• 300 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 lead free 7200rpm 16MB ATA133 – Yeah not amazing but surprisingly cheap and it will do the job.
• Exlixir 512MB DDR400 PC3200 RAM – Again cheap and good enough

And of course some blank DVDs and CDs since were there.

Now to make the hard disk transfer. I thought it’d be easy enough to stick the new drive into the new PC, format and install windows from there. Not happening, not matter how much I messed around in the bios I couldn’t get it to run my Windows XP CD. Great. What I usually do when I encounter such a problem is to go for the old skool floppies. Looking at the new pc I realise that there is one flaw in modern day computers and yep – that is the lack of a floppy drive. So I go and rip out a floppy outta another pc I have lying around and connect it up and guess what – it doesn’t work. I then tried the FDD from another PC and had the same result. Multiple attempts and more fiddling in the bios and we’re still at stage one. Remember that this is over a period of hours, and it’s times like this when you really want to give up! It was at this point that I say to someone on MSN, “I hate working in the pre-OS purgatory!”.

So I’m thinking and finally I decided to transfer the HD back to the other PC. Amazing – the CD will not run. Cursing Windows XP we go for the boot disks. Strangely there is some I/O error with the Windows boot up disks but the good old Windows 98 boot disk got me into the command prompt. Using the nasty fdisk tools I partioned and formatted the HD, a few more hours. Thinking that all is good now I transfer back the HD to the new PC, I wanted to install XP from there just to make sure all the hardware is recognised. Boot up and guess what, XP CD works. Great, we get to the stage where you can choose the partition and yes – there is a problem. The new drive was showing as 130GB, that’s half of what it actually is. Figuring it might just be a miscalculation in XP I go through the installation anyway with a quick NTFS format. Booting up into a fresh XP and unfortunately XP wasn’t just being stupid – it still showed as 130GB. Where is the other 170GB?! HD comes out again and into the other PC. Trying the setup in there was no better, XP still showed it as 130GB. Searching on forums was great – really – when people think that all your problems revolve around something being physically damaged it really makes you feel great, especially when your 99% sure that there is nothing broken. So we work around it and finally after like a hundred different things (more hours) we find the culprit – an old XP CD (no service packs) was causing this. I tried another one of our XP CD’s which had come with SP1 and it showed it as a full 289GB. Great, time to get going. We installed XP onto there and we were finally getting somewhere.

Day 3: Well from now on it is more or less straight forward. Well yeah, it would be if you have a CD with drivers on it. Advent (yak) had provided some nasty recovery CD which would only work if you used the recovery console. My dad strongly advised against it from a past experience from that. Ironically the ethernet driver wasn’t even recognised so I had to find that on the other PC and then onto my SD card and into the new PC (i’m loving built in memory card readers). So once were here I’m searching high and low for drivers. It really doesn’t help when the manufacturer of that piece of hardware has a rubbish website with no drivers and it feels like you’re the only one with a ‘Prism’ wireless card. After getting all the drivers, and yes it was a mission, I decided to compile a pack with drivers for anyone with an Advent T9, you can download it here. Finally we got our software installed and sorted out the drives and yes, we’re finally done! Well actually, after finished we tried out our Creative Inspire 6700 speakers on the built in sound (which claims to be 7.1) and we weren’t completely impressed. Convinced that I required the best hardware we moved the great Creative Audigy2 ZS 7.1 card into the new PC (had to move around the exisiting PCI cards how annoying).

And finally Time to sit back and see what we’ve gained:

Yep, and of course there are a few more things like the nifty little case which is a lot more attractive then the big Dell (although admittedly less accessible). The extra ports on the front especially rock, with all of my card readers, audio ports, firewire and USB. Interestingly this PC also has a scart socket in the back. Yeah, I know I might never use it but that is really cool. Other things, the Dell 8200 ran a motherboard with RDRAM. Yeah – that now pretty much obeslete form of memory which is practically non-upgradable (unless you have a few hundred quid). Now with this new PC we have a much easier ability to upgrade the ram up to 4GB. Another problem with the Dell 8200 was that the AGP slot was 4x so it wasn’t making the best use of the graphics card. This one is 8x which is much better. Of course with PCI-Express now the standard that is really the only step left to get this PC into higher action.

And if your interested from the screenshot, we are running the Vista Transformation pack which is really cool (and with this ram it is not much of a memory hog). Time to update the ‘My Rig’ page!

Though Pentium 4s can sell for up to $637, Intel’s average cost for making a chip comes to $40, according to a report from analysts In-Stat.

The report doesn’t consider expenses related to design or marketing, or the fact that high-end chips can sell for more because fewer off the production line can actually run at top speed, but it does shed light on how Intel has managed to maintain healthy margins in an era of price declines. The cost has been steady at about $40 since 2003, according to In-Stat.

News.com

 

Well i’m hardley surprised at this – it costs Intel about £22 for the production of a single chip. Sure mass production makes it quite cheap, but paying some ridiculous prices for chips over the years maybe Intel have been making just a little too much money on their Pentiums for what they’re worth. Currently the most expensive of these chips retail at around £600, these are the really expensive ones but still they are making over 10x profit! Oh well, I always thought we paid too much for processors!

According to CNET News, Apple will ditch IBM’s line of PowerPC processors in favor of Intel microprocessors. "Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007," asserts CNET. The announcement is expected to be made this Monday during Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs’ Worldwide Development Conference (WWDC) keynote speech.

Update Saturday, June 4, 5pm MST: The Wall Street Journal (registration required) claims to have confirmation of CNET’s report:

"CNET on Friday reported that Apple would announce the transition plan June 6… An industry executive familiar with the matter, contacted Saturday, verified that schedule."
Update Sunday, June 5, 5am MST: Further claims of confirmation come from The Inquirer. Only one more day to go… 

Well i’m kinda shocked and stuff, prettey annoyed that its happening though it does proove to Mac users some of whom are so big headed that they aren’t all that!

Want to find someone to cry to? 1232 replies were posted to this spymac thread titled: Hell has frozen over. Remember peeps, its all just business!

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is keeping details of the technology under wraps. It will introduce a set of chips with a new brand name in the third quarter.

Analysts say the chip bundle and software will transform the PC into an all-purpose multimedia device designed to function as a CD and DVD player, digital video recorder, game console, as well as a machine for traditional data processing and Internet access.

Consumers, however, may not rush to give up their current desktop computers — cheap, straightforward, and in the corner — for these glossier devices.

“It’s a market on the come, but it ain’t here yet,” said Jack Trout, a brand consultant who has worked with Intel and IBM (NYSE:IBM – news). “Is anybody really sure that people want to do all this multi-tasking (on a PC)?”

The new brand will be just the tip of the spear as Intel goes after the estimated $200 billion market for consumer entertainment electronics and media.

Intel recently formed a digital home unit to develop chips for living room electronics and launched a “Digital Joy” campaign with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT – news) to demonstrate PC-based entertainment devices in U.S. shopping centers.

The chip maker also recruited Eric Kim, an executive of South Korea (news – web sites)’s Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), as its marketing director, and split with longtime ad agency Euro RSCG.

Agencies from the top three advertising groups – Omnicom (NYSE:OMC – news), WPP (WPP.L) and Interpublic (NYSE:IPG – news) — are vying for the estimated $300 million account, and sources familiar with the review said Intel wants ideas to promote the digital home.

Opposing Intel’s bid will be traditional consumer electronics makers, such as Sony Corp (news – web sites). (6758.T), whose new PlayStation 3 is rumored to be much more than a game system, handling many of the tasks that Intel wants to put in the PC.
Yahoo! News [ article cont ]

Very interesting, I think that computers are certainly the future of gaming, as they have been for the last 10+ years…

Arstechnica [ article ]

According to hot sauces

By Fuad Abazovic: Monday 24 January 2005, 09:05

SOURCES CLAIMED Microsoft is planning to introduce its 64 bit operating system for Intel and AMD processors (iAMD64) on the 29th of April. The sources are close to Microsoft.

It appears there will be a release to manufacturing version of WinXP 64 in March. That’s the stage before the CDs get stamped out and the boxes get printed.

Quite coincidentally, Intel will finally be ready with its full line of 64 bit capable CPUs, including Celeron 64s, close to that date. This, of course, is entirely coincidental and is just the way things can spookily happen at the same time in our industry.

Little AMD has talked and talked about 64 bit processing for ages now and soon we will see Windows tackling its version of iAMD64, just like the Linux OSes have before it.

March, April, what’s the difference? In terms of aeonic transformations like Microsoft Longhorn, a month here and there is but the blinking of an eye.

Blink. µ

The Inquirer [ article ]

Well i’ve posted a bit about 64bit, and it seems that Windows is kind of drooping behind on this..

And it has set 20 February as the launch date of the P4 6xx series – the first 64-bit Pentium chips aimed at mainstream desktops systems.

It’s already known from internal Intel roadmaps that Smithfield will ship at three clock frequencies – 2.8, 3.0 and 3.2GHz – with model numbers x20, x30 and x40. Only now has the missing first digit been filled in, courtesy of a DigiTimes report citing said sources.

To that we can add the prices: $241, $316 and $530 for the 820, 830 and 840, respectively. The 8xx model number coding will distinguish the dual-core parts from the 7xx series P4 Extreme Edition line-up. Smithfield has been roadmapped for an early Q3 debut, but Intel may formally launch the chip family late Q2, it has emerged.

The next version of the P4, however, is the 6xx series, which adds not only 64-bit addressing but ups the chip’s L2 cache to 2MB from the current 1MB and brings Intel’s power-conserving SpeedStep technology firmly into the desktop arena.

Four chips are expected to ship this quarter: the 630, 640, 650 and 660, clocked at 3.0, 3.2, 3.4 and 3.6GHz, respectively, Intel roadmaps indicate. They will be priced at $224, $273, $401 and $605 at launch, the sources claim. The 3.8GHz 670 is slated for a Q2 release.
The Register [ article ]

Finally some action in the processor market!

The chips, which feature Intel’s AMD64-like EM64 technology, aren’t new. Launched in August 2004, the chips were geared toward workstation and server roles. Indeed, the boxed units that went on sale this week are clearly labelled “for uni-processor workstations and servers”. However, their arrival in Japanese computer-component stores suggests the parts are now being offered outside OEM circles.

All four clock frequencies are available: 3.2, 3.4, 3.6 and 3.8GHz. The latter was only launched last month. Intel’s official price list has the four chips down at $278, $278, $417 and $637, respectively, when sold in batches of 1000 CPUs.

In Tokyo stores, they’re priced at Â¥30,980 ($300), Â¥32,175 ($312), Â¥47,157 ($457) and Â¥78,084 ($756) on average, respectively.

All four chips use the LGA775 socket infrastructure. The chips all sport an ‘F’ after their clock speed to indicate the presence of EM64T.

The Register [article]

Well AMD might have released theirs a while back, but that was prettey useless as MS don’t even have a 64bit OS as of yet. I think the Intel one may be successful, but the prices don’t look so good.

According to Taiwanese motherboard-maker sources cited by DigiTimes, the desktop chip is codenamed ‘Presler’, and will launch at 3.6GHz.

There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip, of course, so we expect that roadmapped launch window to be tentative at this stage. However, Intel has claimed on a number of occasions that it’s 65nm process is on schedule. That process will result limited numbers of ‘Yonah’, the first dual-core Pentium M and the chip giant’s first 65nm processor, ship late this year, Intel has pledged, ahead of commercial volumes some time in Q1 2006.

The Register [article cont]

Interesting…or too late?

Today, lasers that power fast optical networks require exotic — and expensive — materials and are mainly used in vast communications networks. With everyday silicon, the capacity and efficiency of light waves could be used cheaply in much smaller environments.

As a result, the movement of data within computers would keep up with the ever-increasing speed of microprocessors, breaking through an increasingly problematic bottleneck that exists for users of complex programs, such as video editors, large businesses and governments.

Silicon lasers also could be mass produced, using the same equipment on which standard chips are made.

But silicon, the semiconductor that makes up computer memory and logic chips, has only recently been considered for use in photonics, or light-based technology — and it promises to revolutionize that field as it did electronics…

Boston.com [more here]