why don't they just do what should be done for "concise" displays, anyway?
Instead of having a pile of 20 copies of some piece of software, have one box on display (empty) and have a little tag that you tear off and have the checkout person call for from "the back room".
Because it's a royal PITA. I can understand keeping a $200 DIMM (for instance) under lock and key, but a $30 ink cartridge or software package? I just want to go in, grab what I want, pay for it, and get out as quickly as possible. If you make me wait around to account for your shrink paranoia, I'm likely to just walk out the door and find another store with a more sensible way of doing things.
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
OTOH CDs used to be packaged in "LP" sized packaging because the distributers thought no one would be willing to stock CDs in smaller bins.
I thought they used the larger packages as a theft deterrent (it's easier to hide a jewel box than the longer type of box that was used before).
As for software in boxes, I see two reasons for software publishers to continue with their current packaging:
Product information: people want more information about the software they're buying than can be crammed onto the outside of a jewel box, unless you want to reduce the entire description to 4-point type.
Loss prevention: the same reason CDs used to come in longboxes until the environmentalist wackos bitched about it.
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
BTW krogoth, notice how memorize is properly spelled please.
He did spell it correctly, at least as far as non-US usage goes. Look it up in the OED. (Is it just me, or is this whole "grammar Nazi" thing getting old? Did anyone around here authori[sz]e spelling/grammar police for/.?)
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
Windows 2000 RC2 for one, it worked inconsistently on an AMD (Compaq Presario 400 MHz notebook), sometimes BSODing at boot, other times working ok. Sure, they fixed it later, and Release is supposed to work ok.
Are you so sure that the problem is with the processor and not with something else, especially given that we're talking about a "consumer-grade" notebook (read: lots of corners cut, lots of WinHardware in use, etc.)? Also, as someone else mentioned, beta software often glitches for no apparent reason on different platforms. You report those glitches back to the vendor so they can (hopefully) be fixed.
FWIW, I've had fewer problems with systems built around AMD processors than with systems bearing "Intel Inside" stickers. YMMV, but Spitfire (AMD needs to fire whoever came up with "Duron") is looking like a good bet from where I stand.
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
Well, ok. I can get a thunderbird for ~$188. Still beats $192, other things being equal.
I was about to make a comment along the lines of "but how good a vendor is that particular Pricewatch lowballer," but they didn't fare too badly on ResellerRatings.com. OTOH, there hasn't been a particularly large amount of feedback about that firm yet. In any case, going with whoever has the lowest price on Pricewatch can be a recipe for trouble if you're not careful.
(No, I don't work for ResellerRatings...or Pricewatch, for that matter. I'd recommend using the two sites in combination, though...it's better to pay a little more to deal with a reputable company than to get fleeced by a lowballer.)
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
Over, hmm, the six or so hours that I wrestled with that installation [stock Win98 install onto a Compaq notebook, probably a Presario], I slowly got Windows working with all of the proprietary hardware on the Compaq. However, I just could not find drivers for the sound card. I finally broke down and called Compaq, and they told me that no drivers were available, to use the helpfully marked recovery CD, blah blah, etc.
I ran into the same situation with a customer's Presario 305 a while back, only I knew from past experience that CPQ would be less than helpful with providing drivers. The only devices not picked up by the Win98 install were the modem, display, and sound. Modem and display drivers were available from Lucent and ATI, respectively, and went on with no fuss. Tracking down the sound driver was made more difficult by ESS not having the driver on its website (I knew what driver I needed by booting an LRP floppy and looking at/proc/pci, though you can get similar information under Win9x with regedit by looking under MyComputer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\PCI). A few searches through WinDrivers, AltaVista, etc. eventually located the driver on Toshiba's website (they use the same chip in one of their notebooks). It took a while, but that notebook is 100% functional and running much better than it did with all of Compaq's preloaded crap.
Of course, it'd be much better if they just put the drivers up on their website. IBM, OTOH, is pretty good about making drivers available. Even Packard Bell usually provided drivers for the bizarro hardware they used.
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
My problem with linux has been (lately) that when I try to install redhat, the install terminates.
Sounds like a Redh*t problem...but then you said you tried Debian, too. Back in the day, I started with SLS, then went to Slackware...nowadays, I'm using SuSE. (I took a quick detour into Corel Linux (based on Debian), but I couldn't get it dialed in just the way I wanted and didn't want to waste the time to figure it out when I knew how SuSE is configured.) I've installed SuSE on everything from a Cyrix 5x86 up to a K6-III and have never run into problems. I can't say that I've ever used Redh*t, but it seems that when someone posts to comp.os.linux.* or/. with a "Linux problem," it often ends up being a Redh*t problem.
I tried one of the BSDs (don't remember which one) a few years ago...there didn't seem to be anywhere near as much activity swirling around it as for Linux, so it didn't stay on my computer long. Now that my NetWare server setup is trashed (flaky i430VX-based motherboard, not a software problem...funny how most of the hardware problems I've run across have been with Chipzilla hardware, not stuff from this underdog or that underdog) and the machine it was on is fixed, maybe it's time for another trip into "BSD-land."
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
Personally, I'd hope that AOL isn't allowed to merge with Time/Warner. It would be too big to be healthy and we'd very likely have to waste time breaking them up later.
It didn't bug me at all that AOHell bought Netscape...I never used it (still don't, not even after switching my desktop to Linux...the only browsers I use are Lynx, KFM, and IE (running under Win98, which runs under VMware)). It bothered me a little when they bought Nullsoft...that was the first company they bought that produced something I actually used. Still, other MP3 players were (and are) available. If they're allowed to buy Time Warner, I'll be pissed. I'd rather not give up Looney Tunes and such, but it'd be needed to stay AOHell-free if the merger goes through.:-| They can have CNN (the Clinton News Network) for all I care, but leave Bugs alone!
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
Ahh. My CoCo. I truly loved that machine. Anyone else here a former CoCo addict?
It was the first machine I ever did any remotely serious coding on...way back in '81 or so. I had used a TRS-80 Model I and an Apple II+ before that, but had done little more with those machines than play a game or two. My grandfather had (probably still has) a CoCo that got upgraded over the years to 64K and a pair of double-sided floppy drives...learned BASIC on it and started to learn 6809 assembly language on it. The first computer I had at home was a TI-99/4A in '83 (right as TI was getting out of the computer business)...it could do a few things the CoCo didn't, but wasn't nearly as flexible overall (could only code for it in a really crappy double-interpreted BASIC). When the home machine was upgraded to an Apple IIe in '85 (with 128K, a DuoDisk, and an Imagewriter), it was amazing how much what I had learned on the CoCo could be transferred over. (I was coding in 6502 assembly within a week or so of getting the machine.)
While I'd identify myself mainly as an Apple II geek (still have that IIe, though it's been heavily upgraded over the years (including a motherboard swap to make it into a IIGS), and it sits right next to my 450-MHz K6-III...and my Usenet sig has the same ASCII-art Apple logo that it had ten years ago), the CoCo is the machine on which I made my first real foray into this wild and crazy world of computers.
_/_ / v \ (IIGS(Scott Alfter \_^_/
(Wow...now that I've finally figured out how to get/. to render my sig, maybe I'll start using it. When <pre> isn't available to you, is your friend.:-) )
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
I already got that with Junkbuster! (though I still have to stop and think about why a site might act funny if Junkbuster's eating the site's cookies...)
Try squid-redir...it doesn't mangle pages as badly as Junkbuster.
_/_ / v \ (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail) \_^_/
To really understand what they mean when they say "43% of the picture is gone" try watching a few scenes of, say, Ghostbusters in Pan&Scan and Widescreen for examples - they even talk about this in the commentary for that movie.
I think I first learned of this from the director's cut of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (which, AFAIK, hasn't found its way to DVD yet). They took the scene where Kirk, Spock, and Gillian are having a little conversation in Gillian's pickup truck and did a side-by-side of pan-and-scan and widescreen presentations. In the pan-and-scan version, you don't see the facial expressions Spock (seated on the right side of the truck) makes as Kirk (in the middle) and Gillian (in the driver's seat) talk. In the widescreen version, you see everything.
My experience with consultants is that a good many of them are clueless. The reason they're consultants is they can easily BS the customer into believing they know what they're talking about long enough to bleed you dry...
Interesting? This gets moderated as "Interesting?"
It's flamebait, and if the moderators weren't so blind from anti-corporate propoganda...
Let's see here...either (1) you've never worked in a corporate environment where you've had to deal with consultants or (2) you're a consultant yourself and "resemble that remark." From the (admittedly limited) experience I have with them, the original poster's remarks were on-target, though. Those who can, do; those who can't, consult.
It's not an "anti-corporate" bias; it's an "anti-moron" bias.:-)
Legally, the US *is* standardized on the Metric system. All our imperial units are legally defined in terms of metric units. It would just be absurdly difficult to get the american people to switch, we're all used to imperial units.
I was in Tucson recently for my sister's college graduation, and noticed that one of the highways leading out of town is partially marked metric. Distances along I-19 between Tucson and Nogales are metric, and so are some of the overpass-clearance signs...but I really don't think the speed limit along there is supposed to be 55-75 km/h. That would truly suck if it was the case.:-) (90-120 km/h would be more reasonable.)
Now if they'd just do the rest of the signs (of course, the Brits are still holding onto non-metric road signage too, last time I checked (which was '87; maybe they've gotten with the program since then))...
2) hack US's ELF submarine communication system to support IP
...and you thought ping times through a satellite connection were bad. ELF is a very slow means of communication...when you're pumping out RF at audio frequencies (or less), your signaling rate goes way down, with speed more than likely measured in characters per minute, instead of characters per second. It also takes massive amounts of power (a few megawatts, IIRC), more than you're likely to have in the middle of the ocean (the Navy uses it for one-way communication, with responses (if needed) sent on other bands).
Microsoft knows about this problem. They even have a fix for it. You need a specific version of the netdi.dll file (version 4.10.2029, size 317,840 bytes). This hotfix is referenced in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q190656. But you can't have it. If you want it, you have to call Tech Support, and pay them $150 for an "incident". If you can convince them that all you needed was the hotfix, you might be able to get your money back, but don't count on it...
That's funny...they had a link on the page for article Q1 90656 that took me to another page from which the updated file could be downloaded. Here's a direct link for netdi.dll. No phone call needed, no $150 spent.
Even if it isn't, this would still be very valuable to WebTV users, who usually don't have a computer(or at least in concept), and therefore they can't print stuff off the the internet.
Um...most (all? I can't remember) WebTV boxes have a parallel port. IIRC from when I sold the things @ a certain consumer-electronics retailer that will remain unnamed:-), the standard WebTV would work with HP inkjets, while WebTV Plus also supported Canon and one or two other manufacturers.
HP even made a printer specifically for use with WebTV, the DeskJet 670TV.
I remember back in the early 80s this one outfit had this barcode reader and "magazine" for the Atari 800 series of computers. You got your magazine, then swiped the barcode reader across everything, then you got to use the wonderful (ha!) software they wrote.
What you're describing sounds like the Cauzin Softstrip reader, except that the Softstrip was for the Apple II, Mac, and x86 DOS boxen. It was a gadget about the size of a three-hole punch; you'd line it up over a 2-D barcode (printed in a magazine or printed (at lower resolution) on your dot-matrix printer) and it'd save the contents into a file. I think I might have some examples buried in my Nibble collection...they didn't run with it for very long. (I never had a reader; they were kinda spendy at the time, and Nibble had pretty good tools available for checking your keyed-in programs for errors.)
What I'd like to know is why'd they release the 133 (and then orphan it) when the 120DX4 chips were selling like hotcakes?
Did AMD even have a 120-MHz processor for Socket 3? I thought the only company that made those was Cyrix...and their 5x86-120 wasn't a souped-up 486, but more like a "6x86 Lite" that ran with a 40-MHz FSB in a Socket 3 motherboard. (I still have one in a Biostar MB8433UUD...until a few months ago, I had it configured with Linux as a dial-up router. I recently built it back into a computer and loaded OS/2 Warp onto it to play around with that...hadn't used OS/2 in eons.)
IIRC, AMD had 100- and 133-MHz processors that were clock-tripled and clock-quadrupled (respectively) 3.3V 486s. I suppose that, while they were a little bit slower at doing their job, they allowed you to keep the PCI bus running at specified speed (assuming that your motherboard supported PCI instead of VLB). With Cyrix's 120-MHz part, you could either (1) underclock the PCI bus to 26.7 MHz and sacrifice performance or (2) overclock the PCI bus to 40 MHz and hope for the best. (I didn't have any problems with the UMC 8881/8886 (?) chipset, a #9 9FX Motion 531, or a generic DEC Tulip-based NIC at 40 MHz.)
(Now that I think about it, though, AMD had a 486DX2-80, so maybe they had a 120 as well.)
What was wrong with the code-name "Spitfire," anyway? The only other thing called a "spitfire" is an old type of fast sportster.
Actually, the word association I bring up with "Spitfire" is "WWII fighter plane." I suppose the effect is about the same, though.:-)
In any case, "Spitfire" would've been a kick-ass name...much better than "Duron." Then again, I still call Athlons K7s and Pentiums P5s.
(I guess this means we won't see a "K9" from AMD anytime in the future...too bad, as they could have sold it as "a hacker's best friend.":-) )
It's a cool name, and counters "Celeron" quite nicely. A consumer sees "Celeron" and "Spitfire" chips and they sound competitive--remember that AMD needs John Q. Public to buy the chip, not just Slashdotters who know what they're buying beyond name.
Given how close "Celeron" sounds to a particular stringy green vegetable, it's a wonder it has sold in the numbers it has sold.
I guess that Palm is going to seriously screw with their user base in terms of compiled code, unless they do a DragonBall emulator (I guess that for most applications, you don't need balls-out performance for this to work just fine).
...especially when you consider that the Dragonball in current Palms is only running at 16 MHz (just twice the speed of a Mac Plus from 15 years ago). If they're going to run the ARM or StrongARM at a speed somewhere in the hundreds-of-MHz range (which they'd need for voice recognition), there ought to be more than enough horsepower for them to do a 68K emulation at least as fast as the real thing.
what'll impress me
is when they get latency down to the point
where I can't as a human detect the difference
between the latency across the Pond and the
latency to the other nodes at my LAN party
You can only cut it back so far before physics starts to get in the way...unless they figure out some form of FTL communication.
3*10^8 m/s...it's not just a good idea, it's the law!:-)
Re:I speak for myself when I say...
on
Athlons Sold Out
·
· Score: 1
Because some of us need 100% compatibility, and AMD's 99% compatibility doesn't cut it. I've used AMD systems before and, for my uses, they don't cut it by a long shot.
Name one program that won't run on a K[67]*, but that will run on an Int*l CPU. I've run the entire K6 line on my machines (currently have a 200-MHz K6, a 300-MHz K6-2, and a 450-MHz K6-III), and they've all run DOS, Win9x, NT4, OS/2, and Linux with zero problems attributable to the processor. (Haven't tried NetWare on one of 'em yet, but I have no reason to believe it wouldn't work.) I've run a fairly wide variety of apps on them, from old games like Doom and STTNG: A Final Unity to office suites (MS Office 95 & 2000, Lotus SmartSuite 97) on up to more specialized software such as Adobe Illustrator and EAGLE (the latter is a circuit-design/PCB-layout/auto-route package for creating electronic circuits). I've even run the goofball jewelry point-of-sale/inventory/back-office software that my employer uses. Right now, I'm typing this in through Internet Explorer 5.0 running on Win98 running on VMware 2.0 running on SuSE Linux 6.3 on my K6-III box (256 megs of RAM is a wonderful thing to have, too, and not spending the extra $$$ to fund the "Intel Inside" campaign makes this more feasible:-) ), and it's all running flawlessly.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it's a royal PITA. I can understand keeping a $200 DIMM (for instance) under lock and key, but a $30 ink cartridge or software package? I just want to go in, grab what I want, pay for it, and get out as quickly as possible. If you make me wait around to account for your shrink paranoia, I'm likely to just walk out the door and find another store with a more sensible way of doing things.
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I thought they used the larger packages as a theft deterrent (it's easier to hide a jewel box than the longer type of box that was used before).
As for software in boxes, I see two reasons for software publishers to continue with their current packaging:
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He did spell it correctly, at least as far as non-US usage goes. Look it up in the OED. (Is it just me, or is this whole "grammar Nazi" thing getting old? Did anyone around here authori[sz]e spelling/grammar police for /.?)
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Are you so sure that the problem is with the processor and not with something else, especially given that we're talking about a "consumer-grade" notebook (read: lots of corners cut, lots of WinHardware in use, etc.)? Also, as someone else mentioned, beta software often glitches for no apparent reason on different platforms. You report those glitches back to the vendor so they can (hopefully) be fixed.
FWIW, I've had fewer problems with systems built around AMD processors than with systems bearing "Intel Inside" stickers. YMMV, but Spitfire (AMD needs to fire whoever came up with "Duron") is looking like a good bet from where I stand.
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I was about to make a comment along the lines of "but how good a vendor is that particular Pricewatch lowballer," but they didn't fare too badly on ResellerRatings.com. OTOH, there hasn't been a particularly large amount of feedback about that firm yet. In any case, going with whoever has the lowest price on Pricewatch can be a recipe for trouble if you're not careful.
(No, I don't work for ResellerRatings...or Pricewatch, for that matter. I'd recommend using the two sites in combination, though...it's better to pay a little more to deal with a reputable company than to get fleeced by a lowballer.)
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I ran into the same situation with a customer's Presario 305 a while back, only I knew from past experience that CPQ would be less than helpful with providing drivers. The only devices not picked up by the Win98 install were the modem, display, and sound. Modem and display drivers were available from Lucent and ATI, respectively, and went on with no fuss. Tracking down the sound driver was made more difficult by ESS not having the driver on its website (I knew what driver I needed by booting an LRP floppy and looking at /proc/pci, though you can get similar information under Win9x with regedit by looking under MyComputer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\PCI). A few searches through WinDrivers, AltaVista, etc. eventually located the driver on Toshiba's website (they use the same chip in one of their notebooks). It took a while, but that notebook is 100% functional and running much better than it did with all of Compaq's preloaded crap.
Of course, it'd be much better if they just put the drivers up on their website. IBM, OTOH, is pretty good about making drivers available. Even Packard Bell usually provided drivers for the bizarro hardware they used.
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Sounds like a Redh*t problem...but then you said you tried Debian, too. Back in the day, I started with SLS, then went to Slackware...nowadays, I'm using SuSE. (I took a quick detour into Corel Linux (based on Debian), but I couldn't get it dialed in just the way I wanted and didn't want to waste the time to figure it out when I knew how SuSE is configured.) I've installed SuSE on everything from a Cyrix 5x86 up to a K6-III and have never run into problems. I can't say that I've ever used Redh*t, but it seems that when someone posts to comp.os.linux.* or /. with a "Linux problem," it often ends up being a Redh*t problem.
I tried one of the BSDs (don't remember which one) a few years ago...there didn't seem to be anywhere near as much activity swirling around it as for Linux, so it didn't stay on my computer long. Now that my NetWare server setup is trashed (flaky i430VX-based motherboard, not a software problem...funny how most of the hardware problems I've run across have been with Chipzilla hardware, not stuff from this underdog or that underdog) and the machine it was on is fixed, maybe it's time for another trip into "BSD-land."
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It worked for Wesley Snipes' character in Demolition Man... :-)
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It didn't bug me at all that AOHell bought Netscape...I never used it (still don't, not even after switching my desktop to Linux...the only browsers I use are Lynx, KFM, and IE (running under Win98, which runs under VMware)). It bothered me a little when they bought Nullsoft...that was the first company they bought that produced something I actually used. Still, other MP3 players were (and are) available. If they're allowed to buy Time Warner, I'll be pissed. I'd rather not give up Looney Tunes and such, but it'd be needed to stay AOHell-free if the merger goes through. :-| They can have CNN (the Clinton News Network) for all I care, but leave Bugs alone!
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It was the first machine I ever did any remotely serious coding on...way back in '81 or so. I had used a TRS-80 Model I and an Apple II+ before that, but had done little more with those machines than play a game or two. My grandfather had (probably still has) a CoCo that got upgraded over the years to 64K and a pair of double-sided floppy drives...learned BASIC on it and started to learn 6809 assembly language on it. The first computer I had at home was a TI-99/4A in '83 (right as TI was getting out of the computer business)...it could do a few things the CoCo didn't, but wasn't nearly as flexible overall (could only code for it in a really crappy double-interpreted BASIC). When the home machine was upgraded to an Apple IIe in '85 (with 128K, a DuoDisk, and an Imagewriter), it was amazing how much what I had learned on the CoCo could be transferred over. (I was coding in 6502 assembly within a week or so of getting the machine.)
While I'd identify myself mainly as an Apple II geek (still have that IIe, though it's been heavily upgraded over the years (including a motherboard swap to make it into a IIGS), and it sits right next to my 450-MHz K6-III...and my Usenet sig has the same ASCII-art Apple logo that it had ten years ago), the CoCo is the machine on which I made my first real foray into this wild and crazy world of computers.
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(Wow...now that I've finally figured out how to get /. to render my sig, maybe I'll start using it. When <pre> isn't available to you, is your friend. :-) )
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Try squid-redir...it doesn't mangle pages as badly as Junkbuster.
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I think I first learned of this from the director's cut of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (which, AFAIK, hasn't found its way to DVD yet). They took the scene where Kirk, Spock, and Gillian are having a little conversation in Gillian's pickup truck and did a side-by-side of pan-and-scan and widescreen presentations. In the pan-and-scan version, you don't see the facial expressions Spock (seated on the right side of the truck) makes as Kirk (in the middle) and Gillian (in the driver's seat) talk. In the widescreen version, you see everything.
Let's see here...either (1) you've never worked in a corporate environment where you've had to deal with consultants or (2) you're a consultant yourself and "resemble that remark." From the (admittedly limited) experience I have with them, the original poster's remarks were on-target, though. Those who can, do; those who can't, consult.
It's not an "anti-corporate" bias; it's an "anti-moron" bias. :-)
I was in Tucson recently for my sister's college graduation, and noticed that one of the highways leading out of town is partially marked metric. Distances along I-19 between Tucson and Nogales are metric, and so are some of the overpass-clearance signs...but I really don't think the speed limit along there is supposed to be 55-75 km/h. That would truly suck if it was the case. :-) (90-120 km/h would be more reasonable.)
Now if they'd just do the rest of the signs (of course, the Brits are still holding onto non-metric road signage too, last time I checked (which was '87; maybe they've gotten with the program since then))...
That's funny...they had a link on the page for article Q1 90656 that took me to another page from which the updated file could be downloaded. Here's a direct link for netdi.dll. No phone call needed, no $150 spent.
Um...most (all? I can't remember) WebTV boxes have a parallel port. IIRC from when I sold the things @ a certain consumer-electronics retailer that will remain unnamed :-), the standard WebTV would work with HP inkjets, while WebTV Plus also supported Canon and one or two other manufacturers.
HP even made a printer specifically for use with WebTV, the DeskJet 670TV.
What you're describing sounds like the Cauzin Softstrip reader, except that the Softstrip was for the Apple II, Mac, and x86 DOS boxen. It was a gadget about the size of a three-hole punch; you'd line it up over a 2-D barcode (printed in a magazine or printed (at lower resolution) on your dot-matrix printer) and it'd save the contents into a file. I think I might have some examples buried in my Nibble collection...they didn't run with it for very long. (I never had a reader; they were kinda spendy at the time, and Nibble had pretty good tools available for checking your keyed-in programs for errors.)
"Kill Your TV"...and everyone else's, too, at the same time! :-)
<rimshot>
Hmm...such as celery, perhaps?
</rimshot>
(note to /. staff: %lt;sub> , %lt;/sub> , %lt;sup> , and %lt;/sup> tags would be nice to be able to use in messages...)
Did AMD even have a 120-MHz processor for Socket 3? I thought the only company that made those was Cyrix...and their 5x86-120 wasn't a souped-up 486, but more like a "6x86 Lite" that ran with a 40-MHz FSB in a Socket 3 motherboard. (I still have one in a Biostar MB8433UUD...until a few months ago, I had it configured with Linux as a dial-up router. I recently built it back into a computer and loaded OS/2 Warp onto it to play around with that...hadn't used OS/2 in eons.)
IIRC, AMD had 100- and 133-MHz processors that were clock-tripled and clock-quadrupled (respectively) 3.3V 486s. I suppose that, while they were a little bit slower at doing their job, they allowed you to keep the PCI bus running at specified speed (assuming that your motherboard supported PCI instead of VLB). With Cyrix's 120-MHz part, you could either (1) underclock the PCI bus to 26.7 MHz and sacrifice performance or (2) overclock the PCI bus to 40 MHz and hope for the best. (I didn't have any problems with the UMC 8881/8886 (?) chipset, a #9 9FX Motion 531, or a generic DEC Tulip-based NIC at 40 MHz.)
(Now that I think about it, though, AMD had a 486DX2-80, so maybe they had a 120 as well.)
Actually, the word association I bring up with "Spitfire" is "WWII fighter plane." I suppose the effect is about the same, though. :-)
In any case, "Spitfire" would've been a kick-ass name...much better than "Duron." Then again, I still call Athlons K7s and Pentiums P5s.
(I guess this means we won't see a "K9" from AMD anytime in the future...too bad, as they could have sold it as "a hacker's best friend." :-) )
Given how close "Celeron" sounds to a particular stringy green vegetable, it's a wonder it has sold in the numbers it has sold.
You can only cut it back so far before physics starts to get in the way...unless they figure out some form of FTL communication.
3*10^8 m/s...it's not just a good idea, it's the law! :-)
Name one program that won't run on a K[67]*, but that will run on an Int*l CPU. I've run the entire K6 line on my machines (currently have a 200-MHz K6, a 300-MHz K6-2, and a 450-MHz K6-III), and they've all run DOS, Win9x, NT4, OS/2, and Linux with zero problems attributable to the processor. (Haven't tried NetWare on one of 'em yet, but I have no reason to believe it wouldn't work.) I've run a fairly wide variety of apps on them, from old games like Doom and STTNG: A Final Unity to office suites (MS Office 95 & 2000, Lotus SmartSuite 97) on up to more specialized software such as Adobe Illustrator and EAGLE (the latter is a circuit-design/PCB-layout/auto-route package for creating electronic circuits). I've even run the goofball jewelry point-of-sale/inventory/back-office software that my employer uses. Right now, I'm typing this in through Internet Explorer 5.0 running on Win98 running on VMware 2.0 running on SuSE Linux 6.3 on my K6-III box (256 megs of RAM is a wonderful thing to have, too, and not spending the extra $$$ to fund the "Intel Inside" campaign makes this more feasible :-) ), and it's all running flawlessly.