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August 2002

Thursday, August 29, 2002

ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 Nine11 @ 9:37 Comments

Dude, you're getting a Dell..., and the Nvidia GeForce 440 Go graphics chip in your Inspiron 8200 is old hat. According to Anandtech, the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 is 5% to 25% faster in games, including UT2K3, and brings pixel and vertex shaders to mobile gaming. The icing on the cake is this clip from John Carmack about running DOOM III on a M9 powered laptop:

"You know, on our current work at Id right now we're still pushing really hard to make Doom run well on various high end desk top cards. So it's pretty startling to be able to fire it up on a laptop and see it run at a really pretty startling good pace."

Quote Of The Day Nine11 @ 9:22 Comments

This one is a little longer than usual (for her pleasure). It's from Gone Gold's Night Call and has to do with those fancy grocery stores like Trader Schmoes. The whole thing is pretty good, so take a peek if ya dig the clip below.

The only problem with Central Markup is that staples are hard to find, at least in your familiar brand. Lays potato chips? Sorry—how about Eugenia’s Home-Sliced Kettle Chips? Ack. Sometimes this can be a real problem, like the time that Gloria brought home toilet paper. “Made from recycled trees, then recycled again and again” is a rough approximation of what the label said. Rough, indeed—I could have sanded a deck with this stuff. I renamed it “Chafe-X” brand, and we only used it once, but we still keep it around in case we need to grate cheese or file sharp edges off metal.

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Short Take: Mafia Nine11 @ 17:37 Comments

Gone Gold popped off a Short Take on Mafia, which is quite a bit like GTA3. The main difference is Mafia was made for the PC from the get-go, and it has wheel/FFB support. An interesting lookin' game if yer into early-era gangster stuff and like shootin', lootin', fightin'...

Sunday, August 25, 2002

CFS:3 In Game Action Clips Cage @ 5:29 Comments

I caught this link to a site I'd never seen before - AirsideTV.com over on AVSIM.

AirsideTV.com has some video clips of some sweet Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 action. Yep, this is the real deal, not some pre-rendered movie. There are two clips, plus another clip featuring an interview with lead CFS:3 designer Rob Brown.

The footage shows off some very sweet views of the ground detail and a P-51 in clip 1. If you were not able to get into the beta (like me), this is a download/clip you definitely don't want to miss. You might want to turn down the volume though, since the clips features an endlessly looping cheesy period track as background music.

Friday, August 23, 2002

Take Me To Your Leader Nine11 @ 21:01 Comments

This is an interesting mod. It's a naked LCD. No, it's a leftover prop from The Matrix. No, it's an alien!

American Conquest Nine11 @ 12:51 Comments

I got on the American Conquest beta test which includes online play only. I was eager to try the single-player campaign and kick those damn Euros off our turf and de-flower the natives, but that wasn't in the cards for me.

For my online game, I played 2 on 3 in a team game. I was the Aztecs and figured out how to build a Mill and kill some trees. I tried to build a Fortress, but the game wouldn't let me build anywhere. Same thing with houses. Then I shoved all my Aztec Peasants into the Mill and couldn't get them out, so I decided to destroy the building to "set them free". It caught on fire and they all fried. Game over.

Weird.

Chicks Dig This Guy Nine11 @ 3:31 Comments

This is actually a "Laugh Of The Day", but I thought the line above had a better hook. For all lonely women out there, five things you should avoid in a man can be summed up in this line ganked from The Onion Personals:

Five items I can't live without: "My watch, my wang, my wallet, my waffle iron, your Wonderbra. (I wish my name was Weremy.)" -CrackThatWhip

Whoever would even think of sleeping with this guy should have her cervix cauterized!

Mucho Retro Nine11 @ 3:14 Comments

Here's an interesting hand-built aluminum case from the bit-tech forums. Man, those Brits sure know how to poke around a puter... even if it looks like Robby The Robot.

When Geeks Go Wild! Nine11 @ 3:08 Comments

Intel and AMD are gonna grease their g-string bikinis and slap each other around the ring a few times. In case you've been stuck under a rock, AMD released their 2600+ part which Intel plans on smackin' with a 2.8GHz P4 riding high on 533MHz FSB. Expect pelnty of trash talk and price cuts!

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Laugh Of The Day Nine11 @ 5:30 Comments

Ganked this one from Maxim - porno for those who are too embarrassed to buy the real thing. Don't get all bent if ya like the mag, it's got good articles.

A seaman meets a pirate in a bar, and the talk turns to their adventures. The seaman notes that the pirate has a peg leg, a hook, and an eye patch. "How did you end up with the peg leg?" he asks.
The pirate replies, "I was swept overboard into a school of sharks. As my men were pulling me out, a shark bit my leg off."

"Wow!" says the seaman. "What about your hook?"

"Well," answers the pirate, "we were boarding a ship when one of the enemy hacked off my hand."

"Incredible!" says the seaman. "How’d you get the eye patch?"

"A sea gull shit in my eye," the pirate replies.

"You lost your eye to a sea gull dropping?" the seaman asks.

"Well," says the pirate, "it was my first day with the hook."

Gone fishin. Talk to ya later tonight or tomorrow.

Monday, August 19, 2002

Flick Of The Day Nine11 @ 19:44 Comments

The Boondock Saints is what ya get when you throw evil mafioso gangsters, vigilante slayings, and some dark humor into a blender. For some reason, I got a real kick outta it and a sequel is on the way.

As long as were talkin' flicks, CD Now has Sopranos: The Complete Third Season on sale for $69.95.

ATI's Pixel Eatin' Machine Nine11 @ 7:40 Comments

The NDAs have been stripped like a mess of drunken college girls on one of those Gone Wild videos, and Anandtech popped off their review of ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro... and it's significantly faster than anything Nvidia can muster!

Saturday, August 17, 2002

Quakecon 2002 Pt. 2 Nine11 @ 17:34 Comments

Tom's Hardware hammered out the second day of Quakecon 2002. Like everyone else, there's a mess of DOOM III and id related stuff. I really haven't had much of a chance to dig through it 'cuz I gotta bail to work.

Friday, August 16, 2002

Exploding CD Cage @ 8:44 Comments

Since the same exact thing happened to a friend of mine, I thought I'd pass this one along.

Over on Guru3D is a story about a CD (IL2) that exploded in a CD drive. The pictures are quite entertaining. Here's a snip from the news article:

"The IL-2 Sturmovik CD was in an AOpen 52x CD-ROM and suddenly a huge 'bang' .. it exploded and shattered probably into more particles a modern videocard can render realtime. The front of the CD tray even blew off and the CD .. shattered to pieces."

Impressive.

Battlefield:1942 MP Demo Cage @ 8:29 Comments

The Battlefield:1942 demo has been released. The BF1942 demo weighs in at 132MB, and can be found at the ever speedy FileShack.

Rotten Apples Nine11 @ 8:23 Comments

When will Apple ever learn funcion is more important than form? In this latest case, new Macs based on DDR memory are slower than previous Macs based on SDR memory because the L3 cache has been cut in half to save production costs. Judging by the price of new Macs, I'd guess the savings don't trickle down to the consumer. Plenty of women and gay men will still buy 'em because they're so darn cute.

Quakecon 2002 Nine11 @ 8:05 Comments

Tom's Hardware made the trip to Quakecon 2002 and posted a few tidbits from Day One. Nestled in there are some of the trials and tribulations gamers go through to lug their puters around, which is a testament to the virtues of a itty-bitty Shuttle SS51G and quality TFT, and get registered for four days of non-stop LAN lovin'. Also on tap are some of the sponsors, their marketting angles, and some hardware including a pair of really radical ATI boxes.

Warcraft III Impressions Nine11 @ 7:28 Comments

I finally had a chance to dig into Warcraft III yesterday and felt strangely underwhelmed by the experience. I don't know what the deal is, but I just can't seem to get into it and don't really care about what's going on in the game. Could it be Dungeon Siege was such a fantastic ride and ruined my experience for all other pseudo-RPG games? Dunno.

The first Chapter is a tutorial, but that's difficult to figure out unless you read the manual because it's called a "Prologue" rather than any sort of training tool. The real game starts in Chapter 2, but it's quest-based and doesn't have you doing much at first 'cept watch a mess of CGI movies, in-game movies, in-game scripted sequences, run here, smash that, etc.

Building bases and churning out units doesn't even become a major part of the game till well into Chapter 2. Hey guys, this is a RTS, right? Even then, the base is already half-built and is one of those "Survive for 30 minutes" thingies. That last line will ring quite loud for anyone who's played Starcraft.

The game also has an irritating camera which is way too close to the action and doesn't offer much of a bird's eye view. It also scrolls really fast, so I'd imagine looking around is kinda like what my hyperactive poodle sees on a daily basis. Obviously, the game demands a little more attention than most to grasp what's going on and to figure out where attacks are coming from.

That's the point when I decided to give the game a rest. I'll probably give it a second chance, but I really don't expect to get hooked because Warcraft III doesn't bring anything new and/or substantial to the table. It also diverts from the traditional RTS formula and has a really irritating camera. I hope I didn't waste 40 bucks.

Blunder Of The Day Nine11 @ 6:51 Comments

G-Spot seems to be tripping over their own statements in their preview of Platoon. Their main snipplet states "Strategy First and Digital Reality are using the Oliver Stone Vietnam War film as the basis for this upcoming tactical strategy game." Then they end the first paragraph of the preview with "Platoon will have a few references to the more cinematic moments of the film, but it won't actually follow the story or have any of the characters from the movie." So, the basis of the game Platoon is the Oliver Stone war film which it actually has nothing to do with? Er, okay...

Thursday, August 15, 2002

The Bride Is A Bizatch! Nine11 @ 10:29 Comments

You know you've got problems if ya blow $200,000 on a wedding, 250 people show up, and only the bride has a good time. This classic is from The Onion and can be summed up with the following clip:

"To be honest, I never really liked Mindy all that much," said bridesmaid Ellen Lessing, 24, a college sorority sister of the bride. "I always thought she was kind of a stuck-up bitch. But when she asked me to be in her bridal party—I guess because I'd been her sorority sponsor back in college—I felt obligated to go. We've had almost no contact since graduation, yet I still flew halfway across the country just to be in the wedding of someone I hardly even know."

FARKisms Cage @ 7:34 Comments

You know it's true.

"Overwork, faulty computers and annoying workmates were the main cause of "office rage" -- and women are more likely to snap than men." - Reuters.

Yep, and I saw the Virgin Mary's profile in a donut category -

"TORONTO - Parishioners at a suburban church believe they have witnessed a sign from God - the oil that weeps from the hands of a Syrian visitor." - AZCentral.

Concentrated Performance Nine11 @ 7:17 Comments

Tom's Hardware took a look at the barebones Shuttle SS51G, which is the slickest thing since K-Y. It sports the P4 wtih 533MHz FSB, AGP, PCI, USB 2.0, FireWire, LAN, in a package slightly larger than your hand with fingers spread out. The only complaint was about heat in this itty-bitty system, but Tom packed it with RAID and admitted this wouldn't be a problem for most geeks. I still think the SS51G is the finest PC solution to date for anyone interested in a small form-factor, and I'd love to build a system like this.

Yep, New AMD Hardness Soon Cage @ 7:15 Comments

Via The Guru of 3D and the The Inquirer comes word of new AMD CPU's.

"AMD is to release a 2400+ and 2600+ XP on August 21st. The 2400+ runs at 2GHZ and the 2600+ runs at 2133MHz."

Intel will respond with it's own price cuts, and the introduction of it's P4 2.8 GHz on August 26th, per The Inquirer.

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Engagement Ring Detour Cage @ 9:22 Comments

I got a kick out of this one. Anyone who has worked in a hospital or in law enforcement probably has a few stories to tell like this.

Well, let's get right to the bottom of this, and quote the relevant snippage:

"Tuesday, the missing $2,500 diamond engagement ring, first discovered by X-ray in Mr. Hargrave's digestive tract after his Aug. 6 arrest, was found before noon in the commode in Mr. Hargrave's Warren County cell. " - The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Thanks, FARK.

AMD Price Drop Cage @ 9:00 Comments

I've seen this a couple of places, but I had forgotten to mention it.

As per Guru of 3D and other sites, AMD has dropped the price of their XP 2200+ by $50, going down from $200 to around $150. And as Guru3D says, that's usually an indication that something newer and better is just around the corner.

Another Laugh Of The Day Nine11 @ 8:13 Comments

I blurted out another colorfull comment at work last night. I was covering the Emergency Room, and a nurse said she was "glad we had a working manual suction device." I said "that's what we call the head nurse" and started making bobbing motions with my hands. For some reason, she didn't seem impressed.

Macs Mod Too Nine11 @ 8:01 Comments

Macs mod too, but it seems like a waste of time to me. Another quality bone from [H].

Laugh Of The Day Nine11 @ 7:47 Comments

Here's a tidbit Cage shot my way a few days ago, which was originally mentioned at [H]. It's a take on the latest Eminem video, Battlefield 1942 style.

Flight Sim Site Added Cage @ 1:30 Comments

Thanks to a post I saw at SimHQ, I've added another place to check for Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 3 news.

NetWings, who's web masters comes from the UK and Norway, has a very nice selection of combat flight sim news. The NetWings Forums are pretty active with CFS:3 information.

According to a post that slipped by, a CFS:3 beta has shipped to those in the beta test group.

While you are over at NetWings make sure you check out their latest info on CFS:3 aircraft markings. The article includes a pic of the Aircraft Appearance dialog screen.

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Shocking! Nine11 @ 16:12 Comments

This is what happens when lightning strikes too close to home. Ganked from [H].

You Talkin' Tah Me? Nine11 @ 16:08 Comments

G-Spot popped off a preview of Mafia, which has had a curious run on my interest meter. Basically, the game looked pretty nifty, then I forgot about it, and now it looks nifty again. It can be described as what you'd get if ya squished Max Payne, GTA3, and The Godfather together. Drive cars, shoot guns, aviod the law... the simple pleasures in life.

Daily Quote Nine11 @ 8:10 Comments

This one's from Dan's Data and his thoughts on nasty little things computers do which make people think they're alive.

...your PC's sentient and behaves like a supercilious waiter who may or may not be spitting in your soup...

Monday, August 12, 2002

Limping Home After Chicken Run Nine11 @ 15:21 Comments

Ya know, in-game Easter Eggs have always held a special place in my heart. Secret levels, hidden boss characters, special weapons, it's all good. That's why I've been pimpin' out Mr. Muerte, my Dungeon Siege character, for the secret Chicken Level. After dedicating countless hours to "cleaning" both the single and multiplayer maps, leveling up, and collecting the ingredients needed to unlock the Chicken Level, I feel like I've been handed a rotten egg.

I'd been curious about the Chicken Level after reading tidbits about it at the DSNetGuide, but the real hook was the spread PC Gamer did in July which had some specifics about this particular Easter Egg and the big payoff... the Chicken Gun. Well, that was all it took to get me hooked on the game again and set me off on a mad dash for the mother of all poultry armaments.

Mr. Muerte is a level 69 (no kidding) basher who's got enough brains to sling a few Combat Magic spells. Armed with a 205-250 Hammer of Whoopass, pimped out with a 366 Can't Touch This Armor (actual names may vary), and a few Fire Ring and Inferno spells, I decided to blow my wad of goodies and unlock the Chicken Level around 1:15 this morning. By 4:45, I'd had my ass handed to me so many times that I decided to uninstall the damn game and move onto Neverwinter Nights or Warcraft III.

Ya see, I was so hooked on the idea of getting into the Chicken Level and nabbing the Chicken Gun that I neglected a few details about the whole ordeal. There are about 20 chickens named after each person on the development team which will peck you to death, then there's a Chris Taylor chicken boss with a 4X lightning attack. They've all got armor up the wazoo, and each swing of my mighty hammer only did about 50 points of damage. Mr. Muerte, with all his strength and massive hammer, had been dishin' out +300 points of damage on each swing... maybe 150-200 on particularly nasty critters.

So, here I was in the middle of the night feeling like I had a fly-swatter to fend off a mess of tanks. The Chicken grunts had about 5000 HP each and the boss had nearly 9000 HP. For some strange reason, I thought the boss would drop the Chicken Gun, so after dying 20 or 30 times, I decided to lure him away from the pack for a little one-on-one action. After inviting him into my Fire Ring, baking him with my Inferno, introducing him to my little friend the Forrest Troll (a good summoned character), and bashing him around the head with my "50", he didn't drop the Chicken Gun. WTF!

In a frenzy, I ripped through PCG and DSNG to figure out what the heck was going on. As it turns out, all the Chickens gotta meet their maker then a magically sealed door will open and reveal a mess of goodies... including the Chicken Gun. That's my Chicken Gun, damnit! I can smell it from here! I've been robbed! Screw this damn game and it's rotten Easter Eggs... I've got Orcs to fry!!!

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Freelancer Gets Joy(stick)! Cage @ 7:35 Comments

Digital Anvil's new game, Freelancer (which is being published by Microsoft) showed up at Gencon 2002. Freelancer will be a space "sim" Wing Commander/Privateer type game, and has been under development for several years.

According to Gamespot's coverage, Freelancer will get joystick support. Previous reports and previews had said that Freelancer would only have mouse control. After seeing and hearing that at E3 in 2001 I'd pretty much tuned this one out.

Woohoo! Now I might feel compelled to buy the game after all.

Friday, August 9, 2002

MS CFS3 Screenies Added to Gallery Cage @ 22:12 Comments

I'd mentioned this before, but some new screen shots from Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator 3 are now up on the official Microsoft CFS3 gallery.

I've added them to a gallery here, since the older shots previously on the MS CFS3 site seem to have been replaced by the current crop. You can find the older shots here.

Archos Jukebox Multimedia Nine11 @ 8:22 Comments

Tom's Hardware popped off a review of the Archos Jukebox Multimedia. It's pretty slick and is similar to the Creative Jukebox, but it also has a 1.5" LCD and can play DIVX movies. Unfortunately, movies can't just be downloaded from the net and loaded onto the player. They have to be compressed further, which I'd figure is a concession to Hollywood and a nice little stumbling block for multimedia pirates. Still, it's pretty cool to have various multimedia types on the go. I also figure another generation of these devices will add a bigger LCD and will swing with direct downloads.

Thursday, August 8, 2002

New CFS3 Screenies Cage @ 8:46 Comments

The offical Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 3 site has some new screenies that I haven't seen before. You can see them here.

Quote Of The Day Nine11 @ 8:17 Comments

I nabbed this one from Gone Gold. It's in reference to the Death Row cubicle, which is the last stop before getting fired. We aren't important enough to have cubicles at my work, but we can tell who's getting weaned off the schedule when the days assigned to work start to dwindle. I figure everyone has dealt with some sort of system like this.

North One is known as Death Row, although it’s not technically a whole row. Anyone who sits in that cubicle is on a list, and if there’s anything you don’t want to be on in a modern corporation, it’s a list. My whole career has been built around list avoidance. The Death Row cubicle is just a staging area for unemployment. When the latest casualty gets escorted out, we tap our pencils on desktops in sympathy, like tin cups rattling across cell bars as a prisoner walks the last mile.

Wednesday, August 7, 2002

Quote Of The Day Nine11 @ 17:19 Comments

Here's a comment I found in the forums over at Quarter to Three. It's in reference to some fan fiction honoring Shoot Club.

The guy who wrote this should have his head run over by a bus full of retarded schoolchildren.

Shuttle's Itty Bitty Puter Nine11 @ 9:16 Comments

Shuttle has finally put together a high-performance FlexATX system called the XPC SS51. This little sucker sports AGP, PCI, USB 2.0, on-board LAN, Firewire, DDR, and P4 processors with FSB speeds up to 533MHz. The barebones system with case, mobo, and PS retails for $369 and is about half the size of a shoe box!

Early OC Results Cage @ 8:06 Comments

Here's the good stuff.

Intel P4 2.26 GHz cpu OC'd to 2.6 GHz.

ASUS GeForce 4 4400 OC'd to 295/610.

3DMark 2001 SE gave me a score of only 10589 (see here).

It's pretty cool watching the Nature demo run at 40+ fps.

Latest on the Upgrade Project Cage @ 5:11 Comments

It's been a busy 3 days since I started a series of upgrades and system builds. Things never go exactly as planned, and I learned some painful and not so painful lessons.

The upshot is that things are really coming together. The new black P4 system has finally graduated into my primary system. Email is set up, all of my important apps are installed, and the gaming has commenced.

I managed to crush an Athlon cpu, so that brings the grand total of destroyed cpu's to 2. Maybe it was a subconscious desire to upgrade to some XP loving, or more likely the repeated handling and moving about of the CPU's and their Heat Sink/Fan coolers. I can now see why people are so picky about their HSF's. What a difference a poor design or sub-optimal performance can make.

I also had to solve a rather stickly problem with getting my Microsoft Precision Sidewinder Force Feedback 1.0 stick to work with Windows XP. The MS FF (original version with a standard game port connector) does not play well with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002. Part of the problem is that Microsoft decided to drop support for it's own hardware in Windows XP. Ironically, the MS FF stick would work with IL2, but couldn't be selected inside FS 2002.

I gave it another go around the Google/Usenet groups, and finally found a registry hack/edit (see here) that made everything work like it should. While it will be nice to be able to return my un-opened MS FF 2 stick and get a refund, the best part is that my Simped rudder pedals work as well. Yeah, baby, yeah!

Work beckons for the next 4 nights, so a full write up will have to wait until next week. It's all good, and I'm looking forward to some OC action on my P4 and ASUS GeForce 4 4400.

Oh, and one more thing. I'm finally rid of my cursed Shuttle AK31A rev 2(3) motherboard. I swapped in my MSI KT7 board, and it's oh so much nicer. Heck, it even boots from the CD-ROM like it should. It's nice to be able to just slide in the Windows XP CD, and avoid those messy boot disks. More about that later.

Err...make that two things. Windows XP does indeed rock. It's faster, more stable, and quite elegant. There are a number of simple tasks that it does far faster then Windows ME. I'm quite happy with it, and decided to upgrade the MSI KT7 system to Windows XP while I was at it.

Monday, August 5, 2002

NV 30 Gossip Cage @ 9:27 Comments

The guys over at nV News slapped up some rumors about the Nvidia NV30. Here's a taste:

"With that out of the way, Reactor Critical claims to have some interesting information with regards to potential performance. First of all, they claim that NV30 is gunning for a Bit Boys-ish 48 GB/second memory bandwidth! Here's a few additional notes:

Quake3 at 1280x1024 with 4X antialiasing will be 2.5X that of the GeForce4 Ti 4600.

In Doom III, NV30 will be up to 3.5X faster, and possibly more, than the GeForce4 Ti 4600.

In 3DMark2001, 3X that of the GeForce4 Ti 4600.

In pixel shading operations, a 4X increase over the GeForce4 Ti 4600.

It's important to note that Reactor Critical "have no idea if these estimates are accurate as there are no details about them and how they were achieved."

GF4 On Da Cheap! Nine11 @ 9:17 Comments

Anandtech has an interesting article about the Trident XP4, which is supposed to offer 80% of the performance of a GF4 Ti4600 for $100. We're talking 3DMarks of 8,000 at GF4MX prices! There aren't any benchies yet, but it'll be interesting to see how this part fleshes out. Also, Trident isn't exactly known for high-performance parts and spits out plenty of $9 video cards. However, the XP4 might be the killer part you don't wanna brag about. Kinda like riding fat chicks... I mean mo-peds...

Ziff Davis' Chaper 11 Nine11 @ 8:22 Comments

According to Gamespy, it looks like Ziff Davis is doing the Chapter 11 thang but there may be a positive spin for gamers. The bankruptcy may allow ZD to restructure, burn some lame rags like Yahoo Internet Life!, and concentrate their efforts on the game biz. It's still unclear how it'll effect CGW, but things aren't quite so gloomy. I'm sure there will be a consolidation of staff and a few editors will shake loose in the end, but hopefully ZD won't do the mad console rush like other companies. Keep yer fingers crossed!

P4 Buffitude Cage @ 6:44 Comments

My new P4 system is well on it's way to completion. This time I enlisted the help of my 6 year old son, and things went fairly smooth. He got quite the kick out of learning how to "build and fix computers."

I'll knock up some more info and impressions about the components and system. I want to hold off until I get a chance to do some benchmarking and game playing.

That ASUS board is pretty slick. It talks to you when it boots up, if there are any BIOS error messages. I just finished installing Windows XP Professional, and decided to take a break, and maybe get some sleep.

Oh, by the way, I decided to get a ASUS GeForce 4400 to stick in the new system for now. I'm pretty curious as to what kind of effect the total upgrade package will have on Flight Sim 2002. Especially now that I'm rid of that cursed Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum. The Audigy will still reside in one of my systems, and should work ok for basic audio editing and input.

Saturday, August 3, 2002

1 System Up Cage @ 21:51 Comments

The Shafter system is now whole again. I swapped in a CD Drive, and hooked it all up again. Amazingly it all works, and all I need to do is install some security software so the kiddies don't create any problems.

Tomorrow I'll grab a few more parts, and start building my P4 system. I'm starting to lean towards picking up an interim GeForce 4 4200. As nice at the ATI Radeon 9700 looks, I'd like to see what NVidia has up it's sleeve with it's next big thing.

Friday, August 2, 2002

Things That Make You Go "Doh!" Cage @ 9:45 Comments

So there I was, tooling around MSI's support page, looking for info on getting my MSI KT7 Turbo-II board RMA'd. Then low and behold, I came across some simple tips for troubleshooting a motherboard that won't post.

One of the suggestions had to do with making sure that the posts that the motherboard is mounted on in a case were secure, so that the motherboard was well grounded by the case.

So instead of going to bed after a long night at work, I decided to give it a go.

It turns out that yes, the power supply had died, but the motherboard was still alive. Furthermore, it turns out that the MSI board that I had picked up was also quite healthy.

The CPU that had burned out is of course still quite dead. Rationalizing that it would be a shame to let some parts go to waste, I decided to add on some parts, in order to have another system. My current system has an Athlon 1.4 GHz cpu. I'm going to replace that one with an Athlon XP 2000+ cpu, and just rotate the other cpu's down the chain of systems that I have.

I also ordered another Enermax Power Supply, and another LiteOn CDRW, so that I could rotate parts once again, and replace the CD drive with the broken tray in the Shafter system.

There's going to be a lot of upgrading going on as the parts come in. The end result is that I'll have a couple of faster systems eventually, and a bonus system once I get another video card (probably a Radeon 9700 when they become available).

Thursday, August 1, 2002

New System Cage @ 8:12 Comments

Well, after the debacle that occured with the burnt Athlon cpu and problems with FS 2002, I decided the best thing to do was move some parts around, and build another system.

Here's what I settled on. Most of the stuff should start arriving today and tomorrow.

Lian-Li PC-61 USB B2( 1 Ball-Bearing Fan on the Top), 12-Bay, Aluminum Case. Color: Black.
Sony CDRW 40X12X48 - Black
WD HD 120GB 7200rpm 8MB Cache.
Several rounded cables for the drives.
A Black Alps floppy drive.
Intel Pentium P4 2.26 GHZ (533 MHz bus) - retail.
ASUS P4B533-E motheboard (1xAGP(PRO)/6xPCI/3xDDR W/IEEE 1394, USB 2.0, LAN & Audio).
Liteon 16x DVD drive - Black.
Windows XP Pro.

I'll add on a new video card in the next month or so, probably an ATI Radeon 9700 if it still looks like the one to get after it's release.