DUX COMPUTER DIGEST
Summaries and Links
August 2001

8/31 Slides and Audio of an AMD presentation at a SoundView Technology's Semiconductor Conference held day before yesterday... The audio part is mainly a report on how AMD is doing in a tough economic period; but, it does go into AMD's new strategy to compete against Intel in the MHz war by stressing processor performance at a given speed.  Some discussion of the Palomino core and Hammer processors is also included.  The slides are more interesting and less time consuming.  They include an AMD processor roadmap, bunches of benchmarks, and interesting graph of Performance vs. Clock Speed for Generations of Intel Processors since the 80386 that shows the P4 dropping 23% as compared to the Pentium III.

8/30 Overcoming the 8.4-GByte Hard Disk Drive Barrier

8/30 Win 98 Lite

8/27 Intel has introduced the 2 GHz Pentium 4 and it looks like AMD is starting to counter with a "MHz Myth" campaign.  My thoughts on the subject are in our last newsletter.  I buy some of AMD's argument that the speed of the clock pumping a processor is not the only measure of performance, but not all of it... "Benchmarks have clearly shown that the 1.4 Athlon is faster in many respects than a 1.7 GHz P4; it is a more powerful processor.  Well, you can play the more powerful processor just as long as it is the more powerful processor.  A slower architecture clocked at faster and faster speeds will sooner or later overtake a superior architecture that is not.  I think 2 GHz is that point.  It will make the P4 more powerful than the fastest thing that AMD has to offer."  On the other hand, Intel can't have it both ways.  At $562 for a 2 GHz P4 (if you can buy one) or $.28/MHz (plus more expensive motherboards and memory to boot) and $107 (Pricewatch.com) for a 1.4 GHz Athlon, which is nearly as fast and is $.08/MHz, I could easily suffer the humiliation of not keeping up with "MHz Joneses."  In fact, I am humble enough right now to replace my aging 500 MHz AMD K6-2 with a $37.00, 800 MHz AMD Duron at $.05/MHz.  I'm still waiting for the right motherboard...  Larry

8/27 What are 10BASE2 and 10BASE5 Ethernet Networks?  Answer.

8/25 Why would 100BASE-TX network adapters only operate at 10 MHz when two computers are connected with a long cable?  Answer.

8/25 How can I tell if a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Server is running/working on my network?  Answer.

8/23 What are the differences between an Ethernet hub or switch and a broadband router?  Answer.

8/23 Can an Ethernet  hub (or switch) replace a router for a small network using the Internet?  Answer.

8/23 A bit of nostalgia:  The original Dux Computer Works web site as it was in 1996.  75 MHz Pentium computer with 8 MBytes for $1,212.

8/21 Larry's one-way cable goes two-way.  Metrocast Cablevision, our cable Internet and TV provider, upgraded our connection to the Internet. Click here for more.

8/17 Does the order of the colors of the wires in a straight-thru twisted-pair network cable matter as long as both ends are the cable are wired the same?  Answer.

8/16 The 9th issue of the Dux Computer Newsletter has been sent.  I hope you like it.  Excerpt:  "It seems to me that it would be akin shooting oneself in the foot as far as processor competition with AMD is concerned if Intel proceeded with vigor against VIA before there other DDR P4 chipsets and motherboards to supply the mainstream PC market.  Therefore, it probably will not happen, if at all, until well into next year when Intel should be shipping its own P4 DDR chipset in quantity... What does this mean?  Intel is stuck between a RamBus and an Athlon..."  Click here to read the rest of it.  Click here to subscribe.  It's free.  Larry

8/14 Why an anti-static mat is not conductive?

8/13 Suitcase PC, do-it-yourself portable computer case/backpack computer, and the world's smallest PC

8/12 Internet browser standard?

8/10 Which MSI Motherboards Support AMD Athlon Palomino CPUs?

8/10 Cyrix processor failures

8/8 IBM PC 350 6587-79T Computer tech support manual, and CPU and memory info

8/8 Fix for fatal exception error 0028:00000000 when printing with HP DeskJet 842C

8/7 How to test twisted-pair Ethernet cables

8/7 What causes a non-system disk error? Answer

8/7 Extending an Ethernet crossover cable

8/7 Windows running out of memory fix

8/7 What is a RAM drive?  How is it setup on a computer? Answers

8/7 Getting rid of the Netscape Instant Messenger sign-on screen

8/1 The eighth issue of the Dux Computer Newsletter has been sent.  I hope you like it.  Click here to read it.  Click here to subscribe.  It's free.  Larry

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