^/\^ PeaK /\^/\
What's new... is old again
- Dec 25, 1997
- Merry Xmas...spent the morning surfing (yes...I should
be strung up by my wife and family for doing so on this festive occasion..)
one awesome OpenGL
based Web page of Paul Hsieh that chronologizes major developments in the
OpenGL vs Direct3D debate that finally resulted in Microsoft softly
conceding that they might be wrong. The OpenGL camp should be applauded
for their reserve and patience in the last year. May the god's speed be
with them or is that Microsoft's speed ?
- My wife gave me my wish this Xmas in the form of an Acer
AP5T (TX revision 3.4 with switching power supplies on board). The board
runs extremely stable and is upgradeable all the way 5.5x66Mhz=363 Mhz
if either AMD/Cyrix can make it fly in socket 7....unless Intel gets back
into the advanced socket 7 CPU development game. My previous amazing San-Li
pentium board began having intermittent connector problems caused by
card swaps endured during the course of testing of numerous ATI beta test
chips and revisions (RageII, RageII+, RageLT, RagePro, RageLTPro) over
the last year. The board still works fine providing I flex it a certain
way during boot-up but the final problem was the ill-fitting sound blaster
board in the ISA slot. I think I exerted something on the order of 30 pounds
of finger pressure to get the thing into the case....yes, I am mechanically
inclined.
- This is just a reminder for me to upgrade my "Upgrade
Logistics" link
to talk about new thougthts about motherboard selection. Both of my Pentium
boards have been very solid performers. The San-Li had a very well designed
Linear Regulator with a HUGE heatsink. It ran extremely stable with the
SIG11 system test...the Acer
board is also rated very stable
by others.
Highly...highly recommended for future CPUs as the switching supply can
supply much more current without the need for HUGE heatsinks needed by
advanced processors such as the AMD K6 units and early Cyrix processors.
Intermittent failures can be partly pattern dependent
when power supply glitches occur with certain CPU/Chipset/memory sensitivity.
Typically, CPU/chipset/memory vendors will perform typical system tests
on a variety of boards to get a feeling for how fast to rate and margin
their systems. Since they optimized for the worst boards, certain products
with very good low noise supplies can be more easily overclocked on certain
motherboards such as the Acer AP5T.
December 97 News
- Dec 12, 1997
- Use Netscapes 3.0 What You See Is What You Get built
in editor to reformat some of these pages....problem is that it autocorrects
some of my non-standard HTML coding and makes some of my pages unreadable.
- Two recent sites devoted to the Rage Pro based cards
exist .... See End
User Rage Pro site and the @3D
site
- For you UK readers refer to here by @3D...
the OpenGL link is here
- ATI's latest 4.10.2278
drivers have been released to address speed and games compabibility
with some of Xmas's new hotsellers.
- Buyer Beware: Not all AGP cards are created equal...very
good review
by PC World...some cards do not even implement main memory texture access...they
just look like fast PCI interfaces. See following link
- Dec 5, 1997
- ATI's better performance drivers are here.
These are not the real high performance drives called H14C, but they give
you a glimpse of Winbench heaven...or have fun and...run Linux :)
- Buyer Beware: Not all AGP cards are created equal...very
good review
by PC World...some cards do not even implement main memory texture access...they
just look like fast PCI interfaces.
November 97 News
- Nov 19, 1997:
- See John
Peddies 3D Winbench98 scores....ATI achieves it's 5 minutes of fame
and becomes King of the benchmark hill .
- Debian GNU Linux
2.029 distribution upgrade from Slackware...wow!...it runs Quake beatifully
with the the TASS sound driver...
- After much beckoning from a couple of fellows from France
(Sylvain and Jean) , I broke my month long "moment of silence"
to honor my mom's passing away and tested the Rage Pro AGP board
on an Intel AL440LX motherboard (LX chipset) ....IT WORKS wonderfully...4
Mesa OpenGL demos running simultaneuously with 3 windows of DOOM with no
appreciable chugging...did I say wonderful....wonderful! :-;
- Tom's
Xpert@Play reviewand Tom's
3D Graphic Accelerator review ATI does well by Tom. I think he is using
the 4.31 drivers release on Oct 9, 1997.
- Tom's 2D
and 3D
numbers ...not too shabby ...Xpert@Play...the numbers just keep going up...ATI
insider's tip... even more potential to be mined in RagePro hardware.
OpenGL is primarily a software drivers issue and is not some intrinsic
fault of the RagePro architecture as Tom's phrasing of the Xpert@Play's
OpenGL performance might lead you to believe.
- Nov 9 , 1997:
New Xpert@Play review: Thomas Pabst is complimenting his motherboard
prowess/publishing/testing skills by accenting his home
page with Video graphics information. He will have a much more in depth
review and complete review soon.
More free e-mail: Angelfire communications now
has free email . Hotmail now has
company in the internet e-mail business. Now you can access your email
if you can access a Internet station.
My home page provider has provided "local" page
counters. I have added these to some of the pages to get an idea of which
pages are "clicked" on by you dear fellow websurfer. Counters
reset on November 9 1997.
Upgrading to TX motherboard?: Some of the older
hardware, such as IDE hardrives, may have some trouble working with the
newer TX boards
that are strictly 3 Volt parts. (The HX and VX chipsets used 5V from
the motherboard to talk to the outside 5V world). You get the advantages
of having these new boards tested with production quality CPUs using AMD
K6, Cyrix 6X86MX(M2), and Intel P55 (MMX) but may have trouble with the
ol reliable IDE drive of yours ;-)
October 97News
- Oct 26 , 1997:
I finally found the new link
to the manufacturer of my "San-Li" motherboard . The board is
definitely getting more popular and has recently been updated (Version
1.2) to include a switching power supply to reduce the heat dissipation
within the voltage regulator. I have updated my links and added a couple
of other names of companies that distribute this board under their own
name. I apologize to all the people that I did not respond to during my
period of grieving.
- Oct 25, 1997:
My family grieved much this last week with the lost of our mom
from this world. She passed away peacefully on the morning of Friday October
17, 1997 at the Woman's College Hospital.
Mom ....by Rebecca
....translation by Lilian
She is in the room as the sun shines in the spring
Like the song of a finch on a branch
Like the sound of a warm stove on a cold day.
Mom, she is like the good bread one craves
Like the shadow and the bed, after a day of sorrow
Like the spring water on scorching afternoons...
A roof for a lost child...
Mom; she is everything, that is good, noble and gentle.
Oct 25, 1997:
Hello World...I have had my head in the sand for the last little while
with work...our stock is up near $30 and going strong. There is now a Internet
based e-mail facility so you can access your
personal e-mail from anywhere with Internet access. I have tried accessing
my wife's e-mail at Future shop one day and it does work.
Took a canoe trip on the August long weekend in Algonquin
Park. Broke my heart when our fearless trip
leader booked a Water Taxi to cross Lake Opeongo. The Portage was a killer.
The labour day long weekend finds me hiking with family members up on St.
Regis in the Adirondack Park. The knees are a little squeaky on the way
down this small mountain. About 1.5 hours up and 1.4 hours down...food
is great at the Fireside Restaurant in Lake Placid. The end of September
finds me away on an extended vacation from work...I need it... See my long
promised bike tripping page.
Check out Tom's
Hardware Page and found that he has conquered Motherboards and is tired
of beating up Intel. He is now staking out Graphics cards and chipsets
and finding out about AGP. The man definitely has clout and a bit of a
chip on his shoulder from some eventful circumstance in his life. It is
a good thing that he has things such as his car and wife to balance him
out a bit from the computer geek stuff that I work at and that he works
at as a hobby. Just my two cents, the line about "fill in name
of any company not shelling out complimentary evaluation hardware"
having an " attitude problem towards me" is getting a
little worn. Most reputable reviewers go out and purchase products conventional
retail stores just to make sure you and I do not get souped up versions
of some tweaked hardware product. Sometimes we give pre-released stuff
to magazines like Byte and PC Magazine and sometimes we do not. If you
want to call it attitude...fine. I think Tom is basically cheap like me...why
does he not just come out and say so. I think resorting to "name"
calling (however well and mildly phrased) is childish on his part. Sorry
Tom...just my two cents and feeling sorry for Intel and the Evil empire
over the last couple or was it six months when AMD was preparing to release
their K6. Nuff said...great home page, though. Thanks Tom.
Just bought a cheapo scanner from UMAX call "Scan
This!" for $59. Works amazingly well but I hope somebody supports
it under Linux someday... hopefull UMAX will release the register spec
to developers. I cannot wait to scan in some pictures and maps from my
bike trips.....later.
June 1, 1997:
Restored home page after Angelfire(ISP) had crash of site. I have been
very happy with Angelfire but the thought of the site crashing only occurred
to once last year and I dutifully backed up things to a working directory...and
then got complacent. Fortunately, i was able to take advantage of Netscapes
cached copies to restore most things except for this file :(
May 15, 1997:
Added 3d Review links for ATI hardware
