Old 2001 News

	12-23-2001 - 15:24 EST
			Happy Holidays from CyberTekIt - Have a happy and safe holiday this Winter 2001. Please travel safely and be on the alert for any activity that is strange and unusual. Do not forget that the United States is in a time of war, and that the safety of our nation is dependent on both the government and its citizens.
			IBM to Build Supercomputer for Weather Predictions - The European Centre for Medium-Ranged Weather Forecasts is planning on purchasing a supercomputer to be built by IBM. This system, nicknamed "Blue Storm," will be completed by 2004 and is projected to be twice as fast as the current top supercomputer in use. Read more here.
			FBI Warns of Microsoft XP Bug - The FBI's National Infrastructure Center put out a word of caution in regard to using Windows XP, which has been reported as being very susceptible to malicious hacker use on the Internet. While Microsoft has offered a patch, the FBI is warning users to disable "universal plug and play." Read more here.
			IBM Conducts Quantum Research - IBM is currently working with millions of self-manufactured molecules that are being used to conduct quantum computing. Quantum computers work with data bits that are represented as 0s, 1s, or both at the same time (i.e. 0s and 1s). These bits are referred to as "qubits." Quantum computing is currently being developed to work with large mathematical computations. Read more here.
	12-9-2001 - 22:55 EST
			NASA Life in Jeopardy - The survivability of NASA is coming into question. The September 11th attacks have switched the government's views. NASA has been accused of spending too much money, even though the international space station may never be completed. Read more here.
	12-9-2001 - 22:30 EST
			Site Back Up - The website is back up. It was down after some necessary changes were made. Sorry for any inconvenience.
			Server Upgrade - After patience and hard work, I have upgraded my main server to a dual Xeon-450 system. You can find out more by going to the setup page.
	11-13-2001 - 20:37 EST
			Comdex 2001 - This year's crowd at the most famous computer display event is the smallest it has seen in a decade. AOL / Time Warner, Sony, and Nokia have teamed up to develop communications devices that will easily share information. Wireless technology, mainly pioneered by Cisco, is being highly advertised as the network of the future. Biometrics, which involves using human features for security clearance, is also a big player. Read more here.
			Federal Government Receives Failing Grade for Network Security - A House panel gave the U.S. government an "F" for not making a galant effort to highten security on its existing network infrastructure. According to the study, two-thirds of the networks flunked. Read more here.
	10-15-2001 - 21:06 EST
			Technology Tidbytes - Maxtor is now offering 120GB and 160GB IDE hard drives using the new ATA/133 interface. Quantum has increased the capacity of its Snap Server 12000 to 960GB. ATI's new Radeon 8500 improves on their head display technology and is supposed to run more than twice as fast as the original Radeon.
	9-23-2001 - 17:12 EST
			IDE RAID With Windows 2000 - Tom's Hardware has a thorough article on the advantages of running a RAID setup using Windows 2000. The article covers a wide variety of combinations of drives and channels used. It also mentions the cost of IDE vs. SCSI RAID setups.
			Sun Microsystems to Reveal New High-End Server - Sun is planning on introducing their Starcat server line on Tuesday, September 25th. Designed to compete with Intel's Itanium, the new server will be designed around the Ultrasparc and allow for up to 72 processors per machine. Read more here.
	9-18-2001 - 12:14 EST
			There has been little to report lately in the way of computers. Most of the news sites are covering the terrorist attacks, with little room for other content. I have updated the processor page and a couple of the chipset pages. It will be a slow process to get new computer news as the world readjusts after the events on September 11th.
	9-2-2001 - 17:17 EST
			DOJ Requested to Turn Down Microsoft Appeal - The U.S. government has asked the Supreme Court to turn down the request by Microsoft to review its appeal. Some of the rulings made by Thomas Penfield Jackson in the antitrust case have been upheld. Read more here.
	9-2-2001 - 17:17 EST
			Snap Releases New NAS Device - Snap Appliances has released the Snap Server 12000, which holds 900GB. The $14,999 device comes capable with programming for RAID levels 0, 1, and 5. Read more here.
	9-1-2001 - 17:13 EST
			New Serial ATA Standard - Seagate, Intel, IBM, Dell, and several other computer companies have designed a new serial ATA standard that promises to transfer data at up to 600 Mbps. Seagate and Intel have revealed a prototype drive to demonstrate the technology. You can read more here.
	8-27-2001 - 13:10 EST
			IBM Completes Second Step in New Microprocessor Technology - IBM has completed the task of creating a carbon nanotube that can change polarity, giving way for its use in transistors. The carbon nanotube is only a couple of nanometers in diameter and is roughly ten times the strength of steel. Read more here.
	8-27-2001 - 13:06 EST
			FBI Case Against Wen Ho Lee is Scrutinized - The Justice Department is inquiring in the handling of the ex-Los Alamos employee that was accused of giving nuclear information to China. In their investigation, the FBI is questioned as to why the case took so long to be completed, why inexperienced agents were put on the case, and why the Attorney General received word about it before the FBI director himself. Read more here.
	8-27-2001 - 12:55 EST
			SONET Gets a Facelift - In an article from the August 2001 edition of Network Magazine, SONET is being revamped so that it can provide a common interface between many protocol platforms, including ATM, frame relay, and IP. Also, with the current SONET interface, a particular line has to be dedicated regardless of the amount of bandwidth the customer may actually use. With the new system, a line will be subdivided into individual circuits in which several customers use the combined bandwidth for their traffic. Read more here.
	8-27-2001 - 12:46 EST
			Intel Sets Another Milestone - Intel has announced the release of the 2 GHz Pentium 4 processor. In addition, they have released a 1.9 GHz version. Read more here (short article).
	8-23-2001 - 8:49 EST
			Lawrence Livermore Labs Reveals New Supercomputer - A CNN article from August 16th mentions that Livermore has a new supercomputer that is used for nuclear simulations among other tests. The unit was built by IBM and takes up as much space as two basketball courts. It has 8,192 processors and can calculate 12.3 trillion calculations per second. You can read more here.
			On a similar note, IBM has partnered with the Department of Energy to build a another supercomputer. Started in 1999, this new system will be able to calculate 1,000 trillion calculations per second, compared with the supercomputer Livermore just unveiled. Read more here.
	8-7-2001 - 16:48 EST
			Microsoft Appeals Antitrust Case - Microsoft has appealed to the Supreme Court against the claim they are a monopoly. In their defense, Microsoft has reinquired as to whether Thomas Penfield Jackson took the antitrust case to a personal level. You can read the full article here.
	8-7-2001 - 9:37 EST
			The Next Evolution to a LAN is a SAN or NAS - An article in the August 1, 2001 edition of Internet World describes how to implement a storage area network (SAN) or use network-attached storage (NAS) for storing data. NAS devices are ones like Quantum's Snap servers, which provide storage without having to be connected to a PC. They plug directly into your network hub or switch. SANs involve the use of fibre channel as the connection backbone. You can read the article here.
	7-25-2001 - 20:31 EST
			OCZ Technology Releases Faster Version of the GeForce 3 - You read right. OCZ released the Titan 3, a version of the variety of GeForce 3 cards that has memory clocked at 3.8ns, or 526 MHz on the DDR bandwagon. Other cards are currently using 460 MHz DDR memory. There is, however, some speculation to whether they will get sued for it. This being posted by Tech Extreme. Read more here.
	7-21-2001 - 11:53 EST
			IBM Breaks Internet Speed Record - IBM has broken the Internet speed record by having 9,106 simultaneous connections on an E-Server p680, a 12-way system running Zeus 3.3.8.4 web server software. The previous record was 8,739 on a Sun UltraSparc III 12-way Sun Fire 4800. You can read the article here.
			Creative's new Sound Blaster Live! for the Mac - Creative Labs now has a version of their Sound Blaster Live! for the Apple MacIntosh platform. It is based on the same quality EMU10K1 audio processor used by previous Live! products. You can find out more here.
	7-21-2001 - 10:56 EST
			Maxtor Breaks ATA Drive Capacity Limit - Maxtor, in conjunction with Microsoft, Compaq, VIA Technologies, and others, has broken the current 137GB capacity limit on the current ATA interface. As many of you know, there have been certain drive capacity limits with the IDE interface, such as the 528MB, 2.1GB, and 8.4GB barriers the IDE interface has had in the past. The new limit would be more than 100,000 times greater, going as high as 144PB (petabytes). Maxtor has an official link here.
			Western Digital Ships 100GB IDE Drives - Western Digital announced last week that they have begun shipping a 100GB model of their Caviar drives, based on using three platters. Maxtor's current 80GB model utilizes four platters. You can read the article here. Western Digital also released an 80GB firewire drive and an UDMA/66 firewire controller. You can read this article here.
	7-20-2001 - 11:23 EST
			DDR SDRAM Puts the Pressure on RDRAM - AMD Zone mentions an article that describes the performance of DDR SDRAM against RDRAM. A new beta version of the popular program Sisoft Sandra better illustrates how DDR SDRAM can perform. Read the entire article here.
	7-12-2001 - 16:27 EST
			Microsoft Software Allows Nuclear Information Access - An article posted by Packet Storm reports that Microsoft software donated to the Russians by Los Alamos National Laboratory is flawed. Documents containing nuclear information sometimes disappear from the database. It is possible that these documents can be accessed from outside sources. Read more here.
	7-11-2001 - 20:18 EST
			Microsoft Presents Mixed Reviews - Microsoft announced today that it's revenues for Q2 2001 would be three percent higher. They also said that they have approximately $2.6 billion in investment losses. These losses are due primariliy to cable and telecommunications investments. You can read the full story here. In addition, Microsoft has announced changes to how it handles its integration of Internet Explorer into Windows. You can read this story here and here.
			Black Hat Briefings Security Conference in Las Vegas - This conference is taking place Wednesday and Thursday. It includes hackers, security specialists, and CIOs. This conference helps promote defending systems, while the Def Con conference promotes attacking systems. Read the full story here.
	6-29-2001 - 9:32 EST
			Microsoft Breakup Overruled - As many of you are probably aware, the case that U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson proposed for the breakup of Microsoft has been overturned. It also overturned the ruling that Microsoft attempted to monopolize the browser market. However, the appeals court still upholds the fact that Microsoft is a monopoly. You can read the story on MSNBC here.
			This probably begs the question as to whether Jackson was against Microsoft from the beginning. Despite the mistakes Gates and his company have made in the past, and despite the many people who may hate Microsoft for various reasons, it would seem that the justice system still tries to be fair and impartial. This does not mean I am personally defending Microsoft. It simply means one should do the research and look at cases like this from all sides. Whatever the outcome, I believe it is safe to say that Microsoft will be around for a long time.
	6-20-2001 - 14:24 EST
			Matrox Announces G550 Graphics Chip - Matrox's new graphics chip specializes in headcasting technology for high-definition 3D communications. The chip is paired with a 360 MHz RAMDAC and 32MB DDR SDRAM. It appears Matrox has given up the 3D gaming competition. nVidia holds out as the sole graphics card king.
	6-20-2001 - 8:29 EST
			ENUM to Become Standard in VoIP Communications - An article in the June edition of Sounding Board explains that the ENUM standard for VoIP communications involves mapping phone numbers to IP addresses. The standard is to be defined as E164. This represents a major effort to make it easier to access information by simply dialing a telephone number. People will be able to access an "IP business phone, a mobile phone, an e-mail account, a fax machine, or a PDA" by simply going to a specific IP address.
			The following companies are involved in this technology:   Internet Engineering Task Force   International Telecommunications Union   Neustar, Inc.   NetNumber, Inc.   Broadsoft, Inc.   Indigo Software, Inc.   National Telecommunications and Information Administration
	6-16-2001 - 12:13 EST
			New DVD-RW on Market - An article in the May edition of PC World mentions Pioner having a DVD drive that reads, writes, and rewrites DVD and CD media. The unit (model DVR-A03) runs approximately $995. Considering that the encoding scheme for DVD movies was cracked sometime ago, it will become quite easy for computer gurus to easily copy DVD movies. In addition, you can now convert that huge collection of CDROMs to just a few DVD disks.
			File Server Upgrade Complete - I changed out the data drives in my file server. The Quantum 9GB SCSI drives were getting noisy, as the bearings could not take the punishment of spinning 24/7. They have been replaced by two SGI / IBM 9GB UWSCSI SCA drives like the ones in my main workstation. Not only are they faster, but they generate less heat because of the smaller form factor (1" as opposed to 1.6").
	6-15-2001 - 11:40 EST
			Intel Claims Moore's Law Holds Out - Intel has created transistors that are only 20 nanometers (nm) in size. Based on this breakthrough, they are claiming they can put more than a billion transistors on a single processor and run processors at 20 GHz. Read more here.
	6-6-2001 - 8:23 EST
			Cisco Offers Long-Reach Ethernet - According to an article in the May 15th, 2001 edition of Internet World, Cisco has come out with long-reach ethernet. This technology utilizes the existing copper telephone wiring presently in buildings, similar to DSL. Speeds are between 5 Mbps and 15 Mbps. Buildings such as the Empire State Building are already wired using this technology, and several hotel chains are considering implementing it.
			@Home Service Much Smoother - @Home's cable modem Internet service appears to be much faster. When gaming online, I have noticed that ping rates to servers are 200ms or less across the nation. Perhaps this is partly due to the decline in other cable or DSL providers.
	6-5-2001 - 14:12 EST
			AMD Enters Multiprocessor Market - AMD has finally released the first chipset to support dual AMD Athlon-class processors: the 760MP chipset. This chipset does not support original Athlon processor, the Duron, or the Thunderbird. Rather, the Palomino, AMD's newest processor release, is specifically designed for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). It has been released in 1 GHz and 1.2 GHz speeds.
			The 760MB chipset is comprised of a 762 northbridge and a 766 southbridge. It supports PC1600 and PC2100 DDR SDRAM. The rest are standard, including PCI 2.2 compliant and support for Ultra ATA-100 devices. Tom's Hardware Guide has a complete article on the chipset.
			Crucial Memory Sold Onsite - Crucial, a division of Micron, is now selling memory online at very competitive prices. What makes them competitive is that they are offering free shipping. Micron has long been making top-quality memory, and they should be on anyone's list for choices when upgrading.
			nVidia Enters the Chipset Arena - nVidia has entered the chipset market with their nForce chipset. It integrates a GeForce 2 MX GPU and dolby 5.1 audio surround sound. It consists of ten million transistors and is manufactured using a .15 micron process. You can learn more about it from an SocketA's website.
	5-31-2001 - 16:47 EST
			Intel Itanium Update - Intel is planning on releasing its Itanium processor at the end of June. 25 companies will be participating in releasing products that support the processor. Also, five operating systems will support the Itanium, including a 64-bit version of Windows and IBM's AIX-5L Linux.
	5-26-2001 - 21:50 EST
			Another Upgrade Complete - I have finished upgrading my main workstation. It is now an AMD K7 Thunderbird 950 with 512MB RAM, and it now includes a Creative Sound Blaster Live and Pioneer 10x / 40x DVD ROM. The majority of the inner components were kept, and the rest were moved to other systems.
	5-22-2001 - 16:40 EST
			World's Largest Disk Drive - Based on an article in the May 2001 edition of Computer Shopper, Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry, and Education has built a disk drive that is 5,000 miles across Canada. It is similar to Internet2, but it uses a token-ring like design to pass data around between machines. It has an optical design and will provide 5,000 Mbps bandwidth with 50ms access times. The neat part is that the data is converted to photons before being transmitted. Go to the website to find out more about CANARIE.
	5-21-2001 - 10:42 EST
			AMD Announces Athlon 4 - AMD has released the Athlon 4, their newest mobile processor. Using PowerNow! technology, the processor is designed to make better use of battery life. It is available in 850, 900, 950, and 1000 MHz speeds. The processor comes with 128KB L1 and 256KB L2 caches. Compaq will be using this processor in some of the Presario notebooks.
			Intel Itanium - Intel has put up a formal page for the Itanium processor. The specifics include initial speeds of 733 and 800 MHz with a 266 MHz bus speed. Up to 32 Itanium processors can be utilized in a system, provided it is designed to hold that many. It will contain 32KB L1 and 96KB L2 caches. An L3 cache of 2MB or 4MB will also be integrated, and it will run at full core clock speed. The memory path has been increased to 44 bits, allowing for up to 16 terabytes of addressable memory.
			The Xeon processor has been released in 1.4, 1.5, and 1.7 GHz speeds with a 400 MHz bus. They have also released the 860 chipset to work with them. Intel only refers to the new processors as Xeon. However, this site will refer to them as Xeon 4.
	5-1-2001 - 23:36 EST
			NVidia Finishes 3Dfx Acquisition - NVidia has finished its acquisition of various 3Dfx assets as of April 19th. I'm still waiting for what they will be doing as far as the future with this. It would be a waste for NVidia to just sit on it.
			Old Micronics Motherboard Info - The Micronics domain web servers are no longer running. Although Diamond Multimedia has moved all pertinent information to their support database, they had continued to run these separately. It's a shame these motherboards are no longer made. They were top notch in their day. When Diamond bought Micronics out, they only made a couple of motherboards afterward.
	4-24-2001 - 13:09 EST
			New Cable Modem Routers - SMC has two new cable / DSL routers on the market. The SMC7008BR has a built-in 7-port 10/100 switch and a 25-pin serial port for a print server. The SMC7208SBR incorporates a 20GB hard drive for network storage to the LAN side.
			Until now, the only company to manufacture an actual cable modem and cable modem router in one was Cisco, with their 900 series of cable modem routers. These units are special in that they don't rely on you using a cable modem to provide the initial connection from your cable coax line; their WAN connection is an actual F-type coax connector. Askey and Toshiba now have cable modem routers as well.
	4-18-2001 - 13:30 EST
			Another upgrade complete. I now have 2 fantastic IBM / SGI Ultrastar DGHS-09Y 9.1GB SCA-2 UWSCSI HDDs in my main workstation. The Seagate Barracuda 9.1GB drive has been moved to the secondary workstation, and the Quantum Capella 1.1GB drive has been removed from it.
	4-17-2001 - 12:45 EST
			USB 2.0 - USB 2.0 is now on the market. Its maximum transfer speed is 480 Mbps. It is backward compatible with USB 1.1. Adaptec has released their AUA-3100LP 4-port USB 2.0 adapter.
			Maxtor and Quantum Merger - This news is a bit old, but it is definitely worth mentioning. As of April 2nd, 2001, Maxtor has completed its acquisition of Quantum's HDD division, making it the world's largest hard drive manufacturer. In addition, Maxtor is moving its stock trading from the NASDAQ to the NYSE.
			Quantum continues to manufacture a variety of DLT tape drive solutions. They are also continuing to make their Snap network storage solutions. A link to this site has been provided on the links page for future reference.
	4-13-2001 - 11:34 EST
			Intel has released new information about their new 64-bit Itanium processor. It includes E-commerce processing tests. It's current test speed is a mere 800 MHz, yet 4 of these processors will outperform a comparedly configured Sun 420R system.
			Via has announced the C3 processor. The newest in their x86-compatible production, the C3 is built using a .15 micron process and is socket 370 pin-compatible. It has a 128KB L1 cache and a 64KB L2 cache, for a total of 192KB. Initial speeds are 733 and 750 MHz.
			Biostar has five new motherboards: four socket A and one socket 370. The M7VKF, M7VKL, M6VLB, and M6VSB have various types of built-in graphics. The M7MIA is based on the AMD 761 chipset and supports Thunderbird processors to 1.33 GHz, supports DDR SDRAM, and has an AGP Pro slot.
			Gigabyte's GA-8TX supports Intel's new Pentium 4. It's based on the 850 chipset, can hold 4 RIMMs for 2GB PC800 RDRAM, has built-in sound, and has 4 USB ports.
	Previous News
			AMD's Thunderbird processors are up to 1.33 GHz (266 MHz bus) & 1.3 GHz (200 MHz bus). The Duron is up to 900 MHz.
			NVidia has announced the Geforce 3 chip. No word on their final decision with the acquisition of 3Dfx.
			AMD has released their 761 chipset, supporting PC2100 SDRAM and multiple Thunderbird processors. Acer Labs has released a similar chipset: the ALiMAGiK.
			Intel's Pentium 4 is running at 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 GHz speeds. Their 851 chipset is to complement these processors. The Celeron is up to 850 MHz.
			Quantum's Atlas 10K III drives utilize the U320 SCSI standard and have huge 8MB buffers. Their Snap Server 4100 comes prebuilt with RAID 5 support and networked storage capacities up to 240GB.
			Pushing tape storage to the limit, Exabyte offers tape library solutions that store as much as 12TB.