Folks,

Guess what I'm getting on my 3dfxZone personal message?

QuoteGood day my dear,
In confidence,I have to introduce myself for I am Amanda Danni,21 years
old,I am the only child of late Chief and Mrs.George Danni.I prayed
before contacting you,please for God sake do not see my mail as
embrassment as we do not know each other.
I wish to request for your assistance in my efforts to procure the
transfer of my inherited money for investment ventures under your care and
directive,while I continue my education of there in your country.I
inherited Two Million,Six Hundred Thousand Dollars ($2,600,000.00) here in
my name with one of the prime bank in my country and I will require
your assistance in receiving the transfer of the money in your local
account for investment purposes. As it is my desire to come over to your
country to further my education while you take care of the investment of
the money.

Please I am an orphane and I need your assistance to transfer my
inherited money to your country and also your assistance to secure a nice
school for me in your country,where I will contiune my education.

I will be very appreciative if you can return to me with urgent
response to enable me hear from you.I am awaiting for your immediate
response.Please include your telephone number for an easy communication.

Thanks and may God bless you.

Yours sincerely
Amanda Danni

I don't know why, but many old games with such excellent gameplay happen to be GLide games, like EF 2000V2.0, Deus Ex, Archimedean Dynasty, Jane's Longbow 2, and Dungeon Keeper. That's why I keep a legacy system with Voodoo5 5500 on board --to play those GLide games with FSAA.

Alas, there are pesky 3dfx-supporting games that simply need Voodoo1 card to play. It seems that they're hard-coded to use Voodoo1 card instead of using GLide.

Thus, what if I add a Voodoo1 card to my system, putting Voodoo5 and Voodoo1 together on the same system? I imagine those "Voodoo1-only games" will run now, but what happens to GLide games that runs on Voodoo5? Will they run separately (and simultaneously) on both cards, or will they cause error?

Anyone has ever tried this stuff before? Thanks.

Well I'm talking about early GLide games; games of Voodoo1-era that need environment variable tinkering to play with Voodoo2. Some of them are DOS games like EF2000 V.20 and The Elder Scrolls: Red Guard, some others are Windows games like Mechwarrior 2.

Nonetheless, what early GLide games that you successfully play with Voodoo5, and what are the settings of your V5's environment variables?

Just found this article on MSNBC:

QuoteSome bravery as a side dish
Forget liver: Here are 7 foods that truly require a fearless stomach

It was Jeffrey Steingarten, author of "The Man Who Ate Everything," who most recently insisted that we should embrace the universe of foodstuffs around us. You've heard variations on this spiel: Try everything once because (this part gets repeated in your most motherly tone) if you don't try it, you won't know if you like it.

Those principles are fine for Brussels sprouts and sweetbreads. But seeing as it's the time of year when grossing people out gets semi-official sanctioning from a semi-official holiday, now is the moment to consider foods that push the envelope of edibility.

We're not talking about haunted-house, peeled-grapes-as-eyeballs gross. We're talking about food that can churn your stomach without the aid of a blindfold.

and

Quote7) Spiders. Entomologists might disagree, but the practice of eating insects doesn't seem nearly so bad as it sounds at first.  

But the line has to be drawn somewhere, and arachnids seem to be a good place to draw it.  Spider-eating is practiced in a number of places, but Cambodia seems to be the place where it has drawn the most attention, thanks to a practice of eating meaty finger-sized tarantulas known in Khmer as a-ping. For about a dime per arachnid, you can get a cheap, ample meal of the critters fried up with salt, pepper and perhaps a bit of garlic. (Keep in mind that a full restaurant entree can be found in Phnom Penh for under $2.)

And of course, there's pic as well. Look at the size of the spider.




Also found some interesting pics here.





The question is how does spider actually taste? Anyone have ever tried spider before? I haven't tried it myself, but since Chelicerates and Crustaceans belong to the same phylum (Arthropoda, ,that is), then I guess spider should taste quite similar to crab or lobster, shouldn't it?

Well, I'm talking about the 16x Fragment Anti-Aliasing originally used by Matrox Parhelia. The AA method only takes "fragment pixels" (pixels on the edge of an object) and then collects 16 sub-pixel samples for AA purpose.

Theoritically, this method means way bigger sample size with less fill rate penalty, especially since fragment pixels typically account for less than ten percent of the total amount of pixels displayed on the scene.

So theoritically, the Fragment AA method allows bigger pixel size with less performance drawback.

Judging from the picture below, this method produces razor sharp edges, which is very clean. I think this is because sample size is always more important than sampling pattern when it goes to AA quality, and edge AA allows way bigger sample size (16x compared to typical 4x or 8x used in conventional FSAA method).


(image copied from First Look: Matrox's Parhelia-512 graphic processor article on Tech Report (Page 9)).

The question is..... why neither ATI nor nVidia uses this AA method? Today's video cards have much more processing power than those of Parhelia's era, so imagine the beauty of 64x Fragment AA or such. Or how about enabling AA with very little performance penalty?

What are the problems with this 16x Fragment AA method, so neither ATI nor nVidia have adopted it? Okay, granted Fragment AA does not eliminate texture shimmering (unlike conventional FSAA, which elminates both edge aliasing and texture crawling), but there is Anisotropic Filtering for such purpose.

I have to admit that I missed Parhelia the first time it came around, but did anyone ever have that card? Based on your experience, did you find many problems with Fragment AA so it's actually not worth it?


EDIT: I also wonder why didn't 3dfx use this method with Voodoo5?

Well, I just browsed through the FAQ of each Voodoos, but what I found is quite surprising, if not shocking.

First, it seems that it's possible to combine Vooodoo2 and Banshee.

Quote10. Can I use a Voodoo Rush card with V2?

Yes. Any 2D card will work with V2. In the case of Voodoo Rush and Voodoo2 in the same machine you would choose Voodoo2 when the game begins.

And, according to this FAQ, it is possible to put Voodoo3 and Voodoo2 on the same PC.

QuoteQ: Can I use a Voodoo3 with a Voodoo2?

A: Yes, but why?. The Voodoo3 is a standalone product with 2D and 3D combined. No other graphics card will be required.

Now, many people says that it's impossible to put two different version of Voodoos on the same computer, but the FAQs above has shown two cases where it's possible: Voodoo2 with Vooodoo Rush, and Voodoo3 with Voodoo2.

Makes me wonder: have anyone tried putting Voodoo1 with Voodoo5? Is such thing possible? And at best, what do you get?

The reason being is that because some GLide games seems to refuse running on Voodoo5. I have EF2000 V2.0, which is a DOS GLide games. Alas, it refuses to work with my Vooodoo5 despite my tinkering with GLide Environmental Variables. And while I don't have Mechwarrior 2 - 3dfx Edition, I heard that the game will only work with Voodoo1 --it won't even run with Voodoo2.

So is it possible to put both Voodoo5 and Voodoo1 on the same PC? The Voodoo5 will handle GLide 2.x and 3.x games (mostly Windows GLide games, I guess), while the Voodoo1 should handle Glide 1.x games (games like EF2000 V2.0, Blood, and Jetfighter III).

Yes, I always wonder what happened to that one particular graphic vendor. See, during the days of Voodoo1, the two earliest (and most prominent) adopters of 3dfx chips were Diamond Monster 3D and Orchid Righteous 3D. IIRC Orchid's card was better than Diamond's card during that time.

But when the Voodoo2 came, it was Creative and Diamond; the Orchid's whereabouts were unknown. So what happened to that one vendor?

Well, I still remember reading somewhere on the net about early GLide games that is incompatible with Voodoo2 SLI. From my own experience, EF2000 V2.0, which is a DOS GLide game, did not run on my Vooodoo2 SLI, and I had to do some sort of workaround to run the game. However, it was many, many years ago and I don't exactly remember the solution anymore.

I don't have the 3dfx Edition of Mechwarrior 2, but from what I read here, it seems that it needs a workaround to work with Voodoo2 SLI either.

My questions are:

(1) Is there any list of GLide games that don't work with Voodoo2 SLI? And the workaround?

(2) Like I said, I didn't exactly remember the particular workaround to run EF2000 (I just copied and pasted a batch file from the internet at that time), but if I recall correctly, it is basically about disabling SLI and leaving a single Voodoo2 card active. Am I correct?

(3) How about Voodoo5? Has anyone tried early GLide games with Voodoo5? And does the same problem exist? (e.g: games don't run with Voodoo2 SLI don't run with Voodoo5 either) And how about the solution? I bet it should be basically the same (disabling SLI and running on a single chip), am I correct?

(4) If the list is found, can we stickify this thread for reference?

I plan to built a legacy system where I could shoehorn everything into it; a system where I can boot in DOS (to play DOS GLide games like Archimedean Dynasty), but can still play "newer" games (like WarCraft III) with reasonable performance.

Here's the plan for my system (so far I already have every components except the GeForce 6800 and the CPU):
- Soyo SY845PE Motherboard (P4 mobo with ISA slots)
- Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold
- Yamaha SW60XG WaveForce
- Voodoo5 5500 PCI Mac (BIOS flashed to PC)
- nVidia GeForce 6800 GT - AGP version
- A Pentium 4 CPU, preferrably non-HT
- 512 Mb of RAM
- MS DOS 6.22 / Windows 98 dual boot
- A KVM to switch between the two video cards

The Voodoo5 PCI is for playing DOS games (especially DOS GLide games) and Windows GLide games, while the GeForce 6800 GT is to play all Direct3D and OpenGL games. Thus, the V5 5500 is exclusively to play GLide games, whether they're DOS or Windows games.

The questions are:
(1) Which video card should I set as Primary in the motherboard BIOS? The Voodoo5 5500 (PCI) or the GeForce 6800 (AGP)?
(2) If I set the AGP card as Primary, can I still play DOS GLide games using the Voodoo5 5500 PCI? Does the 3dfx card need to be set as Primary Display to be properly detected by DOS GLide?
(3) Likewise, if I set the PCI card as Primary, can I still play Direct3D and OpenGL games using the GeForce 6800 without too many hassles?
(4) What is the biggest challenge in building my dream legacy system? IRQ conflicts? etc?
(5) What Pentium 4 Processor should I use? Since I'm using the SY845PE Mobo, of course my choice is limited to Northwood. Can I go with the highest CPU allowed (3.06 GHz) without conflicting with older devices like the Voodoo5 or the Sound Blaster AWE 64?
(6) Any further tips?

Thanks,
-Kresh

Here's the URL

QuoteMonday, January 30, 2006

MSFT: Our DRM licensing is there to eliminate hobbyists and little guys
A Microsoft spokesman has described their DRM licensing scheme as a system for reducing the number of device vendors to a manageable number, so that the company doesn't have to oversee too many developers.

Yesterday, I spoke at a DRM conference in London. Just before me was the opening keynote, from Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr, Corporate VP of the Windows Digital Media Division, which oversees licensing and deployment of Microsoft's DRM.

Amir's presentation kept referring to Microsoft DRM as "open," which was curious, because it's actually the opposite of open. An open platform is something like an electrical outlet: if you want to design something to plug into an electrical outlet, you can -- you might have to satisfy a regulator that it won't burst into flames, but you certainly don't need to talk to General Electric or any other potential competitor.

Microsoft's DRM requires that device makers pay Microsoft a license fee for each device that plays back video encoded with its system. it also requires every such vendor to submit to a standardized, non-negotiable license agreement that spells out how the player must be implemented. This contract contains numerous items that limit the sort of business you're allowed to pursue, notably that you may not implement a Microsoft player in open source software.

The bombshell was Amir's explanation of the reason that his employer charges fees to license its DRM. According to Amir, the fee is not intended to recoup the expenses Microsoft incurred in developing their DRM, or to turn a profit. The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out "hobbyists" and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with.

I was pretty surprised to hear an executive from Microsoft describe his company's strategy as intentionally anti-competitive and intended solely to freeze out certain classes of operators rather than maximizing its profits through producing a better product and charging a fair price for it.

Isn't that why the Justice Department and the EU went after Redmond in the first place? Link

(Man I was so pissed off when reading the news I almost threw my laptop away)

Folks, I just found a workstation-alike product described Pinnacle 3DFX Standalone. The item description said:

Quote
.....Your looking at and bidding on a used 3D Pinnacle "Pizza Box" for real time 3D effects.  This does not come with SCSI cable or documentation or anything other than a power cord.  This was used and in working order.....

SCSI cable? "Pizza box"-type workstation? What this product is all about? I have heard about Quantum 3D Mercury or AAlchemy, but I've never heard about "Pinnacle 3DFX" before. What is this product, actually?

By the way, here's the pic:

Well, I wonder if Voodoo5 RAM chips can be replaced with DDR ones. My questions are:

(1) Does Voodoo5 support DDR "out of the box"? I mean, if we replace the RAM with DDR, will the Voodoo5 directly take advantage of the DDR? Or we need to modify the BIOS and such in order to make the Voodoo5 works properly with DDR?

(2) What type of DDR RAM chips can be put on Voodoo5? I mean, if we contact RAM manufacturers to buy such chip, what specification we should give them? ("I want to buy this XXXX type of RAM....",  etc)

(3) If we take a look at this article at techreport, Voodoo5 actually beats GeForce DDR in fill rate test (3DMark 2000), both in single-texturing and multi-texturing. It should be noted that GeForce DDR uses DDR RAM, while Voodoo5 only uses SDR. So what if the Voodoo5 is modded with DDR? Will it be faster than GeForce 2?

(4) Has anyone ever tried to replace the Voodoo5 RAM with DDR? And what is the result? Is there any significant increase in performance?

Well I stumbled upon this article, and pretty much surprised with what I read.

The article says that enabling V5 FSAA in StarCraft slightly smoothes the sprites. Also, using V5 FSAA in Diablo II really smoothes the terrain.

Well, both of them are 2D games. Granted Diablo II uses direct3D, but IIRC it is only for lightning effects. The rest of the game is 2D.

On the other hand, I thought Voodoo5 multisample FSAA method can only work in 3D, because it renders multiple samples of the same frame while slightly 'rotating' the geometry (RGSS). So since it needs geometry data, I guess it only works in 3D.

Or maybe I was wrong? Maybe, in 'rotating' the frame, the Voodoo5 MSAA doesn't use geometry data, but only the pixels?

Here on Techreport.

First we have the "You can spam" Act, and now this. Continue this trend and maybe someday we'll see corporate vampires sueing consumers for NOT seeing their annoying ads.  

Quote
Adware provider 180solutions has filed suit against ZoneLabs (producer of anti-spyware program ZoneAlarm), alleging that ZoneAlarm improperly classifies their product as spyware. It'd be easy to dismiss the lawsuit, but 180solutions's filing actually raises some excellent points, especially when read side-by-side with an editorial 180solutions CEO Keith Smith published last week.


In his editorial, Smith points out that there are no defined or accepted industry standards regarding the "threat" level of a given program and no clear standard on which a program is judged spyware, malware, or acceptable adware. Anti-spyware makers, he argues, have a vested interest in producing products that over-inflate end-user fears and create an illusion of security, regardless of the actual threat a program represents. The overall point of his editorial is best summarized in the following quotation:

The bottom line here is that scanning applications have every right to tell the user exactly what is on their computer and to delete any program that the user chooses, so long as the scanning application provides clear and accurate explanations of what the programs in question actually are and do.


The legal filing details how 180solutions gathers data via its Zango and 180sA programs. According to 180, the Windows API Hook is used only for limited keyword comparison, and only to facilitate the delivery of targeted ads. The filing also offers details about how end-user information is kept anonymous:


Because the Windows API Hook function can be used in connection with the monitoring of mouse movements and keyboard strokes, ZoneAlarm mistakenly assumes that this is the reason for its employ by 180's products, despite ZoneLabs having been advised by 180 to the contrary.
180 defines spyware as software that "involves collecting, without consent, a user's personally identifiable information and Internet browsing habits."


Since 180solutions' software is (supposedly) only installed with the consent of the user and all information is kept anonymous, 180solutions' products aren't spyware?or so the argument goes. 180solutions also notes that Symantec products do not classify 180solutions' software as a high-risk threat to user privacy or security.


It's hard to defend adware, and I won't attempt to judge whether or not 180solutions has a case against ZoneAlarm?but regardless, they raise some good points. Anti-spyware products often don't clarify what threat a particular application might represent (or how removing it will affect other software), different products detect and rate differently, and the blacklisting of a program (as 180solutions claims ZoneLabs has done) could be financially ruinous for the company that provides it. Without defending 180solutions in particular, I think they make a strong general case for agreed-upon definitions on what constitutes spyware, adware, and malware. As much as you or I might hate adware, it's a legitimate way to support a business model, provided the end-user consents and privacy rights are respected. Regardless of their past behavior, that's the type of model 180solutions is advocating, and they just might be right.

Yeah, right. User consent my hairy ass. It's interesting to note what 180 solutions actually does to our computer.

Well I've been always preferring CRT for gaming. See, while LCD is easy to the eyes for working (like my laptop), I don't like it too much for gaming because IMO it is too dim, and the color doesn't seem to be as rich as CRT.

However, I've just purchased a Voodoo5 Mac (DVI connector) on ebay, so lately I became more interested to switch to LCD.

So what would you suggest? Do you prefer LCD or CRT for gaming? Should I switch to LCD, or stay with CRT?

I also play a lot of old GLide games like EF2000 V2.0 or Longbow 2, which resolution is limited to 640x480. On large CRT monitors (21" and such), the pixels are blatantly visible when using such low resolution. Thus I'm more interested to move to LCD, because when using low-res in LCD, the pixels are more subtle (although the image is blurrier). However, I haven't quite followed LCD technologies lately. Do new LCD monitors support low-res well?