to see entry! An interesting pic in there hints at a mysterious "GF2MX Picture Quality Mod". This is apparently a hardware hack to bypass the RFI filter on the video card which improves picture quality. I found more info and pics of another modded card in this thread in the forums. Socket Cooler Roundup! (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 18-November-2000  00:53:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg Manaz has been beavering away on a socket cooler roundup recently. He's got a bunch of coolers on test including the Chrome Orb, Agilent Arcticooler and some Alpha offerings. 7 in total on 2 CPU's - a Duron 600 @ 850MHz and a Celeron2 566 @ 850MHz. Although he couldn't test all coolers on both CPU's due to mounting difficulties, you can get a good feel for which coolers are coming out on top - and there are some surprises! He tried the Arcticooler both with and without the TIM, too. Click here for the comparo! Friday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 17-November-2000  23:15:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg Axis put pics of his cool case, totally custom-made, in the forum. G3D checked out an adapter which lets you put an 80mm fan on your Alpha PEP66. The ArsMasters have a full Comdex Roundup posted.. some crazy stuff there. Mike points out that buried in TomsHardware's Comdex coverage is a pic on a real live dual Athlon system.. fnarr fnarr! Ben sent in something funny - Not _really_ a news item, cause I don't have pics to prove it, but today at around 1pm, all the monitors at Town Hall train station had a big windows DHCP error sign on them (the one saying that the machine can't renew their lease). It was funny watching the CityRail staff standing around looking a bit confused. _ALL_ the monitors had the error spread across two screens. :) Alchemy points out that there are new versions of WinAmp and PowerStrip available.. Andrew sends word that some new top-level domain suffixes have been approved.. looks like all the dumb ones got approved so far. :) Hopefully more soon. ExHardware springs onto the scene with their Evil Kyro Review.. apparently they are a reborn HardwareExtreme. Okey dokey. LinuxWorld.com.au have an article on the upcoming Linux Kernel 2.4 release - something to look forward to for sure! TheRegister have an interview with Linus all about it too. 650W Enermax PSU (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 17-November-2000  14:17:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg Just got this sexy Enermax power supply in the mail for review. It's so sexy I thought I'd put some pics up pre-review. :)     This unit has 2 ball-bearing fans - the rear is controlled/monitored by the mobo, note the fan connector cable. The bottom (on top in the pics) fan is thermally controlled by the unit itself. Note also the additional power connectors for P4 (I think?) boards. Nice gold-plated fan grilles too. :) This unit is a 650W jobbie and will ultimately end up in the Big Kahuna. Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 17-November-2000  09:50:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg Just got word that there is a Creative Labs GeForce2 Ultra videocard on the way to me.. yay! We reviewed their GeForce DDR and GeForce2 GTS offerings earlier and were impressed, hopefully the Ultra carries on the tradition. Wired have collected a load of their comdex reports together.. interesting reading if you're into that kind of thing. OCOnline have reviewed some Ram Sinks for video cards.. Hellfire points out that VirtualHideout reviewed the Alpha "Super" PAL6035. They also have a temp-controlled fans circuit, a simpler version of our circuit here. They also have pics showing you how to make it. PCMech have more Comdex info.. as do ViaHardware. JSI's have 6 more case mods. Heh, saw this on HardOCP.. Rambus getting slapped down by a US judge, worth a read. Anand checked out the FIC AZ11E.. SocketA, KT133 mobo, ATA-100. Sharky reviewed the AOpen AX3S Pro.. i815E, Socket370 mobo. Monster PC (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 16-November-2000  23:28:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg You have got to see this monster watercooled machine in the PCDB: Click here for more pics! Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 16-November-2000  23:16:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg Oh dear. You know it's going to be one of those articles when it's titled " Consumer Alert: The Trouble With Overclocking.. thanks Extreeme. Hexus.com hacked their Promise card. Big deal, you say? Already seen our article on it, months ago? Yeeess.. but they did theirs with a hacksaw. Speaking of how NOT to do things, check out this orb mangling going on in the case mods forum. Another system here has an interesting way of mounting a fan on the plexiglass window. ..and if this ever happens to your chip, you were probably pushing too hard.. AthlonOC have an AMD Overclocking Comparison posted, Duron 600MHz and Tbird 750MHz. They also have an article titled To Watercool Or Not.. silly question. :) TweakTown have an 11-page Intel Overclocking Guide posted. Apparently this is a more accurate take on the previous 3DFX not making cards anymore story. GlideUnderground have their own interpretation of the whole 3DFX thing of late. HardOCP have a little scoopage on their front page with an explanation too. Sometimes, you just have to let old technology die. Or, you make it portable, as this atari owner did. Thanks David.. More tales of woe on Max3D. Alexander discovered a cooler that looks just like the twin-fan one we had some scoopage on earlier in the week, but this time Titan say it's for 1GHz P3's. Our one said 1.1-1.5GHz SocketA chips. Probably the same unit. He also pointed out this (his description) mini short ass golden orb! NetKills managed to squeeze out a 4-page review of some thermal paste. I will call him mini-Sharkey. The ArsMasters have info on day three of Comdex. Reviews: ECS P6VXA on TheTechZone. Socket370, Apollo Pro 133A mobo. Visiontek GeForce2 GTS Ultra on IANAG. No-slow mofo video, yo. Duron 800 overclocked/reviewed on ClubOC. AOpen HX08 fulltower on TheColdShop. Nice case, got my main workstation in one here. Antec SX1030 Black Case on SystemLogic. .vxd Fix for WinME (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 16-November-2000  22:06:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Simon has updated his DOS for WinME fix to include another file. This file contains a load of .vxd files which WinME can apparently forget to install, which can cause stability problems. Again, I don't use WinME, so can't verify this. The response to the previous fix was very positive, though. If you're having tricky stability problems with WinME this is definitely worth a shot. Updated info at the bottom of this page. 3DFX not making cards anymore (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 16-November-2000  10:05:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg A few people sent in links to this article on TheRegister explaining how 3DFX will go back to being a chipset-only manufacturer. This means they'll rely on other manufacturers (Creative, Abit, Asus, MSI etc) to buy their chipsets and build video cards around them - much as people do with NVIDIA's chipsets now. In fact, 3DFX USED to do this up until about 18 months ago. But the main point of my news post is, didn't we hear about this MONTHS ago? Isn't this old news? I'm sure I heard about this, from TheRegister, a while ago. Or maybe.. what was that bright flash before.. and now my watch is 20 minutes slow.. hmm! Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 16-November-2000  09:51:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg B5Lurker sends word that AMD is delaying some future processors, namely Palomino (replaces Athlon) and Morgan (replaces Duron). On the other hand, ZDnet have a fairly speculative article about ClawHammer 2GHz. InsaneHardware spotted that there are some Pentium4 results in MadOnion.com's result browser. I thought they might have been uploaded by Dan from DansData before Intel yanked his article from yesterday, but his system used a GeForce2Ultra and this one uses a GeForce2GTS. Andrew points out that you can load MacOS onto your PC. This is a very clever flash thing I linked to a while ago, but it represents so much effort that I'm happy to re-link it. Be warned, I couldn't get it to quit and had to kill it from Task Manager. That's almost an Apple/Windows joke in itself. :) 3DHardware have a 3-way home network router roundup. Finally, Janne sends us a warning as to why you should check your peltier-cooled system regularly for condensation: Click for big pic Wednesday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 15-November-2000  23:55:26 (GMT +10) - by Manaz Straight into the news.... Morgan was the first to point out that the Southern Cross Cable Project went live today.... Hellfire pointed out that you can now download Version 1.2 of the Voodoo5 Overclocker. Hello everyone, Guru of 3D has released a new version of the very popular GeForce Tweak Utility which is now at version 2.2 PC Mechanic have posted a how-to on removing the heatplate from an AMD K6 processor. LittleWhiteDog.com are giving away a 30GB IBM 75GXP hard drive. You can enter once per day, per email address. Tweakmeister.com have posted an article revisting the idea of soundproofing a case. Want a free Duron PC? Join Hexus.net's forums, and you stand a chance of winning! JSI Hardware have written an overclocking guide for Duron processors. They used a 700MHz Duron in this example, and got it to 945MHz. Not a great overclock, granted, but this article gives one of the clearest descriptions I've seen on how to unlock a factory-locked Duron.... Would you like to know where some of the leading developers of FPS games think the genre is headed? The Tech Extreme guys were thinking the same thing, so they contacted Epic Megagames (of Unreal and Unreal Tournament fame) and ID Software (do they really need an introduction?), and have produced this article as a result. You may or may not know it, but this site is served off a server based on an Abit BP6 motherboard, running two 366MHz Celeron processors overclocked to 550MHz. Freaek pointed out that Coolchip's webserver is almost identical when it comes to hardware, but is also water cooled. The guys at Apu's Hardware have flipped. Completely. What evidence do I cite to support this statement (aside from the name of their site, and it's relevance to computer hardware)? I present to the court, Exhibit A, an article on the said site, supporting the argument I have presented to you today. Finally (well, before reviews and Comdex reports), from the "I can't believe someone actually thinks they can make money doing this on the Internet" department, mycereal.com. Yes, you can create a custom breakfast cereal, and have it delivered to your door. Alphabetically listed Comdex Reports. Ars Technica: Day 1, Day 2. CPU-Burn. Firing Squad. Glide Underground: Day 1, Day 2. PC Mechanic. Tom's Hardware. Did I miss any? Reviews. Maximum3D have reviewed a Blue Orb. OCtools looked at MUSHKIN High Performance REV2 PC133 222 128 Mb SDRAM. RIZENET checked out the Front-X Multimedia Ports, and told us what they think. Hexus.net have reviewed the Adaptec AHA-29160 Ultra-160 PCI SCSI host-adapter. Mr PC Pro reviewed the Sony CRX 145E CD-R/W drive. Tech Extreme have reviewed the Cambridge Soundworks DTT3500 Surround Sound Speakers. Extreme Overclocking have posted a review of the Antec KS282 ATX case. SystemLogic.net reviewed the Klipsch V.2 -400 Promedia Speaker System. Eastern Creek (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 15-November-2000  22:33:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ok, people always hassle me for pics of me on the R6 at track days, so this is me last Thursday at Eastern Creek. These were taken by a photographer there and printed, then scanned. So not the sharpest pics, but anyway:    Ok, on-topic stuff soon, I promise. :) Dan does the P4! (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 15-November-2000  10:18:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg Go the Aussies. :) I'll just put his whole msg here: I've heard that some people have gone to Las Vegas in order to have a look at a Pentium 4. Me, I just sat on my bum here in Sydney, Australia, and Intel brought me one to play with. There was a little red thing on the back of the ultra-stacked review machine that said I wasn't to open it. But they forgot to made me sign anything. So I opened it anyway. The test box has a 1.5GHz P4, 256Mb of PC800 RDRAM and a GeForce2 Ultra, so it's pretty much the fastest computer Intel could assemble. How'd it go? Visit this page: http://www.australianit.com.au/common/storyPage/0,3811,1417598%5E504,00.html to find out. Smug bastard. :) UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Dan had to pull the review down because Intel got mad at him. Sigh.. Eastern Creek 6-hour Race Photos (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 15-November-2000  10:09:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg I put together a page of photos I took last weekend, mostly for the rest of the team to look at, but I thought you guys might be interested too: Click for more pics! Tuesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 15-November-2000  01:39:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg Hmm, a bit of jumping up and down today about Maxtor's SilentStore technology. Apparently this deliberately slows down seek times in an effort to reduce drive activity noise. Adrian's Rojak Pot has some info about it, as does RizeNet. Another big story is Seagate's 180GB HDD. That's right, one hundred and eighty gigabytes. Damnit, I'm just going to start talking in TB from now on. Info on their .18TB drive here on SystemLogic, here on BizYahoo, here on AVault.. and the press release is here on Seagate's site. Thanks to all who sent those in.. Interesting pics from Andrew on how they transported the USS Cole, ship that had a hole blown in it's side a few weeks ago. I saw a glimpse of this on the news.. big monster ship-carrying ship. Looks like the Voodoo5 6000 will NOT make it to the shelves.. info on GlideUnderground. The only people using the 4-way SLI (4 cpu's) technology will be Quantum3D, according to this press release Hmm, kill an expensive video card, make a keychain.. kinda sad. :) TomsHardware pits the fastest Celeron against the fastest Duron.. thanks OzEight. Mmmm.. swiss chicks in tanks running over hard disks. It doesn't get much better than this.. thanks Mitch. A linux box in a PCI card.. how cool. Plug-in firewall, amazing stuff. Thanks alchemy! Hmm, Cisco just bought some relatively unknown Australian company in an effort to strengthen their grip on the wireless market.. thanks Andrew. CaseModdersOz have a preview of a new Lasagna CPU Cooler from Tennmax. Reviews: IBM 75GXP HDD's on Hexus. AOpen 52X CDROM on CDRLabs. MSI K7Tpro 2 and 2A on OCWorkbench.. KT133 boards. Belkin's OmniView SE KVM switch on AwareMag. New Titan Majesty Twins Cooler - Preview! (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 14-November-2000  14:54:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Got some sneak pics of a new cooler, to be launched in a couple of weeks by Titan. Certainly looks the business - I'll be reviewing it in a couple of weeks: Click here for more pics + info! HX45 Case Mod - Fan Duct (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 14-November-2000  13:07:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg Dean sent in some pics and info about how he improved airflow through his HX45 without making big changes to the external appearance: Click here for more pics and details! Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 14-November-2000  09:15:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg Comdex is happening again in Las Vegas at the moment.. so expect a lot of new product announcements etc over the next few days. The first of which is NVIDIA's GeForce2Go, their mobile video chipset. More details in PCMech's coverage of Comdex. PCMech also reviewed the AMD K6-III+. OCWorkbench have a list of 11 AMD760 motherboards which have been announced so far. TechnoYard reviewed the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 45, new 45GB hard drive. Interesting snippet on x-bit about nvidia entering the motherboard chipset market with a chipset called "Crush". This is supposedly going to support Intel chips AND AMD chips, and have a memory bus width of 128bits.. thanks Matt. Anand reviewed the Abit SA6R mobo.. i815E, Socket370. PCRoddin reviewed the P3 FCPGA 1GHz. Monday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 13-November-2000  23:38:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg The CIA are in a huff because someone managed to run a secret chat room for up to 10 YEARS on their internal network without them realising.. thanks YYK. PCStats took a Duron 700MHz to 1GHz. Less than a week left to win a blue orb on PCMarket.com.au. CaseEtc reviewed a neon kit. Heh, someone wants your bad dating experiences in the forums. SystemLogic have a thingy on the Evolution of Operating Systems. Sharky reviewed the 766MHz Celeron2. FiringSquad reviewed the Abit SA6R. OCTools have some budget overclocking happening. DOS Fix for Windows Millennium (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 13-November-2000  16:30:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg Sick of not having DOS support in Windows ME? Well, despair no more! Simon has written and sent in a program that will re-enable DOS support for programs that need it in WinME. You can also remove the System Restore and PCHealth "features" of WinME. Check out the full details and download the program here. Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 13-November-2000  10:59:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg Hellfire sent word that there are some hacked Voodoo 3/4/5 drivers on that page.. click "3DFX" on the toolbar to get to 'em. No 3DFX cards here so dunno if these drivers are any good. Hmm, some P4 Sandra benches on CrtlAltDel.com, apparently.. [hands out grains of salt] Hexus have a waffly what we think you should buy guide up. Some salt needed for this one, too. Interesting thing on G3D, a utility which lets you run different games with different drivers.. instead of doing it all manually. TweakTown have a 3-way SocketA comparo. TheColdShop have a directX 8.0 writeup.. ..and if you don't like it, TweakTown have a DirectX Uninstaller at the bottom of this page. Dan checked out a very cool mp3-playing diskman.. up to 10 hours of music on a CD. Can't wait for this market to expand a bit, I could definitely do with a device like this. More weird stuff on ZZZ Online. Reviews: Vantec Ice Cube cooler on ClubOC. Copper Hedgehog cooler on PCXtremes. Soltek SL-75KV2-X on ChicksHardware. Mitsumi Freestyle Optical Mouse on PCReview. Chaintech 6OJV2 S370 i815E mobo on Sharky's. EPoX 8KTA+ SocketA KT133 mobo on Rizenet. Sunday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 12-November-2000  21:55:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg Today was COOL. I spent it at the 6-hour motorcycle race at Eastern Creek.. didn't see much of the race itself as I was in the pit crew of one of the teams - bike #74 with Daron Lesslie, Mark Panos and Glynn Edis. Basically a group of amateurs, quite a few of the rest of the pit crew had no experience either, but it was a great day. We came 11th out of 52 starters, and something like 5th in our class. Woo! Might put up some pics a bit later tonight, and a few from MPU on Saturday, not that I took many there. Anyway, on with the news.. XOverclocker got a Celly2 667 (cC0) to 1225MHz!! Could cC0 CeleronII's be the next big thing? The KT7 FAQ has been updated.. over 100 pages now apparently. OC@QGL reviewed the Ricoh MP7120A CD-burner. OverclockersOnline reviewed the I-Storm II HDD uber-cooler. Cool keyboard LED stuff (no, not what you're thinking) pointed out by alchemy. Ooh, raid hacking for the MSI dual board, thanks Mike. Dodgy CPU's (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 12-November-2000  21:06:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Andrew had some interesting info: Greetings, would just like to get a warning out to all those of you who like buying parts at markets around australia. Warranty at these places can be a little dodgy so it pays to roll up informed. Celeron 400 slot 1 CPUs are being sold of late. But they arent!!!! they have a really convincing painted on marking L9025430 SL37Z 400/100 MALAYSIA except when you scrape of the very matt( almost liquid paper finish paint) you find the original expoxy-gloss paint with SL2TR COSTA RICA. They are old Celeron 266s with no L2 cache......... cunning buggers!!! will attempt to "service" warranty this week 8-) Hmm, dodgy. The Slot1 C400 should be a dead giveaway, I don't think Intel made the Slot1 cellies above 300, did they? UPDATE: Eagle-eyed readers pointed out that the Slot1 Cellies continued right up until the 433MHz part. Saturday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 11-November-2000  22:53:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg MPU was pretty cool, got some pics I will put up soon.. spending all day tomorrow at Eastern Creek Raceway. The 6-hour race is on and I'm assisting in the pits for one of the teams, yay! Probably take lots of pics there, too. :) Falkor pointed out this water-cooled machine.. nice copper work. Rizenet have a pretested 1GHz Duron on review. Hellfire and blackXR8 both pointed out this site, which has a zillion cool Windows tips and tricks.. some good stuff buried in there. Hypothermia want you to go back to school.. and help kids. ClubOC reviewed the Gear Grip Pro, case carrying strap for LAN days.. And that, folks, is about it for tonight.. Saturday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 11-November-2000  09:37:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg TechReport have an article that claims HalfLife (and derivatives such as CounterStrike) is the most popular FPS game at the moment and explains how Valve got to the top. Corsair have put up a fairly simple explanation of what CAS means in terms of memory performance. More cool cases on Fast-MHz.. of course if they were really cool they'd be putting them into the PCDB. :) James sent this in, a cloth keyboard for the PalmPilot, also a squishy phone.. bizarre. :) Hexus have a home networking guide. Real pentium4's, not engineering samples, 1.4 and 1.5GHz, on sale in Japan. Reviews: Belkin Cube 4-port KVM Switch on NewsForge. Game Commander 2 voice controller on Maximum3D. Addtronics 7896a Server Case on G3D. Silver Paste Cleaning Kit (?) on Apu's. GlobalWin VOS-32 on PlanetHardware. We reviewed Plus version of this here about a year ago. Thermaltake Blue Orb on JSI. Right! I'm off to MPU! DirectX 8 - it's official! (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 11-November-2000  09:09:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg Just got this from Aaron - well spotted! This is not a joke or a fake release this is the REAL release of Direct X8! I just checked the version number and it matches! It has not been 'released' yet but it is already there! This version is for Win9x/WinME: http://download.microsoft.com/download/winme/Update/8.0/WinMe/EN-US/DX80eng.exe And this one is for Win2K: http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000pro/Update/8.0/NT5/EN-US/DX80NTeng.exe Update: SOG noticed that Microsoft's DirectX Homepage has been updated now, too. It was still saying 7.0 last night. Early Saturday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 11-November-2000  00:52:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg DirectX 8 final is soon-to-be-out.. apparently Microsoft will have it available from Midnight Saturday (PST) .. so by the time you read this it may be available. :) If you can't wait, grab it from here! Thanks Skibum. Don't forget, MPU is on today (Saturday).. 11am, Parramatta Masonic Hall. Some more great water-cooled system pics in the PCDB. GAHardware have a Monitor Buying Guide posted.. Fysh pointed out this CPU stress-test program, good for checking overclocked stability.. Pics of the new Vapochill System on Overclocking.dk. Kinda dated, but removing a SECC2 cartridge (Slot1 Pentium3 and later P2's) instructions on GideonTech. Reviews: Yamaha 16X IDE CD-R on CDRinfo. Epox EP-8KTA2 SocketA mobo on TweakTown. Vantec Air Circulator on LWD.com. Friday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 10-November-2000  19:57:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg NeXeN put up some interesting pics in the forum - possible remarked CPU? Certainly looks like the spider-device remarked P2's that were reported a year or so ago.. Clonex says there's a Baldur's Gate demo here. HighSpeedPC have a AMD DDR Q&A posted. Hehe, soc sent this pic of the Win2K Bug List over.. :) The US Army will test wearable Crusoe-based computers.. thanks Andrew. Tech-Junkie have a 3-way KT133 comparo.. Asus A7V, Abit KT7-RAID, MSI K7T Pro. Hexus have a budget water-cooling guide posted. ClubOC overclocked a Duron 600MHz to 950MHz. Reviews: Evil Kyro 64MB video card on FlamingSheep. Nightingale (cheap) sound card on SysReview.com Quantum Atlas II 10K HDD on Hexus. KeyGhost II Pro on PCInsight. Keyboard logger. Digital camcorder with built-in printer (?!) on DansData. Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 9-November-2000  22:49:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg Uurrggh.. I ache all over. If I fall asleep during this news post, sorry. :) Today's big news is that CounterStrike 1.0 is now out! Get it from one of these mirrors: Apu, GameServe.com.au, QGL.org. Apparently this mirror is fastest for Oz peeps. Thanks alchemy. Andrew sends word that Microsoft have been hacked again.. PCReview have a Duron Overclocking Guide. G3D have pics of "The Claw".. oz-made controller. OmegER sent this link to download new 7.17 Detonators. Reviews: Elsa Gladiac Ultra on G3D. VMWare for NT/Win2K (cool) on LWD. Soltek SL75KV2-X SocketA KT133 mobo on OCWorkbench. Blue Orb on FrostyTech. Super Orb on Hexus.net. Bay Freezer cooler on InsideHardware. Epox 8KTA2 SocketA, KT133 motherboard on NeoSeeker. MSI 649D Pro dual FCPGA motherboard on TweakTown. Antec Gemstone Case on OC@QGL. Creative GeForce2 Ultra card on TheTechZone. Wednesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 8-November-2000  22:58:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg Taking my baby to the track tomorrow.. Some cool stuff showing up in the PC Database.. check out this monster water-cooled system! Another one has a cool way to tell if the watercooler is on.. and this pictureless entry is the current fastest, at 1260MHz. KngtRider pointed out some new Vortex 1 and 2 drivers for Win2k.. Rizenet reviewed the KingMax PC150 SDRAM.. we checked it out a couple of months ago here. Ado sent word of this alternative to neon tubes.. Neon Trim is like glowing wire.. cool. HardwareCentral compared two IDE RAID cards, Promise vs IWill.. thanks Stewart. 3DSpotlight have a guide to dual-booting MS O/S's.. info on how to share Outlook folders etc across installed O/S's. TechZone reviewed a leufkens water-cooling kit. Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 8-November-2000  08:34:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg NFSXtreme reviewed the vapochill system.. ultimate money-is-no-object cooler? InsaneHardware has a sneak peek at a bunch of upcoming ASUS motherboards.. KnightRider points out that there are a bunch of new Matrox Drivers.. Also, Compaq cancel Transmeta laptops in favour of P3's.. hmm, isn't that the 2nd big manufacturer to drop Transmeta recently? Stomped ask "Is the GeForce Ultra worth it?" .. There's an explanation of those speculative benchmarks (P4 vs Tbird) we saw a few days ago.. there was a bit of hoo-haa about them, he says it's the 400MHz bus that makes all the difference.. Another cool case shows up in the forums.. Dan thinks this new electronic whiteboard thing is utterly boring, but it didn't stop him cranking out a few thousand words about it. :) Anand reviewed a couple of new motherboards, a SocketA KT133 from Soyo and a Socket370 i815E from IWILL.. GamePC reviewed the Tyan Thunder i840 motherboard. Tuesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 8-November-2000  00:01:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Junkz has put up pics of his modded case into the forums.. Our PC Database has 140 entries already, many with pics.. cool! Remember, the PCDB will actually host your pictures for you, so no need to sign up for GeoCities or anything.. Hehe, Fright sent word of this refridgerator PC.. nice job. :) Also, Whistler Beta 1 is out.. this is Windows.NET 1.0 or Windows2002.. NiCH points out that TheRegister reckon AMD760 is going to be delayed.. bah! G3D have a review of the funky RayTek Laser Thermal Probe.. I have GOTTA get one of these! FlushingSquids reviewed the FIC AZ11E KT133 SocketA motherboard.. they found it very overclocking-friendly, woo! Thanks alchemy. DrDamage reports that AGP4X aint worth squat in Win2K.. okey dokey. A few people pointed out that VRZone have some basic info comparing performance of that new Kendon heatpipe cooler to an alpha.. impressive numbers. I want to see a proper review of this thing.. Tweak3D reviewed the Elsa Gladiac Ultra.. IANAG has some Duron Overclocking results.. Hexus.net have uses for an old AT Power Supply.. Hypothermia are giving away a Voodoo5 every day for a week! Got an Amiga 4000 lying around? (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 7-November-2000  22:36:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg If you've got an Amiga4000 you're willing to part with for a reasonable price, please send email here. It must be a "revision 11 socketed buster".. I guess you'll know what that is if you have one. :) He's really only after the motherboard, but he's willing to take a full system. Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 7-November-2000  10:14:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg Right! Lots of news today. Good to see lots of people hitting the PC Database, the newest section of this website. I'm hoping this will become a useful resource and a really cool part of the hardware scene.. We've pretty much come to expect that integrated video is a Bad Thing, but HardOCP wanted to see if that was still true with the i815E's integrated video.. so they have two motherboards with that feature on review. Interesting.. Asus have their Expo 2000 website happening. Lots of prizes being given away online in the "online showroom" apparently! Let me just pause for a minute and savour how much I hate flash-overloaded websites. Ahhhh. VooDoo is paranoid about microchip tracking of humans.. interesting but kinda disturbing. A few people sent word of this Canopus GeForce Ultra card.. phwoar, looks pretty sweet but their price of Y-57800 is about AUD$1020 before the stupid taxes hit you.. It's a terrible, senseless trajedy on BBSpot.. when will you case-modders learn that enough is enough! :) Interesting modded case I found while wandering around.. nothing too exciting, but cool use of a venturi-effect photocopier exhaust fan.. Sadly, ExtremeHW.com are no more, details on their site. Sorry to see you go, guys! RealWorldTech have an article on understanding and troubleshooting PSU's.. PCMech have an article all about DDR SDRAM. Reviews: Soltek SL75KV2-X motherboard on JSI, KT133, SocketA, ATA-100. Gravis Exterminator Gamepad on Hexus.net. Gigabyte GA-6VXDC7 mobo on XBit, DUAL S370, Apollo Pro 133A - massive article, interesting. Hedgehog Cooler on 3DSpotlight.. AOpen AX34-II motherboard on TheTechZone, Socket370, Apollo Pro 133A, chromey bits. 64MB Radeon on BootMax. 64MB Radeon with VideoIn/Out on PCInsight. Voodoo 4500 AGP on IANAG.com.. Super Orb, negative review on ApusHardware. Mouse Bungee on Hexus.net.. just got one of these in the post, weird. Asus AGP-V7700 GeForce2 GTS Deluxe on TechnoYard, vid card with all the trimmings. Creative GeForce2 Ultra on GA-Hardware.. PC Database! (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 7-November-2000  00:04:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ok! We've been keeping this under wraps for a while, but I'd like to unveil a major new part of the OCAU site.. the PC Database: http://www.overclockers.com.au/pcdb There's more info on the page, but in brief - The PCDB is a place where people can showcase their PC's. It will accept your images and host them, and you can fill in a huge amount of info (or as little as you like) about your system. You can then use a link to your system's entry in the PCDB as a summary of your system's specifications, performance and modifications. This is a PUBLIC BETA. Please don't inform other sites about it yet, we will announce it properly once we're sure it's 100%. In this thread please provide feedback and bug reports and ask questions. Special thanks to MWP who's original idea and hard work over several months brought the PCDB into existence. Thanks also the the IRC'ers who've been participating in the beta testing over the last few weeks. 2CoolPC-Turbo Review (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 6-November-2000  21:34:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg I reviewed the 2CoolPC Turbo: Click here for the full review! It's just like the 2CoolPC Plus I reviewed a few months ago, but it has a more powerful fan. Hurrah! MPU this Sat! (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 6-November-2000  18:35:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg Short notice, sorry! Multiplayer Unlimited (MPU) is on THIS SATURDAY.. if you want to play, you need to register by WEDNESDAY. VooDoo from MOS Technology has organised a case-mods and overclocking competition and some OCAU peeps are going to be the judges (uh-oh..) .. so JimX, Manaz and myself will be there pretending to be experts. :) Not sure what the prizes are but I'm sure VooDoo has hooked up some cool stuff. I'll be taking photos of cases and whatever else catches my eye. I am looking into getting some prizes together for next month's MPU including the infamous caffeinated peppermints and hopefully some PC-type goodies - if you're interested in donating something in exchange for having 300 PC freaks hear/see your business name or URL a few times, drop me a note. Of course you'll also get mentioned on this news page which gets seen by about 5000 people a day.. Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 6-November-2000  09:08:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg Special greets to CoolTech, registered user # 2500 in the forums! I noticed some traffic coming from this SlashDot thread today.. seems they've woken up to the whole casemodding thing. :) ..but the really big news for today is that Robert Patrick (Terminator 2, "Have you seen this boy?") is replacing David Duchovny (sp?) AKA Fox Mulder in the X-Files.. minor plot spoilers in this story. Any vendors reading this page, there's some interest in the iPanel (made by Asus I think?) in the forums.. drop me a note if you're thinking of importing them, or if you can find a price. I've already emailed my Asus contact, I will add any info I get to that thread. Mike pointed out this bizarro cooler on AkibaPC.. LoneWolf posted pics of his cool blue case in the forums.. Hexus have a Duron overclocking guide.. they also checked out the MS Explorer mouse. The usual interesting/strange stuff on ZZZ Online. BTW, AllAdvantage coughed up again: I suspect this is the last cheque of any useful size I will see from them. Hope you guys got yours too! Archive updated! (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 5-November-2000  22:59:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Ok, I've been a bit of a slacker with the articles and review archive. It's updated now with all the articles/reviews since the last time I updated it a month or so ago. The archive is here - in case you missed any recent articles, here's the ones I added: Cool-computers radiator DangerDen a-MAZE-ing copper water block Modify Panaflo Orb to fit Asus A7V The Big Kahuna Big Daddy Kahuna Automatic Thermal Fan-Control Circuit Case Mods at MPU Razer Boomslang 2000 Sunday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 5-November-2000  20:16:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg Sorry about the lack of news this morning. Did about 400km's on the CBR1000 today.. :) To everyone who sent mail, all 30 or so of you, explaining that the early versions of Win95 can't run a K6-2 at more than 300MHz due to some timing error.. OK! Thanks. Got it now. :) BTW, there's info here.. thanks Ian. This is all regarding that "suspicious CPU" thing from yesterday. Ian also mentions that big floods in Taiwan are affecting power/comms so some hardware manufacturer sites there are down.. This page has speculative benchmarks comparing the 1.4Ghz P4 with 1.2Ghz TBird using DDR SDRAM.. InsideHardware reviewed the DFI AK74.. SocketA KT133 assault rifle. FoamySuds have an interview with Brian Burke from NVIDIA.. PCReview reviewed the CardCoolerXT.. Interesting stuff on OCShoot, they experimented with directly watercooling peltiers. Samson sends word that CoreMeltdown are giving away a V5-5500.. open to international peeps, gotta pay shipping. SuperOrb is hogging the limelight again, reviewed on HardCoreWare and also AthlonMB. Apu'sHardware want the world to know they have updated their "EXTREMELY POPULAR" K7T FAQ.. okey dokey. 7volts.com reviewed a baybus kit. AwareMag have a guide to installing a FOP-38.. Pablo says he modified a Panaflo Orb ages ago. They also changed the fan on theirs.. neato. Dan has terrorised an innocent cheapo Radeon and exposed its deepest secrets to the world. Saturday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 4-November-2000  19:41:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg TomsHardware have reviewed the new VapoChill unit from AseTek.. this is designed to handle socketed processors better and has a few other refinements.. an interesting look at the more commercial side of high-end overclocking. At the opposite end of the spectrum, YYK points out this cheap breadboard substitute.. breadboard as in for assembling electronics projects on. It's a tortilla. Ayup. HardAvenue have the (apparently) world exclusive review of the SoundBlaster Live 5.1 sound card.. VRZone have a detonator 6xx comparison.. various versions tested with a TNT2 card. Cool baybus fan controller posted in the forums.. Hmm, neato bit of kit reviewed on PCStats.. a removable secure HDD frame.. seems to be a bit more decent than the plasticky ones I've seen before. InsaneHardware have some scoopage - apparently Intel will give away 128MB of RAMBUS with every retail P4 sold..? Hmmm.. no thanks. Keep it and give me a discount on the chip price, Mr Intel.. A review of a GeForce Ultra card on this french site.. it's in English though.. kinda.. more frenglish perhaps. TheHeatsinkGuide, silent for so long, is back with a guide to modding a superOrb to fit a KT7.. you have to follow the link from that page, 'coz he's using frames.. eeew. IANAG have some DDR and RAMBUS info.. mostly political. Yaleman13 points out this suspicious-sounding cpu for sale on sold.com.au.. sounds overclocked to me - 500MHz but with the early versions of Windows 95 speed may need to be restricted to 300MHz.. wtf? XBit labs have a review of the Voodoo4 4500 AGP video card.. Lou sent a link to this wristwatch that can display video.. very Mission Impossible. :) There's another one that can play MP3's.. cool! TheTechZone reviewed Abit's VH6 motherboard.. Socket370, Apollo Pro 133A.. integrated sound, eew. HP PolarLogic / Panaflo Orb on A7V! (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 4-November-2000  12:35:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg Wolfy sent in a great article about his efforts modifying an HP PolarLogic/Panaflo Orb to fit the Asus A7V motherboard: Click here for the full article! Friday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 4-November-2000  00:34:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg BootMax have an article on the resurrection of Doom.. heh, that game rocked when it came out. :) More tales of woe on Maximum3D.. Junkz pointed out this review of a lapping kit AKA a big pile of sandpaper. :) PCMarket.com.au is giving away 5 blue orbs.. Project1GHz have reviewed a black light kit.. CaseModdersOz have a lan party guide.. they've also updated their arcticooler review.. Very cool case mods over on mota's site.. watercooled with flouros etc.. IANAG reviewed the blue orb.. Anand reviewed the Asus V7700 Deluxe video card. Danger Den a-MAZE-ing Copper Water Block Review.. (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 3-November-2000  22:26:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg I checked out a new copper water block from DangerDen. Quite a neat unit with a simple but clever mounting method: Click here for the full review! Friday Afternoon #2 (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 3-November-2000  13:30:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg Little bit more news for you.. expect some review action tonight! Some great custom-built aluminium case pics linked from this thread in the forums.. Splog was teasing us with sneak peeks last night in IRC and he's gotten them together now, great stuff! Jim from Realtime Systems send along a utility he found in his travels - I've not checked it out yet but he says it tells you whats in the eeprom on a sdram module.. interesting stuff for checking out your ram. I've mirrored it here (774KB) if you want to grab it.. Anand has a guide to upgrading your old K6-2 and K6-3 system.. RizeNet reviewed a Neon Lights kit.. Things to look out for, TheRegister point out the Top Ten Net Con Jobs has been updated.. RojakPot have info on a new ASUS website including a tasty-sounding competition.. they also review a portable modem that connects to palmtops etc by infra-red. Kyle from HardOCP has put pics of his wife's box up on the internet for everyone to see. No, really! Looks pretty tasty, too. Friday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 3-November-2000  12:35:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg Last month the overclockers.com.au domain served 1,072,255 pages to 200,516 unique visitors - totalling 37.8GB of outbound web data. "Hits" are not a useful measure of traffic, but in case you're wondering, that's 4.8 million site hits. Phwoar! :) Rekinborl sent word of something to keep an eye out for: I work for a computer retailer on the Gold Coast. I had reason to call a distributer of ASUS product to see if they had stock of any dual cpu mobo's for a system I was trying to put a quote in on. Besides the CUR-DLS and P2B-D he told me that there was soon going to be (in about 6 weeks) a CUV4X-DLS for around half as much again as the standard CUV4X. Hmmmm..... The 2CoolPC cooler-scooper was reviewed on PCMech.. IPKonfig are giving away a Chrome Orb.. TheCoolRepublic has a front-page info about the current case mod craziness.. unsurprisingly, they're just taking the piss as usual. :) Speaking of which, CaseETC have a(nother) cable-rounding article.. Interesting thread in the forums about converting a Voodoo3 to Voodoo5.. causing a bit of a stir. Pics of a stock P3 fan being put to good use in another thread.. AthlonOC have an Asus A7V Tweaking Guide and also info on an Abit K7T Voltage Hack.. More soon. Changing Windows startup text (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 2-November-2000  23:39:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg Neat little mod sent in by Nimus. Check the full details here.. Thursday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 2-November-2000  22:50:50 (GMT +10) - by Manaz I'm sure quite a few of you voted for Overclockers Australia in the AllHW.com grudge match during October. Why am I so sure? Because we came in at number 5! Thanks for the votes guys! Of course it's November now... :) Quite a few of our readers like to spend time in the #overclockers channel on the OzOrg IRC network. Some of them like to quote their system uptimes to the channel, in some sort of bragging contest. I think Tazza beats them all though. And he's on dialup.... The Register is carrying a story that S3 is to be renamed, and will now be known as SonicBlue. If you're like me, and you take news items on The Register with a bit of a grain of salt, ZDNet are running basically the same story. Thanks to Matthew for the links. Hypothermia have some autographed copies of NOLF (No One Lives Forever, a game) and an 800MHz Duron and mobo to give away. MSI have released Fuzzy Logic 3 - from what I can tell, it's a Windows-based overclocking utility, supposedly using some form of Artificial Intelligence. You can read about it here, on Overclockers Workbench, who are carrying the official press release. Are you tired of hearing how much that new digital camera you want is going to cost you? Build your own then! Reviews. The guys down at Ars Technica have reviewed the Lian Li PC-12 case, an aluminium case which competes with the Coolermaster ATCS series of cases. Via Hardware have posted a review of the MSI K7T Pro 2 motherboard. The Tech Zone has reviewed the Largan Lmini 350 Flip Digital Camera. Tech Extreme have reviewed the Mouse Bungee. And no, it's not a device for daredevil rodents to test their nerves on.... Glide Underground have reviewed the AOpen AK72 motherboard. Ken's Hardware have published a review of Thermaltake's latest Socket-A Cooler, the SuperOrb. Thursday Morning/Early Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 2-November-2000  13:03:03 (GMT +10) - by Manaz AnandTech have published an AMD Socket-A 133MHz FSB/DDR Overclocking Guide. Are you interested in what AMD think of their own processor's peformance? Check this page, all sorts of benchmark results from AMD, including the difference between SDRAM and DDR-RAM based systems. JCNews has a translated (from Japanese to English) transcipt of the PC Watch Interview with AMD's Bob Minton. There's some juicy details on the K8 (Hammer) processor here! AcidHardware have posted an exclusive press release, with pictures of the worlds first DDR motherboard from iWill. It seems that Micron have decided not to sell Pentium 4 based systems once Intel releases the processor to OEMs. The Adrenaline Vault has the story. Thanks to B5Lurker for the link. Speaking of companies deciding not to use processors in upcoming products, YYK pointed out this story, about IBM deciding not to use the Transmeta Crusoe processor in its ThinkPad 240 laptop personal computers. X-bit Labs have posted information on the Asus P4T motherboard, for Intel Pentium 4 processors. Apu's Hardware have updated their Driver Comparison page, adding details of the newly released/leaked Detonator 6.47 drivers. The Guru of 3D (that's the name of their site, not just one of their writers) have posted a Socket-A Athlon overclocking article. hardCOREware are giving away a 750MHz Ahtlon system!. Check the link for entry details. Not to be outdone, The Tech Zone are having a contest too! Reviews. OCWorkBench have reviewed the AOpen AX34 Pro II motherboard. GA-Hardware have taken a look at the Thrustmaster Top Gun Fox 2 Pro joystick. GideonTech have reviewed the PCMods neon light kit. Overclockers Shootout have posted a review of the Creative Labs GeForce2 Ultra video card.. PC Review UK have had a look at the Antec SX830 case. TechnoYard have reviewed the Transcend TS-ASL3 Socket 370 Motherboard. Wednesday Evening (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 1-November-2000  22:14:15 (GMT +10) - by Manaz Vegeta has painted his case, and added a couple of fans to it - not a bad effort. Check it out here. Not to be outdone, Smartypants and his friend made a VU meter that fits in a 3.5" drive bay. You can see pics of it (and see what it actually does as well) here. Napster have sold out. It was nice while it lasted.... Hercules have released "The next step in gaming sound", giving "power and ease at your fingertips!" - the Game Theatre XPT. CNEWZ have the story. Yesterday marked the 1 year anniversary of Fast-MHz. Well done guys. Yahoo is carrying a story that Microsoft have released the first, official test of the next Windows Operating system, codenamed "Whistler". Kyle from [H]ard|OCP has been busy - he's posted a preview of the latest Vapochill unit, and a guide to AMD's DDR-enabled motherboard chipset, AMD 760. TBreak have reviewed the Hercules Prophet II MX graphics card, and compared it to Creative's DDR GeForce2 MX based card, to see if DDR (albeit with a 64-bit data path rather than 128-bit like SDR based GeForce2 MX cards) is worth the effort/money. Someone over at Hart-Core (it's German), built a PC into a briefcase. OK, it's a bit bigger than your average briefcase, but it's still pretty portable. Finally, I need to read the news more myself. This WAS a story which Agg already posted this morning. I think I need sleep :P Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 1-November-2000  09:48:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg In case you've still not heard enough about AMD's 760 chipset, Sharky revisits it and overclocks durons on it.. bah, I want 760MP! Tom'sHardware also got around to putting up their AMD760 info.. INQST also have a fairly in-depth take on AMD and DDR.. thanks Mike. Sabretooth pointed out this Killer Bean movie site.. not seen it yet, he says it's funny. The movies are mirrored here for quicker Oz downloads. Dan's been surfing for porn and wants the world to know.. oh, PornSweeper STOPS you seeing porn? With all the hubbub about AMD760 at the moment, it's good to see there are still people out there taking perfectly useful computer components and setting fire to them.. TheRegister take a croquet mallet to Intel once again, noting that AMD is winning the pissing-match and that the blue men ads are even more stupid than the bunny people.. Tuesday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 1-November-2000  00:40:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Now this is a cool case mod. Nice work! ..and this is a fairly basic case-modding article on GU.. GroopA points out we've drifted down to 5th place in the Grudge Match.. go vote for us! :) alchemy noticed that Sony's uber-sexy Vaio range, mostly laptops, now include desktop machines too.. kinda built-in multimedia stuff, look pretty sexy.. until you need to upgrade. Maximum3D have info on Duron/Tbird Overclocking.. in case you missed the pencil trick etc.. InsideHardware reviewed a SocketA heatsink from TaiSol.. TechPlanet have a review of the arcticooler.. Tim wants the world to know that one of the Jackson 5 is maybe looking at buying land in WA. Okey dokey. Alchemy has some advice for those of you who's relationship with your dolphin is ready to go to "the next level".. visit www.dolphinsex.org.. I seriously have no idea where people come up with this stuff.. Sharky has a value 3dcard roundup.. thanks Term. CPUReview, silent for a while, have returned with an Epson Printer review.. hmm. Another silly link, Kaan points out that Bill Gates is evil.. well, derrr.. :) iXBT reviewed the Creative GeForce2 Ultra card.. InsaneHardware reviewed the Super Orb (finally :) ) ..

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