Just a Spoonful of Quickies

Mat Kovach is trying to organize a LUG Adventure to Ceder Point next september. For those who don't know, its an awesome roller coaster/ride park in the midwest. I wouldn't mind going actually. overcode noted that the patches to Civilization: Call To Power for Linux from Loki Hack now available. Nuke Lawyer causes is a wonder that causes all lawyers to explode as a nuclear bomb. Great stuff. otterboy found an auction that has old printings of Neal Stephenson books with The Big U weighing in at $400. For a book! (Note:I Finally finished Diamond Age. Wow) Mo B. Dick pointed us to a 486 overclocked to 247 mhz combining freezers and booze. El Clip sent us an awesome mrtg parody of a geeks life. escher sent us Microsith which is definitely among the most amusing MS parodies that I've seen. dustpuppy2000 pointed us to Homepage's at Superiosity which is a promising looking new comic strip.

Comments

Missing Link?

[Derek Pomery]

Where's the "Nuke Lawyers"?

Such a boon to mankind cannot be hidden!

Re:Missing Link?

[Pathwalker]

It's one of the Civ:CTP hacks...

Gotta love Microsith

[at0m]

That's the best MS parody I've seen in a while. The "Darth Paper clip" really captures what I feel whenever I open MS word :)

"Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies."

Re:Gotta love Microsith

[Tarnar]

The best part is that it's true to the real Paper clip. It's annoying, wastes time loading, comes up FAR too often.. Surfing back and forth across the page, every time I hit the main page, it was up again, annoying me. I was about to get mad when it occured to me just how true to life it was, and I haven't stopped laughing yet!

Re:Gotta love Microsith

[garamir]

I'm reminded of the time I was frantically typing lines from Julius Caesar for a presentation. Clippy interrupted me, making me lose two or three lines in the process, only to ask, "You appear to be writing a letter. Would you like some help?"

The paper clip must die.

Re:Gotta love Microsith

[DAVEO]

the best part is the new updgrade to exploder 5 from 3 ;0)

Why?

[Master Pookie]

Why would you over clock a 486? (first post ha ha DK, love you though)

Re:Why?

[Master Pookie]

nevermind about the first post, dk (shit)

Re:Why?

[punkass]

How's about neverminding about first posts, period.

The 486 Overclock

[ChiefArcher]

Did you see the Jay & Silent Bob Refridge magnets... Hell.. I would overclock the 486 just to buy the magnets.. ChiefArcher

Damn, they missed tughouse... again!

[Anonymous Coward]

here!

why didnt those fools include it ;)

Re:Damn, they missed tughouse... again!

[Dr. Jest]

When I first saw Tughouse, I thought it was kind of funny, even though the art sucks. However, I changed my mind quickly when I found the link to Sluggy Freelance and realized that Tughouse blatantly ripped off all its funny ideas from there. Think about it: evil housepet that plots against its owner, demons are often involved, etc. The whole "trip to Hell" storyline, for example, is taken directly from Sluggy's first Dimension of Pain story. Not to mention the demonic summonings at the beginning of the strip's run, the reactions when a woman entered the strip... I could go on. My advice to the Tughouse author: get some ideas of your own, man! Sluggy's good, but don't plagiarize, for cring out loud.

MRTG

[NME]

Reminds me of a Bob the Angry Flower cartoon. Right on. -nme!

Halflife without a math coprocessor?

[Rendus]

Does Halflife run without a coprocessor? The 486SX had no coprocessor.

Re:Halflife without a math coprocessor?

[Microlith]

Emulate that FPU boy! I believe windows does this already...

Re:Halflife without a math coprocessor?

[drix]

One wonders if they even check. Co-pros were pretty much a given starting with the Pentium, and Half-Life came out well into the Pentium II/Celeron era. Obviously, it does (or they made this up), so I'm guessing no one really looks for a co-processor. Ah, the nostalgia of yearing for a 487 so I could play the HiFi flight models in Falcon 3.0. `Em were the days.
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."

Re:Translation, please

[slashdot-terminal]

Maybe "people" who happen to be lawyers in the game as possible problems will cause them to explode on the surface of the planet? I never really played the game but that's what I guess.

MRTG of "geeks life" a sham

[Illusion]

The MRTG graph that supposedly represents a "geeks life" is an obvious sham. Just look at the point on the graph labelled "wake up": it says 7am! Impossible!

:)

Not bad...

[Catch22RG]

The overclocked 486 is pretty impressive, if you ask me. From what I could gather on the page, that was a 25MHz chip. Therefore, to reach 247MHz, the speed increase would need to be about 1000%!

Hmm, this technique could really breathe new life into my P2-266. 2GHz anyone?

About Microsith

[Microlith]

I have been asked many times if I have anything to do with Microsith...

I do NOT!

I have nothing to do with it, yet I wish I did!

Just to clear things up, or prevent them from getting foggy.

They made it up

[Anonymous Coward]

The 486 overclocking article was a hoax. I once cranked a 486-33 up with a signal generator, and could only get about 38 MHz out of it before it failed POST. It is 100% inconceivable that you could get 247 MHz out of the relatively large-scale fabrication technology used in the 486 generation of chips.

Re:They made it up

[DeadBeef]

I have an intel 486DX-33 machine running at 50mhz with a current uptime of 114 days ( the last time it rebooted was due to a power cut ).

This speed was achieved by putting a plain old 486 heatsink on it, no fan, and in fact it had run previously at 50mhz with out the heatsink. 50mhz is as fast as the board will do. The vesa local bus video completely failed to work at all with the bus running that fast, and it has an isa card in it currently.

Deja Quickie Fu

[Skwirl]

Hate to break it to you, but the overclocked 486 was in the second to last Quickie batch.

Re:Deja Quickie Fu

[Microlith]

It's kinda hard to find...
Direct link is here

Yes, this was definitely a repost of a Quickie-bit.

CEDAR POINT!!!!

[larz]

wooohoooo!!! i wanna go! for those of you who have never been to cedar point, its been rated several years in a row the best amusement park in the world. Holds guiness world record for the most rides in one park, the most roller coasters in one park, and highest vertical ride. Next year it'll have the world record for tallest, fastest, etc, etc steel roller coast once the Millenium is finished being built. Sign up!!!! I hope I can get there inspite of school. Go CLUG and NEOLUG!

Big U available

[Pathetic Coward]

Will trade copy of Big U for fully loaded 550 mHZ P3 (or even overclocked 486)

Sorry

[mduell]

Hey, before you post, you guys should actually look at the links :)
The overclocked 486 was a hoax...or so the last line ( Well, actually that isn't entirely true...all the notes, recordings, videotape and logs from the experiment were destroyed when the processor blew. Everything posted here is taken from eyewitness accounts ) leads you to believe...

Mark "Erus" Duell

repost

[grub-]

two of these quickies are reposts. the loki patches from nov. 4 and overclocked 468 from oct. 22. I remebmer seeing microsith linked from the overclocking page and submitted it then, but my post didnt make it on. still a funny page to read.

Russ

get a clue everyone, overclock is an obvious joke

[Anonymous Coward]

It was meant to be funny

I can't get to the site right now, but these are my recollections from the last time it was on /.

1. the mere thought of going from 25MHz to 247MHz is ridiculous

2. they talk about the "super duper 11 setting" that no other freezers have that lets them get to really cold temperatures.

3. they put a Voodoo card in the system. All Voodoo cards were PCI. All 486sx system were ISA/EISA/MCA.

4. those are just a few specific items. The entire article reads like the joke it is (getting different speeds by using different beers? come on).

486 overclocking doesn't look believable

[Chemisor]

How did they manage to put a 486 chip on a Socket7 motherboard? That motherboard appears to be quite new, with an AGP slot and SDRAM. Also, the temperatures don't look real. It is not possible to get -40 with a conventional freezer. Adding cold beverages does not lower the temperature inside the freezer (it should actually raise the temperature, due to additional heat being introduced into the system).

Re:486 overclocking doesn't look believable

[AndyL]

If the drinks were being chilled in a diferent fridge, and the Motherboard/cpu was giving off a lot of heat it's belevable that they'd be colder then the surrounding air for a short while. (If they're to be beleved this would explain why the they couldn't run it for long.) Especialy since they seemed to keep the door open.

I'm more suspicios that,
A) They didn't mention the temprature sensors on thier equipment list.
B) They say everything was destroyed. Unless the whole rig caught on fire why would, say, the Voodoo card be destroyed? (Water condensation?) If it did catch on fire why don't we have pictures?
C) Did they boot to a slower speed to install HAlf-life and then reboot to the super-dooper speed? If so why not mention it? Also how did they install half-life? They didn't mention a CD-drive. In fact from the photos they didn't even have a floppy drive. Although it's possible that the computer they took the HD from already had halflife on it. So I guesse my whole point "C" is worlthless. Oh well.

They beat me to it!

[Bastian]

I've been planning to get some speed out of my pentium-133 while im bored and on winter break by using dry ice packs instead of a cooling fan.

I'm still working on how to do it using liquid nitrogen without destroying the computer.

What's Slashdot Coming to?

[SMN]

Gee, not only do they repeat week-old news with the Loki hack patches -- there was already a full story on their release -- but within 20 minutes of posting, microsith.com and several other links are already slashdotted. This site is getting too big for its own good. . .

Re:What's Slashdot Coming to?

[James Renken]

Well, for Microsith, the machine and bandwidth are handling things very well, but Apache is a little bit unhappy. I've tuned its configuration parameters, and it should behave better now.

(I run the ISP that hosts Microsith. :)

It's a Joke, Laugh

[tred]

Why the 486 overclocking page is a joke:

- The m/b has an AGP slot and 3 DIMM slots, which means it is either a Socket 7 or Socket 370 motherboard; 486's ran on Socket 5 motherboards on which production was stopped on way before AGP or DIMM slots were created
- Socket 5 motherboards were not made to support processors at a higher speed than 133mhz since the fastest 486 ran at 133mhz, therefore there was no appropriate jumper setting to bring it up to 247mhz
- Quake could never run on that processor (nevermind Half-Life), Quake does check for a math co-processor which a 486 sx doesn't have*. I know Quake won't run without one for a fact, I've tried and seen the error message...
- A fridge won't cool to -40C, sorry guys. Not even with that elusive "11" setting ;)
- Adding beer or another alcoholic beverage to a fridge doesn't make it colder
- "Well, actually that isn't entirely true. You see, all the notes, recordings, videotape and logs from the experiment were destroyed when the processor blew. Everything posted here is taken from eyewitness accounts. You'll have to take our word for it... " Doh.

* FYI - The 486 SX was in reality a 486 DX with a faulty math co-processor/floating point unit. Intel had no plans to make SX/DX models until the first crop of 486's had faulty fpu's. Later on in the production of 486's, the SX model was intentionaly made without an fpu.

Re:It's a Joke, Laugh

[Cef]

Might be a joke, but it's funny none the less..

BTW: Yes the board on the main page is a Super Socket 7 board, but the board in the photos of the fridge looks suprisingly like a traditional 486 board (down to things like the socketed cache ram, and the like).

ERGO: They didn't have a pic of the board to put on the list, and just grabbed one that looked the right size from somewhere else.

Older CPU's are somewhat amazingly overclockable though.. I've seen 386dx40's running at 70 mhz. Of course, you're right when you say the motherboard by default would never allow that, or have such a setting, however, with a little fiddling and a clock generator.. it's possible.

Still a hoax, but a classic none the less.

Re:It's a Joke, Laugh

[Eric Sharkey]

The 486 SX was in reality a 486 DX with a faulty math co-processor/floating point unit. Intel had no plans to make SX/DX models until the first crop of 486's had faulty fpu's.

What are you smoking? The designation SX/DX has nothing to do with a math coprocessor.

"SX" stands for "Single eXternal" and "DX" for "Double eXternal".

With 286 CPU's, both the motherboard and CPU had 16 bit busses, but, with the introduction of the 386 processor, the CPU bus doubled in width to 32 bits. The 386 was manufactured in two varieties, SX and DX. The DX version was all 32 bits everywhere. The SX version used a 32 bit internal bus on the CPU, but sat on a 16 bit motherboard. The SX CPU allowed 386 systems to run on cheaper motherboards and lowered the bar for the 386 entry to the low end market.

Neither the 386 SX or DX have an onboard FPU. If you want a hardware FPU with a 386 system, you need to add a 387 regardless of the type of 386 you have.

The 486 systems also came in SX and DX varieties to allow the 486 to run on cheaper motherboards as well. The 486 DX was the first x86 to include an onboard FPU. This increased the price of the chip quite a bit, but, since since this was targeted exclusively at the high end market, Intel felt this was acceptable.

The SX is not just a DX without a math-coprocessor. You need to add lots of extra circuitry to properly mate the 16 bit motherboard bus with the 32 bit CPU bus. These circuits don't exist on the DX chips.

Re:It's a Joke, Laugh

[tlhIngan]

I'm pretty sure the 386 (i386) didn't *HAVE* the SX/DX markings until much later in the production run (say, around the time that 486's got them).

Now, what you said about the busses, etc may be true, but the big difference (and noticable) of the 486SX and 486DX was that the DX's co-pro wasn't disabled. (In fact, the 487 co-pro for a 486SX was just a 486DX that took over after being handed control from the SX [Intel swapped a few pins to make it not pin-to-pin compatible, but the SX processor wasn't used except for initial booting - and acting as a space heater]).

Re:It's a Joke, Laugh

[drix]

You're both right. Most people recall the distinction between 486SX and DX as being the presence of a math co-processor because the casual user simply doesn't want/need to wrap their minds around the idea of bus width. Although the distinction between SX and DX is much greater, 9 times out of 10 ask someone what the difference between a 486SX-25 and a 486DX-33 was and they'll tell you one has a math co-pro and the other doesn't. I guess that' just how history remembers it. I have no clue as to the validity of the faulty coprocessor story, however I do recall the 386SX appearing much earlier than any 486 in my neck of the woods. Of course, my neck of the woods was just that - woods, of the coniferous variety to be exact. And lots of them. Our local computer store was still advertising DOS 6.22 in stock when Windows 95 came out.
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."

Re:It's a Joke, Laugh

[Richks]

Well done. Right on the money. The MB in the small pic was found in a bit of a hurry, and not the one we used for the project. We basically forgot to take a decent enough picture of the real MB.

And yes, we are the same people as Microsith.

Re:It's a Joke, Laugh

[Eric Sharkey]

I'm pretty sure the 386 (i386) didn't *HAVE* the SX/DX markings until much later in the production run (say, around the time that 486's got them).

Wrong. Just check the CPU Info Center listings. The 386 SX was introduced in 1988, while the 486 didn't show up until three years later in 1991.

Re:Translation, please

[antizeus]

In CivCTP, the lawyer is a "stealth" unit (i.e. invisible unless you have detectors) which can impair production in an adjacent city with their magic power. Nukes, I believe, cause damage to an area of the map. I haven't seen nukes in action yet so I can't be sure. My guess is that once you build the "Nuke Lawyers" wonder (a wonder being something you build in a city for a certain game modifying effect), the existing lawyers explode like nukes. Perhaps not a good thing if you're getting harassed by lawyers (if I'm right, it would damage the cities that they're harassing), but if there are lawyers in an enemy's territory, then it'd be great.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with CivCTP, so I don't know how informative/obvious this is.

Superosity

[Medieval]

Uh, Cmdr, are you aware that slashdot has had superosity in the comics ("Funnies") slashbox for at least six months... ?

Re:Superosity

[ChrisCrosby]

I think DustPuppy2000 might've specifically mentioned the "Chris Geeks Out" storyline (in which Chris learns he may be a geek and "Slashdot dot org" is mentioned) in her story submission. "New" is a relative turn, though. My eight+ months of SUPEROSITY is nothing compared to PEANUTS' fifty+ years. Not that I'm comparing SUPEROSITY to PEANUTS. Though I guess I am in a way. :) I'm just glad to be mentioned. Thanks, Cmdr! I can use all the new readers I can get. 2,000+ Slashdotters have checked the strip out in the past four hours, more than tripling our average daily hitcounts. Chris Crosby "It'd be nice if some of 'em sticked around, too..." http://www.superosity.com
Your Pal,
Chris Crosby

Re:Superosity

[ChrisCrosby]

Anonymous Coward said:
"And (sorry, Chris), it's not really that funny."

I'm sorry you don't find it funny, but many people do (or they say they do, at least). Have you read through the archives? I didn't think my favorite strips were good until I read a big chunk of them at once.



Your Pal,
Chris Crosby

Re:Superosity

[NME]

Well, I like your comic strip. My favorite quote:
"I said 'might'." --Boardy.

-nme!


-tho' todays whole strip is pretty damn good too.

Re:Superosity

[ChrisCrosby]

Thanks, NME!

That quote is from the strip that's located at http://superosity.bigpanda.net/d/990625.html if anybody wants to check it out.


Your Pal,
Chris Crosby

nitpicking

[h2odragon]

Socket 5 was the initial Pentium socket; 486en go into a Socket 3.

There were some motherboards made that could be jumpered up to 80Mhz motherboard speed, for pushing the 486-DX50's. I've got two (which have two PCI slots but don't seem to have BIOS code to use 'em). AMD 5x86-133's do not react well to overclocking even with heroic cooling, I've killed two on these boards. Also killed one of the bords, I think I melted something in the CPU 'cuz the voltage regulator gave up the magic smoke.

Adding beverages to the fridge would increase the thermal mass; the electronics would tend to stay cooler because the liquids will need more energy to heat than the air.

Other than that tred's right on the money.

Re:nitpicking

[anzip]

Actually I have one AMD5x86-133 MHz, which is in reality just a 486 with a multiplier of 4, overclocked to 160MHz (=4*40). It has been running nicely at that speed for couple of years with a small cooling plate and fan. Sometimes I have to try how it would react, if I try to run it at 200MHz (4*50). Probably won't boot, but what the heck, it would be the fastest 486 on the planet! .. Or has someone already got more?

One Error

[garamir]

In the Microsith pages, the pages appear to use PHP, although my browser may be controlled by the Dark Side. Wouldn't the Evil Empire use ASP? Obviously the author(s) are rooting for the Rebellion. :)

And another one...

[Matt2000]

And one that doesn't get ever get included, but we're getting used to rejection.

(Hint: The link is in the sig)

Hotnutz.com

Microsith vs. the Rebels of Linus

[xdc]

Microsith is a great parody site, and I highly recommend that you check it out if you haven't already. Visit all of its sub-pages, too -- not just the main page. They left me in stiches. Also, I'm afraid I couldn't resist the urge to post the following pun-riddled drivel in its user feedback area:

Darth Insidious vs. Luke Warmweather

Together, we can ruin the galaxy as FUDder and stung!
Never will another Dagobah without a BSODomy!
Always trust ActiveXterminator control from Microsith? [OK]

(EULAgree that the Linus in the sand.)

Kenobi-have, baby, yeah!
You don't need to see my processor identification.
But I want to transmit my applications this year and be the best X Windows pilot in the galaxy!
I must learn the ways of Open Force and become a Jedix Knight.

The above was changed ever-so-slightly from my original Microsith post, so I guess that makes it Service Pack 1. ;)

Re:Microsith vs. the Rebels of Linus

[Richks]

I wondered who that was...

SX, DX, and Blue Lightning

[Chaostrophy]

On the 386/387, SX was in refernce to bus width, and also to memory address bus width, 16bits for data, 24 for address (16MB max on those). On the 486, things get funny. Sure, the basics were that the DX had the FPU, and the SX did not, but then you had IBM's Blue Lightning, which had the 16/24 bus of the 386, but it had a 16 rather than 8KB cache, which made up the perfomance. Then there were things like the SL, the X4's that were really X3, that a Pentium is more like a 486 Pro, and the P6 (Pentium Pro, Pentium2/3, Xeon) has NOTHING to do with the Pentium, aside from running x86 code, internaly quite different, but a Pentium is just a 486 with a new FPU and a second, half crippled iteger unit.

rant off

give Darth Fences probation

[xdc]

I should have said Service Probe 1.

Laugh, people. It's funny! :)

Bah... of course it's a joke

[Ripat]

Of course it's a joke. Very funny too...

check "www.redhat.org" and "redhat.org"

[deno]

Unfortunately my notice on "redhat.org" did not make it into "quickies". Well, either the "editor" did not check it at all, or he is completely humor-impaired.

Anyway, just take a look at that baby - it is one of the best jokes i have ever seen.

E.U.N.U.C.H.

[eiPi]

Come on, guys- look at the acronym- if this is not evidence of a joke, I don't know what is. The Extreme Use of Nearly Universal Cooling Hardware(?) is what EUNUCH stands for- did they miss out an E?

--If you have nothing to say, say nothing--...
...--I'll just shut up then, shall I?--

WOO HOO, Cleveland Rocks!

[SgtPepper]

Cool beanage, The CLUG being mentioned in slashdot....I love it, hey MATT! I WANNA GOOOOOOO!!!!!! If my girlfriend'll let me....

Jay & Silent Bob

[Delta-9]

It should've read:

Jay & Silent Bob Magnets -- Priceless

Damn. Now I need to find those things. Any ideas? Local comic book stores?

-d9

Re:Jay & Silent Bob

[hisholiness]

Try:

http://store.yahoo.com/jsbstash/jayandsilbob13.htm l

US$7.00

-- "You have been absolved."

Re:Jay & Silent Bob

[theno23]

They came form forbidden planet in the UK, I think.

- Steve (steve@totl.net)

the big u will be reprinted

[felix]

one of my friends at avon tells me that the big u will be reprinted "sometime next year". so if youi want it just to read, i'd wait a bit rather than paying the $500-700 dollars you'll pay. of course if you're a collector that's a whole nother issue.

felix

until the lawyers come...

[GoNINzo]

Actually, what's best is the copywrite issues.

"Dude, I have an idea, who goes after more copywrite issues than anyone else?"

"I don't know, Microsoft or Fox and Lucas?"

"Hey, let's spoof them both!"
--
Gonzo Granzeau

Re:until the lawyers come...

[theno23]

Wierdly enough, thats exactly what we though when we wrote it, we were gaggin for a cease and desist, but we never got one...

- Darth Steve

Re:Heat Transfer

[drix]

It would be smarter to use mineral oil. Being about as conductive as regular air, you run no risk of a shortage; in fact the only problem is residue coating pretty much everything - if you get a layer of that stuff stuck on the copper interconnects in ISA/PCI slots or in the CPU/RAM sockets, you no longer have a circuit, so to speak. However, it cools excellently, and this is a cheap and effective solution if you're into "extreme" cooling. It's been used on supercomputers for a while.
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."

Overclocking 486's... fun

[hautis]

After reading that scam, I just had to try it out myself. I was so disappointed to find out it was all crap (I found out when they talked about an SX-25 and anything-over-50 MHz).

After some time, one charred motherboard and a lot of trying, I got a stable 150 MHz AMD 486. Overclocked only from 120, but the board won't allow for any more speed... If I ever get my hands on those 5x86's, I'll make one run on 200 MHz.

Of course I could try to freeze the damn thing and insert a 100 MHz AMD, so I'd get a 150% speed increase... or try an Intel 486/33 on the 50 MHz speed. It worked fine for months clocked on 40 MHz, no heat sink, no fan. Who knows what it can take.

"If you have flaky hardware", it said somewhere in the kernel configurator's help... what the hell does flaky hardware mean anyway?