| Tuesday, May
23, 2000
Jerry,
I read with interest Bob Thompson's comments on
motherboards based upon the VIA Apollo Pro 133 and 133A chipsets. I agree
with everything he says except:
My experience with the Apollo Pro 133 chipset was as
Bob describes them...slow and buggy. The 133A has been something else,
though. My current main system is built around a Tyan Trinity 400
motherboard (model 1854S). It uses the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset. VIA
has recently released a new set of windows interface driver files that
improve stability and speed (particularly the AGP driver 4.02) for
motherboards in the Windows 9X environment. The drivers are available at
www.viatech.com/drivers With these, and the latest BIOS from Tyan for my
motherboard, my 1854 is ALMOST as fast as a BX board (say within 3 per
cent or so) and every bit as stable. This is with everything set at
nominal values (100 mhz FSB, CAS3 for the memory...in short, no tricks.)
The situation under Windows 2000 is more
complicated. My board is very reliable but decidedly slow under Windows
2000 when compared to the same components installed a BX based motherboard
(Tyan 1830S). The problem appears to be in the video subsystem. Given that
the performance delta between the 133A board and BX board under windows 9X
are minimal, I believe that the problem is software rather than hardware
and it is more a matter of immature driver and interface files than
anything else. Whether VIA, nVidia (in my case) Microsoft and the various
motherboard suppliers fix this remains to be seen.
Practically speaking, Thompson is on target in
asserting that the best motherboard solution available today remains the
BX based motherboard with an Intel Coppermine CPU. In fact, were I going
to do this last system iteration over again I would buy the Tyan 1857
motherboard rather than the 1854...they are the same except the 1857 is BX
based. ASUS' new CUBX board is another contender. It is also BX based and
has an extraordinary set of user definable settings.
However, by spending time tuning my 1854 BIOS, BIOS
settings, video drivers and interface files achieved reliable and stable
performance from my Trinity 400 that falls with measurement error of a BX
system...under Windows 9X.
Win2K's video subsystem for the VIA Apollo Pro 133A
chipset is broken and needs to be fixed. While my system is very stable
and reliable, I recommend Windows 2000 users stay with the BX chipset
based systems until somebody can make a convincing case to switch. The
Apollo Pro 133A chip is not it, nor apparently are the Intel 810, 820 and
840 chipsets. Robert has clearly and accurately exposed AGP4X, 133mhz
memory and UltraDMA 66 as marketing gimmicks and with that, BX chipset
motherboards represent the reliable, efficient and cost effective
solution. It remains to be seen if the Intel 815 chipset, due to be
released soon, will provide any meaningful performance or compatibility
advantages over the BX chipset.
In any case, let me repeat your admonition that no
matter which motherboard you decide to use, there is no substitute for a
solid case and power supply. I'm using a PC Power and Cooling 450W ATX
unit and all steel tower case. The PS replaced a PC Power 300W unit that
delivered six years of excellent service. I replaced it only because I
changed form factors from AT to ATX with the last motherboard swap. The
case is the most solid I have seen and has survived moves from San Diego
to Stuttgart to Washington DC to Los Angeles to Omaha without problem.
Regards
Ron
Just a suggestion, but have you considered putting a
Last Week link and a Next Week link on your View and Mail pages? It'd take
only a moment to update when you were creating the new page for the week,
and it would make it much easier for readers to page back and forth.
I thought about this when I read the reader reply to
my comments on VIA, UDMA66, and so on. While doing that, I was going to
page back and read what I'd said. In order to do that the way things are
set up now, I had to load the View Home page, wait for it to load, then
load the most recent numbered View page, wait for it to load, and then go
find my comments. If you put Last Week and Next Week links on each current
page, readers could just flip back and forth.
Just a thought.
Bob
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com
I tried it just now, and perhaps, but it takes a
significant amount of time since I do not have an automated system for
updating to the next week. Perhaps I ought to write some kind of script
that does it, but I never have time.
Mostly I should have supplied the cross link
myself. I usually do, but not this time. That's fixed anyway.
Hello Jerry,
There seems to me to have been a logical
inconsistency between cruise missiles and SDI. If satellites can track
cruise missules then these lose their main advantage. There would be
advance warning, perhaps the cruise missiles could even be neutralized. On
the other hand, if the satellites can't track cruise missiles, then the
nuclear umbrella has a fatal gaping hole. Can you shed any light on this?
John Hendrickx
Two different problems, although
ground based lasers with orbital mirrors have some applications in
intercepting cruise missiles. A cruise missile is a pilotless aircraft, or a
remotely piloted aircraft. Air defenses and missile defenses have different
technological solutions. Defense is costly and complex, and no one has ever
said it isn't. With luck it's never used, either: but was it wasted?
Is a policeman's protective vest wasted if he's never shot at? After all he
could be clubbed in the head, or poisoned...
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I have attached a link to an interesting article
regarding the bankruptcy reform legislation was agreed upon by our
legislators in secret committee. (Rather then resolve differences between
the house and senate version using the normal method of a joint
committee,the leadership of both houses decided to negotiate in secret
among themselves.)
Our government never ceases to amaze me with its
contempt for the populace and its disregard for the liberties which were
fought for during its inception.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/columns/gillmor/docs/dg052300.htm
Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of bureaucracy.
John Wm. Zaccone
Haven't read it. What does it
say? Little surprises me that comes from "staffers" who
are much easier to get at than Congresscritters, and who often have
agendas of their own.
Dear Jerry:
I have been reading your Byte column for many years
and consider you to be the best computer columnist in the business, along
with John C. Dvorak.
I particularly enjoyed your column on the Federal
Government's attempts to break up Microsoft. I too am a defender of
Microsoft and the free market. A company should not be punished for being
successful, as long as it has obeyed the law.
Microsoft has, however, pulled a boner with it's
Windows Scripting Host, the software that comes with IE 5 and Win98 SE.
It's nice that Microsoft has finally got around to duplicating the utility
of the old DOS batch files in the Windows environment. What's not so nice
is that Microsoft has enabled this feature by default, leaving your
computer wide open to attack by computer viruses. Double-clicking on any
file with a .vbs or .js extension leaves your PC, and the network to which
it is attached, completely vulnerable to attack. The recent ILOVEYOU virus
is a good example of just such a malicious .vbs file.
What to do? The fix is surpringly easy, and works on
all Win95, Win98, WinNT and Win2K machines. First, use Find / File to
search your computer for the files wscript.exe and cscript.exe. Next,
rename theses files to wscript.bak and cscript.bak respectively. Now .vbs
files will now no longer run. Don't worry--the only programs that use .vbs
files are viruses!
You can now relax. You are now immune from whatever
.vbs virus comes next! And if you ever decide you would like to experiment
with .vbs programming you can always rename the .bak files back to .exe
files.
Regards, John Drake Toronto, Canada
Or, you can rename them to something
like runwscript.exe. Certainly a sensible precaution. Thanks for the kind
words. Renaming to .bak runs
afoul of automatic cleanup programs that may simply delete all bak files.
Incidentally, since in W 2000 there is dll cache, renaming those programs
may be harder than you think: rname the ones in the cache director before
doing the ones in the system directory and even then do a search: they
have a habit of reappearing. Microsoft really wants those scripting files
active. After you finally
rename the things, W 2000 pops up an ominous warning that says you are
about to die. Ignoring it gets another. With a black window in the tray. I
have told it to go away, and I wait with abated breath...
And a better way:
I sent this to Mr. Syroid, but seem to have
neglected you... The easiest and safest way to eliminate the VBS/VBE
problem is to do as little as possible to change your system. Go into your
file associations and find all of the file types that are associated with
wscript.exe. Change their default behavior from "Open" to
"Edit". You'll still be able to run a vbs file by right-clicking
and picking "Open", but if you double-click, it will just open
up in notepad.
That way, the next time you install something that
wants windows scripting, it will find that it's already there and leave
things alone instead of installing it "for you".
Bill Cavanaugh billcav@pobox.com
"Take THAT, kin of Evil!"
Power Puff Girl Buttercup
From: Stephen M. St.
Onge saintonge@hotmail.com
Subject: More Biology News
Dear Jerry:
According to the Washington Post today, the Human
Genome project is 'almost, almost finished.' Which means that within a few
weeks, the researchers expect to have all forty-six chromosomes to about
90% accuracy, and after another two years will have it to 99.9%.
Now the fun begins. Anyone whom has not reread Mr.
Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon recently is advised to remind himself
what's coming soon. (Lordy, SIXTY years old, they hadn't even counted the
chromosome number correctly, and that novel still has the entire subject
of genetic engineering as a backdrop for a meditation on the meaning of
life, all as an integral part of a cracking good story! "Me hat's off
to the Duke.")
The most interesting part of the article, imao, is
this: Perhaps most surprising, two analyses released this month suggest
that the entire human genome may contain fewer than 40,000 genes--about
half the number that scientists have presumed (no more than a worm and a
fly combined, Collins quips).
That doesn't mean people are genetically less
complicated than had been thought. On the contrary, it is becoming clear
that single genes can produce multiple biological products, in some cases
by having their DNA code cut, shuffled and spliced in various ways on
different days depending on what the body needs.
Scientists once thought that each gene directed the
production of a single protein product for the body, but the new model is
that as few as 40,000 genes can direct the production of a million or more
different protein products.
That raises many questions, prominent among them:
What tells a gene how to splice itself to produce whatever is needed at
the time? Attention is gradually turning to the so-called junk DNA, which
may not be as junky or superfluous as once thought. Indeed, some
researchers are beginning to suspect that these stretches of poorly
understood DNA might even play a role in various diseases.
Interesting times indeed!
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36634-2000May19.html
Best, St. Onge
Indeed. One might also read C. S.
Lewis, The Abolition of Man.
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