3dfx/Gigapixel Conference Call Tidbits: Here's a list of some of the more interesting tidbits from the conference call (2nd go round). Despite wearing out the 1-4 buttons , I was never able to ask a personal question (apparently the queue was too deep and time ran out).

• Comments were made that one goal is to beat the Xbox in graphics performance (with a personal computer) 6 months before the Xbox would be released.
• Estimated 8-12 months before products with merged 3dfx/Gigapixel technology would be at retail (after Rampage). (Combination of the best of both 3dfx and Gigapixel technologies.)
• Theoretical performance - 'orders of magnitude' better than any existing technology currently in production (including the VSA100 cards).
• Gigapixel's focus is different than 3dfx's current market (high end graphics, high power). They are targeting 'Visual Communications', 3d small form factor displays, PDAs and even cell phones. Gigapixel looking to 'Expand Markets' vs. carving niches.
• "Apple will be excited" at the performance but no definite details or agreements to date.
• Question was asked if the choice of nVidia for the Xbox had any effect on the acquisition. Answer was no, but Gigapixel speculated that if the acquisition has been a month ago, perhaps they might have gotten the nod for Xbox.
• Gigapixel technology has been licensed to other companies (no specific names were mentioned). This licensing is not affected by the acquisition.
• There were some comments on Microsoft's interest in investing in Gigapixel (even though they chose nVidia for the Xbox graphics chip)
• $186M spent on Gigapixel, return to profitability expected Q2 or later. Gigapixel also brings cash they said.

My question (and I've asked 3dfx via email already) is if there are any definite plans for a notebook graphics chip and if so, what level of performance is estimated (compared to say the ATI Rage128 Mobility). This may be a premature question, but I know everyone's dying to know.

3Dfx's Bryan Speece Comments on GigaPixel Benefits: As I'm sure most of you already know, Bryan is 3dfx's Director of Macintosh Business Development. He replied to my emails about what the Gigapixel deal means for the future:

"The announcement of the acquisition of GigaPixel yesterday adds remarkable technology for low-power, high-performance, licensable cores to our already impressive portfolio.

Initially this means the potential licensing of highly efficient 3D graphics technology. Technology that can provide very high performance levels while consuming very little power.

In the future it will mean that 3dfx continues to produce the very highest performing graphics solutions at the very best prices. GP's technology can effectively allow the reduction of necessary memory bandwidth by a factor of 10. This will allow 32-bit full-scene anti-aliased rendering at unbelievable performance levels. As the state of the art in graphics technology moves forward processing is not the issue - that's a given - memory bandwidth will be the gate. GP's "chunking" capability will be assimilated into a strong 3dfx roadmap that already promises superior fill-rate, FSAA, FXT1, T-Buffer and more.

What does this mean to the Mac market? A lot of that depends on Apple. The PowerMac is the only machine that currently allows the user to choose a graphics solution. Even in that case the user is forced to pay for an ATI Rage 128 board with his CPU purchase. With all other product lines Apple completely controls the integrated graphics capability which is supplied to the purchaser. And the purchaser has no recourse.

For our part we'll continue to develop and market the best graphics technologies on earth and make them available as broadly as we can. The rest is up to Apple.

In the future, when you think of 3dfx, think of the technologies that will enable tomorrow's 3D visual communications: SLI (scaleable architecture), FSAA (hardware full-scene anti-aliasing), FXT1 (superior texture compression), T-Buffer (cinematic effects), "Chunking" and more. All offered in the broadest array of solutions - from licensable core to board level - from high-power static designs to low power portable ones.
-Bryan "

It looks to be a very interesting year ahead. Stay tuned...

I've updated the VPN reader feedback below with comments on protocols.

Kenwood TrueX 72x CDrom Beta Mac Firmware Tests: I'm testing the XLR8 G4/450 ZIF from the MAChCarrier G4/450 card in the Beige G3/266 along with the beta firmware version of the TrueX 72X drive I commented on yesterday. I'm glad to report that even using MacOS 9.04's standard CD/DVD extension, all CDs I've tried so far seem to mount fine. The drive is very fast and quiet as well. I suspect the Intech drivers will be faster than Apple's extension, but glad to see the Apple extensions working (so far). As I noted yesterday, Intech CDTools drivers are to be bundled with the Mac retail drives.

Speaking of the Beige G3, with a case that allows at least two CDROM size drives, legacy serial ports and SCSI, testing the G4 upgrade in it really has me appreciating that overall system design. Granted it has no firewire/USB (I could add a PCI card with both these on one card), no AGP slot and only ATA/3 onboard IDE; but I suspect this upgrade will compare well in most real-world application performance to my G4/450 (2.6 stepping) system. While I had the case open, I upgraded the hard drive to a Maxtor 27GB model I had as a spare from previous tests . BTW: I was glad to see the XLR8 G4/450 CPU is a 2.9 revision, the latest available.

Source for IX3D and IXTV Drivers: Several owners of these cards have written recently asking where to find drivers now that IXMicro's site is closed. Sean Coleman just wrote that Other World Computing has the IX3D and IXTV drivers at http://shop.macsales.com/MacSales/Tech/. [Bob Friede says there was a later revision that at OWC, I'm working to get it now.] OWC's Tech Page also lists links to ZIF upgrade info and more. For future reference, I've added this info to the FAQ's Video cards (non-3dfx) topic area.

Mac VPN Feedback (Updated Twice): Several readers responded to the earlier request for info on Mac VPNs:

Several readers mentioned support of standard protocols:

"Perhaps the question should be - What VPN software supports industry-standards PPTP or L2TP? I have not yet checked out the others, but if I recall, NTS is the only one that does PPTP - which is important, as this PPTP and L2TP are what MS uses.
Patrick Scott
Manager, Information Systems
National Association of Secondary School Principals"

Two more comments on protocols:

"Hi Mike,
just a note on VPN stuff. There are two 'standard' VPN protocols: PPTP (by Microsoft) and IPSec. I think TunnelBuilder is the only PPTP client for the Mac, and the one used by most NT shops(?). There are lots of IPSec clients, including PGP (free!). TunnelBuilder is kind of pricy, though, around $300/user for a single user :(
I think all the ones listed (except TunnelBuilder) are IPSec (or other) based.
Manny Veloso"

[Update: Another reader noted Tunnelbuilder was $99 - check their website for the latest pricing.]

"In theory, the best solutions to use would be anything supporting the IPSec protocol. While not all IPSec solutions are fully interoperable at this time, they are slowly getting there. So you could use any IPSec client for the Mac with any IPSec compliant gateway. There are lots of companies either currently offering IPSec clients or planning to in the future. I have personally setup and used a TimeStep VPN box and am very happy with the stability and functionality. While I haven't tried their IPSec client for the Mac, they do offer one. One note though : by definition, IPSec will likely only tunnel IP traffic, and not AppleTalk.
Keith "

"There are several VPN clients for the mac. I bought Tunnel builder for my company (300 pc's and about 20 macs) and it seems to work fine with both lan and ppp connections. Companies that make mac vpn solutions include:

NAI
V-One SmartGate
Compatible Systems
TimeStep
NTS
infoExpress
AltaVista Tunnel

Thanks for the great site,
Chris Moscardini "

"The company I work for is also currently setting up a VPN. The product we are currently evaluating is called SmartGate by V-One.

http://www.v-one.com/smartgate.htm

Supported Hardware and Software for the SmartGate 2.7 Server

* BSD 4.0, 4.1
* Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6
* NT 4.0 - Service Pack 4 & 5
* HP-UX 10.10, 10.20
* Red Hat Linux 6.0

SmartPass 3.4 Client Support

* Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0 w/SP 4 & 5
* MacOS System 8.1 or later
* Solaris 2.6
* Win CE 2.; P/PC, H/PC, H/PC Pro
* Red Hat Linux 6.0

We have folks working on getting us up and running now and it should be operational this week. I don't have any specifics on how it all sets up and works, but the web site does let you download a trial version.
Mike Alletto "

"Hi.
I am a regular reader of your page, and I just came about that article about VPNs for mac. NTS Lan Tunnel Builder is the only solution for that. In france, when france telecom deplyed ADSL services, they used VPN, and so macs were left out for quite a while (from nov 99 to march00 actually...), the only solution they founf was tunnel builder, and they had to buy the rights in france to be able to provide the service to macs.
Hope this helps,
Omar BHATTY "

"We're using an IntraPort VPN appliance from Compatible Systems (recently acquired by Cisco). It's a high-end solution that supports Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris, and we've been very happy with it. I'm not sure how the acquisition will affect Mac support, but it's the VPN that Apple uses, so I'm not too worried. It is the only high-end solution that we found that tunnels AppleTalk.
Dave"

"Mike,
I am not sure if this helps at all, but am in the middle of planning a VPN for a mixed environment for a magazine/internet company I work for. I have decided to go with the OneGate 1000 (from Tut Systems). It's Linux-based.

In my discussions with them, I made it very clear that it HAD to work with both Macs and PCs. I was told that is no problem.

Unfortunately, it looks like Alexander's situation may be different, as it looks like a solution has already been implemented. I hope this helps him anyway. -Devin "

"hey mike,
I believe PGPnet (part of the PGP package) will do this, and perhaps another solution is hardware based, something like sonicwall firewall (found at www.sonicwall.com).
take care,
Jeffrey"

Thanks to all readers that responded to the request for suggestions.

Toshiba's DVD/CDRW Combo Drive: PCworld has a review of Toshiba's SD-R1002, the competitor to the Ricoh DVD/CDRW drive. Although the Toshiba is a 4X CDR drive (vs 6X for the Ricoh), the review notes it outperformed the Ricoh in CD/DVD read and seek tests with a $50 lower retail price. Although neither drive is listed as Mac compatible, it will be interesting to see if the Toshiba is more Mac friendly than the Ricoh (see the FAQ's DVD section for Ricoh owner reports). PCworld had previously reviewed the Ricoh drive.

Another IE 5/Suitcase 8.2 Tip: A reader replies to the tip in yesterday's news with another workaround:

"Mike
I upgraded to IE 5 and I also have Suitcase 8.2, I also run multiple users and I could not launch IE 5 or it would crash eventually.

I think I nailed the problem down to a file called "MenuFonts Data". After removing this file from each user's prefs folder, it worked then. I didn't have to exclude IE 5 in Suitcase. Keep up the good work.
Joe Ward "

Reader Request: Virtual Private Networks and Macs

"I was wondering if your readers might be able to help me out regarding Mac compatible VPN client software. My company is building an extranet, and while they have a Windows solution, nobody has determined a Mac solution. So far, I've found one product, NTS Tunnelbuilder. Perhaps your readers can suggest alternative VPN clients for Macintosh. Information on this topic is hard to come by!
Thanks,
Alexander Glass
Senior Support Analyst
Sony Pictures Entertainment"

If any readers have any comments/recommendations for VPNs with Macs, please contact me with specifics. Thanks!

More GaugePro/UMA Motherboard Comments: The latest in the thread on changing performance reports in UMA motherboard with mixed dimm timing. (Previous reports were from Pismo systems only.)

"After reading about the Pismo's memory differences, and noting that you were unsure about other UMA models, I tried it on my PowerMac G4 400Mhz (Post-Tokyo).

I have a 128MB (3-2-2) DIMM, and a 64MB (3-3-3) DIMM installed, and when I pass the 128MB threshold with an application, Photoshop, or Internet Explorer with a boosted memory partition for example, then launch Gauge Pro, the memory speed drops from 120 MB/sec to around 108 MB/sec. While that is not much of a difference, it seems that the UMA motherboard does switch between the memory's speeds depending on which DIMM is in use. I don't have another machine to test it with, but hopefully more readers can test their own machines to find out whether this is all a glitch or not.
Nate Hamilton "

It's still hard to believe that the dimm timing would make the dramatic differences in reported performance, unless the software is misreporting the actual rates. (Previous reports of 3-2-2 vs 2-2-2 showed as much as 20+MB/sec). As noted in the previous posts, systems before the UMA Macs ran all dimms at the timing of the slowest dimm installed. I'm beginning to think this is not true of the UMA Macs (new iMacs, Pismos, G4/AGP systems). What's interesting is that with an earlier beta version of GaugePro, I saw higher performance with a B&W G3 with G4 400MHz CPU upgrade than in my Sawtooth G4/450 (scroll down to GaugePro results on this page of the review). Both systems had all 222 SDRAM.

More Yamaha 8424 SCSI CDR Feedback: This owner reports an earlier Toast reader extension version solved a problem:

" Re: Yamaha 8424 CDRW
Although I've downloaded the latest firmware for the drive, my problems did indeed stop earlier when I connected the drive to a wide Ultra SCSI-3 card.

There is still a problem with the Toast Reader Extension however. Toast Reader 4.0.1 freezes the computer at startup when the init icon appears. Toast Reader 3.5.7 does not however, so I have been using this older extension to use the drive to read CDs.
Steven Varner"

As noted here previously on the Yamaha 8X SCSI CDR page, another reader reported he had to disable wide negotiation on the 2940UW SCSI card to get the drive to work properly even with the latest firmware.

128MB FPM/EDO Dimm Feedback: Based on about 2 dozen reader reports, it seems there is no general problems with current 128MB FPM/EDO dimms from just about any source on the Net. The reported problems of a year or more ago must have been resolved, or isolated incidents.

Blue Planet Drive Jumper Info Site: A reader sent a note that my (old) link to Blue Planet (the largest source of drive jumper info on the net) no longer worked. I've updated the links page and FAQ to include their new site URL which is http://www.thetechpage.com/cgi-bin/default.cgi.

More IE 5.0 Feedback: This reader reports some problems with web page links to PDF files:

"Mike,
I noticed an odd problem using IE 5 last night. I was surfing LinuxPPC.com for a user manual and IE 5 was not properly handling some hyperlinks. On some links, the text was colored and underlined consistent with the rest of the page's hyperlinks, but IE 5 would not allow me to click on them. IE 4.5 and Netscape worked fine for these same links. In particular, go to this page: http://www.linuxppc.com/support/guide/ and see if you can click on the "LinuxPPC 2000 Installation guide" link. I know this is a link to a pdf and not an html file, but a number of other links on the site do not work as well. I was involved heavily with the Linux installation and did not do a great deal of surfing to see if this problem occurred elsewhere.

BTW, if you type the absolute location (including the pdf document), the browser will allow you to access it. And to top it all off, the user's guide is on the LinuxPPC CDROM.
Clay Jones"

Mac TrueX CDrom Drive Firmware: Several readers responded to my post in yesterday's news regarding Mac Firmware equipped 72X TrueX CDRom drives to ask if there would be firmware updates to existing TrueX drives. Although I wish there would be (as an owner of two 52x drives) I'm not sure and will ask my contacts to verify this.

3dfx To Acquire GigaPixel: [For those that missed the late update last night] 3dfx has a press release on their acquisition of Gigapixel Corporation. According to the press release "GigaPixel specializes in the design, development and licensing of 3D core technology. Designed to dramatically reduce the memory bandwidth and high gate count designs traditionally required for 3D acceleration, the GigaPixel technology for the first time enables high quality 3D display capabilities in low power, cost sensitive environments. ". Does the low-power comment indicate the potential for future notebook (onboard or Cardbus) 3dfx accelerators? Let's hope so...

The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings, Mac Game Reviews, and Mac Game FPS databases were updated this morning with new reader entries.

Other Net News:

• Take the Theater With You - Portable DVD Players (ZD/Net)
• eBay, authorities probe fraud allegations (News.com)

The recent features page also lists articles posted (most recent first) as does the sidebar links here. The site topics pages (systems, cpu upgrades, etc. - see top and sidebar links on this page) also are places to check as well as the FAQ.

Monday's News Summary

• 3dfx To Acquire GigaPixel
• Aurora Video Systems releases Component, SDI, and Uncompressed Options for Igniter
• IE 5.0/Suitcase 8.2 Tip
• Beige G3/IE 5 audio popping report
• OWC SDRAM prices rise a bit
• Mac ROM TrueX 72X Drives Coming Soon
• More Comments on PowerBook Ext. HD/Exp. Bay Kits
• More info on Pismo/GaugePro Performance Variations
• Ratoc Ultra-Wide PCMCIA SCSI Cards
• More Yamaha 8X SCSI CDR Feedback
• More Gadget 'Faster' Speedup Util Feedback
• OT: 3 MegaPixel Camera with IBM 340MB MicroDrive
• Latest PNY 80Min CDR reports
• The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings and Mac Game FPS databases were updated late last night with new reader entries and my Pismo G3/500 review game performance results.
• Other Net news/Software Updates

Weekend's News Summary

• IE 5.0/OE 5.02 Released
• PB Expansion Bay HD Kits (w/o Drive)
• Feedback on 'Faster' Util
• Toast 4.02 Update Install Tips
• Recycle PowerBook HDs Externally
• More Peltier Tech Info
• More MP3/Mac Info
• More on Club-Mac Firewire/IDE Case Price Matching
• G4 Upgrade/6 PCI Slot Mac PCI SCSI Card Tip
• Gadget's Faster Speedup Util
• Bottom Line's current weekly specials
• The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings, Mac Game Reviews, and Mac Game FPS databases were updated late last night with new reader entries.
• Other Net news/TILs/Software Updates

Friday's News Summary

• Reader reports Retrospect 4.2 driver Yamaha 8X CDR patch works on his systems
• Rumors on RAM price rise soon
• Adaptec SlimSCSI 1480 Driver Update
• Reminder on URL to 8500 Cache Dimm article
• OWC site specials page $209 sale on 256MB 222 SDRAM Dimms/SODimms
• Reader's Fix for Yamaha 8X SCSI CDR & Retrospect
• Reader Article on Peliter Cooled G4/Yikes
• OS 9.04 Changes
• Interleaved RAM Solves Quake3 Audio Stuttering
• GaugePro/VM Oddities
• The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings, Mac Game Reviews, and Mac Game FPS databases were updated late last night with new reader entries.
• Other Net news/Software Updates

For links to older news pages see the Archives page.

The recent features page has a lists reviews/articles you may have missed.

For a guide to finding answers to questions - see my Site Guide page.

Considering a CPU Upgrade? Search the CPU Upgrade Owner's Survey results and search for owner reports by Mac model and/or card brand. The current database has more than 3,300+ reports and growing.