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3:00 AM
Micomsoft's XRGB-1 Converter
I'll bet you're wondering "What the hell is this?" The
XRGB-1 converter can upscan a standard broadcast signal from, say, a PlayStation or your
VCR and convert it to display on a multisync monitor. Essentially, this means you
can use this thing to view TV stuff on your computer's monitor.
Because monitors are capable of displaying a much more precise image than your typical
TV (hence the higher cost of monitors), the image might look better on your monitor than
on your TV. Personally, I'm a little skeptical of the claims that it improves the
image quality that much, but I really want the opportunity to see the XRGB-1 converter in
action for myself.
My Rainbow Runner is capable of taking in and displaying a video signal, basically
serving as an upscan converter. That's actually quite nice and amounts to getting a
typically very expensive feature for free. If I watch something on the video input,
it looks nice, but it probably isn't anything I would pay extra money just to have.
Anyhow, I've always found these things fascinating and probably would have paid good money
for one back when I had no TV and just my monitor over the summer. At $195, though,
this unit isn't cheap, and you can probably buy a good TV for that price. On the
other hand, TV's probably don't look as good and you'll have an extra 50-75 pounds to lug
around.
National Console Support's feature on
the XRGB-1 upscan converter
2:38 PM
Winnov Videum AV
Wow! A couple of my friends and I just won a bid on these from http://www.onsale.com. We got them for $69...the
normal price is $199 a piece. We might have gotten them cheaper yesterday when they
went for $54 (quantity 74), but I didn't spot the product for sale until it was too late.
Today there were only 11, so the bidding was a little fiercer, but definitely not
as heavy as it should have been. What makes these cards unique is that they support
video-in from multiple sources and true full-duplex with full support for both the video
and audio portions in NT 4.0. The video-in is somewhat redundant considering I have
the Rainbow Runner. However, the NT 4.0 support, full duplex operation, and optional
add-on TV tuner (really the only viable TV tuner option I've seen so far for NT) are, as
far as I can tell, simply not available anywhere else. Considering I dropped $90 on
the Daytona PCI before I returned it, buying this was a no-brainer. Check Winnov's site for more details.
Robert Scoble, a Winnov rep, posts a lot on the netmeeting newsgroup on msnews.microsoft.com. Sometimes people feel
he goes overboard with the "buy Winnov" posts, but for the most part people
don't really argue with him because he's right. If you want the best
videoconferencing support, Winnov pretty much does it...even Microsoft uses Winnov card to
test and demo Netmeeting. If you have a question about Winnov products, you can be
sure it will get answered if you post there.
11:53 AM
ICQ98a beta officially available
Yes, you can finally download the real beta from http://www.mirabilis.com. It IS
different from the version I mentioned a couple of days ago so you should go ahead and get
it again. For those of you who don't use ICQ, it's an incredible application that
simply keeps you in touch with your friends when you are online. Everyone keeps
wondering how they can make money with this (I'm curious too) but for now, it's totally
free. Also looks like Mirabilis is developing ICQ for Windows CE...are they mind
readers or what? :-)
3:37 AM
Overclocking the Permedia 2
My friend found out a way to overclock his Permedia 2 card (Fire GL Pro
1000) in NT. You simply need to modify a couple of registry settings..."permediaclockspeed"
and "glintclockspeed". If I'm not mistaken, glint refers to the
geometry engine on the card. We haven't found a way to do it in 95 yet.
5:19 AM
New SoundBlaster card info
These are the first sound cards from Creative Labs that look to be more
than just minor improvements. These new cards use the PCI interface, allowing them
to utilize system RAM for sample storage. The Sound Blaster Live! is what seems to
have most people excited...it features an extremely powerful custom DSP capable of 64
separate audio channels and over 1000 MIPS of raw processing power. Sounds cool,
doesn't it?
http://www.creativelabs.com/promo/comdex/
7:13 PM
RedHat Linux 5.0
I believe this distribution got released on December 1st...my friend down
the hall trashed his computer trying to upgrade from 4.2 to 5.0 so what can I say, be
careful. I remember trying to install RedHat at one point a year ago and it
absolutely refused to install on my system. This after two years of using Slackware,
(which installed just fine, by the way). I thought RedHat was supposed to be the
easy one to install! It seems that RedHat has taken the lead in popularity though.
http://www.redhat.com
X-Men vs Street Fighter officially
announced for Playstation
To my great surprise, it seems that Capcom has officially announced XMvSF
for the Playstation. The game will be called X-Men vs Street Fighter EX edition
because supposedly it will have some new options as well as original and arranged music.
Quite frankly, the game seems absolutely impossible to do on the Playstation
without the benefit of extra RAM; it has trouble storing full animations for 2 characters,
let alone 4. I sincerely hope that Capcom has found a way to use that expansion port
on the back to add a RAM module or something.
http://www.sol.no/games/psgamer/news1297/12039701.htm
2:12 PM
No C140's
I just called Compaq and it seems that their web site isn't in sync with
their inventory. So basically they never had any C140's to begin with. You'll
probably want to call to check and see if you got one, but chances are you didn't.
If you can, the best way to get one is to go visit all your local Office Depot/Staples
type stores and try to find one that hasn't been snapped up yet. Looks like I'm the
only one among my group of friends with backlighting now. :-)
5:43 AM
Windows NT Option Pack stuff
Well, the Option Pack installs mostly a lot of stuff I can't ever imagine
your average person needing. The web server also took over the web server that
FrontPage was using to edit my web site, so that screwed things up for a while until I
figured out how to get the web servers running concurrently. The setup process for
this is less than clear but it seems as if I still have things working right now.
What it does do is give you an inside glimpse at what's coming up for NT 5.0.
Microsoft's Management Console (a central application to manage everything on a
server) appears to be in, as do all those interesting Internet technologies like IIS 4.0,
Transaction Server, and Message Queue server, to name a few.
Compaq and the C140's
I hear that the web site might not have actually had the C140 in stock and
that a lot of orders were placed on back order instead of actually being ready to ship.
I'd suggest calling to make sure that your order actually went through. I'm
going to have to check myself.
3:35 PM
Windows NT Option Pack released
Hmm, this appears to have been released concurrently with IE 4.01. I
would suppose that's because the Option Pack requires you to have IE 4.01 installed to
install the Option Pack itself. Yes, that smells funny to me too.
Anyhow, it includes a raft of stuff like IIS 4.0, Transaction Server, etc. I'm
going to install it later to play around with it a little. Go to the link below to
learn more.
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/guide/whatisntop.asp
2:39 PM
Internet Explorer 4.01 released
A bunch of bugs and security holes are supposed to have been fixed with
this release, so I'd recommend downloading it right away. I've been waiting for this
one!
http://www.microsoft.com/ie/
1:34 AM
Quake 2 goes gold
Hmm. Well, it finally got sent to master, so I guess that means
we'll be seeing it in time for Christmas. Are you excited about this game? I'm
not, actually. Looks like more of the same to me. StarCraft seems more
interesting. The manual has been
placed online, you can read that if you are really into Quake.
More places to order the C140
Looks like Compaq itself is selling these for $99. Grab 'em quick!
http://www.compaq.com/athome/store/index.html
2:32 PM
MobilePro 450
Well, guess what! The warranty replacement for that one broken
MobilePro 400 that we got was taking so long that they just sent us a MobilePro 450
instead! Since I'm the one who got the deal and I'm the one who ordered the stuff,
I'm the one who gets to pick what I want! Backlit for me, baby! Looks like I
may not need to chase after that C140 after all. I've been seeing a lot of people
just buying these WinCE machines and trying to sell them for a profit on the net.
Probably works, too.
5:54 PM
ICQ98 beta available
It's been forever since they released the last one, and it really does
need a little more fixing up! To be honest, this version doesn't look like it's a
legit beta for public download, but I'm using it right now and it seems just fine.
http://www.bluedragon.net/icq98a.exe
5:09 PM
Computer fun
Did a few things yesterday...first of all, I finally took care of one
problem with a hard drive that I had sold to a girl downstairs which wasn't working.
I knew it was working, having used it for two years, so I finally headed down there
and fixed it myself. The problem turned out to be with Intel's busmastering drivers
in NT 4.0, which caused the computer and/or hard drive to lock up during large transfers.
The problem didn't happen in 95 or a fresh install of NT, which made it fairly easy
to pin down. Good thing, because I would have had to take the drive back.
Also we somehow got conned into taking a look at her roommate's computer, which
supposedly had the NYB virus. Weird thing was, we couldn't get the virus signature
to go away...it always detected the NYB virus in memory, even after a cold boot from a
known clean disk. The NYB virus seems to be fairly interesting...apparently it
actually has the capability to modify the CMOS so that the boot order goes C:, A: even if
you don't have it set like that. We did change the boot order to A:, C:, though,
which should have gotten around that. Either this computer was triggering a false ID
from McAfee or that virus is incredibly tricky. They ended up just reformatting the
drive. I wouldn't personally have done that but I didn't really care so I just let
them do it. I wasn't about to go mucking about in somebody else's BIOS/CMOS
settings. Trying to reinstall 95 was very hard...it kept locking up at random points
in the install process where it copies files. For a new P2-266 from Dell (LX
chipset), it was very very flaky.
Last thing I did was to go take a look at my friend's new FireGL Pro 1000, which uses
the Permedia 2 chipset. Overall, it's quite nice. The 3D performance is fast,
but not liquid smooth like the 3Dfx. OpenGL acceleration was actually, I thought,
something of a let-down. In OpenGL apps, you have to stay at 1024x768 and you can't
really accelerate complex scenes becuase the card doesn't have enough memory to do
z-buffering and store all the other goodies in extra memory. What the card really
needs is more memory, like 16MB or something. The way I see it, it's really just a
2D/3D card with enough OpenGL support to let you play around a little but not get anything
complicated done.
2:32 PM
Other deals
By the way, I recommend checking CompUSA's
and Best Buy's websites every Monday or so to see
what kind of deals they have going. They do a lot of crazy rebating on certain items
so occasionally you can get a very awesome deal that you just couldn't get otherwise.
I used to just check the Sunday paper, but seeing as how I don't get that here at
college, the website is a lot better. Some examples of what I've seen before...a $9
33.6 internal modem, $99 flatbed color scanner, free CD-R's, etc.
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