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12:40 PM
No more CRC/Hardware overruns
Wow, that ata-idei.exe
hotfix fixed a lot of problems with my system. Namely, the problem that was causing
my modem to go nuts with a CRC error or hardware overrun every time my IDE drive got
accessed. For somebody who is permanently on a modem now, that's a pretty big
problem. It would have been absolutely intolerable if I didn't have a SCSI drive
also.
The remote access fix is only for machines running remote access server. So I
guess it's not as cool as it sounds, hmm?
2:11 AM
About Unreal
I'm really impressed by this game. It's far better than I was
expecting. The level of detail in the game is amazing...the use of color and
attention to detail in environmental design is just phenomenal. Unreal is everything
Quake 2 should have been, and more. Well, I can't speak for the Internet play yet,
but Unreal has Quake 2 beat hands down in the single player department. I knew that
the moment I saw the intro, which isn't even really an intro but is just a real-time fly
around of a level. It looks so good that having no intro pretty much speaks for
itself. The WHOLE GAME looks like this.
I might also add that the game's level designers seem to have done a far better job.
The second level takes you outside into a large expanse of grass and
waterfalls...you would never have seen anything like that in Quake 2, period. The
levels aren't just a bunch of crates and caves. Every room is different.
Everything is there for a reason.
Another neat thing about Unreal is that it uses MMX to do some pretty sophisticated
audio mixing. It automatically defaults to lower quality for non-MMX processors, but
since I have dual processors and the sound engine appears to run in a separate thread, I
can enable high-quality sound with no loss in frame rate.
This is the first game that has made me think that I might benefit from having a Voodoo
2 in my system.
Dreamcast/PC compatibility
I might not have been clear on this before, but it's unlikely that
Dreamcast games will run directly on a PC. However, a developer writing games for
the Dreamcast should be able to create a PC version with little to no added effort.
New NT hotfixes
Well, some not so new. The first hotfix takes care of a problem with
NT misreporting the size of certain IDE drives. However, the revised atapi.sys in
the hotfix might be of some use if you use the busmastering registry hack in NT.
The second fix is more recent and says in the readme:
NT Issues Performance Issues:
- This release includes an enhancement to TCP/IP that will
improve the performance of TCP-based applications over high latency networks, such as the
Internet.
Hell, sounds good to me!
The readme:
and the fix: ata-fixi.exe
The readme:
and the fix: rrasfixi.exe
12:50 PM
New server
Well, guys, apparently I am being forced to move off this server.
I'll leave the details out until I figure out exactly what's going on, but in the meantime
I need to start searching for a good webhosting service and domain name
registration. Suggestions would be appreciated...and yes, this is quite important!
Mail me!
4:00 AM
Unreal observation
WOW.
O&O defrag
Here's a different revision of this alternative to Diskeeper for NT.
None of these defraggers seem to work remarkably well. I have 1.36 GB free on
a 6.6GB partition and O&O tells me it still can't do a complete defrag. I don't
believe that for a second.
O&O Defrag 1.2 - Direct
download
1:04 AM
Decided on an ISP
Went with Mindspring. I noticed that dual analog service wasn't
available in my area yet from Netcom anyway, and I need to jump off AT&T without
running over the 150 hour limit. Plus, it seems like a lot of AT&T users jumped
to Mindspring after AT&T cut the flat-rate plan. I thought Mindspring was going to
activate my account immediately, but, as it turns out, I need to wait for a kit to arrive
by priority mail first. That sort of sucks, but I can deal until then.
In the bonehead department, there's a little logo there on the Mindspring homepage that says "AOL users click
here: Special Offer!" So I click there and lo and behold, they waive the $25
start-up fee for you. Now, normally, I would object to somebody thinking I'm using
AOL, but in this case... Funny how they screw the smarter users and give the dumb
ones the breaks. Anyway, I saved myself $25 bucks.
I still need to sort out the whole MLPPP thing. Apparently the feature that
allows your second line to drop for a voice call while you are bonding the lines together
(that is, dropping you to one line while still maintaining the connection, much like 128K
ISDN) is proprietary to Shotgun, which is Diamond's implementation of MLPPP. I'd
need that for sure if I didn't want a third line. I'm going to try and check in with
other Mindspring users to see if they support MLPPP.
11:24 AM
First Microsoft, now Intel...
Don't say you didn't see this coming. Big issues are the proprietary
control of Slot 1 and the P6 bus architecture, as well as the brouhaha with Digital and
Intergraph.
ZDNet's story
Multilink PPP ISP's
Oh man, ISP dilemma. I was all ready to set up with Mindspring when
I ran across that old spectre known as Multilink PPP. I played around with it last
summer, but now it seems like ISP's are actually starting to support it. Netcom is
offering $19.99 flat rate service and only $10 extra/month to support dual analog.
That's sweet. Mindspring charges $19.99/month for flat rate service but doesn't seem
to have an option for multilink service. I believe it's supported, but they charge
you $1/hour for simultaneous logins. I'd rather get two accounts if that's the case,
but I don't know if the routers will link me together from two different accounts.
Sygate's Netrocker
Speaking of multilink, this software claims to let you double your
bandwidth with two modems without the need for multilink PPP support from your ISP.
I don't quite know how they purport to make this work but I'd suspect you'd need to
download multiple files simultaneously to see the speed increase.
Netrocker site
10:59 AM
Dreamcast games are PC compatible
And yes, that is the kicker. I assume you'll need some sort of 3D
accelerator or perhaps even a PowerVR2, but overall it's a rather significant step.
It's an interesting step for Sega because I think that, while it certainly improves the
chances of broad support for the system, it will hurt console sales when those of us who
would ordinarily drop the big bucks on the Dreamcast already have PC's. Then again,
if things hold true to form, money tends to come in from software sales and royalties, not
the console.
The other interesting thing to note is that the Dreamcast seems to be composed mostly
of off-the-shelf hardware. The SH4 microprocessor, PowerVR2, and Yamaha XG sound
engine are all parts we can expect to be using in PC's/Windows CE machines as well.
EE Times' story
1:13 AM
A long day...
Well, the hard drive testing is proceeding a-pace. I even have some
FAT32 benchmarks under NT to show you, although not all benchmarks run. Driver
problem or benchmark problem? I'm not quite sure. I also went out and bought
the Sonic Impact S70 because it looked pretty good and it seemed like it might support
multi-stream audio under NT. Installing it is a VERY long story and I'll get to it
later. Preliminary review: don't buy this card, it's not worth it.
Speaking of which, does anybody know what cards DO support multi-stream audio under NT?
Because I'm having a hell of a time finding one at a reasonable price.
2:37 AM
Unreal
Hey, Unreal is out. 3D shooters, yay. I'm a little tired of
them, but this one is supposed to be better than Quake 2. How's the
multiplayer...that's what I care about, personally.
New Tyan Titan Pro BIOS
This probably applies to very few of you...but anyhow, I noticed that Tyan released a new 5.01 BIOS for the Titan Pro. It
took them about a year to get from the 4.0E evaluation version to 5.01. One of the
more interesting things about this BIOS is that it says it includes support for UDMA33
drives. Now seeing as how the Titan Pro uses a 440FX chipset, does Tyan know
something we don't?
WarFTPD 1.70 close to public beta
Those of you who run FTP daemons on your computer know that this freeware
daemon is THE choice for most people. The beta of the long awaited V1.70 is very
close now. Part of the reason that 1.70 took so long is that 2.0 appears to have
been dropped for the moment and many of its features incorporated into 1.70. In
fact, when you see 1.70, it looks like a 2.0 release. Anyhow, I've been beta-testing
it, and it seems nice, although still missing quite a few features.
3:04 AM
RAM upgrades
Hey, I upgraded my ram to 128MB (from 80 MB) and I can actually tell a
difference. Especially in task-switching in and out of StarCraft. Productive,
eh? Well, it's free, so what the heck.
While I was at CompUSA, I noticed some other things. There's this sound card that
I'm curious about called the Sonic Impact S70 from Diamond
Multimedia. Unlike a lot of other low-cost PCI sound cards (I'd say $69.99 is
low cost, wouldn't you?), this card features hardware accelerated DirectSound. It
uses the Maestro-2 chipset from ESS Technologies,
which seems very nice. What I want to know is if this card has can play back
multiple sound events in Windows NT simultaneously. I can't find any info about this
on the net, so I might just have to try it out for myself. I've been trying
desperately to get rid of the SB16 in my computer for ages, but I haven't found a
worthwhile replacement yet.
Plagiarism
OK, I've noticed two sites so far which have plagiarized items from me.
Even funnier is that these sites don't have the courtesy to link to me. Which
is either stupid or smart depending on how you look at it. Anyhow, how do you
propose I deal with these idiots?
12:46 PM
Rebate madness
Two things that look pretty cool at CompUSA. Free 72-pin EDO memory
at $49.99 - $49.99 rebate. Only one per customer, so bring a friend. Next is a
24X ATAPI CD-ROM for $49.99 - $9.99 rebate. That's just really cheap.
Also, they've got the Everex Freestyle Associate in (that's the low-end model with 4MB
RAM) in for $299.99 - $30 rebate. But I did a little more checking and Infoworld
didn't really like it all that much in their review.
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