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Bringing you the best computer news on the ECST network. |
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| Water Cooling April 29, 2000 | ||
| I'm a bit late on this one, but on April
25th Swiftech finally released a water
cooler set. No word on performance numbers yet, but water coolers generally
do a lot better job than your average heatsink/fan unit, so you know it's
going to be good. You can get the whole MCW2000
pricing stats here.
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| New Detonator Drivers April 27, 2000 | ||
| There is a new set of 5.XX drivers that were leaked. These are the ones that were used on the numerous GeForce-2 GTS previews as of late. No word on speed upgrades or stability yet, but 3DChipset has them for download here. | ||
| New Site Design April 26, 2000 | ||
| On the premise that I would have to modify
my website to meet the requirements of an upcomming assignment for my MINS-110
class, I have altered the design of my website. Unfortunately it is also
highly likely that I will have to take down certain parts of my site in
order to feed the voracious bandwidth appetite of MS Access database files.
Well know for certain as the day progresses... nVIDIA finally lifted the NDA on the NV-15. And as many of you had already inferred from the 5.XX Detonator drivers, the NV-15 is named the GeForce-2 GTS. Here's just some of the stats (you can get the rest at RivaZone):
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| Weekend Wrap Up April 25, 2000 | ||
| Well I just got back from visiting my
parents in Irvine. It was a nice vacation visit: I spent 2 days relaxing
with my parents, then we went down to my grandparents house for the remainder
of this Easter weekend. I also saw U571
on Sunday. Very good movie if you ask me, I'd recommend you see if it you
haven't done so already.
In the computer related news, there's been a plethora of Voodoo-5 5500 previews lately. There's too many to link. As for GeForce-256 owners, apparently there is a new reference bios (version 2.10.03.00.00) that is supposed to improve stability and increase the speed of your card by a few percent points. Go here for some benchmarks. |
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| School Stuff April 19, 2000 | ||
| School work has been keeping me pretty
busy lately. I've been doing studying for my Assembly Language mid-term
tomorrow and I've also been trying to get some work done for my Corporate
Information Technology class. Unfortunately the SAP system administrators
haven't managed to fix all of my problems yet, so that just delays the
work that I have to get done sometime in the next week. Next Thursday the
system is taken off-line, so I have to get this stuff done soon.
For those of you whom don't alreadly know,
there are a few Voodoo-5
5500 previews out on the web, complete with benchmarks:
In other news, it looks like someone has stolen the spacer design. I know somebody who'll be getting an e-mail in the not-to-distant future...
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| More Computer News April 16, 2000 | ||
| Looks like Trinity's server for the K7-H2O
water cooler, doesn't like me using their pictures, so I pulled the
pic, but you can still view it here.
Looks like the cat is out of the bag on the name of the successor to the ever-popular GeForce-256: the GeForce-2 GTS. You can get the full specs on Creative Lab's card here. 3DChipset also has the two new sets of drivers for the GeForce-based cards. Here's the 3.84 drivers (Win9X, Windows 2000) and the 5.14s (Win9X, Windows 2000). Remember, these are still beta drivers, so use them at your own risk. On a side note, I changed some of the files around on the 3.84 drivers to include FSAA support through using the OpenGL driver from the 5.08 drivers. I also used the control panel from the 5.14s to get OpenGL FSAA access. If you want these, e-mail me. School is still keeping me busy. I'm about ready to do my presentation for my speech class tomorrow and I still need to do some studying for my mid-term for my Assembly Language class next week. But on the bright side, I'll be visiting my parents next Thursday for the weekend. |
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| Computer News April 13, 2000 | ||
| After recieving my SCSI
cable for the second time, my computer is up and running quite well
again. And this time I even put the case cover back on! (Gasp!)
For any of you guys whom are into hard-core overclocking, my old pal TiGeR is going to be doing a review of the K7-H2O water cooler from Trinity Micro. This thing sure looks like one mean water cooler, but I'm not totally certain that you can mount peltiers on their yet. As for a bit of sad news, according to this document, my laptop does not have a new enough revision of it's motherboard to support the K6-2 or above. I guess that kind of quashes my dreams of upgrading this thing from a K6-266 to a faster CPU. But at least I can still stick another 64MB of SDRAM in there... |
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| More School Stuff April 11, 2000 | ||
| My two quizzes went well today. I think
I did pretty good. Just I hope I do this good on my mid-term for my Assembly
Language class next week...
My replacement SCSI cable also came today, but unforuntately I was away at school when FedEx came. I'll have to wait until tomorrow until I can get it back again. |
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| SCSI and Other Stuff April 10, 2000 | ||
| Good news regarding my SCSI
card. It's working properly again. Turns out my SCSI cable had broken--or
just it doesn't want to operate within design specs anymore. I'm going
to have to get a new one, but at least that's cheaper than having to buy
a new SCSI card and or hard drives.
My computer is back up again, however I had to disable my second hard drive which contains all my applications. Since I don't have another SCSI cable yet, I can't hook up all my devices. Oh well... My other hard drive is in working condition and I can play some games. I also found some new drivers for my GeForce-256. For those of you whom can't run the 5.XX drivers, grab the 3.77s from 3D Chipset. These provide FSAA and S3TC support. Today I also finally hooked up my joystick (well it's actually a Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital) for the first time in ages. I tried it out on last year's Star Wars Episode I: Racer. Works pretty good. Still need to find some more games to use my joystick on, but Starlancer is looking pretty awesome. It went gold only a few days ago; it should be on the shelves on the 28th. By the way, Daily Radar has an excellent Starlancer Preview.
School has been going well, but I have a presentation to do for my speech class tomorrow. Fun stuff. In my Assembly Language class I also have to do a quiz. But it's the following weeks that I'm worried about: I got another mid-term comming up. I guess it never ends... |
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| No News April 6, 2000 | ||
| Well not much has happened on the computer
front. I did finally manage to get my SCSI
card to work again, but it only seems to want to work in SE mode. Basically
I can't turn on the Ultra-2 speeds that I bought the card for. I'm gonna
hafta wait until Tekram sends back
another reply before I can get things straightened out...
School has again kept me pretty busy this past week. Next week should be better, but I'll still be doing a lot of work right up until finals week. I can't wait until Summer, where I can sit around and goof off all day. |
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| Not So Good News April 3, 2000 | ||
| Something has gone awry with my Tekram SCSI card. I don't know what the problem is, but it's decided that it doesn't want to utilize my hard drives any more. I'm contacting Tekram's tech support now, to get this one fixed, but I sure don't want to have to get this card fixed so soon... | ||
| School Stuff April 2, 2000 | ||
| Let's see. I've already completed my Computer
Science program that's due on Wednesday. Now I have to study for the two
quizzes I have next week as well as the mid-term for my Anthropology class.
Well at least I've got some stuff done...
My Athlon went down again :( But it appears the thermal epoxy holding my cooling fan to my GPU couldn't stand the heat. Luckily when it fell off it didn't damage the video card or shatter the fan blades, so all I have to do is put it back on. I dug up the old heatsink that I had before and I'm now going to attatch the new fan to it. The old heatsink uses the two plastic clips that grib to the video card--it's not as good as the other heatsink, but this one will definately stick better. Now all I have to do is head down to Safeway and pick up some rubbing alcohol to clean up the GPU. |
