linuxmade

2000-02-13

No time for any serious update. Fixed my computer though. Seems that Win 98 after the latest clean install didn�t allow me to use the first PCI slot for Banshee. No matter how I tried to clean out and reinstall drivers, adjust IRQ settings etc. it just blacked out under different stages of the boot process ! Worked fine under all previous installs, Win 95/98, Win 2000, NT4, Linux, BeOS etc. Since the card obviously wasn�t faulty, I had to resign to the second PCI slot which miracously did work just fine with the latest Creative drivers ( but not 3Dfx drivers, Windows did not want to allow them ?). The 3Dfx drivers have worked quite OK earlier, I would have preferred to use them instead as they are optimized for DX7. Also, I would have preferred to use the first PCI slot as it would give a small speed gain. As the second PCI slot now seems to work to my satisfaction I guess I should be just happy. I am.

See Ya // Per

2000-02-06

I�ve had an accident in the family. My 3D graphics accellerator decided to give up it�s life yesterday. Mourning is intense. Not that I was too surprised, as I�ve read in several tests that the reviewers have had concerns about the high temperature of the graphics CPU on 3Dfx Banshee boards. I guess my board died a temperature death; the graphics CPU was actually burnt (as in fire) at the edges. So I�ve had to temporarily turn back to my old ATI Rage Pro 3D AGP2x for my graphics needs. My Banshee card is now returned to the store for a suspicious evaluation by some service tech before I eventually get a replacement. That will take at least 10 days. If I get the option to choose a new card I guess that I will choose a Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra or M64 in an edition with a mounted fan on it�s graphics CPU. The new ATI with twin processors and 64 megs onboard sounds interesting too. Of course I will pay inbetween for any difference in price. I don�t think I will choose any of the Voodoo 3 cards as they are likely to encounter the same temperature problems as my Banshee had ( based on basically the same design ). Now that I had to change back to my old graphics card it was quite interesting to see how well it performed after getting used to Banshee performance. Luckily; so had ATI released new and very much improved drivers since last I used the card. The new drivers was enough for the card to not lag behind on normal desktop use ( the older drivers looked awful, funny how ones taste improves ). Visually it looks about as well as the Banshee on the desktop, only that I have to use slower settings. On the Banshee I used 1024x768 with 32bit color at 100Hz, on the ATI I can�t get above 1024x768 with 24bit color at 75Hz. But it looks OK though. With the older ATI drivers I couldn�t get above 60Hz at the same settings, and it looked dreadful. On 3D it�s a different story, now I have to get used to very slow performance for a while. Actually no faster than software rendering. It�s a pity. With Banshee I practically flied trough the corridors in "Half life", now it�s more like a limped walk. Even if it�s still playable. No more "Glide" effects of course. Now it�s only Direct X and Open GL, good then that the new Direct X 7a is much improved from the Windows 98 default of Direct X 5. I�m actually reliefed too, over the fact that I had two more months of guarantee left on the Banshee. That is, because I do need a 3D graphics accellerator in my system and it would be too expensive to by a new one each year. One spend enough money on telephone bills to get fully functional drivers ( most products seem to come with early beta drivers in the package nowadays ). And of course, one lesson I learned from the Banshee was to not get the hottest graphics available. I�m serious about using Linux and Win 2000 too, and those won�t have the drivers if the card is too esoteric. One should definetely keep quite mainstream in the choice of video card manufacturer. All this mess inspired me to wipe out my hardrives and reinstall Windows 98 on clean drives. I gained a lot of diskspace from my earlier upgrade, but the functionality doesn�t seem to have improved much. I believe the conclusion is that it is OK to upgrade, as long as one have a lot of diskspace. My most important apps are also reinstalled: Cakewalk Pro Audio 7.02, Photoshop 5 and Dreamweaver 1.2a. And, well mabe, I believe my Soundblaster Live! soundcard benefitted from the clean install. I�m quite sure that it�s sounds a notch fuller and richer under Live! ware 3.0 now than before. That said to convince me it�s time to play around with music a little and make some songs. Well, we�ll hear about it.

See Ya // Per