|
Week of 1 May 2000 Friday, 05 July 2002 08:28 A (mostly) daily journal of the trials, tribulations, and random observations of Robert Bruce Thompson, a writer of computer books. |
|
wpoison
Search [tips]
|
Monday, 1 May 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Arghh. The start of yet another new month, and the Book That Will Not Die is still not finished. I didn't get the final chapter completed and to my editor yesterday, but I will get it finished today. Honest. * * * * *
Thanks. I'll be finding out about W2K. I've about decided to strip down my main system and install W2KP as the sole OS on it. I figure I'll have at least a few problems with drivers and applications, perhaps with the Voyetra/Turtle Beach QuadZilla sound card, the Tecmar 3900 DDS3 tape drive, the Matrox G400 video card, or the Plextor CD burner. But W2K has now been out long enough that I should be able to find drivers or workarounds for most of the problems. I didn't think that black/white was an unusual combination for an English Shepherd. I've seen quite a few of them, and they were all black and white. In fact, it's impossible to tell them from Border Collies by appearance, except that the English Shepherds are generally somewhat larger than BCs. For example, one of the volunteers that Barbara works with at CBCR has a giant male BC (about 80 lbs., I'd guess) that I suspect may really be an English Shepherd. * * * * *
Thanks. I may give that a try. In fact, I'd considered making myself a local NT account with the same name as the account at my web hosting company and using that account for my general work. The only reason I haven't done that is sheer laziness. But it makes sense that it would work. In general, if I think I'll be publishing repeatedly, I just leave FP2K up and minimized. It prompts me for the name and password the first time I publish, but it caches that information, so if I publish again, I don't have to enter the information again unless I've closed FP2K in the interim. * * * * *
That sounds like a nice machine. Just make sure that both processors have identical S-Specs. My inclination would be to buy the least expensive Pentium IIIs. You just won't notice much difference, for example, between a /500 and a /550, or between a /550 and a /600, or for that matter between a /500 and a /600. * * * * *
Dunno. I *think* it loads most of its stuff high. The DOS portion of Win9X, of course, acts just like any other DOS, but I believe the bulk of Win9X is loaded top-down. I remember testing this one time, but it's been so long that I don't recall exactly what I learned. Perhaps one of our readers will know for sure. * * * * *
Yes, as I've mentioned repeatedly in the past, I don't own an inkjet printer because the cost of consumables is ridiculous, at least for the low-end and mid-range models. High-end models (>$1,000) dispense with ink cartridges, instead using ink reservoirs and discrete print heads. They have a cost-per-page approaching that of laser printers. Less expensive ink jet printers--not just HP but everyone's--use the King Gillette model of giving away the razor/printer and selling the blades/ink cartridges. * * * * *
Thanks. * * * * *
No, Slot 1 is the older technology. Intel was forced to use cartridge packaging with the first Pentium II processors because they used separate L2 cache RAM chips. Current processors have the L2 cache as a part of the processor substrate, which means that expensive cartridge packaging is wasted. My sources tell me that Intel will not introduce any new processors (or faster versions of existing processors) in Slot 1 format. The 1 GHz Pentium III Coppermine is the fastest processor they'll ever produce in Slot 1, and they plan to phase out production of all Slot 1 processors by the end of 2000 or early 2001. Socket 370 in its PPGA (Celeron) and FC-PGA (Pentium III) incarnations is the newer technology. It uses the same GTL+ electrical interface as Slot 1, but implemented in Socket form, which is much cheaper to produce. Future Intel processors will also use a socket interface, although not Socket 370. The Willamette (Pentium IV), for example, will use an enhanced version of Socket 370 called Socket 423. * * * * *
Thanks. I wasn't aware of that.
|
|
wpoison
Search [tips]
|
Tuesday, 2 May 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] I finished re-write on the Processor chapter yesterday and shipped it off to my editor. That's the final chapter. Through at last. Well, until the comments from the tech reviewers start coming back, anyway. Now to get started on the next one. The Register posted an interesting article this morning about the ongoing saga of HP products and Windows 2000 support (or the lack thereof). This time, the focus is on not being able to use HP CD burners under W2K. It talks a lot about drivers. I'm not sure what they're referring to, because any OS sees a CD burner as just another CD-ROM drive. It's the application software, like Adaptec Easy CD, that allows the CD-R(W) drive to burn CDs. I assume they must be talking about that. At any rate, users are upset because HP hasn't promised a date when they'll ship updated "drivers", and because they plan to charge $10 or $25 for them, depending on drive model. It sounds to me as though what they're talking about is providing an updated copy of Easy CD. I suspect that HP has to pay Adaptec for this, and is simply passing the cost along, which is probably not unreasonable if HP did not represent their CD-R(W) drives as Windows 2000 compatible. There's an old army story about the enlisted men and officers getting together one day to play a softball game, which the officers won by a score of 1-0. On the bulletin board the following morning appeared an account of the "season", saying that the enlisted men and officers had met in the final game of the season, and that the officers had played very well, but had been able to score only one run. It went on to say that, for the entire season, the officers had won only one game, finishing in next-to-last place, while the enlisted men had won all but one game, finishing next to the top. This story came to mind the other day while I was reading articles on the net about the new AMD Athlon-series processors. In this game, it seems that Intel is the officers and AMD the enlisted men. How many articles have you seen over the last few months saying that Intel was unable to produce enough Pentium III Coppermine processors, and implying that their production was so fouled up that they were unable to make anywhere near enough processors to meet demand? Well, stated another way, you could say that the Intel Pentium III is so popular that Intel can't keep up with increasing market demand for it. But then, that would be saying nice things about Intel, and it seems that it's no longer fashionable to say nice things about a successful company. Well, what went around came around, and AMD is now in a position where they cannot supply enough Athlon processors to meet demand, unless you're willing to accept the older and less desirable 500 and 550 MHz units. So where are the articles about AMD's production being fouled up? We don't see those kinds of articles. Instead, we again see articles that imply that Intel is so bad at making processors in large numbers that billions of customers are being forced to go elsewhere. Since AMD is the only real alternative, everyone wants Athlons, which are accordingly in short supply. Now, I know that we always cheer for the underdog, but this is ridiculous. When Intel processors are in short supply, it's because Intel is incompetent at producing processors in adequate numbers. When AMD processors are in short supply, it's not AMD's fault. No, it's Intel's fault, because Intel is too incompetent to produce processors in adequate numbers. Give me a break. I suppose I should get back to work on the book that Pournelle and I are doing, but kiwi, my dual-CPU system, is still sitting here shut down, after it started overheating a month or two ago. I think I'll fire it up and install the release version of Windows 2000 Professional on kiwi, blowing away everything else that's on the drive. Later on, Barbara and I can tear it down, pull the 50 GB Seagate LVD drive, and see what may be causing the overheating. I also need to pick up a DDS cleaning cartridge for the Tecmar 3900 DDS-3 tape drive that's in it. |
|
wpoison
Search [tips]
|
Wednesday, 3 May 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Kiwi now sits on the kitchen table with the cover off. There wasn't as much dust and grunge in there as I'd expected, and we couldn't find anything obvious that might have been making kiwi overheat, other than the fact that it has about 7 drives in it, including an 18 GB Seagate Cheetah 10,000 RPM SCSI drive and a 50 GB Barracuda. Actually, the system isn't technically overheating at all. The CPU temperature got up to 50C, which concerned me. I like to run my processors no warmer than 35C to 40C, although they're probably rated for 70C or 80C. We'll pull the Barracuda to reduce the heat load a bit and see what happens. I've just been playing over on google.com, using their related pages feature. It's kind of interesting. When I told it to find pages related to my main page, I got this. Most of the links make sense. Those to Pournelle's site and others of daily journal keepers from Daynotes.com. But Wacom.com? HomeDepot.com? I searched on this page instead, and got similar results, but with a different group of daily journal keepers. Wacom.com and HomeDepot.com stuck around, though. I then hit Pournelle's site, and got similar results, although with some new entries and missing some old ones. At least Wacom.com and HomeDepot.com had disappeared. I then spent entirely too much time clicking on the Similar Pages links to find out what they showed. Interestingly, there's no direct two-way correspondence. For example, Dr. Keyboard shows up frequently as a site similar to my own, but my site doesn't show up as a similar site to his. That's rather odd. One would think that sites similar to each other would be similar to each other in both directions. The Register has an interesting article about a contest they ran to see how fast various systems ran SETI@home. Although SETI is famous for liking big L2 caches, and although the amount of RAM, operating system, and other factors varied significantly, these are interesting real-world benchmarks nonetheless. The per-unit times are worth looking at: 20h 15m: overall average according to SETI What's interesting is that the units/hour/processor are so very close for mainstream processors, ranging from 8 hours and 10 minutes for the Pentium III/500 down to 7 hours for the Pentium III/700. Even at the overclocked extremes, the Celeron/450 is only about 31% slower than the Pentium III/770. Kind of makes you wonder why anyone would pay a huge premium for a marginally faster processor. Also interesting are the results for the dual Pentium III/600, which turns in an overall time of 8 hours to complete two units. That's just over twice as fast as the single Pentium III/500, a pretty impressive result for a dual processor machine. The article mentions that for the SMP machines the users dedicated a CPU to each instance of SETI. It would have been interesting to see the results if they'd let MPS allocate CPU resources. * * * * *
Thanks for the kind words. As far as upgrading a Pentium/75, that's a tough one. The Pentium/75 is one of the P54C, so-called "Class Pentium" processors. That means that it's a Socket 5 processor that uses 3.3 volts for both core and I/O, and runs on a 50 MHz system bus with a 1.5X multiplier. You can't simply drop any random processor in and expect it to work. There are several alternatives for upgrading this system, none of them good. First, you could try to track down an IDT WinChip. They made various models that were drop-in replacements for P54C processors. The problem is, IDT got out of the processor business last year and, while WinChips are still available in limited quantities, it may be hard to find one that supports the proper voltage. What you need is a 3.3V WinChip2 (it also came in 3.52V versions). I think they were made in 200 MHz (66 MHz bus X 3.0X) and 233 MHz (66 MHz X 3.5X). If you can find one, it should sell for about $25 or $30 and be a drop-in replacement. But you probably won't be able to find one. Second, you could go with one of the CPU upgrade kits available from companies like Kingston and Evergreen. Most of these use the AMD K6-2 processor, and have built in voltage regulators to supply proper voltage to the CPU. I think Kingston makes one that has several models of your 575 Compaq listed as compatible. The problem with these kits are, first, that compatibility is problematic, second, that the speed increase is usually nowhere near what you'd expect from the ratio of processor speeds (the rest of the old components slow things down), and third that the kits are so expensive that you could buy a Celeron motherboard and a Celeron processor for about the same amount. Third, you could replace the motherboard. Plan on spending perhaps $75 to $125 for the motherboard, another $60 to $100 for the processor, and whatever it takes to buy however much memory you need. There are a couple of problems with this method as well. First, you still have old components like your hard drive slowing things down. Second, and probably more important, you may find it difficult or impossible to find a motherboard that is compatible with your system, particularly since it's a Compaq. I don't know about your particular system, but Compaq has used a lot of proprietary parts in many of their systems. You may find issues like non-standard mounting hole positions, power supply connectors that don't fit a standard motherboard, and so on. Best advice is not to try to upgrade the system. You'll end up spending more and having less than if you just built a new system from scratch. * * * * *
Thanks. That's pretty much what I figured. I'm stripping down my main box and installing W2KP this week, so I'll get a chance to find out for myself how everything works. * * * * *
Yep, I'd already gotten it, thanks. I'll probably test burn a few CDs once I get kiwi up and running tomorrow or the next day.
|
|
wpoison
Search [tips]
|
Thursday, 4 May 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Please give a moment's thought today to Alison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder. Thirty years ago today at Kent State University, the Ohio National Guard murdered those four students and wounded nine others. Two of those dead were merely spectators at the anti-war protest that occurred that day. The other two were minding their own business on their way to classes. No students were armed. No Guardsmen had been injured, nor were they in any danger. The Guardsmen fired randomly for 13 seconds--13 seconds--into a group of unarmed civilians, killing students as much as 700 feet away. No one has ever been brought to justice for this massacre, nor even suffered administrative discipline. It was that day when I realized, once and for all, that the government is not my friend. As I sit here listening to CSN&Y playing Ohio, it seems trivial to write about my day, but I guess life must go on regardless. As I was cleaning the dust bunnies out of kiwi yesterday, and thinking about removing one of the SCSI hard disks to reduce the heat load, the thought actually came to me: What would Toolman Tim do? The answer, of course, was MORE POWER. So instead of pulling a perfectly good disk drive, I started fishing around in my parts closet. I came up with a PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 2X. This is one serious fan. Instead of installing internally, it attaches externally, to the back of the power supply. The thing has a standard AC power connector and pulls 11 watts. As I said, a serious fan. This 80mm unit moves more air than any pancake fan I've seen, including some 120mm fans, and should at least double the air flow. According to PC Power & Cooling, it reduces interior case temperature from 5C to 15C, drive temperature from 5C to 20C, and CPU temperature from 10C to 25C. And I believe it. Kiwi has more fans than any system I've ever built. I gave up counting around 7 or 8. Let's see, the power supply fan, one fan on each of the CPU heat sinks, two or three pancake fans on the case itself, two fans on the Cheetah, a fan each for most of the other drives, and so on. Before this latest addition, kiwi at startup sounded like a Learjet firing up. With the new fan, it's more like a 747. Once it's running, though, it's not that bad. You only have to raise your voice slightly above normal speaking volume to be understood by someone sitting within a foot or two of you. Once I got the fan installed, moved kiwi back into my office, and reconnected all the cables, it was time to start rebuilding it. I stripped both hard drives down to bare metal, inserted the Windows 2000 Professional CD, and started things rolling. Everything went swimmingly well, except that W2KP did not recognize my Matrox Millennium G400 video card. That seemed kind of strange, given that the G400 was in general release for about 6 to 8 months before W2KP shipped. I visited the Matrox web site, downloaded the latest certified driver for W2KP, and installed it. Big mistake. It flat out didn't work. When I started the system, everything worked normally until the Windows 2000 splash screen appeared. At that point, there was a pause, and then the "Loading Windows" splash screen appeared and the system locked up. To make a very long story short, nothing I did--including three complete re-installs of Windows 2000 Professional--allowed the Matrox G400 to work with Windows 2000. I tried driver version 5.03, which was described as the latest certified W2K driver. That didn't work. I found driver version 5.04, which was posted elsewhere on the site and described as the latest certified driver, but with the proviso that it worked only with the G400 with SGRAM, and not with the G400 with SDRAM or the G400 Max. I didn't know whether my card had SGRAM or SDRAM, so I fished out the box, which describes it as model G4+MDHA32GR. That didn't tell me much, and there was nothing on the box, in the manual, or that I could find on the website to tell me which type of memory my card has. I decided that the worst that could happen would be that the new driver wouldn't work, so I downloaded it and installed it. It didn't work, either. I tried an old beta driver that I'd downloaded months ago, when I first built kiwi. That had worked fine with W2KP RC2, but it sure didn't work with the release version. Three strikes, and W2K was out. At that point, I was convinced that the G400 just wasn't going to work with W2K, so I started fishing around for a video card to replace the G400. The only decent (high performance) video card I had available was an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro, which is a wonderful TV card whose TV functions work only under Windows 98. No point to wasting it in a W2KP machine, then. Then I realized that I really didn't care whether kiwi ran Windows 2000 Professional or Windows NT Workstation 4.0. So I stripped the hard disks down to bare metal and installed NT4W. Everything went fine, and while it was installing I popped over to the Matrox web site to download the latest G400 drivers for NT4. After applying SP6a to the new NT4W installation, I fired up Nt4445.exe, the Matrox driver I'd just downloaded. Driver installation proceeded normally, and I restarted the system. When it came up, the Windows splash screen was totally scrambled. I knew the system had been running successfully for months under NT4, so at this point I decided that there was something physically wrong with the G400 card itself, perhaps a failed video memory chip or something. I was getting ready to pull the card when I decided to try one last thing--installing the old NT4 video driver that I'd been using back when the system worked. I fired up Nt4_421.exe, which I'd downloaded last October, installed the driver, and restarted the system. It came up normally and has been running properly ever since. So the upshot is that I can't get a recent Matrox G400 driver to run under either NT4 or W2KP to save my life. But the old driver works just fine. I've been using and recommending Matrox video cards forever, and part of the reason for that (other than their superb 2D display quality) is that their drivers have been rock-solid. Now it seems that that's no longer the case. In all fairness to Matrox, this is a dual-processor system, and dual-processor systems are known for having subtle problems with things like video drivers. So it's not necessarily fair to blame Matrox. At any rate, kiwi is running again, and seems happy. I installed Office 2000 with the Full Monte option, and am writing this on kiwi. It's very nice to have my 1280X1024 video back, and the additional performance of the dual Pentium III/550s over the single Pentium II/300 is welcome. It's not so much that the system "feels" a lot faster, as that it doesn't bog down under load. And, after a full day running, the processor temperature is showing at 40C and the system temperature at 27C, which is reasonable. * * * * *
Thanks. I hadn't heard of that one. But I don't think that can be the problem. My system ran normally for months, and then one day it just started overheating (well, to the extent that a 50C processor temperature is overheating). I hadn't flashed the BIOS or anything. * * * * *
Thanks. I'd meant to post something about this outrage a couple of weeks ago, but I got busy and never got around to doing it. For those who don't have time to read the full article, it says that, as of 1 April (appropriate date), Microsoft no longer allows OEMs to ship a Windows distribution CD with new systems. That's true for Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows 2000 Server. Instead, they give OEM a choice between two methods, neither of which is an adequate substitute for having a distribution CD. They can ship a recovery CD, which allows the system to be rebuilt, but which is locked to that system model, or they can install recovery files on another partition of the hard disk. Microsoft's attitude is that users and OEMs can like it or lump it. According to them, this is an anti-piracy measure. I think it's more than that. Microsoft hates licensing software. What they want to do is rent it to you. I believe that a lot of their moves over the last couple of years, such as forced registration, their support of UCITA, and this new media-less license, are moves in that direction. Microsoft is just giving more ammunition to the Open Source folks, and these recent moves are one of the big reasons why I decided it was time for me to start learning about Linux. * * * * *
Get the CD burner. ZIP drives are relatively rare, and use expensive and relatively fragile media. In my opinion, ZIP drives (and other superfloppies) are an obsolescent and dying technology. With a CD burner, you can produce discs that nearly anyone can read. Any reasonably recent CD-ROM drive can read CD-R discs, and nearly all CD-ROM drives made in the past year or so support the Multiread standard, which means they can also read CD-RW discs. I don't know the situation in India, but here CD-R blanks cost less than a dollar each, and CD-RW blanks are perhaps two or three dollars each. I generally use CD-R for archiving stuff or when I need to send a lot of data to someone, and CD-RW for quick backups. As far as model, I don't know if Plextor drives are sold in India. If they are, I'd go with the Plextor 8/4/32A ATAPI drive, which is the best IDE CD burner I've ever seen. If you're using SCSI, go with the same model in the SCSI interface, or simply install the IDE version. The IDE Plextor is the first IDE burner I've seen that approaches SCSI burners in performance and reliability. If Plextor drives aren't available, HP drives are a good second choice. I've now heard from enough people I know and respect to believe that the "Love Letter for You" virus is very real and a major threat. It appears to be a variant of Melissa, and propagates the same way. There are by now several articles about this virus up on the net, including this one from SecurityWatch.com. Most of the damage reported so far seems to have occurred in Britain--where the virus has shut down Parliament and at least one major bank--but the virus has definitely propagated world-wide by this time. Do not open any email message you receive with the subject line "ILOVEYOU" or similar. 4 May 2000, 12:40 PM EDT: I've found another good article at CNET. The National Infrastructure Protection Center (NPIC) acknowledges that the virus exists, but says little more. No one seems to know yet exactly what this thing does, other than spreading like wildfire. 4 May 2000, 12:55 PM EDT: The Register reports that an estimated 10% of British PCs have already been infected by this virus. The burn rate on this virus makes Melissa look slow. Several antivirus companies have already developed fixes, including Dr. Solomon and Norton. 4 May 2000, 1:40 PM EDT: It now appears that the purpose of the Love Letter virus is to download an execute a Trojan Horse program, which when run attempts to retrieve detailed information about your PC environment, including passwords, and send it to an address in the Philippines. Since the last post, I've heard from several people who have been affected by the Love Letter virus, including some who have had to shutdown and disconnect their entire corporate email systems. This is definitely a nasty piece of work. 4 May 2000, 11:10 PM EDT: The Love Letter virus is now proliferating with a new subject line, VERY FUNNY. Scanners which examine the code itself will detect both versions. Filters that operate by comparing a string against the subject line will not detect the new version. More details here 5 May 2000, 7:45 AM EDT: The Iloveyou virus is now being sent with different subject lines. Be careful about opening emails with the subject "Iloveyou", "love letter", "very funny", "Susitikim shi vakara kavos puodukui...", "Fw: Joke", or similar.
|
|
wpoison
Search [tips]
|
Friday, 5 May 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] What a mess. The Iloveyou virus and its derivatives caused a lot of damage, resulting in many corporate and government email systems being shut down yesterday. As usual, Microsoft Outlook users were the target. But it didn't have to happen. If you run Outlook 2000, do yourself (and everyone else) a favor. Do it right now. From within Outlook, choose Tools -- Options and then click the Security tab. On the Security page, look at the middle section, Secure Content. In that section, use the drop-down list to specify Restricted sites as the Zone. Click the Zone Settings button, make sure Restricted sites is selected, and then click the Custom Level button. Set every option button in the resulting dialog to Disable. Set the final Logon option setting to Prompt for user name and password, and save the changes. Back on the Outlook Security page, click the Attachment Security button and make sure it's set to High. Save all changes. I always wonder about the people who create viruses like this. Brian Bilbrey has an interesting idea that hadn't occurred to me. He speculates that the ILOVEYOU virus "has "RIAA Covert Ops" written all over it. If you can't stop the kids from trading music, infect their machines and kill the MP3 files, then spread and burn. HEH, Heh, heh... Sure I'm joking, aren't I???" Maybe he is joking, but it makes one wonder. MP3 files are a pretty weird thing to target. Locally, the impact of the virus was nil. No copies arrived here. I did find one copy on Jerry Pournelle's mail server yesterday, which I deleted. But I was surprised that between us we received only one copy of a virus this prolific. Some Athlon users are going to be very upset. The Register reports that AMD will ship Slot-A Thunderbird-core Athlon processors only to OEMs, and not as retail-boxed processors. Why? Because the Slot A Thunderbirds won't work in motherboards that use the VIA KX133 chipset. There are apparently timing problems with the VIA chipset similar to those that caused Intel to pull 820-based motherboards with three RIMM sockets. The new-generation Slot A processors do work in Slot A motherboards based on the AMD-750 chipset, but apparently AMD decided that it was too much of a risk to make the Slot A Thunderbirds generally available. So if you want to upgrade your Athlon system, plan to buy a new motherboard. I've never much liked VIA chipsets. In my experience, they're slow, buggy, and have aggravating incompatibilities. This latest mess is going to cause me to change my recommendations in the book. For now, I think the best advice is not to buy a KX133-based motherboard, unless you don't plan ever to upgrade the processor. For that matter, AMD's decision not to release Thunderbird in Slot A means you'll be out of luck if you have an AMD-750 motherboard. If you're considering an Athlon system, it's probably best to wait for the Socket A processors and motherboards to arrive. They should ship in volume this summer.
* * * * *
Thanks. I did see something on the Matrox site that reported that some users had had problems when they used the Windows Temp directory as a target. It suggested using some other directory, but said that any other directory was okay. Rather than accepting the default, I used the directory c:\junk in every case, so perhaps that was the problem. It did work with the 4.21 NT4 drivers, though. * * * * *
Thanks. There aren't any problems with IRQ's or PCI interrupts, nor with BIOS setup. Remember, this system was successfully running W2KP RC2 with the G400 and beta drivers, and I changed nothing before installing W2KP release version. There are a lot of things I could try in BIOS setup--stuff like AGP aperture, MPS version, etc. etc.--but the system is running happily now under NT4, and I don't really care if W2KP runs on it or not. I'll probably build another dual-CPU box with all W2K HCL-certified components to be my main W2KP box. * * * * *
Thanks. Yours is not the first message I've gotten from someone having problems with one or another AGP video card on a K7 system, but I was surprised to encounter the problem on a vanilla Intel box with a 440BX chipset. I've also heard from several people who've had some real problems installing W2KP as an upgrade, so I'll be interested to hear what happens with your upgrade.
|
|
wpoison
Search [tips]
|
Saturday, 6 May 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Pournelle is back. He's posted some brief notes about his trip to France on his current View page, with more promised for later. So if you'd gotten out of the habit of checking his site, it's time to start visiting it again. I ran web site access statistics for his site and my own this morning. My hits are up noticeably, thanks to those of you who've started visiting my site while Pournelle has been gone. Please keep coming back. Barbara is off to another Border Collie event, this time in Asheboro. She's manning (womaning?) the CBCR table, where they sell t-shirts, caps, and so on with a Border Collie theme. Funds raised go to their Border Collie Rescue organization. With Barbara gone, I get to dogsit all three dogs. I tried to talk my mother into watching them for me. She's 81, but still too crafty to be suckered into doing that. * * * * *
Go with the Celeron. Integer performance is roughly comparable between the Intel Celeron and the AMD K6-* series, but the AMD falls down badly on floating point performance. Also, the AMD K6-2 is really on its last legs, and will soon be replaced entirely by the Socket A Spitfire/Duron. And you really don't want to build a new system on the obsolete Socket 7 platform anyway. Of course, if the system you're upgrading already has a motherboard that will accept the K6-2, that's the cheapest way to go. But if you need to buy a motherboard no matter what, go with a PPGA Celeron and a Socket 370 motherboard.
|
|
wpoison
Search [tips]
|
[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] I wasn't feeling well last night, and didn't sleep much, so I'm taking today off.
[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |