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Mars Explorer Rover
Both Alex and Calvin are fascinated by the Mars missions. Here are some amazing web sites: * “Mars Exploration Rover Mission”:http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/. The official site. Some cool videos and images. Lots to explore. * Maestro Headquarters. Wow, you can look at the imaging applications they are using at the JPL to piece together all those photos…
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Aquamark Benchmarks
AquaMark ARC – Overview. Kind of a cool site. These use a Aquamark, a benchmark based on a real game. You submit your ratings up there and see how to tune. For instance, Alex’s new Athlon went from a score of 36693 (this is really 36.693 frames per second in the benchmark) to 40145 by…
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nVHardpage
nVHardpage. On to tweaking the new video card. Wow, these new ones are incredibly powerful. This seems like the best utility for nVidia. Basically, it turns on some pretty complex menus you find in the advanced display menu. Also has a mode where you can test your video memory to make it go faster. In…
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Connie's Overclocked Machine Stats
Well, I finally got Alex’s new machine up and running. Thought I’d give overclocking a serious try to see how things are. Boy there are certainly some risks in it, but it is interesting to see how flexible folks have made these things. Here’s the machine today. The main gotcha is that it was incredibly…
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Ultimate Boot CD
Ultimate Boot CD. Wow, what a great idea, here is a CD image of a bootable CD with everything on it. I tried to use Bart’s Boot CD stuff, but the script fails mysteriously. This is a better idea since it has everything on it already. A 56MB image.
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Blowing up a Floppy Drive
Been putting together Connie’s new computer. First time I’ve ever had a machine not power up and also the first time I’ve smelled burning. Not good. Fortunately, didn’t burn out the whole motherboard. Whenever you build a new computer, make sure your hand is next to the power off switch. So, here is what I…
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Mac Flac and Bit Torrent
Here are some more tools that I’ve been using: * “Mac Flac”:http://www.danrules.com/macflac/. Flac is a lossless compression format for compressing CDs. * “Bit Torrent”:http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/. This is a pretty cool file download system. The client is a little strange as it is the usual obscure user interface. * “Experimental”:http://ei.kefro.st/projects/btclient/. When you download experimental, you get a…
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Connie's Work Machine
OK, Connie has $2,200 to buy a machine and printer for work. That’s the standard budget over at Harberview. They are standardized on Dell Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks. Interesting to see Windows 2000, not XP is part of the standard too. I’m not used to paying so much for hardware, so this is a…
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My Onkyo TX-DS989 Dies and what are all these formats anyway?
Onkyo Upgrades TX-DS989 Future-Proof Receiver. I’ve had this Audio-video receiver for about two years now. Blew out an amplifier and also part of the digital processing section by crossing some speaker wires in the back (yes, Virginia, it was dumb to have a bunch of stripped wires back there, I’ve fixed that now). In any…
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nVidia GeForce 5900 SE
“Firing Squad”:http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/evga_e-geforce_fx_5900_xt_review/, “Hot Hardware”:http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/gffx_5900xt.shtml, “Guru-3D”:http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/112/ and “Tech-Report”:http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q4/geforcefx-5900xt/index.x?pg=1 have all reviewed this board (called the GeForce 5900 SE) and the chipset (called the 5900 XT). Go figure this naming convention stuff. You can get it for about $185 right now online. It is basically a high end GeForce 5900 with slower memory (2.8ns vs. 2.2ns) and…