I'm finally on summer vacation now. I finished all my finals last week. I think I did alright but I'm going to have to wait until June 8th before I can get any of my grades back. 

So far I haven't done that much other than play video games and sit around. Looks like I have about the same plans for today. Dad wants me to go see if I can hunt around on the web and see if I can locate a job for this summer. Not a bad idea. I've sent a few résumés off to Boeing, Western Digital, and a few other companies in town. Hopefully something will turn up. If not, I might end up working at MicroCenter. It's a computer store (surprise, surprise.)

Unfortunately I was not able to bring back my PC from my apartment back in Chico. I guess I'll have to let it sit there until July when we can pick it up when we are moving stuff between the new and the old apartments. Looks like Ill be using my laptop some more this summer...

In other news, this page will be down between June 2nd and June 4th while the ECST servers are shut down. 

In computer-related news, several sites on the web have confirmed some rather unfortunate news for Intel. After the many bugs plauging the i820 motherboards, Intel has decided to do a massive recall on all of their motherboards that used this chipset. This is their second largest recall behind the 1995 Pentium FDIV bug.

HardOCP says it's sources have unearthed more unsettling news about the incompatibilities regarding AMD's Thunderbird CPU. Apparently they will not be shipping any Slot-A CPUs outside of the OEM computer manufacturer market. In other words, it is highly likely that you'll never see Slot-A Thunderbirds on the store shelves unless you are buying a retail machine like a Gatway. Looks like if you want to go Thunderbird, you are going to have to get a new Socket-A motherboard as well...

Today Napster banned all 317,377 users whom had been identified for trading Metallica MP3s. Strangely enough, over 300,000 new accounts have been registered. Man, who would have imagined that? Come on guys, you aren't fooling anybody: nothing prevents those prior users from re-registering under a different name.

In computer-related news, I've downloaded another 100MB of MP3s yesterday. Got another few CDs. Boy am I glad that I have 18GB of storage, otherwise I'd be wheezing for space. My brother is suffering from that problem right now, but he's only got half as much storage as I do, plus he loads just about every game he has on his computer. He's pretty tight on the MB these days...

I'm trying to convince him to get one of those Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40GB drives. If you are looking for a new hard drive and you use IDE, then I highly reccomend you check one of those out. They are among the fastest drives on the market. 

It seems to be that some of the Intel P!!! Coppermine chips have been suffering problems of cracking when under extreme thermal temperatures (hot or cold). Overclockers.com's article has turned up some interesting results. I'd give it a read if you are or will be a perspective Coppermine owner. HardOCP says that they don't reccomend mounting Coppermines without copper spacers anymore.

Here's some more GeForce-2 GTS reviews from around the web:

• Hercules Prophet II
• Elsa Gladiac (which is also made by VisionTek according to here).
• Leadtek WinFast GeForce2

Anyways, there's a good article on the speed variations on quality settings in gaming at FullOn3D. I highly reccomend that you check this article out.

As some of you already know, I've spent the past week downloading lots of MP3s. So far I've racked up 2.4GB in the past five days. If you don't have DSL, get it. 

AthlonMB put up a comparison of the newer GeForce-2 GTS and the GeForce-256. In other GeForce-related news, there is also an FSAA comparison between the GeForce-2 GTS and the Voodoo5 5500. The screenies are on seperate pages, but here's the GTS/Voodoo-5 shots. 

Ace's Hardware posted some rather startling news from Intel: The time-honored Pentium III will no longer be the top chip in it's processor lineup. Not only that, but it will be removed from the mid-range market as well. It's replacement? The Willamette. Intel is positioning it's new 7th-Generation chip agains AMD's upcomming Thunderbird and Duron processors (formerly Spitfire). Now this means that Pentium III will now serve in the low-end, bargain-basement market which is currently occupied by the Celeron and the AMD K6-X. As for the Celeron, well...nobody knows what's giong to happen to the Celeron after the Willamette is released.

But why the sudden change of plan for the Pentium III? Maybe the upcomming chips from AMD will beat it so badly that they [Intel] is taking them off their product line or perhaps the Willamette is underperforming and needs to dip into the mid-range market. We'll never know. But something must have gone awry at Intel for them to have to make a rather large detour from their CPU Roadmap. 

One thing that caused quite a stir in the Athlon world recently is that AMD said the Thunderbird would not be compatible with motherboards based on the Via KX-133 chipset. Here's what AMD had to say about it (as ripped from FullOn3D on):

"Here is the deal. The VIA KX133 chipset is designed to work with the current version of the AMD Athlon processor in the Slot A module. We plan to begin volume shipments of the new AMD Athlon processor(Thunderbird)in June. This is planned to coincide with VIA Technology's planned iintroduction of the KZ133 chipset. The new AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) processor is primarily intended to ship into Socket A infrastructure that uses Via KZ133."

Hmm, oh well. I guess I was lucky to stick with my AMD-750-based board until the 760s came out...

In other news, school is starting to wind up here. I only have another two weeks before finals. I'm gonna have to start studying a lot more. But luckily I only have one more program to do for my Assembly Language class and I'm finished. But after all that's done, I can sit deathmatch for three months straight. I can't wait until summer...