Pete Sherriff

All the lurid details of Intel's delayed Camino motherboards have emerged at US site NECX Direct where you can actually place an order for the little devils, should you feel brave enough (and don't mind waiting). The Cape Cod CC820 comes with or without SoundBlaster 128 audio on board and features AGP4X (backwards compatible …

It is a truth universally acknowledged that early adopters (aka people with more money than sense) pay through the nose to be the first kid on the block with the latest, greatest processor. A 1.0GHz Pentium III would set you back a cool $990 apiece if you could find 1,000 of them. An Athlon of the same speed comes in at $1,299. …

When does 2195 not equal 2195? Why, when it refers to the build number of Windows 2000, of course. Attempting to discover why a system that ran happily under the gold code version of Win2K refused to have anything to do with AGP graphics when upgraded to the full retail version of the OS, we discovered that there are two sorts …

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, Chipzilla was snug inside its ivory tower, pouring scorn on the 'imitators'. Everything in the garden was rosy and world+dog waited eagerly for every speed bump Intel deigned to release. At the low end, the chip behemoth poured scorn on little Cyrix and its System on a Chip …

Poor old kicking Pat Gelsinger. Not only does he have to put up with the likes of The Register's very own Mike Magee at the Intel Developer Forum this week, but the uncreasingly awful ZDNet adds insult to injury by asserting that Pat is now of the female persuasion. Ace reporter Matthew Broersma writes today (only 72 hours late …

Intel's new wonder chip, codenamed Willamette, is, according to official leaks from Chipzilla central, due for launch in October. Slightly less official, but usually reliable, sources close to the chip behemoth tell us that Willamette is due to start sampling in July. This would be about right for a sampling date for an October …

When The Register's own favourite PR person, Doctor Spinola, applied for a job at Dell a few months back, he was somewhat dismayed to discover that the Great Satan of Hardware deemed his 27 years' experience in the industry to be insufficient for their needs. He should consider himself lucky he didn't try Sun -- a couple of …

The headless chicken scenario at Intel goes from strength to strength. As OEMs queue up to build Athlon-based systems, the once-almighty Chip behemoth is plumbing new depths in the panic department. Not content with being unable to supply enough Coppermine Pentium III chips, Athlon's performance is forcing Intel to torture the …

Windows 98 users keen to upgrade to Windows 2000 next month might do well to hold off while graphics drivers get more battle-ready. According to Microsoft's compatibility lists, scads of video adapters meet the Windows 2000 logo programme requirements, but it would be a mistake to think that this means they'll all run properly …

Review The world+dog is hardly short of stories about Windows 2000 and how such wonderments as the Active Directory will make the IT department's life so simple that even a complete idiot could get a job in tech support. But The Register thought it might be interesting to see how a regular Joe, or even Pete, got on with installing it. …

Not content with winning the 1999 Formula 1 World Championship and reducing Microsoft to a mere shadow of its former self, Linus Torvalds now has his sights set firmly on putting Intel out of business. Torvalds, along with the terribly rich financier George Soros and the even terribly richer Paul Allen of Microsoft, will unveil …

Back in July, in a rare accurate prediction, The Register's erstwhile seeress, Old Mother Chipton, predicted that Intel's Geyserville (aka Speedstep) mobile Pentium IIIs wouldn't arrive until Q1 2000 despite being billed for September '99 shipment. Tomorrow the little poppets are due to be born, initially in 633MHz guise and …

The long-awaited launch of Microsoft Year 2000(tm) turned out to be a damp squib, according to most industry watchers. Despite a development spend of well over $3Bn and an intensive, five-year marketing campaign; MSY2K has failed to live up to expectations. The feature list for the new product included aircraft falling from the …

Several weeks ago, we noticed that Intel thought Europe spanned the entire distance between Galway and Vladivostok on its Channel pages. (See Intel brokers Russian entry into Europe). Now it has realised the error of its ways and has moved the word Europe from the centre of the steppes and close to the gulag, back to where most …

As if it weren't enough that you can't buy Coppermine Pentium IIIs for love nor money, the latest list of erratanotbugs on the Intel Web site (over 60 and counting) includes one guaranteed to send a shiver down the spines of everyone at Satan Clara: "E56. It is possible that a negative sign bit may be incorrectly applied to the …

Publishing giant Reed (home of such terrific titles as Water Power and Dam Construction, Electric Drives and the terminally dull Computer Weakly), has announced it is to specialise in "New Media". But clicking on the link on the Weakly site results in the following fascinating story: Issue date: 6 December 1999 Microsoft …

Chipzilla's much-maligned PSN is not the first system serial number. Sun has had a hardware serial number coded into each system (as have most Unix hardware vendors) since the early 80s. Most large (aka expensive) Unix software is usually locked to a certain system serial number to prevent piracy. "Sun puts a serial number -- …

The Sherriff may be an enigma wrapped in a mystery to some folks, but was flattered to find that delegates at the AMD investor conference (no telephone booth jokes please --Ed) apparently felt strongly enough to hold a debate as to his (or her) true identity. Amidst the electronic sackload of emails generated by yesterday's …

So Intel faces yet another threatened blockade on those pesky Pentium IIIs with their evil Processor Serial Numbers, does it? Give us strength. The STOA (scientific and technological options assessment) committee is presenting its findings to the European Parliament, in connection with the development of surveillance technology …

Remember the Intel Overdrive processors? This was Chipzilla's attempt to flog user-upgradeable processors to provide a straightforward power boost to ageing systems. A year or so back, Intel chopped the whole range claiming that hardly anyone upgraded anyway, they just went out and bought an entire new system. Now Chipzilla is …

Yeah, we know you're all bored to death with Caminogate® stories, but this one will really get up Chipzilla's nose. The much-delayed, blah, blah, blah, i820 chipset finally saw the light of day in cut-down form, both the Rambus Vancouver (VC820) and SDRAM Cape Cod being restricted to a maximum of 512MB of RAM. There are still …

While world leaders were putting their feet up and enjoy a relaxing weekend in Florence, Italy, Chipzilla's negotiators have obviously been beavering away if a map at Intel’s channel website here is to be believed. For the former Soviet Union is labelled 'Europe' with the last e a couple of hundred miles due north of …

The world+dog knows that Chipzilla's chipset from Hell, Camino, has a problem counting above two when it comes to RDRAM DIMMS. Less well-known is the fact that two is -- by a remarkable coincidence -- also the maximum number of PC100 SDRAM modules that Intel's Cape Cod i820 mobo can deal with. Worse than that, if you want to mix …

A fantastic new £1.2 billion scheme will allow tragic cellphone users to tell their loved ones that they’re "on the train" from deep underground on the London tube. A consortium of leading telecommunication companies including Motorola and Racal Electronics will equip the entire network with the wonderful new system over the …

First Gander You might not be able to actually buy a Coppermine Pentium III right now, but early results from the RegMark Institute suggest you might want to put an order in - at least for one of the 100MHz FSB variants. As one of the lucky few to have a 700MHz/100MHz FSB CuMine to try, we can report that it runs just fine in an Intel Sun …