Simple. Probably used one of the later Socket 7 (or "Super Socket 7") boards which supported Socket 5/7 processors and often had AGP slots. I think you're right about not having these machines in 1994 though.
Seagate UK kindly have supplied us with one of their new Serial ATA hard drives. We take a look at the new SATA format and attempt to determine what the new format means in real life. Will SATA produce any real improvement in performance?
Before we begin looking at the physical drive it is worth reading a little about the SATA format. The following extract from Seagate's web site provides us with an insight into the serial ATA standard and more importantly it's expected development path.
About the Serial ATA (SATA) format
Most desktop storage systems today use a parallel bus interface referred to as Ultra ATA/100. The parallel ATA interface has been in use on desktop systems as the mainstream internal storage inter-connect, since the 1980\'s (over 15 years!). Today\'s PCs demand higher speeds, more robust data integrity and flexibility for innovative smaller designs. Physically and electrically, the current parallel bus has run into limitations that will prevent this bus from providing higher speeds of data transfers. The move to a new technology is inevitable in the eyes of industry leaders such as Intel, Dell, Seagate, Maxtor and APT.
These same leaders formed the SerialATA.org and are highly dedicated to bringing this new technology to the forefront of today\'s PCs. Serial ATA is designed to overcome the limitations of parallel ATA while providing scalability for years to come. Setting the goal to be compatible and at cost parity with current parallel ATA drives when in volume, the SerialATA organization is promoting the adoption of Serial ATA in all systems where ATA drives are being used today.
Serial ATA... the future?
What is Serial ATA?
Serial ATA is a \"serial\" architecture as opposed to today\'s \"parallel\" ATA internal disc drive bus. Serial ATA wraps many bits of data into a packet and then at a higher speed (up to 50% higher) than parallel, transfers the packet of data down the wire to or from the host. Today Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) is performed on the data being transmitted back and forth but not on the commands. Serial ATA integrates CRC on the command and data packet level for enhanced bus reliability. Cyclic redundancy code detects all single and double-bit errors and ensures detection of 99.998% of all possible errors. A Serial ATA drive can transfer data at 150MB/sec on the bus to the host system with extremely reliable accuracy and the Serial ATA interface will continue to allow scalability for a very long time.
Generation 1Generation 2Generation 3
Approximate Data Rate150mb/sec300mb/sec600mb/sec
Approximate Bus Speed1.5gb/sec4gb/sec6gb/sec
Approximate IntroductionFall of \'02Mid \'04Mid \'07
Additional Benefits
In addition to a faster, more reliable bus, Serial ATA improves cabling and connectors for a robust yet simpler integration. Gone are the days of bent pins and clumsy cabling and needless returned hard drives. Serial ATA cables are thinner and longer for improved system airflow and innovative system designs such as small form factor and consumer electronic boxes. Connectors are easier to snap into place without any pins but rather a blind-mate type of connection. Without the wide cables, system integrators can easily route the longer data cables (1 meter) within the system for simplicity or innovative designs.
Seagate Technology, A Native in Serial ATA
Still in its early market entry stage, Serial ATA provides immediate benefits to desktop users. Serial ATA, an innovative new interface, allows continued performance growth, enhanced data reliability, and overall improved system dynamics above and beyond what Parallel can efficiently continue to provide.
A true \"Native\" Serial ATA solution offers customers the \"Real McCoy\" in Serial ATA technology. By implementing Serial ATA technology, not only on the physical layer of the drive, but also in the ATA controller link and transport layers, Seagate drives can communicate from the drive to the host directly up to the full 150MB/sec speed on the bus. In addition, the native solution incorporates command queuing, which can be a big performance boost in operating systems that can take advantage of that type of function. Some drive manufacturers may not immediately offer these \"native\" Serial ATA features on their 1st generation Serial ATA drives due to the difficulty of this integration.
The Test Drive I
The drive it\'s self looks just like any other computer hard disk drive. Consistent with other Seagate barracuda drives this one is very well built, solid and as attractive as a rectangular box of metal and plastic can be. The label clearly identifies the drive and provides setup information.
Review ModelSeagate ST380023AS
Size80gb
Speed7,200rpm
Seek Time (Average)9ms
InterfaceSerial ATA
Here is the description of the drive from Seagate\'s web site...
Seagate\'s Barracuda ATA V with Serial ATA Interface leverages the mechanics of the industry\'s quietest 7200 rpm desktop drive. The Barracuda ATA V offers 80GB and 120GB capacities with an 8MB cache for mainstream, high performance PCs, and entry-level servers. The product features all FDB motors, superior reliability and the next generation interface - Serial ATA. The SATA Barracuda includes Seagate\'s exclusive 3D Defense System and a one-year limited warranty.
FeaturesBenefits
7,200 RPM desktop performanceImproves overall PC performance
350 Gs nonoperating shockProtects drive from shock and vibration
3D Defense SystemIndustry\'s most comprehensive drive and data protection system
DiscWizard softwareWorld\'s best disc installation software utility
SoftSonic(TM) FDB motorQuietest acoustics on any desktop drive
8-Mbyte cache bufferImproved performance
Serial ATA interfaceFastest data transfer rates
The Test Drive II
SATA drives can not be connected to your computer with the standard IDE and Molex power connectors as becomes clear when viewing the back of the drive. Two new interfaces are need to use the drive. If you have a motherboard with serial ATA support you will have probably been supplied with an SATA data cable as shown below. However you will also need a Molex to SATA power conversion lead which is not supplied with either the motherboard or hard drive. I can foresee this power lead becoming a source of frustration for many people ordering SATA drives, hopefully when the drives hit the retail market the cable will be supplied with the hard drive.
Connecting the drive is very easy indeed. The SATA connectors are very well designed and will only fit the correct way round. There are no pins to bend or break as the fittings are more like USB than IDE.
Currently motherboards with SATA connectors run via the PCI bus. Some have connection via a SATA RAID controller, but our test board used a single SATA connector which is linked to a stand alone SATA controller chip. Once installed and booted the drive was displayed in the Bios taking the place of the primary IDE device. Windows XP located the drive as new hardware and the drive was fully visible. The Seagate drive is fully SMART enabled. This gives access to drive monitoring information including temperature.
Benchmarks I
Test Setup
DFI NB80-EA Granite Bay motherboard
P4 2.66Mhz CPU, 512MB DDR3500 RAM
Seagate 80GB SATA150 Hard Disk Drive
Maxtor 120GB 8MB ATA133 Cache Hard Drive on IDE
Maxtor 60GB 2MB ATA100 Cache Hard Drive
2 Weston Digital 80GB 8MB Cache drives on Promise Raid Controller on Raid0
Speedfan utility for SMART monitoring including hard drive temperature
HD Tech - Read Results Graph
The HD Tech benchmark is recognised as the most comprehensive hard drive test available. The benchmark evaluates the Hard drives performance across the whole drive regardless of how the drive is partitioned. It is common for performance to drop the further into the drive the test goes. This is due to the sectors at the end of the disk being physically further from the drives starting point.
Seagate SATA ATA150
Maxtor ATA133
The graphs above show two interesting trends. Although the computer was able to read information from the Maxtor drive faster than the Seagate drive, the opposite is true when it comes to writing data. The Seagate drive shows a consistent write speed with a few downward troughs, where as the Maxtor drive shows a few peaks in performance. Secondly although both drives show the expected reduction in read speed the further into the drive the test goes, the Seagate drive shows a slower decline dropping from circa 40k to 25k. The Maxtor drops more steeply from 50k down to 25k.
The graphs below show the results of all the HD Tech tests carried out during the review. As the benchmark requires unpartitioned drives to test writing speeds only two drives were able to be tested, the Seagate SATA and the Maxtor 120GB 8MB Cache.
Read speed average results
Write speed average results
The Seagate SATA drive did not perform as well as we had hoped in the read tests. Performance was lower than the other 8MB Cache drives whether in a raid configuration or straight forward IDE. The drive is far from being slow, but with the same 8MB Cache and the equivalent of ATA150 transfer speeds we hoped for more. Despite the average scores showing lower the Seagate drive did display better consistency across the drive as a whole and also proved significantly better in the write tests, some 30% better than the Maxtor.
Benchmarks II
Sandra Benchmark
The Sandra benchmark is less reliable than the HD Tech because it tests a partition rather than the whole drive and as we have seen performance changes depending on where on the drive the partition is located. When testing for the review we ensured that all the test drives had the same sized partition and that it was at the start of the physical disk.
The results show the same story as HD tech, although we are unable to break down the Sandra scores to establish where the Seagate drive falls down.
General Usage
Hot Swapping
An interesting attribute associated with SATA devices is that they should be \'Hot Swappable\', that means that you should be able to move devices around while your operating system is running. On the face of it this would be very useful. Care must be taken when moving hard disks around because while the internal discs are spinning damage can be caused easily. With the SATA drive installed as a non system disk we were able to disconnect the drive with windows XP running. Unlike USB device when removed, windows did not realise that the drive was no longer connected and it remained visible!
Noise
Seagate have produced a very well built drive in the ST380023AS. The casing is very solid and the mechanism well balanced. As a result it is most defiantly the quietest hard disk drive I have ever used. If you are looking for an ultra quiet drive then this one should be on your shopping list.
Reliability
The test drive was run continually for a week cycling the Sandra benchmark. Although the drive can get quite hot, rising to 45c under very heavy load, it performed without fault. SMART monitoring did not detect any problems during our testing. It should be remembered that a weeks hard testing does not give any real indication of the drives long term reliability, but we can take a great deal of comfort from the fact that the IDE Barracuda drives have proven to be one of the most reliable in the market thus far.
Price
Although SATA drives have not hit the retail market place in the UK yet The 80GB Seagate drive is expected to retail for circa £115 including VAT. This puts a small premium on the SATA format.
Conclusion
The read performance of the Seagate ST380023AS was not as good as we had hoped for. On the other hand write performance was better than we hoped for. In summary one fact is clear, the SATA interface works differently to the IDE interface and when you consider that this is a first generation SATA drive, linked to a motherboard that has the SATA interface located on the PCI bus, limiting it's potential, the overall performance is very good indeed.
The benefits of ultra fast data writing would make this drive ideal for write hungry tasks like video rendering or data backup. The Seagate drive itself is very well made and seems to be very robust. Its quiet operation makes it ideal for inclusion in a system where quietness is of benefit.
Serial ATA is in its infancy. Seagate have produced an excellent hard disk drive at the high quality end of the market place which should be very well received. I for one will be very sorry to have to part with this drive when Seagate ask for it back.
I don't know of anyone who would could listen to this 24/7 for 600 days. Perhaps a download edition will be avaliable? Also, consider the fact that the kernel is constantly changing, and that this is only a snapshot in time. Nearly two years from now the kernel will be vastly different and this will be obsolete.
LA Times (no registration or pop-ups!)
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Must be geek love
The adventure is everything in the second "Lord of the Rings."
By Manohla Dargis, Times Staff Writer
When the final chapter closes on Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," the whole extravaganza -- three features, nine hours and a catalog of characters as seemingly infinite as the films' crew -- may well be heralded as one of the more heroic ventures in commercial cinema. Launched last December to enormous success with "The Fellowship of the Ring," the ongoing epic has now entered an awkward adolescence with its middle feature, "The Two Towers," on its way to its concluding volume, "The Return of the King." Slated for completion next year, the entirety of the "Rings" looks auspicious even if in its present manifestation this once and future landmark is a bit of a yawn.
Based on the second volume of Tolkien's novel, "The Two Towers" begins fairly soon after "The Fellowship of the Ring" leaves off with the hobbits, Frodo (Elijah Woods) and Samwise (Sean Astin), warily traveling toward the Dark Tower of Mordor, the lair of Sauron the Great. Conquered in an ancient war, Sauron has been gathering his forces with the intention of obliterating the world of men, Middle-earth, for which he needs the ring. In the first film, Frodo had become the ring's reluctant keeper, charged with its destruction by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), a mission that transported him out of the idyll of his homeland, the Shire, and into a fellowship with eight other Middle-earth inhabitants. Splintered at the close of the first volume, the fellowship has now scattered to fight its enemies separately.
"The Lord of the Rings," built on a bedrock of mythic archetypes and sagas such as "Beowulf," is essentially a quest story but one in which the seeker aims to renounce power, rather than to seize it. That makes Frodo uncharacteristically humble for a hero and an unusually appealing seeker no matter what the troubled times, and it also speaks to why the book was a cult favorite during the 1960s. (The hobbits' fondness for smoking an herb called pipe-weed likely appealed to the book's original counterculture fan base, as well.) Although Frodo hails from the pastoral Shire and is by nature and inclination gentle, each step of his journey brings him closer to cataclysmic warfare that rumbles during the first volume, erupts in the second and rages throughout the third.
Tolkien began writing "The Lord of the Rings" in 1936 and for years after its publication insisted that it had nothing to do with the Second World War. Jackson has no such qualms but his inspiration is cinematic not political. In "The Two Towers," he cribs an iconic image of massed troops from Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda reverie, "Triumph of the Will," but the allusion loses its punch when you realize that another shot of goose-stepping troops has been lifted from "The Wizard of Oz." Tolkien built his story on foundation myths; Jackson builds his on movies: The film's most charming new creature, a mossy shepherd named Treebeard, walks like the heron described by Tolkien but looks like a relation of the animated trees in "Oz." When Gollum (voiced by Andy Serkis, with goggling computer-generated eyes and slithering silvery body) returns to the scene to pull the word "master" from its mouth, it's with the same sinister fawning as Dracula's helper Renfield.
Despite these cinephile fillips, Jackson and fellow screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Stephen Sinclair have enough to do just keeping Tolkien's histories and characters in play. To that end, the new film faithfully opens with the human warrior Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), a huntsman with his own impending quest issues, in the company of the Elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and the Dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies). Together, the three are hotfooting across green slopes in search of two other fellowship members, the hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), who have been kidnapped by Orcs, servants of Sauron's strongest ally, the wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee).
Tolkien devotes the first half of "The Two Towers" to Aragorn's exploits and the second to those of Frodo; Jackson instead oscillates between the questing travelers before getting swept up in a battle that nearly proves the undoing of Aragorn and the film. While searching for the hobbits, Aragorn and his companions enter the human kingdom of Rohan, where they're soon engaged in protecting its people from Sauron's army. Jackson spends an interminable amount of time in Rohan, lavishing his attention on a battle that consumes less than a chapter in the novel. Set at night, the fight unfolds with hordes of the enemy ("thick as marching ants," in Tolkien's words) descending in waves. Despite Mortensen's energetic vaults across the set, the tension slackens precipitously. It isn't only that there's no fun to be had watching ants get squashed; it's that the battle, designed for the video-game generation, proceeds in frustrating starts and stops, as if Jackson couldn't get past the first level.
With "The Fellowship of the Ring," Jackson delivered us into never-before-seen worlds. The fellowship covers new ground in "The Two Towers" but the story bogs down in Rohan, a dreary stopover that fails to capture the imagination; unlike the Shire or Elvish lands, it doesn't look that different from the back-lot Middle Ages we've seen elsewhere. During the past few decades, computer technologies have enhanced (and waylaid) numerous films but it wasn't until Jackson's first try at Tolkien that we saw the greater possibilities of those technologies, particularly in the realm of fantasy, where now everything seems possible. After years of anemic space escapades in which the blue screen was invariably more important than the flesh-and-blood actors, digital video technologies were put in the service of a juicy story and not the reverse.
That more or less holds true in "The Two Towers" even if for stretches at a time the tools at Jackson's disposal distract him from what he does best, which is push the story forward with the enthusiasm of a filmmaker who hasn't put ego before movie love. The director's great strength is the confidence with which he translates Tolkien's vision into visual imagery even if he still gets tripped up converting that vision into dialogue.
"The Fellowship of the Ring" was periodically hampered by the writers' attempts to cut swaths through the narration. There's as much exposition in "The Two Towers" but because Jackson and his screenwriter partners don't want to repeat themselves, they lay out the story even less clearly than they did on their first outing. When Aragorn consults with Gandalf, it's easy to get lost in a thicket of names and allegiances.
It was during one such eyelid-drooping moment while watching "The Two Towers" that I flashed on an old Gary Larson cartoon that pokes gentle fun at the nomenclature found in books of this sort by contrasting the names we give dogs with those they give themselves. "I am known as Vexog," says one dog (a.k.a. Rex), "Destroyer of Cats and Devourer of Chickens." "I am Zornorph," says another, proudly, "the One Who Comes by Night to the Neighbor's Yard, and this is Princess Sheewana, Barker of Great Annoyance and Daughter of Queen La, Stainer of Persian Rugs."
The absurdity of the dog names was a relief, giving me a momentary reprieve from the film and its insistent monumentality. At that instant, I stopped bumming about the second film and began looking forward to the third. Such is the nature of geek love. As with "The Fellowship of the Ring," the excitement and pleasure of "The Two Towers" comes from the feeling that we're doing more than simply watching a film but have, rather, embarked on an epic journey with like-minded travelers. If the second film never reaches the highs of the first -- we have met the players before and there are no new worlds of wonder -- it nonetheless invests moviegoing with a sense of adventure. Like Frodo and Aragorn, we have to cover a lot of middling expository ground in "The Two Towers" -- here, we're just passing through on our way to the end.
'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'
MPAA rating: PG-13 for battle sequences and scary images.
Times guidelines: There's a lot of fighting and death but little bloodshed; overall, it's less scary than the first film.
Elijah Wood... Frodo
Ian McKellen... Gandalf
Liv Tyler... Arwen
Viggo Mortensen... Aragorn
Sean Astin... Sam
New Line Cinema presents a Wingnut production. Director Peter Jackson. Writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair, Peter Jackson. Producers Barrie M. Osborne, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson. Director of photography Andrew Lesnie. Production designer Grant Major. Film Editor Michael Horton. Music Howard Shore. Visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel. Special makeup creature miniature and digital effects Weta Ltd., NZ. Costume designers Ngila Dickson, Richard Tyler. Running time: 2 hours, 59 minutes.
Been using the HOSTS file on all my machines to block most ads, wondering if it would work for this too by simply adding any domain name anti-leech uses to it?
Browsing directories on this server (uruklink.net) is permitted. Wonder what kind of files are loaded on this system? Some poor soul in Iraq is gonna suffer when Saddam finds out American geeks have been hacking his site.
Trust me, I DO remember what the trap screens looked like. This machine was in text mode with information about the trap. It was/still is a good operating system, but it wasn't completely bulletproof (like any other system). I would still be using it today if I didn't have to reboot into Win98 to play my favorite games (maybe either I will stop being too lazy to reboot or the project Odin will solve this one day).
Not too many people would have this under OS/2. I haven't seen OS/2 used by web servers (except for certain OS/2 supporter sites), but I did see it just 2 or 3 weeks at a local ATM. I only knew it was OS/2 because it was crashed, and I remember the Trap screen well from when I used it on my system.
Who says all us are fat, pimply-faced slobs? I'm in the military and I've seen quite a few others in here that are computers geeks, so obviously we have to be in shape you know.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe FOOD would be a better resource to give poor countries. If all the people starve to death then who is going to use the WiFi infrastructure?
Almost as pathetic as the TSA morons searching old ladies at airport terminals... We all know that old grannies like to kill and steal.
that I just paid $150 for a Western Digital Raptor with a 5 year warranty.
Simple. Probably used one of the later Socket 7 (or "Super Socket 7") boards which supported Socket 5/7 processors and often had AGP slots. I think you're right about not having these machines in 1994 though.
Reviewer: Simon Maltby
Date of Review: 30th December 2002
Sample Provided by Seagate
Introduction to SATA
Seagate UK kindly have supplied us with one of their new Serial ATA hard drives. We take a look at the new SATA format and attempt to determine what the new format means in real life. Will SATA produce any real improvement in performance?
Before we begin looking at the physical drive it is worth reading a little about the SATA format. The following extract from Seagate's web site provides us with an insight into the serial ATA standard and more importantly it's expected development path.
About the Serial ATA (SATA) format
Most desktop storage systems today use a parallel bus interface referred to as Ultra ATA/100. The parallel ATA interface has been in use on desktop systems as the mainstream internal storage inter-connect, since the 1980\'s (over 15 years!). Today\'s PCs demand higher speeds, more robust data integrity and flexibility for innovative smaller designs. Physically and electrically, the current parallel bus has run into limitations that will prevent this bus from providing higher speeds of data transfers. The move to a new technology is inevitable in the eyes of industry leaders such as Intel, Dell, Seagate, Maxtor and APT.
These same leaders formed the SerialATA.org and are highly dedicated to bringing this new technology to the forefront of today\'s PCs. Serial ATA is designed to overcome the limitations of parallel ATA while providing scalability for years to come. Setting the goal to be compatible and at cost parity with current parallel ATA drives when in volume, the SerialATA organization is promoting the adoption of Serial ATA in all systems where ATA drives are being used today.
Serial ATA... the future?
What is Serial ATA?
Serial ATA is a \"serial\" architecture as opposed to today\'s \"parallel\" ATA internal disc drive bus. Serial ATA wraps many bits of data into a packet and then at a higher speed (up to 50% higher) than parallel, transfers the packet of data down the wire to or from the host. Today Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) is performed on the data being transmitted back and forth but not on the commands. Serial ATA integrates CRC on the command and data packet level for enhanced bus reliability. Cyclic redundancy code detects all single and double-bit errors and ensures detection of 99.998% of all possible errors. A Serial ATA drive can transfer data at 150MB/sec on the bus to the host system with extremely reliable accuracy and the Serial ATA interface will continue to allow scalability for a very long time.
Generation 1Generation 2Generation 3 Approximate Data Rate150mb/sec300mb/sec600mb/sec Approximate Bus Speed1.5gb/sec4gb/sec6gb/sec Approximate IntroductionFall of \'02Mid \'04Mid \'07
Additional Benefits
In addition to a faster, more reliable bus, Serial ATA improves cabling and connectors for a robust yet simpler integration. Gone are the days of bent pins and clumsy cabling and needless returned hard drives. Serial ATA cables are thinner and longer for improved system airflow and innovative system designs such as small form factor and consumer electronic boxes. Connectors are easier to snap into place without any pins but rather a blind-mate type of connection. Without the wide cables, system integrators can easily route the longer data cables (1 meter) within the system for simplicity or innovative designs.
Seagate Technology, A Native in Serial ATA Still in its early market entry stage, Serial ATA provides immediate benefits to desktop users. Serial ATA, an innovative new interface, allows continued performance growth, enhanced data reliability, and overall improved system dynamics above and beyond what Parallel can efficiently continue to provide.
A true \"Native\" Serial ATA solution offers customers the \"Real McCoy\" in Serial ATA technology. By implementing Serial ATA technology, not only on the physical layer of the drive, but also in the ATA controller link and transport layers, Seagate drives can communicate from the drive to the host directly up to the full 150MB/sec speed on the bus. In addition, the native solution incorporates command queuing, which can be a big performance boost in operating systems that can take advantage of that type of function. Some drive manufacturers may not immediately offer these \"native\" Serial ATA features on their 1st generation Serial ATA drives due to the difficulty of this integration.
The Test Drive I
The drive it\'s self looks just like any other computer hard disk drive. Consistent with other Seagate barracuda drives this one is very well built, solid and as attractive as a rectangular box of metal and plastic can be. The label clearly identifies the drive and provides setup information.
Review ModelSeagate ST380023AS Size80gb Speed7,200rpm Seek Time (Average)9ms InterfaceSerial ATA
Here is the description of the drive from Seagate\'s web site...
Seagate\'s Barracuda ATA V with Serial ATA Interface leverages the mechanics of the industry\'s quietest 7200 rpm desktop drive. The Barracuda ATA V offers 80GB and 120GB capacities with an 8MB cache for mainstream, high performance PCs, and entry-level servers. The product features all FDB motors, superior reliability and the next generation interface - Serial ATA. The SATA Barracuda includes Seagate\'s exclusive 3D Defense System and a one-year limited warranty.
FeaturesBenefits 7,200 RPM desktop performanceImproves overall PC performance 350 Gs nonoperating shockProtects drive from shock and vibration 3D Defense SystemIndustry\'s most comprehensive drive and data protection system DiscWizard softwareWorld\'s best disc installation software utility SoftSonic(TM) FDB motorQuietest acoustics on any desktop drive 8-Mbyte cache bufferImproved performance Serial ATA interfaceFastest data transfer rates
The Test Drive II
SATA drives can not be connected to your computer with the standard IDE and Molex power connectors as becomes clear when viewing the back of the drive. Two new interfaces are need to use the drive. If you have a motherboard with serial ATA support you will have probably been supplied with an SATA data cable as shown below. However you will also need a Molex to SATA power conversion lead which is not supplied with either the motherboard or hard drive. I can foresee this power lead becoming a source of frustration for many people ordering SATA drives, hopefully when the drives hit the retail market the cable will be supplied with the hard drive.
Connecting the drive is very easy indeed. The SATA connectors are very well designed and will only fit the correct way round. There are no pins to bend or break as the fittings are more like USB than IDE.
Currently motherboards with SATA connectors run via the PCI bus. Some have connection via a SATA RAID controller, but our test board used a single SATA connector which is linked to a stand alone SATA controller chip. Once installed and booted the drive was displayed in the Bios taking the place of the primary IDE device. Windows XP located the drive as new hardware and the drive was fully visible. The Seagate drive is fully SMART enabled. This gives access to drive monitoring information including temperature.
Benchmarks I
Test Setup
HD Tech - Read Results Graph
The HD Tech benchmark is recognised as the most comprehensive hard drive test available. The benchmark evaluates the Hard drives performance across the whole drive regardless of how the drive is partitioned. It is common for performance to drop the further into the drive the test goes. This is due to the sectors at the end of the disk being physically further from the drives starting point.
Seagate SATA ATA150
Maxtor ATA133
The graphs above show two interesting trends. Although the computer was able to read information from the Maxtor drive faster than the Seagate drive, the opposite is true when it comes to writing data. The Seagate drive shows a consistent write speed with a few downward troughs, where as the Maxtor drive shows a few peaks in performance. Secondly although both drives show the expected reduction in read speed the further into the drive the test goes, the Seagate drive shows a slower decline dropping from circa 40k to 25k. The Maxtor drops more steeply from 50k down to 25k.
The graphs below show the results of all the HD Tech tests carried out during the review. As the benchmark requires unpartitioned drives to test writing speeds only two drives were able to be tested, the Seagate SATA and the Maxtor 120GB 8MB Cache.
Read speed average results
Write speed average results
The Seagate SATA drive did not perform as well as we had hoped in the read tests. Performance was lower than the other 8MB Cache drives whether in a raid configuration or straight forward IDE. The drive is far from being slow, but with the same 8MB Cache and the equivalent of ATA150 transfer speeds we hoped for more. Despite the average scores showing lower the Seagate drive did display better consistency across the drive as a whole and also proved significantly better in the write tests, some 30% better than the Maxtor.
Benchmarks II
Sandra Benchmark
The Sandra benchmark is less reliable than the HD Tech because it tests a partition rather than the whole drive and as we have seen performance changes depending on where on the drive the partition is located. When testing for the review we ensured that all the test drives had the same sized partition and that it was at the start of the physical disk.
The results show the same story as HD tech, although we are unable to break down the Sandra scores to establish where the Seagate drive falls down.
General Usage
Hot Swapping
An interesting attribute associated with SATA devices is that they should be \'Hot Swappable\', that means that you should be able to move devices around while your operating system is running. On the face of it this would be very useful. Care must be taken when moving hard disks around because while the internal discs are spinning damage can be caused easily. With the SATA drive installed as a non system disk we were able to disconnect the drive with windows XP running. Unlike USB device when removed, windows did not realise that the drive was no longer connected and it remained visible!
Noise
Seagate have produced a very well built drive in the ST380023AS. The casing is very solid and the mechanism well balanced. As a result it is most defiantly the quietest hard disk drive I have ever used. If you are looking for an ultra quiet drive then this one should be on your shopping list.
Reliability
The test drive was run continually for a week cycling the Sandra benchmark. Although the drive can get quite hot, rising to 45c under very heavy load, it performed without fault. SMART monitoring did not detect any problems during our testing. It should be remembered that a weeks hard testing does not give any real indication of the drives long term reliability, but we can take a great deal of comfort from the fact that the IDE Barracuda drives have proven to be one of the most reliable in the market thus far.
Price
Although SATA drives have not hit the retail market place in the UK yet The 80GB Seagate drive is expected to retail for circa £115 including VAT. This puts a small premium on the SATA format.
Conclusion
The read performance of the Seagate ST380023AS was not as good as we had hoped for. On the other hand write performance was better than we hoped for. In summary one fact is clear, the SATA interface works differently to the IDE interface and when you consider that this is a first generation SATA drive, linked to a motherboard that has the SATA interface located on the PCI bus, limiting it's potential, the overall performance is very good indeed.
The benefits of ultra fast data writing would make this drive ideal for write hungry tasks like video rendering or data backup. The Seagate drive itself is very well made and seems to be very robust. Its quiet operation makes it ideal for inclusion in a system where quietness is of benefit.
Serial ATA is in its infancy. Seagate have produced an excellent hard disk drive at the high quality end of the market place which should be very well received. I for one will be very sorry to have to part with this drive when Seagate ask for it back.
Pros
Cons
I don't know of anyone who would could listen to this 24/7 for 600 days. Perhaps a download edition will be avaliable? Also, consider the fact that the kernel is constantly changing, and that this is only a snapshot in time. Nearly two years from now the kernel will be vastly different and this will be obsolete.
By Manohla Dargis, Times Staff Writer
When the final chapter closes on Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," the whole extravaganza -- three features, nine hours and a catalog of characters as seemingly infinite as the films' crew -- may well be heralded as one of the more heroic ventures in commercial cinema. Launched last December to enormous success with "The Fellowship of the Ring," the ongoing epic has now entered an awkward adolescence with its middle feature, "The Two Towers," on its way to its concluding volume, "The Return of the King." Slated for completion next year, the entirety of the "Rings" looks auspicious even if in its present manifestation this once and future landmark is a bit of a yawn.
Based on the second volume of Tolkien's novel, "The Two Towers" begins fairly soon after "The Fellowship of the Ring" leaves off with the hobbits, Frodo (Elijah Woods) and Samwise (Sean Astin), warily traveling toward the Dark Tower of Mordor, the lair of Sauron the Great. Conquered in an ancient war, Sauron has been gathering his forces with the intention of obliterating the world of men, Middle-earth, for which he needs the ring. In the first film, Frodo had become the ring's reluctant keeper, charged with its destruction by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), a mission that transported him out of the idyll of his homeland, the Shire, and into a fellowship with eight other Middle-earth inhabitants. Splintered at the close of the first volume, the fellowship has now scattered to fight its enemies separately.
"The Lord of the Rings," built on a bedrock of mythic archetypes and sagas such as "Beowulf," is essentially a quest story but one in which the seeker aims to renounce power, rather than to seize it. That makes Frodo uncharacteristically humble for a hero and an unusually appealing seeker no matter what the troubled times, and it also speaks to why the book was a cult favorite during the 1960s. (The hobbits' fondness for smoking an herb called pipe-weed likely appealed to the book's original counterculture fan base, as well.) Although Frodo hails from the pastoral Shire and is by nature and inclination gentle, each step of his journey brings him closer to cataclysmic warfare that rumbles during the first volume, erupts in the second and rages throughout the third.
Tolkien began writing "The Lord of the Rings" in 1936 and for years after its publication insisted that it had nothing to do with the Second World War. Jackson has no such qualms but his inspiration is cinematic not political. In "The Two Towers," he cribs an iconic image of massed troops from Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda reverie, "Triumph of the Will," but the allusion loses its punch when you realize that another shot of goose-stepping troops has been lifted from "The Wizard of Oz." Tolkien built his story on foundation myths; Jackson builds his on movies: The film's most charming new creature, a mossy shepherd named Treebeard, walks like the heron described by Tolkien but looks like a relation of the animated trees in "Oz." When Gollum (voiced by Andy Serkis, with goggling computer-generated eyes and slithering silvery body) returns to the scene to pull the word "master" from its mouth, it's with the same sinister fawning as Dracula's helper Renfield.
Despite these cinephile fillips, Jackson and fellow screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Stephen Sinclair have enough to do just keeping Tolkien's histories and characters in play. To that end, the new film faithfully opens with the human warrior Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), a huntsman with his own impending quest issues, in the company of the Elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and the Dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies). Together, the three are hotfooting across green slopes in search of two other fellowship members, the hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), who have been kidnapped by Orcs, servants of Sauron's strongest ally, the wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee).
Tolkien devotes the first half of "The Two Towers" to Aragorn's exploits and the second to those of Frodo; Jackson instead oscillates between the questing travelers before getting swept up in a battle that nearly proves the undoing of Aragorn and the film. While searching for the hobbits, Aragorn and his companions enter the human kingdom of Rohan, where they're soon engaged in protecting its people from Sauron's army. Jackson spends an interminable amount of time in Rohan, lavishing his attention on a battle that consumes less than a chapter in the novel. Set at night, the fight unfolds with hordes of the enemy ("thick as marching ants," in Tolkien's words) descending in waves. Despite Mortensen's energetic vaults across the set, the tension slackens precipitously. It isn't only that there's no fun to be had watching ants get squashed; it's that the battle, designed for the video-game generation, proceeds in frustrating starts and stops, as if Jackson couldn't get past the first level.
With "The Fellowship of the Ring," Jackson delivered us into never-before-seen worlds. The fellowship covers new ground in "The Two Towers" but the story bogs down in Rohan, a dreary stopover that fails to capture the imagination; unlike the Shire or Elvish lands, it doesn't look that different from the back-lot Middle Ages we've seen elsewhere. During the past few decades, computer technologies have enhanced (and waylaid) numerous films but it wasn't until Jackson's first try at Tolkien that we saw the greater possibilities of those technologies, particularly in the realm of fantasy, where now everything seems possible. After years of anemic space escapades in which the blue screen was invariably more important than the flesh-and-blood actors, digital video technologies were put in the service of a juicy story and not the reverse.
That more or less holds true in "The Two Towers" even if for stretches at a time the tools at Jackson's disposal distract him from what he does best, which is push the story forward with the enthusiasm of a filmmaker who hasn't put ego before movie love. The director's great strength is the confidence with which he translates Tolkien's vision into visual imagery even if he still gets tripped up converting that vision into dialogue.
"The Fellowship of the Ring" was periodically hampered by the writers' attempts to cut swaths through the narration. There's as much exposition in "The Two Towers" but because Jackson and his screenwriter partners don't want to repeat themselves, they lay out the story even less clearly than they did on their first outing. When Aragorn consults with Gandalf, it's easy to get lost in a thicket of names and allegiances.
It was during one such eyelid-drooping moment while watching "The Two Towers" that I flashed on an old Gary Larson cartoon that pokes gentle fun at the nomenclature found in books of this sort by contrasting the names we give dogs with those they give themselves. "I am known as Vexog," says one dog (a.k.a. Rex), "Destroyer of Cats and Devourer of Chickens." "I am Zornorph," says another, proudly, "the One Who Comes by Night to the Neighbor's Yard, and this is Princess Sheewana, Barker of Great Annoyance and Daughter of Queen La, Stainer of Persian Rugs."
The absurdity of the dog names was a relief, giving me a momentary reprieve from the film and its insistent monumentality. At that instant, I stopped bumming about the second film and began looking forward to the third. Such is the nature of geek love. As with "The Fellowship of the Ring," the excitement and pleasure of "The Two Towers" comes from the feeling that we're doing more than simply watching a film but have, rather, embarked on an epic journey with like-minded travelers. If the second film never reaches the highs of the first -- we have met the players before and there are no new worlds of wonder -- it nonetheless invests moviegoing with a sense of adventure. Like Frodo and Aragorn, we have to cover a lot of middling expository ground in "The Two Towers" -- here, we're just passing through on our way to the end.
'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'
MPAA rating: PG-13 for battle sequences and scary images.
Times guidelines: There's a lot of fighting and death but little bloodshed; overall, it's less scary than the first film.
Elijah Wood ... Frodo ... Gandalf ... Arwen ... Aragorn ... Sam
Ian McKellen
Liv Tyler
Viggo Mortensen
Sean Astin
New Line Cinema presents a Wingnut production. Director Peter Jackson. Writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair, Peter Jackson. Producers Barrie M. Osborne, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson. Director of photography Andrew Lesnie. Production designer Grant Major. Film Editor Michael Horton. Music Howard Shore. Visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel. Special makeup creature miniature and digital effects Weta Ltd., NZ. Costume designers Ngila Dickson, Richard Tyler. Running time: 2 hours, 59 minutes.
In general release.
How can this be "Redundant" if it's the first post? I don't understand... Oh well, I hope I see this in meta-mod...
Been using the HOSTS file on all my machines to block most ads, wondering if it would work for this too by simply adding any domain name anti-leech uses to it?
My funding priority would be the making of high quality porn to be distributed across P2P networks.
1. Find out if this guy has a web server. /.
2. Post address to another front page article on
3. ???
Browsing directories on this server (uruklink.net) is permitted. Wonder what kind of files are loaded on this system? Some poor soul in Iraq is gonna suffer when Saddam finds out American geeks have been hacking his site.
Share the file on P2P networks!
Faster than /. can melt a underpowered server, which is about the time the 5th comment is posted.
Answer is yes since nearly all consoles can run Linux these days...
If you look closely at his desktop, you will see that he is running the Xitami webserver, not Apache.
At least someone here is right. I just started playing Legend of Zelda again today, should be finished with first quest in just a few hours now...
Everyone on here is so anti-Microsoft, but with this server being slashdotted so quickly you have to wonder about that...
Why no links to riaa.org? Did they complain about the slashdot effect or something?
Can't get to the page, it seems that the servers they are using consist of those "defective" parts.
Trust me, I DO remember what the trap screens looked like. This machine was in text mode with information about the trap. It was/still is a good operating system, but it wasn't completely bulletproof (like any other system). I would still be using it today if I didn't have to reboot into Win98 to play my favorite games (maybe either I will stop being too lazy to reboot or the project Odin will solve this one day).
Not too many people would have this under OS/2. I haven't seen OS/2 used by web servers (except for certain OS/2 supporter sites), but I did see it just 2 or 3 weeks at a local ATM. I only knew it was OS/2 because it was crashed, and I remember the Trap screen well from when I used it on my system.
Who says all us are fat, pimply-faced slobs? I'm in the military and I've seen quite a few others in here that are computers geeks, so obviously we have to be in shape you know.
Do the /. editors actually read /. or know how to use a spell checker? I really don't think so...
/.'ing a server so quickly should be a crime.