Nou, in ieder geval geven ze bij Vega Technologies wel snel antwoord op vragen. Alleen worden we er niet veel wijzer van (zie mijn post: Clone je pc voor weinig geld).

> And is there any chance that with future releases a decent 2/3D card > will be included? Cause this looks to me like a possible cheap solution > for gamers, who want to link their games?

The video situation is definitely being looked into (as well as no sound on the second station) by the proper departments. We as a company will of course strive to improve and update this product as much and as often as possible.

Currently, the cost of designing and integrating these features would raise the price of the Buddy to an extent that it wouldn't be a good value. We will upgrade our product as much as we can while maintaining a reasonable market price.

Thank you for your interest in our product,

Albert Franco

Vega Technologies

Tom heeft in z'n tech news een berichtje staan over een bedrijf dat een goedkoop systeem bedacht heeft waarmee je één of meerdere dummies aan je pc kan bouwen. Heel handig als meerdere mensen in huis willen internetten.

Why shell out as much as $2,000 for a second PC when you can clone your first for just $149.95? That's the pitch Vega Technologies is making for its Buddy PC product.

According to the company, the easy-to-install Buddy system requires only the addition of a second monitor, keyboard and mouse to allow two users to simultaneously access word processing, spreadsheets and other everyday applications from the same primary machine.

Ik denk alleen niet dat je met dat ISA kaartje van hun Quake III kan linken. Ik heb Vega Tech al een mailtje gestuurd met de vraag of ze in de toekomst ook rekening gaan houden met ons gamers, ik hou jullie op de hoogte.

Hier kan je een review vinden over de WIDE-drive van Plextor.

I really did notice a difference between the Narrow and the WIDE drives.  The difference was no so much in the time it took to install a game, or to read a file, but more in the overall responsiveness of the drive.  The WIDE drive definitely seemed to make things a bit faster in most CD related tasks. Of course, I ran CDTach 99 on the drive so that my observations had some empirical value to them.  You may not notice too much of a difference between the two drives, but there is one there if you look hard enough.

De kaarten van ATI zijn meestal bagger, maar deze kaart is toch wel goed vanweg zijn multifunctionaliteit. Prestaties zijn, net als bij vele andere kaarten, bagger.

The Rage Fury was of course based around the Rage 128 chip from ATI, a company that had traditionally been a leader in OEM sales, but lagged somewhat behind the performance curve when it came to 3D acceleration. The Rage 128 was ATI's attempt to take back the lead in 2D and 3D performance. This .25 micron chip features a 128-bit engine, complete OpenGL ICD, hardware DVD decoding, and an "advanced graphics architecture with superscalar rendering, line and edge anti-aliasing, gouraud shading, twin cache architecture, single-pass multi-texturing and bump mapping."

Je kan hem hier vinden.

Linus Torvalds heeft aangekondigd dat hij stopt met werken voor Transmeta, dat vage bedrijfje dat claimde dat het met een revolutionaire processor zou komen. Hij gaat werken voor het Russische bedrijf Elbrus International, die van de E2K processor, om een Linux compatible OS voor hen te schrijven.

In a russian-language article named "Closer to Dad" Computerra said that the factors that convinced Linus to move to Russia were "more interesting and promising job", closeness to his father who works as a Moscow correspondent for Finnish radio & TV, and a more familiar climate, similar to Linus's homeland Finland (they don't get a lot of snow in LA, do they... ). They also quoted the future boss of Linus, professor Boris Babayan: "The great professional qualities of Torvalds will help create a dependable OS for the E2K processor, fully compatible with Linux, in a tight deadline". "

Hmmm... volgens mij zullen de Amerikanen hier toch niet echt blij mee zijn.

Yep, gisteren nog watergekoelde G3's, nu draaien ze er al Linux op. Het gaat beter. G3 bezitters moeten ff gaan snuffelen op www.yellowdaglinux.com:

Yellow Dog Linux is a cutting edge Linux distribution which contains the latest and greatest in open source software. Built upon the PPC Linux Kernel, Yellow Dog Linux is ideal for both the commercial service provider seeking a rock-solid, fast server environment and for the home-user who desires a stable, easy to use and maintain work and play system.

Riva3D heeft meer TNT2 vs Voodoo3 benchmarks gepost. De info...

It's obvious that the V3 running Glide still reigns supreme, with the V3-2000 beating even the TNT2 running at 183 on both the P2-350 and P2-450, except for 1600x1200 resolution, where the V3-2000 begins to show its limits. But what's more interesting is the almost identical numbers on the P2-350 and 450 when the TNT2 is running 32 bit color at 800x600 and higher resolutions. This suggests that 1) the beta drivers are hitting the peak of their capabilities, 2) a bottleneck is occurring in the system, or 3) the peak rate of the TNT2 is being reached. As newer drivers are released, this will bear more scrutiny. But while the V3s slap the TNT2s in Quake 2, Turok 2 tests illustrate the edge that D3D gives to the TNT2. This stands to reason, as the TNT core was designed for D3D, while the Voodoo core was designed for Glide. Looking at it in that light makes the strengths and weaknesses of each quite obvious:

...bij de resultaten.

Gamesmania heeft een review van X-Wing Alliance op het net gekickt. Da's weer leuk voor de Star Wars fans:

The X-wing series has always been known for its multiple campaigns and excellent story line. That’s why X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter is seen by some as a failure. I’m very happy to report that X-Wing Alliance is everything that any fan of the series would expect. There are over 50 single player missions plus an instant skirmish mode that makes for limitless replay. There are fewer multiplayer options than in XvT, but Alliance is first and foremost a single player game. In those 50+ missions you’ll progress from a freighter pilot to a front line fighter pilot, flying the hottest hardware the Rebel Alliance has to offer. The culmination of all of your efforts is an assault on the Death Star orbiting the forest moon of Endor, and we all know how much fun that can be.

Futuremark heeft de nieuwe 3DMark99 benchmark database onlijn. Die database is errug handig als je de prestaties van verschillende videoplanken onder verschillende configuraties wilt vergelijken. Hier de info van 3DMark.com:

Alright! Global Compare and Hardware Upgrade features are now fully functional and online!

Global Compare is a powerful feature that allows you to compare your results with hundreds and thousands of 3D gamers from all around the world. Cut through the jargon and see how fast you really are and whether you belong to the fastest or slowest users on similar platforms!

Hardware Upgrade is a totally new unique tool that let's you see how fast different 3D accelerators would perform on your system! Hardware Upgrade matches your 3DMark results against the 3DMark results database and shows what kind of 3DMark scores you would get if you installed different 3D accelerators to your particular system setup.

Finally, under the Chipsets section you can browse the 3DMark database to see how different 3D accelerator or processors perform on different resolutions or color depths.

All Internet functionalities are updated on a real time basis. Do the Right Thing and help us to collect more information by running the very nifty Batch Run feature of 3DMark 99 MAX and comparing your results on all different resolutions and color depth. That way we can give you even more accurate information and the world will be a much, much better place...

AGN Hardware heeft een review gebakken van de Plextor Ultraplex 40x Wide, da's een dikke Ultra-Wide SCSI CD-ROM drive. Hier een stuk over de performance van het ding, in vergelijking met zo'n mindere 'narrow' broertje:

I really did notice a difference between the Narrow and the WIDE drives.  The difference was no so much in the time it took to install a game, or to read a file, but more in the overall responsiveness of the drive.  The WIDE drive definitely seemed to make things a bit faster in most CD related tasks.

Of course, I ran CDTach 99 on the drive so that my observations had some empirical value to them.  You may not notice too much of a difference between the two drives, but there is one there if you look hard enough.

AVault heeft een nieuwsbericht gepost over de opvolger van Carmageddon II. Carmageddon: Death Race 2000 gaat de naam worden:

orrest says the engine is much more powerful than previous iterations, with real-time shadows, environment mapping and more. It will support all new processors and cards, including TNT2, Voodoo3, Matrox G400, S4 and so on. Although he could not be too specific, he said the team has a “brilliant” DirectX6.1 and DirectX 7 engine, meaning they have support for every card with a DirectX driver. SCi is not going hardware only, though, something many developers are opting to do, so there will be a software mode for older machines and non-3D accelerated cards.

There is a setting and basic plot in place, and Forrest says the team is striving to give Deathrace 2000 a great narrative. Although he would not provide details, he did mention the designers will be using the game engine for some “superb storytelling.” The gameplay is also under wraps, though Forrest mentioned huge animated environments, draw bridges that open and close as ships pass under them, animated water and cranes that drop weights on opponents. We wanted him to go on, but he stopped there. Essentially, players will have to use more thought to get through the game.