16th August 1999 Archive

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Intel changes rules on slot one

A year ago SECC 2 package designed for higher slot speeds

Posted 14 August 1998 -- over a year ago Intel is set to change the ground rules on its architecture once more with the introduction of a modification to its slot design later on this year. An Intel representative confirmed today that it would move to a new slot design dubbed SECC 2. "This is the mark two version of slot one," …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 07:29
Pentium II family reaches end of the road

As PII/450 disappears, so does entire family

Intel is now saying the Pentium II/450MHz part has limited availability and that means the end of the line for the entire PII family. The chip giant has relentlessly pushed the Pentium III family into its place during the course of this year, and that process will be complete within the next few weeks, according to reliable …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 09:19
Happy Cat leaks stash of Intel futures

Willamette, CuMine, Timna, Foster, Cascades: it's all there on our favourite Japanese site

Small Japanese corner shop Happy Cat has got its claws on Intel's future plans up until the year 2001, with details of its major introduction in Celeron, Coppermine, Cascades, PIII, Timna and Xeon technology. The document, which you can view here, also outlines the future sockets Intel will adopt over the next two years. …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 09:44
Opera user base grows despite ‘end’ of browser war

Developer nears completion of Linux, BeOS, Mac, EPOC32, cellphone versions

Facts are getting in the way of Microsoft's claim that there is not a market for browsers. Opera, the Norwegian browser that sells for $35 after a 30-day free trial, has established itself as the contender, according to research company BrowserWatch. The latest figures show Internet Explorer with 43.7 per cent, Navigator with 35 …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 10:56
AMD K7 puts in early appearance

Evesham Micros builds PCs for QVC shopping channel

Today's the day we can expect a raft of Athlon PC announcements from AMD's OEM partners, but eagle-eyed UK TV viewers got a sneak preview yesterday. Anyone watching the shopping channel, QVC, on Sky Digital on Sunday evening (and who wasn't? –- Ed) will have seen an Athlon-based PC advertised with a forecast delivery time of …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 11:21
Hacker jailed after Vodafone SMS sting

Three months' bird for revenge attack on ex-employer

A spurned computer buff was jailed last week after he hacked in to Vodafone's messaging network to get revenge on his former employer. Scott Reid fooled thousands of mobile phone users into calling his former company's switchboard after telling them they had won a car. Switchboards were jammed for days and the company lost …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 12:05
Iomega launches OEM'd CD-RW drive

Step back for storage company, but step forward for its finances

Iomega, the financially troubled storage specialist, today took a step -- several steps, actually -- backwards into its past to announce shipment of a product not based on one of its own technologies. Marking Iomega's return to OEM-hood -- it started out offering systems based on SyQuest technology -- was the launch of the $209 …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 12:27
Cisco buys UK outfit for $55 million

Callista target of the Kid's affections

Networking giant Cisco said it had paid $55 million to buy UK company Callista. Callista makes technology which allows a number of phones to work over Internet systems. The move is part of Cisco's plans to develop voice and IP data over phone networks. ®

Business 16 Aug 1999, 12:47
Footy fight site hit by white hat hackers

Are the police secretly supporting the illegal activities of anti-violence site busters?

A group of "white knight" hackers who trashed a Web site used to organise soccer violence appears to have failed in its quest to clean up the game. Soccer thug Paul Dodd's Web site was trounced on Friday rendering its message board completely useless, according to the Daily Star. The message board is used to post details about …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:18
HP hopes to trump Compaq on Unix, NT support

The battle royale is on

Sources close to Hewlett Packard said today that it is likely to announce support on Merced for both HP/UX and Windows NT in the very near future. Today, HP is expected to announce good earnings for its third financial quarter. That could be viewed as a pre-emptive strike against Compaq, which will, tomorrow, announce that the …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:22
Capellas only gets ½ as much as Pfeiffer

Must be the haircut 2000

Worthy US newspaper is reporting that Mike Capellas, the CEO of Compaq, is only being paid $895,000. That compares rather unfavourably with ex-CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer, who got nearly twice that plus a stash of options. But perhaps Mr Capellas does not need barbers quite as much as Mr Pfeiffer did... ®

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:34
Amiga developer in talks to buy Commodore name

CBM branding to sell Iwin's Amiga-based machines -- it hopes...

European software and hardware developer Iwin Corporation has entered into negotiations with Dutch PC vendor Tulip to acquire the name and logo of the long-defunct Commodore. Iwin's interest in the Commodore brand stems from its long involvement with the Amiga. The company's line of servers and workstations are Amiga-based, and …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:46
Date rape drug – two arrested for Net sales

US authorities swoop on two selling GHB kits for $200

Two men were arrested for allegedly peddling the "date-rape" drug GHB on the Net. Sixty-three year old Carl Gorton from Florida and John Hedrick, 22, were collared by state authorities in Michigan and could face up to 30 years in jail if found guilty, according to a report by the Associated Press. The pair was arrested for …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:55
Evolution to be benchmarked against computers

Computer organisms put Darwin to the test

Darwinian evolution is being put to the test by a team from Michigan State University, the California Institute of Technology and the University of California in Los Angeles. Researchers hope that computer organisms will shed light on the most fundamental questions about life on Earth. The programme is designed to mimic life in …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:56
End-of-the-week bug to eat GPS

Satellites outlive their 20 years' life expectancy

A mini millennium bug (a buggette, perhaps?) is going to strike at midnight next Saturday (21 August), as the GPS systems' counter rolls back to zero. The GPS system –- that’s global positioning satellites -- keeps track of time by counting the number of weeks since it went into operation, but it was only programmed to count the …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:57
Red faces at AT&T over Intel phone bill

It's a boo-boo

AT&T formally withdrew its case against Intel -- as first reported here -- later on Friday after the world saw an unseemly mess where Phonezilla seemed to be stomping all over Chipzilla. A red-faced employee admitted that the writ was issued without regard for the size of the company it was sueing... ®

Business 16 Aug 1999, 14:58
Athlon PC pricing is a secret

Carrera boom-di-ay – our common sense has gone away

We rang the sales office of systems builder Carrera this afternoon to enquire after the price of its Athlon-bearing PC. What with this being the day AMD's OEM partners start selling Athlon-based machines, and all, on the surface, this should have been a very straight forward request. Not on your life. According to one of Carrera …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 15:09
PIII/600 with 133MHz FSB outed!!!

It's a cannot confirm or deny situation

Our friends over at the site which clocks many chips to their limit, and then some more, is reporting today that a British firm has posted the price and due date of an Intel 600MHz Pentium III using the long-fabled 133MHz Front Side Bus (FSB). Kyle at HardOCP is pointing to Dabs Direct, which says the part will ship on the 26th …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 15:14
Chip site spins off Linux site…

It's the coming thing, you know

A well-known hardware site has spun off a Linux site dedicated to solving hardware problems new users might have. The site, which is spun off from CPU Review, is called About Linux. According to William Henning, editor of both sites, it will be devoted to people interested in migrating to Linux in a hardware sense. Henning said …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 15:34
MIPS unveils own MMX for 64-bit CPUs

ASE plugs hole in MIPS64's 3D graphics functionality

MIPS today introduced its own version of Intel's Multimedia eXtensions (MMX) and AMD's 3D Now! With the uninspiringly dubbed MIPS-3D Application Specific Extension (ASE). The technology extends the existing MIPS 64-bit architecture with "additional graphics-oriented floating-point instructions that reduce code size in graphics …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 15:43
Athlon PCs go on sale

UK system builders start to set out stall

OEMs need no longer be scared of AMD's wrath -- they can now officially announce if they are launching Athlon systems. Mesh and Time Computers have been among the first system builders to put this chip in PCs. Available from today, Mesh is launching its Matrix range of machines with 500, 550 and 600MHz Athlon processors. The …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 16:18
Home shopping boom fuelled by Net

Ecommerce takes off in UK

Online sales are set to make up 2.5 per cent of all retail sales in Britain by 2003, according to the latest shopping survey by Verdict. What's more, the growth in online sales -- via the Net and TV -- has sparked a renaissance in home shopping which had been in decline over recent years. Although home shopping increased by 7.2 …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 16:26
James Bond aided by Fujitsu printer

It's 007 -- licence to print

Product placement in movies is big business –- it brings in extra funds for the film-makers and guarantees publicity for the brands involved. Recent examples have included Apple's PowerBook helping to save the human race in Independence Day and its similar role in Mission Impossible. But now, one of the more sublime product …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 16:30
All-new RegMark99™ shows Celeron outperforms Pentium III by 2.3 times

Bangs per buck is the name of the game

Despite Chipzilla's vain attempts to hide the value for money differential between the Celeron and Pentium II ranges highlighted in our original RegMark™ benchmarks - including this week axing the entire PII range - we can exclusively reveal that little Celeron continues to be a thorn in Intel's side as it continues to munch …

Business 16 Aug 1999, 17:58