Intel vind de PSN (Processor Serial Number) identificatie methode in de PIII zelf ook niet betrouwbaar, zo blijkt uit een de disclaimers in Intel's application notes:

Processor serial number provides an identifier for the processor, but should not be assumed to be unique in itself. There are potential modes in which erroneous processor serial numbers may be reported. For example, in the event a processor is operated outside its recommended operationg specifications, the processor serial number may not be correctly read from the processor.

"Improper BIOS or software operations could yield an inaccurate processor serial number. These events could lead to possible erroneous or duplicate processor serial numbers being reported. System manufacturers can strengthen the robustness of the feature by including redundancy features, or other fault tolerant methods."

Geript van The Register...

C|Net News.com heeft nog wat info over de yield problemen bij AMD, die veroorzaakt worden door een gebrek aan productie facaliteiten:

The "fab" question goes to the heart of the pricing and volume dynamics of the microprocessor industry. In short, AMD has one microprocessor fab, while Intel has 13 and is building more. When Intel wants to boost the speed on a chip, it tries out the new design in one fab and, when the kinks are worked out, it rolls the manufacturing technique out to the rest of the factories in a process called "Copy Exact."

AMD doesn't have that luxury, so when the inevitable kink comes up, a shortage occurs. Intel then attacks on price.

In other words, it's not as if there are major design problems with AMD's chips. They just can't produce enough of them fast enough to turn a profit.

Zie dit nieuwsbericht op News.com voor het volledige verhaal.

Corel heeft een deal gesloten met Cygnus Solutions, die een aangepaste compiler gaat ontwikkelen waarmee het porten van Windows software naar Linux vereenvoudigd wordt. Het nieuws van The Register:

Corel has signed Cygnus Solutions to modify the compiler developer's Linux programming tools to make it easier for software companies to port their Windows applications to the open source OS.

The deal seems to have been done to make it easier for Corel to deliver on its commitment to port its productivity software to Linux. Having translated the WordPerfect 8 word processor to Linux, Corel said it would port over the other applications in the WordPerfect Office suite too.

However, since Cygnus will make changes to its GNUPro professional Linux development system, other companies should benefit from Corel's largesse.

Er is weer eens een bug ontdekt in Windoos. News.com brengt het nieuws:

Microsoft has confirmed a security vulnerability in its Windows NT operating system that could allow unauthorized access to sensitive information in administrator files.

The news comes just two days after Microsoft acknowledged that a feature in its Windows 98 operating system can be used to collect information on authors of electronic documents without their knowledge and vowed to fix the problem. (See related story)

The Windows NT problem is triggered by malicious software that allows a user to get into protected files on an NT system via the screensaver. When the screensaver launches, the malicious user can gain access to privileges that he or she should not ordinarily be able to obtain, Microsoft confirmed. The bug was discovered by Cybermedia Software of India.

Ars Technica heeft een review van SuSe 6.0 op z'n site geparkeerd. Hier wat basic info over deze Linux distributie van Europese bodem:

Linux user or not, it's possible you've never heard about SuSE, Europa's self-styled Red Hat in terms of popularity and media acceptance. As Linux becomes more and more attractive to users looking for new toys, new OSes, and new things to learn, Red Hat and SuSE are leading the way in the lucrative, high-visibility "newbie market." But the affinities between Red Hat and SuSE are few and far between once you get past the fact that they're both Linux distributions.   While each excel in offering a plethora of applications built upon the newest base set of the packages that make up Linux as an OS, their choices in libraries and GUI differ significantly enough to make the two products seem alien to a new user.  As it stands right now, both of these distributions have impressive shares of the Linux market. SuSE's share is about to get bigger.

Meer spul zie je bij Ars Technica.

Review-Zone heeft een review van 3Com's nieuwe Palm V:

Look at the Palm V and your first impression will probably be “It’s tiny!” The anodized aluminum case is only half as thick as a Palm III, slim and subtly curved. It’s seductively eye-catching: if people bought PDAs simply on the basis of how good they look, this would probably break all records. However, people don’t, or at least, shouldn’t and those of us who are tempted must harden our hearts and abstain from such sinful abandon. Anyhow; the Palm V definitely gives out some positive vibes. Pick it up- it’s light, but only slightly lighter than a Palm III, thanks to the former’s metal case. It feels solid and it is: you can’t take it apart. In other words, it isn’t upgradable. Unlike previous Palm models, you won’t be able to add more memory to the Palm V. Just hope that the 2MB it comes with is enough- but more on that later.

Maxtor heeft een press release losgelaten over z'n nieuwe 7200rpm DiamondMax Plus 5120 drive:

According to Bill Roach, Maxtor's senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing, these new 7,200 RPM DiamondMax Plus drives continue the leadership Maxtor has demonstrated over the past 18 months in the desktop hard disk drive marketplace. "With both our 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM products, we have consistently led the industry in shipping new generations of products in volume, while delivering the superior quality required by demanding OEM and distribution customers," said Roach. "Our new 7,200 RPM DiamondMax Plus 5120 drive sets a new standard for the high performance desktop market, delivering superior performance and quality along with our leadership technology."

The DiamondMax Plus 5120 offers capacities up to 20.4 GB (5,120 megabytes per disk), UltraDMA compatibility and an average seek time of 9.0 ms. This new family shares a number of features with its predecessor, the DiamondMax Plus 2500, including a digital signal processor (DSP)-based electronics architecture and partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) read channel technology. Combined, these technologies result in a higher-capacity, higher-performance drive.

In navolging van Intel, Oracle en Netscape gaan nu ook IBM, Compaq en Novell investeren in Red Hat:

erms of the investments weren't disclosed, but that's less important than the fact these companies are investing in Red Hat. IBM last week announced it would ship servers and desktop PCs with Red Hat Linux, so some kind of financial help the company develop isn't a great surprise. In fact, Red Hat has been talking to Big Blue about co-operative projects and an investment deal since the autumn.

Compaq's interest clearly arises from the increased demand for Linux from its customers. Certainly, Dell, according to chairman and CEO Michael Dell, interviewed in the LA Times, is planning to introduce Linux as a standard OS option -- at the moment, it's only available to high-volume purchasers -- and it's not hard to imagine Compaq considering the same sort of move.

Zie voor het complete nieuwsbericht.

Extreme Hardware heeft een review van de Guillemot Raceleader, een futurisch ogend racestuur met force feedback:

The Race Leader is a pretty funky looking controller, and the wheel base itself has a high resemblance to a Klingon battle crest. The silver emblem on the steering wheel certainly gives it a distinctive look, as do the metallic pedals on the base unit. Getting out my critical eye, I don't know how successful this design will be, since it has only a passing resemblance to any steering wheel I've ever seen. It must be marketed to the "arcade racing" crowd, where realism and suspension of disbelief are seen as archaic terms found in a dictionary. The Race Leader is a gear-based racing wheel and features both the good and bad associated with that design. Quick force feedback effects, excellent tactile feel and an overall sharper response are some of the positives, while you'll also have to put up with slight ratcheting sounds from the internal gears, and less power in the FF effects.

Anders Hammervald (designer van Sharky Extreme en Sysopt.com) heeft een preview gepost van de Riva TNT2. Over de kloksnelheid waarop de TNT2 gaat lopen is de laatste tijd nogal wat verwarring. Dit zegt Anders:

s far as nVidia has confirmed the TNT2 will run at 125Mhz core speed as was originally intended for the TNT1, however considering rumors that have been floating around and looking at the general development for .25 micron products this seems very low. S3's upcoming Savage 4 will run at 125 and 143Mhz and these boards hardly break a sweat in action. The Voodoo3 (which is manufactured at the same plants as the TNT2 will be) runs at 143, 166 and 183Mhz (albeit there has been issues with the 183Mhz board). Hence it seems quite likely that the TNT2 will be available in at least a 143Mhz variant and quite likely a 166Mhz variant as well, if not it might not be competitive enough..

Meer stuff vind je in het artikel bij 3DGen.com.

Crypto van BXBoards heeft een review gepost van de STEP Thermodynamics Fairbanks. Hier wat info over deze heatsink/peltier combo:

TEP's new flagship cooling product designed for the Intel PIII, and Celeron lines is called the FAIRBANKS. STEP sent BXBoards a FAIRBANKS mounted to a Celeron 400A that they guarantee will run stable at 500mhz for life. The FAIRBANKS cooling system employs a double fan, heat sink and peltier combination mounted on a unique beryllium copper backing plate that runs nearly the full length of the entire CPU board itself. This copper backing plate is then fused directly to the CPU with titanium dioxide at over 100psi. Copper is an excellent conductor of heat that has been used for many years in cooking and is making it's way into microelectronics as well. The FAIRBANK's copper plate acts to evenly distribute heat generated by the CPU to dual peltiers which, in turn, actively pump the heat to a double heat sink/fan combination for dissipation. This, by itself, is a superb design that could do the job quite well on it's own.

Piet van Pete's Hardware Domain heeft een toffe editorial over 'Antarctic overclocking' op z'n site gepleurd. Wie geen geld heeft voor een Kryotech systeem van 1600 dollar moet het anders aanpakken:

Not everyone can get/afford Kryotech's solution and so they have to find alternate ways to chill their CPU's. Geoff and I are quite fortunate in this respect, as we have the UK at our disposal. Don't know what I mean? Well here in England, at this time of year it's cold. It's not Antarctica, Siberia or anywhere else as cold as that but it certainly isn't warm. So over the past couple of weekends, we have been taking our PC's out to the garage where the ambient temperature is about 0c and trying to get some high speed action.

:D

Zie ook mijn artikel over extreme cooling.

Blizzard heeft een nieuwe patch voor Strafcraft klaar geknutseld. Hier een lijst met fixes in versie 1.05:

- Reduced Academy cost to 150 minerals.
- Reduced Science Facility cost to 100 minerals, 150 gas.
- Reduced Spider Mine research cost to 100 minerals, 100 gas.
- Reduced the cooldown for units on unload from a transport.
- Added a limit so games can only be saved at most once every two minutes during a multiplayer game.
- Fixed a bug that caused save game compatibility problems with 1.03 save games loaded into 1.04 and Brood War.
- The 'something for nothing' cheat no longer gives Brood War upgrades in normal Starcraft games.
- When using the 'exactly' modifier in trigger conditions, incomplete units are no longer included in the comparision.
- Hallucinated devourers no longer leave acid spores on targeted units.
- Spider mines are now properly affected by disruption web.
- Neutral medics no longer auto-heal units.
- Added a wireframe for Infested Duran in a dropship.
- The low memory version of the disruption web art is now correct.
- Terran insane AI no longer locks the system.
- Fixed the bug that allowed terran buildings to move after landing.
- Fixed the bug that incorrectly allowed 'morph to lurker' commands to be issued to units that weren't hydralisks.
- Miscellaneous minor bug fixes.
- (StarEdit) Eliminated dependence on updated comctrl32.dll
- (StarEdit) Now displays language based on installed version of Starcraft rather than operating system setting
- (StarEdit) Fixed a bug in the Player Upgrades dialog that could cause settings for one player to be inadvertently copied to another

Fiets ff naar de Blizzard patch page om het ding neer te halen.

Windows NT Magazine heeft een artikel in elkaar geplant waarin Windoos NT en Unix met elkaar vergeleken worden. Welke is beter?

Hier wat benchmarks resultaten:

What these benchmarks show is that, contrary to popular belief, NT can compete head-to-head with UNIX on high-end servers. The results also demonstrate that NT can scale well to four processors on enterprise-level applications. The results show, too, that NT is not a contender on systems with more than four CPUs, and that UNIX clustering solutions are far ahead of anything NT has to offer. However, NT is a relative newcomer to multiprocessors and clustering. Microsoft has recently begun to focus on multiprocessing and clustering capabilities as part of the company's plan to move NT into the high-end enterprise-scale arena. It won't be long before UNIX finds NT on its heels.

Het complete artikel, met benchmarks en een paar lessen WinNT/Unix geschiedenis, vind je hier.

Silicon Graphics blijft voorlopig nog renderdoosjes bouwen op basis van z'n MIPS processors. De bedoeling is dat deze doorontwikkeld worden tot 800MHz, dit ondanks het feit dat SGI eerder al duidelijk liet maken dat het over wil stappen op de 64-bits Intel Merced (waarvan de ontwikkeling zwaar gedelayed is). Hier wat info van EETimes:

The new microprocessors — which include an R14000 to debut next year, an R16000 for 2001 and perhaps an R18000 beyond — are fundamentally stepwise improvements, faster speed grades and process shrinks of the R10000 core, said John Mashey, SGI's chief scientist, in a separate interview from the company's offices in Mountian View, Calif. Customers approved of SGI's plans to migrate systems to Intel's IA-64 and IA-32 processors, but wanted more overlap between those systems and generations based on existing MIPS architectures, he said.

Last year when SGI spun out its MIPS processor division as a separate unit targeting embedded cores, sources at the company said SGI would not develop any MIPS CPUs for its workstation and server lines beyond the R12000, though SGI had previously stated that it planned a successor processors to the R12000 dubbed H1 and H2.

Anand heeft Kryotech's nieuwe Renegade koelsysteem getest. Met een prijs van 415 dollar is de Renegade heel wat minder betaalbaar dan de originele Kryotech Kool K6-2 barebones. Wat je voor die prijs krijgt is een mid-tower ATX kast met compressor, 'thermal bus' en koelplaat. De voeding mag je er zelf bij gaan kopen.

Tot zover de specs, hier wat info over de performance van het ding:

The Pentium II 400, now clocked at 450MHz, normally running at a temperature of above 39ºC quickly found a point of comfort, according to the LCD display on the system, at around 21ºC, approximately room temperature. For the sake of comparison, the LCD was allowed to run with the Renegade cooling system turned off, where the temperature of the same processor hit a steamy 55ºC. At 55ºC it stopped to register on the LCD which immediately shut down the computer due to, what it thought was, a cooling failure. Those two readings are made from the surface of the Pentium II's cartridge (where the cooling plate makes contact with the chip), however by using the on-board temperature monitoring features of the BX6 Revision 2.0, AnandTech's experimentation showed that the CPU (not the plate itself) was hitting temperatures of around 34ºC with the heatsink/fan solution coming in at over 42ºC.

Zie Anand's review voor de rest...

AGN Hardware heeft een fotootje van Creative's portable MP3 player weten te scoren. Zie 'm hier.

Strategy Gaming Online heeft 13 screenshots van Dark Reign 2 gepost.

Ace's Hardware heeft weer een diepgaand artikel over CPU's&zo gebakken. Dit keer gaat het om Superscalar CPU's. Hier de intro:

High clock speeds are nice, but they are not what you call the most intelligent approach to get a lightning fast microprocessor. In fact, even if you could get a i80386 to run at 500 Mhz, it would be no match at all for a humble PII-233. So how about it? Want to know why the K7 is such a promising CPU? Why the Pentium Pro/PII was much more advanced than the Pentium and a big step forward in the Intel x86-world?

Then it is time to dig into the architecture of modern CPUs again and find out what makes those brand new CPUs faster than the previous generation... 

Naast een zooi technische stuff zit er ook wat info bij over de K7 en waarom die sneller is dan de Intel P6.

PC Velocity.com heeft een review gepost van de ATI Rage Magnum. ATI ziet de Magnum als een "high performance 3D design and CAD solution for professional NT PCs and Workstations". Veel verschil met de goedkopere Fury valt er echter niet te ontdekken:

From what I've seen of the ATI Rage Fury though in benchmarking, it doesn't seem to be very different from the Fury. 3D compatibility is exactly the same, and performance doesn't differ by much. Just consider the fact that right now the Windows 95/98 drivers on ATI's website for this card work for all ATI Rage 128 cards, and I think it's safe to assume that if ATI has anything up their sleeve about increasing CAD or general OpenGL performance for their cards, that it's not quite done yet. As of now, what I did try in the couple of 3D design-type applications I have didn't seem to be any faster than other ATI Rage 128 cards.

De rest van het verhaal is te vinden bij PC Velocity.

S3 wil een kaart op de markt brengen met goede 2d en 3d kwaliteiten voor thuisgebruik na hun verliezen.

One of the pioneers in graphics chips, S3 is trying to bounce back after missing critical product cycles and, as a result, reporting a string of losses. In the fourth quarter, for example, it posted a wider-than-expected loss of $70.3 million.

Hier kan je meer (technische) info vinden.

Matrox heeft nieuwe drivers uitgebracht voor z'n G200. Ze ondersteunen weer iets nieuws.

Matrox has added new WHQL certified G200 drivers that add support for SXGA Flat Panels.

Je kan ze hier neerladen.