Ik kwam bij Coolinfo een artikel tegen van Wired over nieuwe Amiga's van Amiga Inc. (Gateway) en IWin, een of ander vaag Duits bedrijf:

So when a mysterious German computer company materialized last week announcing new computers based on the long-abandoned Amiga technology, there was much jubilation, along with some skepticism, on Amiga enthusiast sites. "This sounds too good to be true," said Laser, who continues to work on a 50 MHz system that he purchased in 1989.

"If it's real, they're gonna sell a lot of machines. We have people who've been living with old Amigas for years."

After a few attempts to resuscitate the platform failed, PC maker Gateway stepped in and purchased the Amiga patent library in 1997. Gateway was shocked to receive a loud greeting of "We're saved!" from the few, the proud, the remaining Amiga faithful. Because of the enthusiastic reception, Gateway decided to set up a subsidiary, Amiga Inc., to keep the technology alive. The plan was to go forward with new technology, not build new PCs based on the old designs. The next generation Amiga is rumored to be a set-top console using the Linux kernel powered by super-secret chips being developed by Transmeta. The current release date for next-generation Amiga is the first quarter of 2000.

The announcement from IWin on 16 August of a pair of new "Amiga" computers, the A510 and A1010, shocked everyone, including Amiga Inc. Jim Collis, president of Amiga Inc., posted a newsgroup message that day claiming it was the first he had heard of the company or its products. "If they have attempted to contact Amiga, Inc. in the past, I am not aware of these attempts," said a Collis posting.

But IWin's, promises appear to be shadier than a 50-foot oak tree. The company has no US retail presence, and there is no phone listing for its American office in Lewes, Delaware. The company did not respond to repeated requests for an interview made to their home office. The Amiga computer used several proprietary chips that required special fabrication units to design, and even if IWin could copy the chips, Amiga, Inc. claims it would be a copyright violation.

Another reason for the suspicion is that the computers don't come with a copy of the Amiga operating system. Customers are told to get a copy of the OS from their local dealer, if they can find it. The prices are also remarkable -- the Amiga 1010 comes with a 68060 or PowerPC 604 CPU, 40MB of RAM, 8GB SCSI hard drive, DVD-ROM, ZIP drive, and 15-inch monitor for $799. The 510 comes with 32MB of RAM and without a DVD or ZIP drive, and it sells for $499.

Laser won't get too excited until the new box shows up on his doorstep. "I'll believe it when I see it."

Extreme Hardware heeft een review van de Saitek Cyborg Stick 2000 online gezet. Deze pretpook ziet er niet alleen erg kewl uit, je kunt haar ook nog eens volledig naar je eigen wensen customizen:

The Cyborg 3D’s claim-to-fame was always its unparalleled degree of customizability to fit hands of all sizes and shapes, and in this regard, the Stick 2000 is no different. It comes with the same nifty hex tool that allows four separate adjustments. Lefties will appreciate being able to re-position the throttle knob and palm rest to achieve a mirror-image of the default right-handed stick. The palm rest may also be moved up or down to accommodate different sized hands. The two remaining adjustments allow incremental tilting and rolling of the thumb base to fit thumbs of various shapes and lengths.

Extreme Hardware noemt het "quite possibly the best 4-button analog joystick currently on the market". Het waarom daarvan lees je hier.

3D Soundsurge heeft een behoorlijke complete review gepost van de Xitel Storm Platinum, een Aureal Vortex II soundcard met quad speaker support, digitale S/PDIF interface en force feedback headphones. Een probleem met de Vortex II kaarten was altijd de hoge CPU load bij gebruik van de wavetracing engine (iets dat de SBLive sowieso al niet kent). Zoals reeds eerder aangetoond door Extreme hardware is de de CPU performance hit met de nieuwe drivers dramatisch gedaald!

Half-Life continues to be our best benchmarking tool for in game A3D 2.0 performance. Using a Celeron 300a at its default speed with 2015 drivers on a Vortex 2 board results in 27.2 FPS with wavetracing and 31.4 without and with the Celeron 300a overclocked to 450 MHz the results are 34.7 with wavetracing, 36.8 without. For details on how we benchmark in Half-Life and to see the results of several other soundcards you can check out our Half-Life benchmarking page (which is actually just a regularly updated part of our full Half-Life review, which includes the results of playing it using four different sound cards!

As we noted before, the A3D 2.0 engine and API has been undergoing progressive tweaking by Aureal. With the release of the 2.20 A3D drivers (now up to 2.22) we decided to take a quick look at where performance was with the initial release of A3D 2.0 and where it is today using Heretic II as our prime the benchmarking tool. Heretic II is the focus because it uses the latest A3D 2.0 engine that we have access to. The results of this test show that CPU usage has dropped from In Heretic II, the performance hit of using the full feature set of A3D 2.0 vs. Direct Sound has dropped from 25.4 percent all the way down to 5.6 percent on a Celeron 333a oc to 416 Mhz! You can check out the all the details in our A3D 2.0 Performance article.

Okee, wat denk je hier van :

De fusie tussen S3 en Diamond is een stap dichter bij de werkelijkheid geraakt, zo bericht The Register:

S3's attempt to buy Diamond Multimedia took a step closer to completion today when the graphics company announced it had been allowed to limit the period it needs to wait before it can put the merger proposal to a shareholders' vote.

The US' Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act enforces a waiting period between the statement of two or more companies to merge and the final vote by the companies' shareholders on whether the merger should go ahead.

S3's "early termination" -- as the company darkly put it -- now means shareholders will be asked to gather together on 20 September to cast their lot in favour of the motion to merge.

Deze move zou tevens moeten voorkomen dat een aantal pissige Diamond aandeelhouders (die vinden dat Diamond zich voor te weinig geld heeft laten over kopen) de kans krijgen om Diamond voor de rechter te halen. Meer daarover lees je in dit bericht van The Register.

HardOCP heeft een review gepost van de Skywell Magic TNT2 kaart. In goede HOCP traditie hebben ze ook getracht om dit ding over te klokken. Nouja, dat is in dit geval een grof understatement...

Nou vragen we ons allemaal af: helpt dit?

Did going to all of these extreme lengths do any good? Well in this case absolutely not. It was total waste of time and money to stick all those damn heatsinks on there. And not to mention the time lost painting them stoopid colors on the edges.

This is an extremely good example of a rule that many of us overclockers tend to overlook. If you are limited by the equipment, all the tweaking in the world will most likely not help. We get mail everyday asking, "Hey Mr. FrgMstr, do you think if I strap on that Alpha cooler it will get me to 102,433MHz?" I seriously doubt it because the equipment just ain't cutting it and that is what we have here with the SGRam.

At our best we were able to bring the card up to 153MHz on the memory. It was already OC'd for all it was worth. Let's look at some numbers.

Nee dus :'( (en dat geheugen draaide standaard al op 150MHz...).

Ik kreeg van Sake de tip dat Sharky Extreme z\'n Weekly CPU prices column heeft geupdate. Voor het eerst worden ook prijzen voor de Athlon genoemd. Mako (hardware editor van Sharky Extreme en uitsproken anti-AMD) krijgt het zelfs voor elkaar om enkele positieve opmerkingen over de beschikbaarheid van de Athlon te plaatsen:

Also, this week sees the debut of AMD\'s new Athlon line of CPUs on our weekly list, a fact that many fans of the part will no doubt be happy about. While there aren\'t many resellers that we talked to that weren\'t still waiting for their Athlon orders to come in, the ones we\'ve listed above did verify that they indeed had stock on hand and could ship orders immediately.

Athlon mainboards are a rare commodity currently, but both Gigabyte and MSI\'s first \"Slot-A\" Athlon boards should hit retail channels either early next week or shortly thereafter. Think mid-September at the latest.

It\'s a testament to AMD\'s strong commitment to the Athlon that it

S&F kondigd aan dat zij zeer spoedig (begin vierde kwartaal) haar 12/4/32 (re)writer op de markt brengt voor $399 en een lading software.

Following the company's successful launch of the world's first 8x CD-Recorder in November of 1997, this latest announcement solidifies Smart and Friendly's position as a technology leader -- engineering, designing and developing optical storage solutions that are a full two generations ahead of the competition.
With unprecedented 12x Write, 4x ReWrite and 32x Playback speeds, an unparalleled software suite including eight of today's hottest-selling software applications, and an Estimated Street Price (ESP) of $399 (internal model, Part No. SAF1200), the new CD Rocket Mach 12 will make professional performance available to individual users and hobbyists in early Fourth Quarter, 1999.
The CD Rocket Mach 12 features Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe, allowing users to easily create audio and backup CDs, access music on the Internet, fine tune music tracks, enhance photos and videos like a pro, as well as create personalized CD labels.
An all-in-one solution for CD-Recording, this new software enables corporate, government and power users to create content with professional results. Combined with the performance of the CD Rocket Mach 12, users can create a full 650MB CD in as little as six minutes.

Er zijn geruchten dat Plextor ook bezig is met een 12x brander, en volgens deze bron waren er wat problemen met de 8x versie van S&F. Als je het snelheids record wilt gaan verbreken, zou ik wachten waar Plextor of Yamaha mee gaat komen.

Bij iXBT-Labs is een review te vinden van de Dual Celeron plank van Abit, de BP6. Verdere introductie niet nodig lijkt me. De review is zoals we van deze site gewend zijn, vrij uitgebreid, lees hem hier. Hier is vast een gedeelte over de overclocking features:

First of all, ABIT BP6 allows changing the CPU voltage for each processor separately and independently. In other words, if you are using two processors from different supplies and with different overclockability, the possibility to increase the voltage for one of them will let you achieve highest working speeds. The CPU voltage can be changed within the range from 1.3 to 2.3V with 0.05V step. Such a wide range especially the values below the standard 2V may turn out pretty useful later on, when the Celeron processors are manufactured with 0.18 micron technology and are very likely to require lower core voltage.

All the other parameters are changed simultaneously for both processors. Among those is the multiplication up to 8x, which hardly influences anything, because Celeron's multiplier is locked as well as those by other Intel processors. However, as it comes to FSB frequency, we feel like devoting it a bit more time.

All the mainboards designed for Celeron processors always had one pretty unpleasant drawback in terms of overclocking: there were only two additional frequencies (75 and 83MHz) in the range between 66 and 100MHz. The frequencies available within this range were always very important for the today's CPUs of this type, because they could hardly be overclocked to the bus frequency exceeding 100MHz. The launching of ABIT BP6 finally changed the things to the better. The frequency generator ICS 9248AF-9D increased the frequencies set mainly by means of the values below 100MHz: 66, 72, 75, 78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 106, 108, 110, 124, 133MHz. All in all - 31 values. We consider it to be a significant advantage of ABIT BP6 as of the board designed for Celeron processors.

Rage 3D heeft een review geplaatst van de 3DCool Twin Turbo case cooler. Dit ding schuif je zo in een 5.25" bay (zie plaatje). Ze zijn er in ieder geval erg tevreden over:

Installation in my Enlight 7237 case was a breeze. I attached the drive rails, slid it in, and hooked power up to it and off we went…

When I first turned my PC on after putting the Twin Turbo in, I was rather dismayed because the Twin Turbo didn't turn on. Rather, I only thought it didn't come on because the thing is so quiet! I quickly stuck my hand in front of the vent and was amazed to feel how much air the thing was putting out at such a low noise level. I'm happy to say that the cooler makes ABSOLUTELY no "mechanical-type noises" and only barely-audible white noise from the constant whirring of the fans. Honestly, I can't tell a difference in noise-level when the Twin Turbo is on and off… thing is just plain quiet.

The Twin Turbo can be placed in the bottom 5.25" bay with the fans facing up, sucking air out from the upper-half of your case, or the Twin Turbo can be placed in the top 5.25" drive bay, with the fans facing down, expelling hot air from all portions of the case. I found, although neither position is the CLEAR winner, that placing the Twin Turbo in the top 5.25" bay cooled the case an average of about 1 degree Celsius more than when placed in the bottom 5.25" bay.

[break]En zo ziet het ding eruit...[/break]

Thresh's FiringSquad heeft een roundup in elkaar gezet van de goedkopere videokaarten momenteel op de markt. Ze testen de 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000, een standaard TNT2, een Matrox G400, de ATI Rage 128 en een Savage 4 Pro kaartje. Hier heb je vast een stukkie, hier staat de rest.

As always, the choice is between speed and eye-candy. Hardcore Quake players who want the fastest framerates from a vanilla card will have to go with the Voodoo 3 2000 set to fastest at 640 x 480. If cost is an issue, you can't beat the V3 2000's price with the $30 rebate.

Most of us aren't hardcore Quake players, and we'd probably go with the TNT2. It's not much slower than the V3 2000 on the fast low-res settings, and it does much better at higher resolutions with more demanding graphics options enabled. If 32-bit graphics are a must, the TNT2 is your card. Keep in mind that the Savage 4 Pro might also be a contender. We'll try to get the Stealth III S540 numbers as soon as possible.

The G400 is great in D3D games such as Expendable, but the card still lags behind the V3 and TNT2 in OpenGL game performance. Environment mapped bump mapping, dual monitor support, and Matrox's excellent image quality still make the G400 an attractive card, but we'll have to pass on this one because we're still big on Quake over here.

We're not going to recommend buying the Rage 128, but don't feel bad if it's the card that came with your system. The Rage 128 is a decent performer, and the card still supports all the newest games.

ATI heeft nieuwe drivers gebakken voor haar ATI Rage based videokaarten. Hier zijn de links:

ATi Rage Pro (Win95) version 5.37
ATi Rage 128 (WinNT4) version 6.20
ATi Rage 128 (Win9x) version 6.20

Ik kwam op NV10.net een tip tegen over een newsgroup thread over T&L (geometry acceleration) op de NV10. Hier heb je twee postings uit dit draadje:

Have you seen hardware T&L on SGI machines? It doesn't just curve the arch, it literally transform the 3d scene into more realistic looking scenery. Take a look at current games characters' 3d figure, notice the polygon muscles, square looking nose and cubic cheekbone? With hardware T&L, you can get smooth contour on any polygons' angle. The result is very dramatic, it will get PC games closer to "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story" 3d quality. Without hardware T&L, a high-end workstation would not even be able to render such high quality 3d imagery onto the screen at acceptable framerates, let alone a PC.
- Robin Hood

T&L are supported in OpenGL and Direct X 7.0 (but not previous versions of Direct X), OpenGL games that use the openGL functions for T&L will get immediate acceleration with Hardware T&L. For Direct X the story is different and developers will have to modify their code to take advantage of T&L. I think the only game that will immeadiat take advantage of the Hardware T&L is Quake3 (And Quake2).
- Wael Hendawi

De thread kan gevonden worden in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video met titel "NV10 needs AA to be competitive". Als je geen zin hebt om hiervoor je (verstofte) newsreader aan te kachelen kun je ook Deja.com gebruiken.

Niet dat dit ding in Nederland verkrijgbaar zal zijn, maar op zich is het interessant om te zien dat grote OEMs zoals Future Power dual Celeron systemen gaan verkopen. Dit alles wordt uiteraard mogelijk gemaakt door Abit's BP6:

Future Power Inc., best known for its ePower iMac look-alike, is preparing to announce Dual Millennium -- a new line of dual Celeron processor computers that it says support multitasking and multithreaded applications. Not only that, Future Power says the Dual Millenium will match similar single-Pentium III machines in performance.

However, the Dual Millennium could attract more attention -- and controversy -- as a result of its specialized dual Celeron motherboard, which lets PC owners overclock their processors by up to eight times their intended speeds.

[...] The systems achieve their dual-processor status by using a specialized motherboard developed by ABIT Computer Corp., of Taipei, Taiwan. The motherboard, called the ABIT BP6, integrates two 370-pin sockets for pin-grid array Celeron chips.

"The ABIT motherboard is a really famous board for reliability. It's really popular among gamers," said Dong Yun, a system engineer at Future Power. "Basically, the Dual Millenium is for a user that wants to use a more powerful [Pentium III] PC, but cannot afford it."

The motherboard also includes hardware that makes the dual Celeron setup possible. Celeron processors, according to Intel, are not designed to be used in multiprocessor computers. It is, however, possible to use two of the chips together by altering them physically.

Allemaal oud nieuws dat nu ook tot de bouwers (en kopers) van kant en klare PC's door begint te dringen .

Bij The Tech Zone vinden we een zoveelste review van de Maxi Gamer Xentor 32. De kaart draait standaard op 175/183Mhz. Uiteraard probeerde The Tech Zone dit wat omhoog te krikken, maar dat bleek niet echt een succes:

To give the Xentor an even chance against the Viper Ultra, I performed the same overclocking tricks I used on the Viper, which were a big Global Win CPM32 on the TNT2 Ultra chipset and metal strips on the memory chips. This help take the Viper Ultra to insane 185Mhz core and 243Mhz memory.

Unfortunately, the Xentor was unable to perform the same feat as the Viper Ultra. The core simply refuse to work above 175Mhz. However the memory did make it to 230Mhz before overheating.

EETimes heeft een artikel over een nieuwe storage technologie waarmee het mogelijk wordt om 2300Gbyte in een PCCard te douwen. Eerder zagen we hierover een nieuwsbericht bij The Register, maar het is altijd handig om te weten dat hun nieuws door 'serieuze' sites wordt bevestigd. EETimes heeft ook meer info over de gebruikte technologie:

The memory system exploits the storage properties of a new family of metal alloys, said Mike Downey, managing director of Cavendish Management Resources Ltd. (London), a venture capital firm that formed Keele High Density as a joint venture with Keele University. The company plans to license the technology to computer and storage companies. Downey described the memory system as solid-state and three-dimensional, with data stored in multiple layers.

[...] Although the system is described as solid-state it does require moving parts to roughly align an optical system above the storage medium and to focus the beam used for writing, reading and erasing data. Focusing is used to provide fine control of the addressing in x, y and z directions with the variable focus and transparent microscopic layers used to store data in three dimensions. The data access time for the new storage technology is predicted to be around 100 Mbytes/second.

According to the company, an additional advantage over existing data storage systems is that only 20 percent of the total capacity is needed for error correction, significantly less than the 40 percent now needed for hard disks and 30 percent for optical storage.

Een PCCard met 2300Gbyte capaciteit zou bij gebruik van deze technologie slechts 50 dollar hoeven te kosten. Errug interessant...

PC Paradox heeft een aantal nieuwe Permedia 3 benchmarks gepost, als aanvulling op hun eerdere Permedia 3 review. De getest programma's zijn 3DMark99, Expendable, Quake3, Lightwave en Slave Zero. PC Paradox concludeert:

After extensive testing, benchmarking, and spending about 3 weeks with this card, I am going to say that is that the Permedia3 Create! is not for the hard-core gamer. Frame Rates are quite acceptable, but nothing compared to the TNT2's and Voodoo3's of this world. But that is understandable, this card wasn't meant to be for the hard-core gamer. It is for our favorite, 3D artist by day, 3D gamer by night. If you only play every once in a while, and are never too concerned with frame rates, then this card just may be your ticket.

Intel heeft een 'PC-on-a-chip' processor in ontwikkeling met geïntegreerde North- (graphics, audio en memory) en Southbridge (I/O, PCI, USB en Ethernet). Volgens Intel kunnen de prijzen van mainstream PC's dankzij deze chip tot onder de 700 dollar grens dalen:

Intel is developing a single silicon chip that will contain the usual central processing unit plus all of the essential controllers and interfaces for a PC.

Code-named Timna, this 32-bit PC-on-a-chip would significantly reduce system costs, which will be vital if Intel is to wage war against thin clients and WebTV.

Timna would combine the processing functionality of a future IA-32 Pentium III processor and the capabilities offered by processor support chip sets like the Intel 810 or 820, sources say.

Voor meer info moet je ff richting ZDNet fietsen...

Biznizzy.com heeft een paar foto's gepost van twee 'afgevlakte' Celerons op een Abit BP6 moederbord (de heatsink rechtsonder is de GlobalWin FDP32, waarvan je hier binnenkort een review kunt verwachten):

Meer info over dat afvlakken / afschuren vind je in dit artikel van AGN Hardware.

Gamespot heeft een review van de NEC Multisync FP950 in elkaar gesleuteld. De FP950 19" monitor met een super platte aperture-grill beeldbuis en een maximum resolutie van 1920x1440:

Aperture-grill monitors generally have a brighter image than the more common shadow-mask screens. The downside has always been a slightly less-sharp image than the best shadow-mask tubes and the presence of a pair of faint gray lines, usually visible only with a light-colored background. Those lines are the tension wires that hold the aperture grill in place.

The good news here is that the picture is actually quite sharp. The FP950 sports a 0.25mm grill pitch at the center and a 0.27mm pitch at the edges. Running the display through our torture tests revealed no convergence errors

CombatSim heeft een review van de Voodoo3-3500TV gepost. Dat dit ding met z'n 183MHz core/mem settings snel is geloven we wel, veel leuker zijn de video-editing en TV-in/out features:

After installing all the software and attaching my coaxial cable to my V3 3500 TV, I was ready to do some channel surfing!

The picture was outstanding! Due to the release of the new drivers for the 3500 TV, the picture was clear and animated. Using the software VCR feature, you can record TV programs, S-Video output or Composite video output.

Even as I type this, I am watching Wings on the Discovery channel. Those Boeing F-15's never looked so good!!

CombatSim bracht de kaart trouwens stabiel naar 192MHz. Meer daarover lees je in de review.