Just thought I'd throw together a page looking at computing and computers. After all, it is what I get paid for, so I should know something about it...:> I suspect that this will end up being focused on PC's, but we'll see.
First, for some general information about setting up and configuring PC's, check out these pages:
And for those of you planning on buying a new computer, or upgrading an old one, check out these sites. Between them, they seem to have the best prices overall of the places I've been able to find. Again, if you know of other (better, presumably) ones, please let me know.
NECX (no, I don't know what that stands for). I've
had trouble getting through to them. I hear that they're very cheap though. Netbuyer. This site is put together by Ziff-Davis
publishing. It seems an outgrowth of Computer Shopper. Pretty good for searching. Warning,
though, I don't know what they did, but for some reason Netscape seems to crash all the
time when looking at this site.
Internet Shopping Network. I
can't seem to get through to their page recently, for some reason... They seem like
a good company, though, from the couple of times I've dealt with 'em.
It seems like you can't even talk about 3D gaming of late, without mentioning the Voodoo/2 boards. They're no longer the only good 3D gaming board, but they're still pretty darned good. The only thing I've really heard mentioned as a challenge to it is the Rage 128, (well, now the Riva TNT) board. One of the things I like about the Voodoo boards, though, is that they're 3D-only. That way you can get the best 2D board separately. Of course, some people hate that.
Since I mentioned 2D, I bought the Matrox Millennium board. Gorgeous performance. I finally have 1024x768x24-bit color. Now I just need to upgrade my monitor so I can do better than that. I think 1600x1200x32-bit at about 90Hz sounds like a good thing. I just need to get thatViewsonic PT815 monitor I've been waiting a bit for. I'm also going to pick up a new Matrox Marvel G200-TV when I get the monitor. For some (slightly) less propagandized material about Matrox cards, check out this site or this one.
I don't do any work on them, but I've long been fond of Macintoshes (the computers, of course; in apples, I tend to be more fond of granny smith :). I finally picked one up recently. It's pretty good. It takes care of my main priority, which is that I can play Maelstrom on it. If you haven't seen this game, check it out. It's a bit old at this point, but a lot of fun. Ambrosia also does a number of other games, including Apeiron (a centipede variant) and some other good ones. (Now if only I could get Apeiron to run on my LC's 12" screen. It seems that it requires a 13" one... *sigh*)
I suppose I should also throw some mention of programming languages in here. I'm quite fond of Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language; AKA Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister). As the name suggests, this language is best utilized for text manipulations, but it will handle just about anything. (including IPC, TK, SQL queries, etc.)
Personally, though, the language that I use for just about everything is still C. *sigh* You'd think by now more people would have switched over to using at least C++. I definitely prefer the latter, but seem to be getting kept from using it indefinitely. In fact, for the past year or so, I've been primarily using Borland's Delphi package. This is a PC-only development environment with a good widget set, that essentially takes all of C++'s nifty OOP features, and wraps them around the venerable Turbo Pascal. I have pretty mixed feelings about it, but it is a very capable package.
As for operating systems, I definitely dislike anything Microsoft. I'm not too fond of either Win95(98) or NT, though I at least have a little respect for the latter. Personally, I only have Windows for a few games that I like. I like the UNIX working environment, with my preferred PC version being Linux. If you need to get a CD-ROM version now, check out the Red Hat distribution. I like the fact that it comes with a commercial X server, and includes just about everything you could ever want.
If I had to pick something on pure technical merit, however, I've long been convinced that the Mach project was on to something. What I really like about Mach are its built-in multithreading systems. I also really like the idea of running multiple operating systems concurrently. Admittedly, not the most efficient of systems, but the possibilities are endless. I wonder if anyone has written the C-64 OS for Mach yet... hmmm....
I should also mention that the BeOS is quite good for multimedia processing. It used to be a Mach-based system, but I believe that that is no longer the case. In any event, it can be bought here.
I think I should start talking about internet access at this point. Obviously, there are a lot of different options, although my current favorite option is called DSL. You pretty much need to get it through Bell Atlantic, but there are options for who you will use for your ISP. The short of how the system works is this: a special "modem" is attached to your standard phone line at both ends. The standard phone service operates over the bandwidth spectrum from 0Hz to 4kHz. The DSL "modem" uses the bandwidth from 4kHz to 2.2MHz to provide high-speed access (Bell Atlantic's service provides 640kbps, 1.6Mbps, or 7.1Mbps). Additional information can be found at Dan Kegel's ADSL page, at SunWorld, or possibly at Telecommunications Magazine Online.
Another possibility is ISDN, which is also available from Bell Atlantic. This essentially uses a standard phone line (or two), except that the data is never converted to analog and back, allowing for the entire 64kbps that POTS will support. This means that, with two lines, one can get 128kbps transfer speeds. Unfortunately, this is a fairly expensive service. The tradeoff, however, is that this is available over most of the country.
There is also the "cable modem", which uses cable TV lines to provide high-speed access. These are pretty much a mixed bag of options. If you have bidirectional access (I don't), then it isn't too bad, providing a large bandwidth that is shared by groups of people (for instance, maybe, the residents of an apartment building).
Finally, there is the standard phone line access. This is relatively slow (no more than 56kbps), but is by far the cheapest solution out there. Diamond also has a dual-channel modem which will allow 112kbps access, but also ties up two phone lines. You also need an ISP that supports multiple simultaneous logins.
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This page created and maintained by Dave Clemmer. Last modified on Mar 15, 1998.