Applefritter - PC/Intel

PC Hardware Buyer's Guide

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 14:59:36 -0800

[center] [center][b]Choosing the Perfect Components[/b][/center] [i]PC Hardware Buyer's Guide[/i], by Robert Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson is intended for readers seeking advice on how to build their own PC. From the power supply to the mouse, it provides purchase recommendations and warns of potential hazards. This review will approach the book from the perspective of an experienced Macintosh user looking to build an Intel-based Linux system. The components covered in the book are: [list][*]Case [*]Power Supply [*]Processor [*]Heatsink/Fan [*]Motherboard [*]Memory [*]Floppy Drive [*]Hard DRive [*]Optical Drive [*]Video Adapter [*]Display [*]Audio Adapter [*]Speakers [*]Keyboard [*]Mouse [*]Network Adapter [*]Modem[/list] Thompsons' advice on choosing a case is all common sense, but the discussion of power supplies is very helpful, providing quite a bit of information on output ratings and operational temperatures. They explain how much current you'll need based on several sample systems. Next, processors are explained. This section covers a lot of topics Mac users are probably unfamiliar with, including choosing a fabrication size and socket type. As usual, the Thompsons provide buying advice based on what sort of system the reader is building. They also provide recommendations for heatsinks, processor fans, and thermal compounds - not topics I've traditionally had to worry about! The explanation of motherboards is adequate and explains which chipsets are appropriate for which types of systems and how to check processor compatibility. It also covers such features as power management, wakeup functions, and boot device support. The section on RAM is a straightforward discussion of different RAM types and their abilities. The discussion of hard drives and optical drives contains nothing a Mac user will be unfamiliar with. They also cover floppy drives, which I scoffed at, until I saw [url=http://www.mitsumi.com/products/fa402amain.html]this cool device[/url]. The Thompsons recommend embedded video for most applications, but still provide a lot of information on possible video cards. They recommend most users stick with onboard audio, but also suggest a few high-end audio cards. Linux compatibility is discussed. The section discussing the relative merits of CRTs and LCDs seems dated to the point of uselessness. Keyboard, mouse, and speakers are also covered, but there's nothing here particularly surprising. Network cards are covered but these are such a commodity there isn't much to discuss. Wireless cards and modems are addressed, but there's not a lot in these sections a Mac user won't already be familiar with. The book ends with a discussion of where to buy components that's not particularly useful. As a whole, though, the book is an excellent reference when choosing components. For the reader who isn't familiar with the PC architecture, this is an excellent guide with which to navigate the specification-laden component listings on sites like PriceWatch. [i]Buy on Amazon:[/i] [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596009380/applefritter-20]PC Hardware Buyer's Guide: Choosing the Perfect Components[/url]

BeOS: A Retrospective

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 14:55:47 -0700

[image:2616] BeOS was the brainchild of former Apple executive, Jean Louis Gasse, who founded Be Inc. in late 1990. BeOS was originally intended to be a continuation of Jaguar (an early RISC prototype) at Apple. It was to run on the BeBox, a machine with four AT&T Hobbit processors. The Hobbit was discontinued, and left Be in shambles. The engineers scrambled to create a new platform for the OS to run on, and eventually they found the PowerPC. BeOS and the new BeBox debuted at the Agenda 95 conference in the fall of 1995 to critical acclaim. The demo was so successful that Be got the biggest investment it ever received, a check for $4 million from David Marquadt. Nonetheless, Be was mounting serious debt, and was forced to discontinue its hardware line. Yet again without a platform, the Be engineers ported BeOS to the PowerMac. BeOS continued investing a large portion of their talents and energies into BeOS for the PowerMac, hoping to be acquired by Apple, but in December 1996 Apple announced it would acquire NeXT and make OpenStep the basis of its next generation operating system. Be then set about porting their operating system for the third time to the Pentium. Despite these efforts, Be was never successful and eventually sold its assets to Palm, where Gasse is now a board member). [h2]Interface Basics[/h2] [image:2625] BeOS has an intuitive and elegant interface. Located in the top right corner, the Deskbar is the equivalent of the Dock in Mac OS X. It displays all of the running apps, and allows users to change their settings. Across the top of the display, there are icons for all of the drives mounted on the system (note the Mac OS inspired look), shortcuts and the trash can. Much like GNU Linux, and other platforms, BeOS uses workspaces. Workspaces are like virtual screens running on the system. For example, I am surfing the net on Screen 1, writing this document on Screen 2, reading the forums on Screen 3, and browsing my email on Screen 4. [image:2623] Be is unusual in the way it draws its windows. Instead of having title bars that span the entire width of the window, the title bars in BeOS are only large enough for the tile of the window, the close button, and resize button. To hide these window, you double click them with your middle mouse button. [h2]Apps[/h2] BeOS comes bundled with a handful of applications. The most useful of these are the mail client and web browser. The web browser, NetPositive, is remarkable, but aging. It does just about everything, except for JavaScript, and Flash, and it renders sites almost instantly. It loads AppleFritter forums in slightly less than 2 seconds on my cable connection. One of the interesting features of NetPostive is its error messages. The 404 Error messages are written in haiku. [image:2619] The mail app is much like Nisus Email in the way it stores emails. Instead of a custom application, it treats the inbox as a special folder on the hard drive. Otherwise the app is not that remarkable. [image:2620] Despite its small user base, BeOS has many third party applications written for it, many of them free. Likely, the most popular third party software is Bezilla and Opera, two web browsers ported to BeOS. I personally prefer Opera, but for those of you who need to view complex sites, try Mozilla. [image:2617] My favorite free word processor is AbiWord, a port of the famous KDE word processor. It supports older Microsoft Office files, is capable of reading and writing HTML, and can export to PDF. If you need a serious word processor, try GoBE's BeProductive Suite. It was designed by the same engineers who worked on ClarisWorks. [h2]Weird Stuff[/h2] Here are some screen shots of BeOS being weird. [image:2618] [image:2621] [image:2624] BeOS has Workspaces, just like Linux. Though I only have twelve, you can use up to 32. [h2]Where can I get Be OS?[/h2] BeOS personal edition is offered as a [url=http://bebits.com/app/2680]free download[/url] for Windows and Linux x86. If you are using a PCI PowerMac, try to find a copy on eBay. BeOS does not support NuBus, 52xx, or anything G3 and up.

Toadem

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 21:03:18 -0700

by Kay Orchison [center][image:464][/center] It used to be a dead toaster. Now it's a working 33.6k modem. Toadem is now living with a woman who drives it from an AMD K62 running Windows 98. The badge is from a cheap overdamper piano Kay played as a child, which suffered a cracked frame in his house move in 1980, and later became his first computer desk. [center][image:465][/center] And the rear view... [center][image:463][/center]

Expanding Your Mac - A Rundown of Macintosh Slots

Sat, 29 May 2004 12:50:43 -0700

[i]Computers were designed as general purpose machines with the ability to do anything in the digital world that one can imagine. The standard configuration of a machine may not suit the mind of a creator or artist, so they'll add something to it. Their are many different types of boards available and they can fit into different types of slots. The type of slot dictates how many things work inside of a machine. The most common features are integrated onto a computer's motherboard but they are addressed virtually as if the functionality were an expansion card.[/i] [b]ISA - Industry Standard Architecture[/b] The ancient Intel design for expansion cards. Developed in the 1980's by computer giant IBM, it quickly became the standard in PC's. The 8 bit ISA bus is limited to 8 MB/sec bandwidth with the 16 variant offering twice that. The bus design works in tandem with the old IDE devices, floppy, PS/2, serial and parallel ports often found on PC's. That pretty much covers all the legacy ports the PC industry. The ISA standard has evolved a bit over time but not at the same pace as the various components an a motherboard. As processors continued to become faster and data traffic between devices exploded Intel created another standard - PCI. Why is the ISA important to Macintosh users since Apple never made a machine with an ISA slot? While a Mac never shipped with an ISA slot on the motherboard, the ISA bus have been used for communication between devices on the motherboard. PC Cards (aka PCMIA Type I and Type II) were designed around 16 bit ISA bus protocols. [b]NuBus[/b] Originally designed by MIT and then trade marked by Texas Instruments, the Nubus design was chosen by Apple for expanding the Mac II line. At its heart, Nubus is a 32 bit slot running at 10 Mhz for 40 MB/sec of bandwidth. For its time, it was a relatively fast bus. Since Apple was the only major company to adopt the standard, pretty much every Nubus card was proprietary to the Mac. With the Mac in a niche market meant Nubus cards carried a price premium. To keep Nubus competitive, Apple increased the clock speed of Nubus to 20 Mhz, but that wasn't enough. As Nubus showed its age, Apple wisely adopted the faster, more industry standard, and cheaper architecture of PCI. [b]PCI - Peripheral Communication Interconnect[/b] Intel, using its juggernaut control over the industry, guided to a new bus design called PCI to market. Intel made it industry standard and was adopted as such quickly. Apple wisely decided to follow the industry's decision. Being 32 bits wide and running at 33 Mhz provided 132 MB/sec of bandwidth. Just like ISA, the bus design was used for interfacing various motherboard components - IDE, SCSI, USB, on board video for example. Even the ancient ISA bus was to become a component along the PCI bus on motherboards. PCI has evolved over time to keep up with the demand of high speed peripherals. Their are two easy ways to gain bandwidth, one by increasing the clock speed and another by increasing the bus width and the industry went both ways to increase speed. 64 bit PCI slots are backwards compatible with 32 bit cards and run at the same voltage. For 66 Mhz slots, the voltage had to be dropped from 5 volts to 3.3 volt and has a slightly different slot key. Cards can be made to run at either 33 Mhz or 66 Mhz, allowing card makers to take advantage of the extra speed with compatibility in mind. For the ultra high end motherboards, manufacturers can use 64 bit and 66 Mhz techniques for 533 MB/sec of bandwidth. The B&W G3 is the only Apple machine to have a 66 Mhz PCI slot. The B&W G3 and all G4's to date have 64 bit PCI slots. The new Xserve is uber cool with its 64 bit/66 Mhz PCI slots. [b]AGP - Accelerated Graphics Port[/b] The industry was content with PCI except for one segment - the video card market. The high demands of video received its own dedicated bus - AGP. Video cards quickly migrated over to the new bus given its dedicated, high bandwidth design. Even PCI cards are happy since they didn't have to compete with a video card for shared bandwidth. Another advantage of the AGP bus is direct access to main memory for storage of information. It can buffer information to system memory that a card cannot store on its own dedicated memory. In fact, an AGP video card does not have to have any memory of its own as it can use system memory for everything. Bandwidth on the AGP bus can be multiplied from its base 264 MB/sec of bandwidth. For example AGP 4X has just over 1 GB/sec bandwidth. [b]PDS - Processor Direct Slot[/b] This slot is generally unique in design to a machine (SE or LC) or generation of machines (Quarda, 1st gen PowerMac). The design philosophy is similar in nature to AGP as it provides a relatively fast dedicated bus to the processor/memory. However, a PDS is not limited to graphics functions as SCSI, Ethernet and other devices. The physical connector for a PDS card is just as varied as what can go into them. PDS cards are often unique and expensive due to the small market and proprietary design associated to the PDS slot.