Logo by Tom Purves

5:24 PM
BeOS for Intel shows itself
Release 3 of BeOS now supports Intel-based platforms as well as PowerPC.   I don't know about you guys, but I'm eager to see how this OS stacks up.   Partition and boot management utilities are included to allow you to dual boot between BeOS and good old Windows.

Infoworld's story

WinAMP 1.81 released
I forgot to mention yesterday, WinAMP 1.81 was released over at http://www.winamp.com.

7:58 PM
New CPU information
A couple of new developments in the microprocessor world over at CeBit.   First of all, Intel laid the groundwork for its future plans for its microprocessors.  They demoed a 700 MHz Pentium II, said that on April 2 they would be debuting the Mobile Pentium II, said also that within 30 days they would release the first of the Celeron brand of low-cost microprocessors, and, finally, revealed that in April they would release a 400 MHz Slot 1 Pentium II with support for the 100 MHz bus speed.

Cyrix also showed their new PR266/6x86MX, which actually runs at 208 MHz with an 83 MHz bus speed.

Infoworld's story on Intel
Infoworld's story on Cyrix

11:15 PM
Tekken 3 Intro first look
Yes!  Namco Japan posted two short clips of what appear to be commercials with clips from the intro to Tekken 3.

BTW, you can expect a full and comprehensive review of Tekken 3 when it gets here.   Rest assured, there will be plenty of info and, as you know from the other reviews I've done, I make no compromises when it comes to screenshot and capture quality.   I'll definitely have the intro up in all its glory.

Clip 1 (680 KB)
Clip 2 (681 KB)

2:52 PM
Ehrgeiz
A somewhat interesting development for you Square/Final Fantasy fans here!   Ehrgeiz, a new arcade fighting game collaboration between Dream Factory of Square and Namco, has two characters from Final Fantasy VII in it, Tifa and Cloud.  Take a look at the screenshots in NCS's journal.  They look pretty good, don't they?

1:27 PM
Park-Man
Oh wow!  If you like South Park, you're going to LOVE this.   It's Pac-Man with a South Park twist, in full 3D accelerated glory!  The source and executable are over at the DirectX's Programmer's Journal.  It's some sort of contest...but this one already looks like a winner, eh?

2:15 AM
Revised Thriller 3D results
New results for the Hercules Thriller 3D are up in its review.  By popular request, I'm adding Windows 95 Graphics Winmark 98 results to the reviews now.  The ASUS 3dexPlorer 3000 review has Windows 95 results as well, and the rest should be updated shortly.

11:09 AM
New Thriller 3D drivers
Hercules has released new Thriller 3D drivers for both NT and 95.   Get them here.

Maxtor DiamondMax 8.4GB
Good news.  I should be receiving the DiamondMax 8.4GB UDMA drive in a couple of weeks for an upcoming comparison between the latest 8.4GB drives out on the market.  It'll be some good info for you guys.

2:00 AM
Firmware updates
I did something pretty wacky today...I updated the firmware on my UltraStar 2XP SCSI HD.  I didn't even realize this was possible until I ran across a solitary posting on DejaNews which said it solved some problems for one guy.  Anyhow, I e-mailed IBM tech support asking for the update and I got it.  My drive is now firmware revision 6363 instead of 5353.  Yay...I guess?

I originally tried to update the drive from Win98 DOS, but as it turns out, that didn't work too well.  I had to make a Win95 DOS boot disk and hard boot the computer to get the firmware update taken care of properly.  For a while there, I was thinking about just how much it might cost me to get this data recovered in case I trashed my drive.   Not a pleasant thought.

4:04 PM
Tekken 3 preview
A truly excellent preview of Tekken 3 is up at VideoGameSpot.  They have an interview with one of the Tekken 3 designers.  The part where he says that "I don't think we're ready to say goodbye to Kazuya yet" is almost enough to make an old Tekken fan like me cry!   :-)

11:24 PM
DirectX Media 5.2a run-time available
OK, you should definitely get this.  It should update a bunch of core multimedia components in your computer.

Link to Microsoft's download page

2:29 AM
Good deals
OK, first of all, there are some crazy deals going on at Onsale with respect to 440FX based motherboards in the Upgrades and Accessories section.   Way too many good deals there to list, just take a look.  The i960 board looks sweet, but I'd have to throw away way too much existing hardware to use it.

The other deal is at CompUSA, where they are advertising the UMAX Astra 610P scanner for only $69.99.  Oh man, now that, I think I'm going to get.  NT support, too!

10:19 PM
SCSI mode pages
Yesterday I got the idea into my head to try messing with the SCSI mode pages of my SCSI drive.  The mode pages control a bunch of settings for your drive like how it handles error recovery, etc.  I searched all over the place and although I found a couple of places that sell mode-page editing software, like SCSI-Mechanic or CoComp, the only place that had a downloadable trial was PTI at http://www.scsitools.com.   SCSI Toolbox is a 7-day trial that lets you fool around with all kinds of SCSI weirdness.  You can tune your drive to be A/V optimized (at the cost of less data integrity...not a good option in my opinion).  Be warned, though, editing the mode pages of your drive runs the very real risk of blowing away the data unless you know exactly what to change!

I did find that Quantum's website has some excellent manuals for its drives which explicitly describe the function of each mode page, such as the manual for the Atlas II.   I had tried IBM's site, since I have an IBM drive, but they didn't have the documentation online.

Well, now here's the big problem, though.  SCSI Toolbox doesn't see my SCSI drive.   So I can't actually tweak it.  I have no idea why this is, but it kind of sucks.  Oh well...let me know if you decide to try this out and if it can see your hard drive.  Maybe PTI just disabled the ability to see hard drives so that people couldn't tune up their drives for free with the trial download?

1:59 PM
Sega Saturn is dead
It was dead a long time ago, actually...it's just that you didn't know it.   :-)  X-Men vs. Street Fighter was fun, though.  Anyhow, Sega of America will cease sales of all hardware and software by the end of the month.

Next Generation's story

3:19 PM
Real3D Starfighter status
Latest word is that I should be getting it near the middle or end of this week.  Are there any particular tests or benchmarks you are interested in me running on this board?  Let me know.

12:36 PM
New 3Dfx Voodoo2 NT drivers
It's apparently just a bugfix release...but anyhow, if you have a Voodoo2, you'll probably want these.

Voodoo2 NT drivers - RC2

Rebellion went gold
It happened a while ago, but Star Wars: Rebellion, another RTS game from LucasArts, went gold the other day.  I think it got lost in all the StarCraft hype.  I wonder if it'll be any good?  The thing I dislike the most is that it says it only supports 2 players in multiplayer.

12:58 AM
BOOT.INI options
I just read that you can disable the assigning of high interrupts to PCI devices in multiprocessor machines by adding the /PCILOCK option to the boot entry in the BOOT.INI file.  I guess about 0.0001% of the world cares about this, but whatever.   I haven't found a good source that documents all the switches that can be used in NT's BOOT.INI file.

Quake 3?!?!
John Carmack dropped the bomb in his .plan.  I'll not regurgitate all the details here, but the details are definitely worth reading.   Remember what I said about game designers needing to actively use the extra texture memory in 3D accelerators for it to be worthwhile?  Well, here's the game that will do it!