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2:07 PM
Might and Magic VI
Role playing on the PC has slowed to a standstill in recent years, as
games like Ultima and other attempts at RPG's have lost track of what made them successful
(speaking of which, read this news on
why one Ultima IX design team member decided to leave). Fallout was a great return
to the RPG for PC gamers, but didn't really have a party system with the ability to
control multiple characters. However, one old standby, the Might and Magic series
from New World Computing, is about to experience
a long awaited revival with the release of Might and Magic VI. We're all hoping
it'll be good...from the looks of it, it certainly seems to have all the cool elements of
an RPG, like lots of neat items, spells, characters and quests.
Personally, I always found the Might and Magic series to be a bit easy, but always a
lot of fun. Let's hope this latest release proves to be as enjoyable. NWC
claims they expect gamers to take 100-150 hours to finish the game as well. 150
hours of solid fun can be physically dangerous. :-)
New chips enable lower cost LCD
monitors
You've seen all the fancy TFT active-matrix flat panel displays and lusted
after them, but been a bit hesitant about the multi-thousand dollar price, right? A
new breed of chips is set to help bring the cost of these LCD monitors down to earth.
The problem with LCD monitors is that the analog signal coming from your video card is
designed to drive a CRT/monitor tube, not an LCD. An LCD monitor displays discrete
pixels and consequently requires digital data. So what you need on the monitor's end
is a chip that converts the analog data back into digital form...and it has to do it in an
acceptable manner, so your display doesn't look like total junk. Yes, it's terribly
redundant and inefficient, but that's the price we pay for backwards compatibility, right?
I suspect notebook computers have it much easier.
Anyhow, this new class of chips enables high quality A/D conversion of the signal at a
much lower cost than before, possibly bringing 14-15" monitors below the $1,000 mark
by the end of the year.
EE Times' story
4:25 PM
12,000 RPM hard drive
If you thought the IBM UltraStar 9ZX or Seagate Cheetah 9LP was fast, wait
until you get a load of the latest drives from Hitachi. The new DK3E1T-91 series
from Hitachi comes in 9.1 GB and 18.2 GB and features a rotational speed of 12,000 RPM for
blazingly fast random access and sustained transfer rate measurements. Gotta get my
hands on one of these!
Hitachi's press release
11:29 PM
More Tekken 3 endings
Endings for both Eddy and Tiger are now up. Some older links have
been moved to the Videos section. Both
are really great...and I wonder who did the motion capture for Tiger's ending? I
love that one! BTW, the net's best Tekken resource is back up at http://www.tekken.net. You can't go wrong visiting
there for the best Tekken strategies and combos.
11:56 PM
Free RAM
Hey, I didn't notice this before, but CompUSA is selling free 16MB 72-pin
EDO RAM. $49.99 - $49.99 rebate. The original price is a ripoff, of course,
but the after rebate is obviously nice. Only catch is, you can only get one per
customer, and SIMMS need to be installed in pairs. So grab a friend who doesn't want
free RAM and bring him along to buy one too. And don't get lazy mailing in those
rebates...that's what they want you to do!
http://info.compusa.com/adproducts/upgrades.asp
6:09 PM
More Slot 2/Xeon pictures
Well, if you were too lazy to take a look at those presentations I
mentioned before, I took the liberty of putting a few of the interesting bits on a web
page for easy viewing. There are some very nice pictures of the giant Pentium II
Xeon in a dual processor configuration that are definitely worth taking a look at.
Check out the Pentium II Xeon section
here (which currently consists of nothing but these screenshots, heh).
3:45 PM
Storage round-up
Perhaps you're wondering what's in store for you the next couple of days.
Well, now that I've got commitments from all the major contenders in the hard drive
market, you can expect to see a round-up of 8.4GB IDE drives on the market from Quantum,
Maxtor, Seagate, and IBM. Benchmarks will include Winbench 98, Miro Expert (for you
video capture enthusiasts) and Adaptec's Threadmark 2.0. We'll try to start it off
with some individual reviews and figures during the week and finish off the results with a
summary and comparision by the end of the weekend. Sound good?
More Xeon info
I was clicking around the Intel site and came across these presentations
from Intel Developer Forum. I highly recommend checking them out. For those of
you who don't care to look at the technical stuff, I'll rip out some of the pictures and
diagrams and post them for you later today.
6:52 PM
Cheat sheet for Microsoft interviews
Hey, get the inside track on your next Microsoft interview, courtesy of
SGI. Annoyed by those weird questions and brain teasers they ask you? There's
a whole list of
Microsoft interview questions over on SGI's website...haha!
1:06 PM
Slot 2 Pentium II named
Get ready for this...it's called the Pentium II Xeon. Well, I guess
it could be worse...sounds like a noble gas to me, personally. I do seriously think
we've got the same people who make car names naming these processors too. Anyway,
you can read more info on Intel's Xeon
page.
2:27 AM
Tekken 3 - Anna's ending, uncut
There's been some hubbub about Namco totally redoing Anna's rather risque
ending in Tekken 3 for the American release, and consequently I've gotten a lot of
requests for the Japanese ending. Well, here it is, in the Recent A/V clips section
above. Umm...have fun? :-) Really, it could be worse.
Tom's updates
It seems to be a big event nowadays when Tom updates, so I'll join in the
party and send you over there to check out the
latest info. BTW, anybody know what pathetic website he is referring to in his
What's New column? Nobody I've talked to can figure it out?
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