DISTORT 2001-04-15

Where my mind was 2001-02-25...
© 2000 Per Johansson All rights reserved

2001-04-15 Last time I was in Mandrake 8.0 RC1 writing stuff, now I'm in Windows XP Personal (build 2462) again. I just installed Macromedia:s Dreamweaver UltraDev 4.0 in XP. Nice. Dreamweaver totally conforms to the Luna-interface and looks like an native Windows XP application ;) UltraDev is Macromedias answer to Microsofts, by now somewhat aged, Visual InterDev 6.0 (soon replaced by Visual InterDev .net). It is in most aspects totally identical with the "normal" Dreamweaver 4.0, but features lots of tools for easier management of database-driven web-sites (.asp is the most wellknown acronym of these kind of sites). For myself, I haven´t made any deep studies on how to run things with dynamic, "virtual" pages instead of my own static kind. Of course I have had different web-servers running on my "play-PC"; PWS, IIS4, IIS5, Apache Linux/Windows and tried with some pages connecting to databases. But that was all at home, and I was the only visitor. So far, I haven't had energy enough to move my site to a web-hotel with .asp-support (or Linux-wise .php, for that matter). My current host, fortunecity, does not support .asp on this free web-space I'm using. No wonder I haven't been to eager to teach myself. But things change, there are a lot more web-hotels out there these days and chances are I'll soon be moving. Anyway, I already like Dreamweaver and this UltraDev does, at least at the first look, seem like it's a lot easier to manage than Visual InterDev which has been on my HD for long, but not much used. Anyway, you won't see any of my experimental pages here at fortunecity, have to stick to the ancient static kind for now being, but when I move I guess you'll notice, as I use a "redirect" URL which won't change when I switch to another web-host. So far, I've just had a glimpse at UltraDev but it looks like one of these programs almost essential and well worth digging deep into, not to mention my miniscule knowledge of .asp and .php which really needs some serious improvement ;) But, as things are, this program gets me inspired to start teaching myself some more in this database-sitebuilding area - seems like it´s necessary too; who in the world still writes static web-pages ? (hint: old fools...) SeeYa / Per

P.S. I haven't really started now either, as I use XP Personal in this setup I´m not really sure IIS is included in the package(prbbly only in Pro)and UltraDev is *almost* non-functinal without a properly running web-server connection, have to check that out now... D.S.

2001-04-14 I got this sudden urge to overclock my main-PC, I haven´t had that before ;) Of course I´ve tried to overclock my old 3Dfx Banshee graphics card sometimes, mostly resulting in black screen ;) Now, I wanted to overclock my CPU; sad enough it looks like it just isn´t possible with the old garbage I have. The bus-speed on the mobo is locked at 66MHz as max. value - meaning I can never go higher than the 300MHz I have with a common P2-processor clocked at that speed. Sh-t ! So I went to a e-forum and got the tip to invest in a cheap socket-converter for my SLOT1-socket, and buy a Celeron 2 instead. Hmm, might be something. But would be nice to know if it works before buying...My main PC uses the by now totally obsolete Intel-chipset 440LX/EX, that was a version not made for modifying much, as is my ibm-customed acer-mobo. Upgrading isn´t for ibm:ers, obviously(if upgrading=overclocking). Then, I do have a slightly more modern PC-chassi in the wardrobe, a machine that went to machine heaven at work some time ago. Mabe it was just some parts that failed, and the mobo and riser-card might still be intact ? If they are, I could do some magic using that old chassi, as the mobo in it is equpped with the more modern 440BX-chipset - featuring many more bus-speeds to choose from. Mabe, if I move all my hardware out of the IBM and puts it in this chassi, I could finally overclock my P2-300 to at least 400MHz ? The good thing: that would be an upgrade totally for free, the bad thing: OhOh, It could take a couple of days to get things working....Then: buying a Celeron 2 - most likely no probs at all, but it would cost 100-150$ and who knows how much faster things actually get on my crappy motherboard ? The only other alternative is buying a new PC, that is out of my budget for time being - so I rather experiment ;) And it is fun.... SeeYa / Per

2001-04-13 Well, Well ;) I just argued for this great WYSIWYG webeditor under Linux.... Hmm, I wasn´t completely wrong; it does work great. With Netscape, that is :-( I had this wonderful edit session, and now when I´m back in Windows I see that the differences between Internet Explorer and Netscape in rendering pages look worse than ever. Both are latest versions, IE5.5SP1 and Netscape 4.77. As Internet Explorer now has about 80% of the surfers, it looks like Microsoft has a stronghold on webdesigners. It´s impossible to design pages without looking at them in IE. If one doesn´t, it looks like Picasso did the site ;) One hope is using Opera as reference under Linux, as it renders more close to IE than Netscape, of course, and even Mozilla. I really hate those Microsmerfs...AARRRGH!!!

2001-04-13 Hi there folks ! It seems like I'm back yet another time ;) It's easter(time flies). I'm deep into the the first release cantidate of Mandrake 8.0, while I'm writing this.

As I've told you before, there IS at least one decent WYSIWYG HTML-editor for Linux. Forget Netscape Composer, as it is way crappy. No I'm actually happily using IBM:s WEB SPHERE 4.0 homepage builder, while editing my site this time. It is astonishingly competent, not much worse than my Windows favorite Dreamweaver when it comes to pure functionality. In fact, this is a Windows program too. Of course I'm using it under WINE(wine is not an emulator), which makes it possible to run Windows-programs totally without the OS itself ;) In contrast to most Linux progs, Web Sphere isn´t for free. But I do hope IBM makes some money for providing this great website-building tool. HTML text editors in all honor, but they aren't exactly time savers and we all have other things to do in life than edit text ;) So; if you happen to run Linux and want to keep your site alive - go for IBM:s Web Sphere 4.0 homepage builder. I still haven´t found any nearly as competent competitor running under Linux(let's just hope Macromedia sees the light and ports Dreamweaver & co. to Linux - even though not likely as Macromedia happens to do some business with Microsoft...).

Otherwise, Mandrake 8.0 is clearly the most cultivated Linux yet and makes my need to run Windows smaller and smaller - it's just games and music apps(of course) that keeps me there.

Despite myself trying to port all my work over to Linux, so does the new Windows XP Personal Beta 2 seem like a fresh new OS. I've been running that too for some time now and it is frighteningly trouble free ;) The new interface is also much needed, as at least I had grown very tired of the old Win 95 look that's been the standard for six years. The new Windows interface(Luna) will be possible to customize much more extensively than any previous version, or even third party apps. That does drain the PC from a few of it's resources, but I really don't see why that should matter much - probably there'll be a 2.2GHz P4 this autumn, and 256MB starts to emerge as standard RAM(with quad bus-speeed in the P4 case). Graphic cards will probably have 64Megs as standard soon, and "real time rendered movies" will be common stuff. On HD:s where soon talking 80-100GIG:s as "standard" and DVD-ROM:s are hitting the shops. Even the Internet will soon look like a giant LAN as broadband-connections of all flavors rapidly spreads over the world. So, those small extra resources required to run Windows XP does seem abysimal, in the light of where we're heading ;) It really runs quick enough on my by now extremely ancient PII-300MHz, so does Linux in all it´s KDE/Gnome glory too of course, even this IBM app I'm running right now writing this for you runs quite OK even though it´s driven by a software abstraction layer mimicing Windows between itself and the underlying Linux-core ;)

I don´t see many kinds of software being regarded as "heavy" on modern PC:s(1GHz and away...), I guess that the excellent site Tom's Hardware aren't that unrealistic when they run compressing/uncompressing speed-tests on downloaded DVD-Movies as benchmarks. Where soon talking a 2 hour long high definition movie as being of "normal" file-size, and so we will expect rapid handling of those our new favorite file-types. My own old favorite file-types of the audio kind, now seems mostly like kids toys ;) Haha, good I still like music though - and I do play guitar every day, hmm only struggling to find inspiration between all my "tweakin the shit out of my PC"-attacks.... See Ya at "Blakulla" ! / Per

2001-03-31 I´ve done some more tweakin' on the kids computer. First; I´ve replaced the Pentium 166 CPU with a Pentium 233MMX CPU. Only running at 200MHz, because that's the max-value of the motherboard(hmm, have to use another MB), but it was a very significant upgrade anyway. Much faster on modern programs which of course all use optimization flags for MMX(and SSE or 3DNow!). Real Player and Windows Media Player now delivers more than acceptable video quality, earlier the quality was quite lousy with useless framerate. Secondly; I managed to get hold of some ancient memory - parity memory - so now it holds a whopping 96Meg:s. That was a very big upgrade as well, as the harddisk activity almost disappeared on normal use. Much better. Third; I found an extremely ancient, as well, 3D-accelerator in our companys trash-bin: an ATI 3D Rage II+ DVD with 4MB on board. That was also a very big upgrade, as "normal" screen resolutions of 1024x768 with 24-bit color now look calm and sharp in the edges even at 85Hz update-frequency. S3 Virge really suckz. Additionally, the ATI is hardware accelerated for watching Video and TV and has all the basic Direct X 3D-Effects for playing Direct X video-games. All in all, this is still a very old computer, but now at least it starts to be usable for normal everyday web-surfing and gaming. In fact, the picture-quality on their 17" is now very good and evrything feels quick and responsive, the most obvious drawback compared to a slightly newer Pentium II(as I use myself) is that this computer can´t manage heavy multitasking without the progs affecting each other. No real prob on a kid computer, as they are most often focused on only one task, and then it feels surprisingly quick. It is also good as a sound machine; I´ve downloaded some songs with Napster on it(the home network works great too, as downloading wasn´t a bit slower than on the main computer); the old AWE64 does in fact deliver very good sound quality on mp3:s. Quite usable. But it is noticeable that it is a ISA-card with low processing power as the playback is easily affected by ie heavy web-surfing. Mabe I´ll try to find a more modern PCI-card instead, to lower the burden on the CPU. Haha, all this has been very fun, to dig in the trash-bin for old hardware and actually make it work together. As a bonus, this is unvaluable training for when I'll build my own new "state of the art"-PC. It´s about time, as a new Athlon 1.33GHz now is about FIVE times faster than my own PII-300 ! And a new GeForce 3 video card is capable of real time rendering movie quality games ! This is very depressing. But hopefully, after the summer I´ll start to outline the specs for my new PC and start buying the most essential hardware for it. I guess it will be in the 2GHz-region and a GF3 is mandatory, mabe there will be a SB Live! Platinum mark II by then ? It will be using Windows XP Professional as main OS and also Linux, BTW two days ago I received the latest build of Windows XP beta 2 Home Edition which I will start to beta-test as soon as possible. I haven´t had time as I´ve been too much into ancient hardware lately ;)(I have even started reading PC-Magazines from 1996-97 hehe). Have Fun ! / Per

2001-03-26 Oh, It did not take long to realise the "internet connection sharing"-scheme ;) I bought a 10meter crossed ethernet-cable at lunch today and ran Windows Me:s "home networking wizard" when I came home(i had an extra Intel Fast ethernet card stuffed away). The wizard prompted me to create a floppy for the Windows 98 machine which I ran there, and voila ! It didn´t work :-( Almost forgot, "Zonealarm". As soon as I´ve uninstalled it, everything worked just fine, Surfing and Mailing now works perfect on two PC:s at home ! I have my own LAN, hehe ;-) Just had to remember to disable all file-sharing, for security reasons. And now I have to settle for another firewall hmm...anayway, great fun that this "internet connection sharing" thing actually works :-) See Ya / Per

2001-03-25 "A little Later"; Hmm. The Kids computer again. I surrendered. There where too many small probs with Windows 95 for my taste, so I wiped the kids HD once again and installed Windows 98 instead ;) Actually, it turned out that 98 worked much better even on such an old computer. Much faster, smoother, better picture quality and all those small tools that´s nowadays hard to not have at hand, and everything worked right away without further tweaking ;) It took some meg:s extra, but it was worth it(of course I added all known official upgrades). I guess that was my personal definitive funeral for Windows 95 ;-) BTW so did I find a freeware OEM version of Ontrack:s Disk Manager at Quantum:s web-site, so I have good hope of making the 8GIG drive work too, just didn´t have time right now to check it out. Additionally, I guess it will be easier to work out our internet connection sharing scheme with 98 in their PC and Me/Win2k in mine. Now I only wish I could get my hands on another old PC I could use as frontend to the cable modem so the kids could surf when my PC is off or when I´m using Linux, that one could also serve as a much better firewall for the other two PC:s - in fact: it could use some secure version of Linux, like the new dedicated Mandrake Firewall-distro :-) Interesting...

2001-03-25 Oh my, It´s been a full month since ;) Lot´s of things going on at work, distracting me from this page. At least, I have upgraded my PC to 256MB RAM. Not such a big difference from 128Meg:s on "normal" use, but memory is cheap now and it feels good to have a reserve. Also, I have inventored some computer junk at work. After a few weeks keeping eyes open at what was to be thrown away, I managed to get some parts to work together with other leftover parts I already had at home. So now my kids have their own PC to play with. Not a very good one, but it didn´t cost anything but sweat ;) A old Compaq desktop-chassi with most things integrated on the MB, it took some time to out-clever the MB:s obscure Compag BIOS/Computer Setup-utility, puih ! Anyway, I eventually managed some "magic" to get it to boot "normally" from a floppy so I could format a HD to put in. At this time I've only managed to get a old 1.6GIG drive to work, I have a old 8GIG I´ve put in but the computer reports it as a 8GIG drive with zero heads !!! Lol ;) Eventually I´ll have to upgrade-flash the BIOS, I´ve only reset it so far. The whole PC setup is as follows: Pentium 166, 32MB, 3+3ISA/PCI-slots, 160W power-unit, 3Com-network card integrated, S3-virge 2MB graphics integrated on MB, SB AWE-64 ISA soundcard, Mitsumi 24x ATAPI CD-drive, Maxtor 1.6GB EIDE + Quantum BF-TX 8GB EIDE(not working yet), IBM 17" CRT-monitor and Technics OEM PC-speakers. Now I just need more memory, as 32MB is a little to little, only thing is - don´t know where to get such old memory, I have to check it up- irritating, as I have 64MB SDRAM I can´t use on this old bastard ;) I´m also thinking of buying a new graphics card for my own PC, and ditch over my old Voodoo Banshee 16MB PCI to the kids, the S3 is best known as the world:s first "3D-deaccelerator" ;) So, as you noticed, I was stuck with a small HD and very little memory, what software should I choose ? I had to dig deep in my CD-collection to find a copy of the original Windows 95 CD, no servicepacks, no nothing. It´s great for this purpose as it leaves a very small footprint on a computer, it´s only ca. 50Meg:s of CAB:s on the CD. Not more than a single full version of IE5 ;) It installed fine, but I was soon remembered of the old days when it didn´t find the CD or even refused to use the dual channel IDE controller - it defaulted to DOS-compability HD-mode with no CD :-( I fixed that too, after poking around on the net a little for drivers and upgrades, even got DMA to work :-) Then I installed DirectX 8.0(most functions not available on such an old PC, but anyway) and IE5.5 on top, as it is quick and light on resources, and MS Office for the others to be productive while I´m playing around with my PC ;) Finally some recommended upgrades where added. The whole install ended at ca. 400MB including all drivers and upgrades, not much by todays standards. And it runs great ! The kids are not so old yet, so at the time this is fully sufficient for the kind of games they prefer. Only thing to fix now is to get it to network with my PC, so I can do some internet connection-sharing(it will be interesting).

On my own PC; I´ve been starting to try out Mandrake Linux 8.0 Beta 2. It is very good ;) I´ll report more later. I´ve also been using Windows XP Beta 2 some, can´t decide really if I should turn off "Luna"(the new interface) or not, I´ll come back more to that later too - but I still don´t like the "product activation"-function. It will be interesting to see the press when it get´s released ;)

So so, time to go out and catch some fresh air, see ya ! / Per

2000-12-02

2000-01-15