This news has made AMD'ers happy

[KR Williams]

Had a Millinium yrs ago. good company.

My Mystiques (cheap Milleniums) have served me fairly well. I'm
not about to try to bring 'em forward to a new system.

Have a g-force2mx now - (nvidia) - also good product.


You should consider Nvidia - for the reasons the other poster said -
good drivers for Linux. ATI neglects Linux.

I just bought a Nvidia 5700 LE with 256meg vid ram/TV-out/DVI/dual
monitor support.................all for 120 bucks after rebate. (but
hurry one of the two rebates end in a few days).

The 5700 was interesting, but for a reason I'm really not going
to go into here. The issue I had was 2D quality and dual analog
monitor support. I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone.

I plan to use it in my new PC I'm building using a 30-buck Athlon1800XP,
and 1-gig ram. Yes I do not build around the CPU - I find the CPU is the
less important things to concider in the real word.

....depends on intent.

MONITOR,

Sure, but the budget didn't allow a few 22" LCDs. ;-)

then RAM

Perhaps. I did go cheap here (512MB). Memory is expensive these
days.

and vid card are the most important,

Which is why I went with the known; Matrox.

followed by Harddrive. IMO.

I'd move the hard-drive up on the list. However, I'm going to
recycle one out of this system for now. I'm sure I'll tear down
the new system (I've never used Linux, but am no stranger to *IX)
many times before I settle in. I'll buy a new drive or two
(RAID-1, perhaps) when I settle in.

I ignore sound and use the on board myself.

My plan.

here is the link to the vid card:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=716809&Sku=P450-8511

Tiger-direct? Gack.

I like SuSe.

I've been looking around some. Since Novel bought SuSE, I like
the package *and* the politics. SuSE 9.1 looks like a very nice
package, and I'm willing to vote with a small amount of change.

My adoption of Win2K (my only M$ OS) was in interim solution.
When I picked it up it was only a bridge to Linux. We'll see how
smoothly it goes (and how the CFO gets along).

 

[justin credible]

But they didn't.

Who cares..AMD sports the 64 and intel sports a 32,everything AMD does now will
be gravy to an already advanced process,that's about as future-proof as you can
get today IMO..I just wish I could afford the AMD FX.

 

[justin credible]

Well... Graphics cards look like a big bugaboo. Unless anyone
can convince me otherwise, I think I'm going safe: Matrox G550.
I'm really a 2D kinda guy anyway (and dual monitors are a must).

For what the Matrox does it is the best and they seem to stay on the same track
they layed several years ago only refining an already great product with top-notch
support.

 

[justin credible]

I'd have loved to have gotten a P650, but Matrox hasn't released the
programming info for the card. The card worthless for open source
OS's. For a company on the skids, you'd think Matrox would be doing a
bit more to develop new markets.

They certainly are not on the skids..they have a very solid market base
with developers and people who want and need high quality 2D with full
multi-monitor support.

 

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

They certainly are not on the skids..they have a very solid market base
with developers and people who want and need high quality 2D with full
multi-monitor support.

http://www.hoovers.com/matrox-electronic-systems/--ID__43203--/free-co-fin-factsheet.xhtml
http://www.hoovers.com/matrox-electronic-systems/--ID__43203--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml

Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd.
1055 St. Regis Blvd.
Dorval, Quebec H9P 2T4, Canada
Phone: 514-822-6000
Fax: 514-822-6292

http://www.matrox.com
Basic Financial Information
Company Type Private
Fiscal Year-End March
Financial Overview
2003 2002 2001 2000
Annual Sales ($ mil.) 89.4 106.2 147.1 500.0 (est.)

Key Numbers
Company Type Private


Fiscal Year-End March
2003 Sales (mil.) $89.4
1-Year Sales Growth (15.8%)
2003 Employees 1,000
1-Year Employee Growth (31.0%)
More Financials
Key People
Chairman Branko Matic

Job Openings
President Lorne Trottier
Controller Brian Bertram

Sliding from $500 million to $90 million in 3 years doesn't sound like
a vibrant company with a growing market share to me. The 1/3
staff-reduction doesn't look so hot either.

I don't know any open source developers that are working with the new
Matrox cards since Matrox isn't releasing any programming information.
Their choice of course, but it seems strange that they would want to
pass up a large market like X11 users, which for the most part, are
only interested in 2D performance.

-wolfgang

 

[AD.]

I think I skipped over the Mystiques - I went straight from Millenium I
and II to G400, G550, and now P650. IIRC, the Mystique was a low-end
G200 series card ?

The G200 had Millenium and Mystique models - the Mystique being slighter
slower memory and RAMDAC or something like that.

Earlier on the Mystique was a cheaper 'gaming' version of the Millenium
II. Also had lower specced RAMDAC and memory I think.

Cheers
Anton

 

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

(e-mail address removed)
says...

I didn't think any drives rapped the voice-coil with a square
wave. I thought the waveforms were quite complex (initial whack,
sustain, tail), with the energy driven in each phase depending on
the distance of the move. At least that's sorta the results I
got from looking at the performance characteristics of various
drives five or six years ago (time flies).

I was talking more tongue-in-cheek. I was trying to say was that the
current ATA Seagate Barracudas whack the arm pretty hard and the disk
voices it's objection rather loudly. The rubber disk mounting
grommets on the Sonata's drive caddy definitely makes a difference in
the amount of arm seeking noise that gets coupled to the case. (The
1-year old Barracudas still had an optional quiet seek mode where the
firmware was quite a bit nicer to the arm, but alas, that mode no
longer exists at least on Seagate's due to legal problems.)

-wolfgang

 

[KR Williams]

The G200 had Millenium and Mystique models - the Mystique being slighter
slower memory and RAMDAC or something like that.

Earlier on the Mystique was a cheaper 'gaming' version of the Millenium
II. Also had lower specced RAMDAC and memory I think.

That makes some sense, but I thought the G200 was a follow-on to
the Millenium. I remember wanting to buy one when they came out,
but the Mystiqus were doing an adequate job.

 

[KR Williams]

(e-mail address removed)
says...

I was talking more tongue-in-cheek. I was trying to say was that the
current ATA Seagate Barracudas whack the arm pretty hard and the disk
voices it's objection rather loudly.

Ok, I took it literally. Thouhg to get performance out of the
drive one has to rap the voice-coil rather hard (inertia and all
that).

The rubber disk mounting
grommets on the Sonata's drive caddy definitely makes a difference in
the amount of arm seeking noise that gets coupled to the case. (The
1-year old Barracudas still had an optional quiet seek mode where the
firmware was quite a bit nicer to the arm, but alas, that mode no
longer exists at least on Seagate's due to legal problems.)

Really? Do you have a reference for this? I know many drives,
from long ago, had performance options built-in, and could be
selected it one had the right tools. SCSI drives often exposed
these options to the user.

 

[KR Williams]

For what the Matrox does it is the best and they seem to stay on the same track
they layed several years ago only refining an already great product with top-notch
support.

I agree with the above (from my experience only), however if
they're only doing $90M with a thousand employees ($90K each,
according to my tired math), they are sucking wind. OTOH, I
added my 1ppm to their revenue. ;-)

 

[KR Williams]

(e-mail address removed)
says...

I wish I'd read this yesterday. ;-)

BTW, I ordered everything (except memory, monitor, and OS) from
newegg late Friday afternoon. The case (nothing else) was here
today (Monday). Swoosh! UPS ground is faster than FedEx! ;-)

 

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

Really? Do you have a reference for this? I know many drives,
from long ago, had performance options built-in, and could be
selected it one had the right tools. SCSI drives often exposed
these options to the user.

Here you go.


http://www.convolve.com/pr2000-7-12a.html

BILLER COMMUNICATIONS
310 West 94th Street
New York, New York 10025
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)

*NEWS* NEWS* NEWS* NEWS* NEWS* NEWS* NEWS* NEWS*

CONTACT: Aaron G. Biller
212-663-9319

COMPAQ AND SEAGATE SUED FOR $800 MILLION CHARGED WITH PATENT
INFRINGEMENT, FRAUD, TORTIOUS INTERFERENCE AND BREACH OF CONTRACT

NEW YORK CITY (July 13, 2000)--- Convolve Inc. announced that it
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as obligated
through its license agreement with Convolve, filed a lawsuit today
against Compaq Computer Corp. and Seagate Technology Inc. in the
U.S. District Court Southern District of New York seeking "to
prevent Compaq and Seagate from stealing Convolve's proprietary
computer disk drive technology".

Convolve is seeking at least $800 million in damages and seeks a
permanent injunction barring Compaq and Seagate from manufacturing
or selling disk drives or computers incorporating Seagate's "Sound
Barrier Technology" (SBT) feature.

Convolve is the exclusive licensee of patented motion control
technology called Input Shaping®, originally developed at and
licensed from MIT. This technology would permit the roughly 200
million disk drives sold this year in computers to operate more
quickly and quietly than currently possible. Convolve's core
vibration reduction technology is used by many large companies for
making manufacturing machines more productive.

Input Shaping® is currently used commercially by manufacturers of
high precision machinery. The technology has also been
demonstrated on NASA's Space Shuttle robot arm training facility,
has flown in space on a payload aboard a NASA Space Shuttle, and
is used on the controls of a nuclear materials handling crane at
Argonne National Laboratories.

Input Shaping® technology is a method for commanding equipment to
move as quickly as possible without excitation of vibrations. In a
disk drive application, Input Shaping® control of the read/write
arm permits the fastest and quietest performance by reducing the
vibrations that are generated at the end of the "seek" or the
movement of the arm between tracks on the disk. Information can't
be written or read by the computer until the arm settles (stops
vibrating). These same vibrations are also responsible for much of
the noise generated by computers.

According to the complaint, "For more than a year, beginning in
October 1998, Convolve held discussions with and gave
demonstrations for engineers and executives of both Compaq and
Seagate for the purpose of licensing their technologies to these
two companies."

Both Compaq and Seagate had signed non-disclosure agreements (NDA)
not to use this proprietary technology to develop competing
products.

In addition, Convolve also has developed and has both domestic and
foreign patents pending for an innovative computer control panel
feature called "Quick and Quiet(tm)" which allows the user of the
disk drive to select between faster or quieter computer
performance. The Quick and Quiet(tm) technology is also the
subject of the complaint against Compaq and Seagate. The action
filed in Federal court alleges that the computer giant and its
disk drive supplier misappropriated Convolve's technology.

In 1989, Neil Singer, PhD, and Ken Pasch, PhD along with MIT
professor Warren Seering invented the technology under a
government grant to perfect a vibration control technology in
computer controlled machines. The results of this research have
been applied in a number of applications from large gantry cranes
to microscopic MEMS based devices. In 1989, Dr. Singer formed
Convolve, a privately-held company based in New York City.

For more information on Convolve visit www.convolve.com.

========

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

From: (e-mail address removed)
To: (e-mail address removed)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 02:52:09 -0600

Hello:

Seagate has decided that we will no longer support AAM. Seagate is in
the process of removing all product information pertaining to the
support of AAM.

Our drives are extremely quiet while operating at the highest
performance levels, so we believe the ability to switch between Modes is
unnecessary, though supported by ATA specifications.

We are also involved in patent litigation with Convolve and MIT.
Although we believe the lawsuit is without merit, Convolve alleges that
one of its patents, US Patent No. 6,314,473, covers AAM technology.

We understand that Convolve told the T-13 standards committee that it
would license its patents on a reasonable, non-discriminatory basis.

If you want a utility that will switch AAM modes you must procure it
from a third party. Seagate cannot make any recommendations as to what
third party utility you choose to use, nor do we in any way support the
utilities. However you can perform an Internet search for Automatic
Acoustic Management and select from the available 3rd party

If you have further questions, please contact us.

Regards,

Jeremy W.
Seagate Technical Support

 

[Tony Hill]

That makes some sense, but I thought the G200 was a follow-on to
the Millenium. I remember wanting to buy one when they came out,
but the Mystiqus were doing an adequate job.

The G200 was a follow-up to the Millennium, more or less. But like
with the original Mystique, which was a cheapened version of the old
Millennium II, there was also a G200 Mystique. Pretty much the same
idea.

I actually had one of those G200 Mystique cards a while back. Not a
bad card, though nothing particularly great. Bought it to replace an
old Millennium. While the G200 Mystique added a bit of 3D
capabilities, it certainly didn't impress me much. 2D image quality
was good, though I was using a cheap 15" monitor back in those days,
so I didn't benefit from it. I later replaced it with a TNT m64
(el-cheapo version of the original nVidia TNT chipset), and the 2D was
slightly worse, even on my 15" monitor, but performance (2D and 3D)
was MUCH better. I then bought a GeForce2 MX card, and that brought
the 2D image quality up to a very acceptable level on my monitor
(decent quality 17" at that point in time) and better 3D performance.
Now I've got an nForce motherboard with integrated graphics, which is
basically identical to the GeForce2 MX (so much so that I just yanked
the old card and gave it to a friend).

One thing of note: while the chipset does play a role in 2D image
quality, there are a lot of other features that come into play here.
It's very possible to get an nVidia video card with good 2D image
quality and another card from a different company but using the exact
same nVidia chipset but having poor 2D image quality.

 

[KR Williams]

(e-mail address removed)
says...

Here you go.

Thanks for the reference. I pulled the patent and read it today
(53 pages!, which tells one something ;-). The patent, as the
article suggests, is all about user/machine-interfaces to control
noise of disk drives. It has *nothing* to do with the way the
heads are driven to optimize noise or performance! There are
references on how to calculate head movement, but these aren't
even claimed!

Indeed I don't see how this patent will stand because of the
dates (filed in 1999, issued in 2001). Certainly control of disk
performance via drive parameters was known *long* before 1999
(SCSI drives have had many performance selection "pages"
available for "users" to tune systems). They *may* have
something to defend (though I doubt it) on a specific user-
interface, since that's really all they talk about in their
claims. Note that the claimants are pulling the UI from their
offering, but not the drives.

In short, this seems to be much about nothing. ...and certainly
doesn't support your claim about driving voice-coils with a
"square-wave". Indeed that's nonsense.

 

[KR Williams]

The G200 was a follow-up to the Millennium, more or less. But like
with the original Mystique, which was a cheapened version of the old
Millennium II, there was also a G200 Mystique. Pretty much the same
idea.

Your memory is better than mine, though that's pretty much what I
remembered too.

I actually had one of those G200 Mystique cards a while back. Not a
bad card, though nothing particularly great. Bought it to replace an
old Millennium. While the G200 Mystique added a bit of 3D
capabilities, it certainly didn't impress me much. 2D image quality
was good, though I was using a cheap 15" monitor back in those days,
so I didn't benefit from it.

I'm using the one at work to drive a 20" monitor at 1600x1200, so
it's not all *that* bad. It's a tad slow (72Hz, IIRC), but we're
poor folk these days. No, I'm not about to buy a graphics card
for the boss! It's bad enough that I have to supply the
batteries for the mouse they bought me. Sheesh!

I later replaced it with a TNT m64
(el-cheapo version of the original nVidia TNT chipset), and the 2D was
slightly worse, even on my 15" monitor, but performance (2D and 3D)
was MUCH better. I then bought a GeForce2 MX card, and that brought
the 2D image quality up to a very acceptable level on my monitor
(decent quality 17" at that point in time) and better 3D performance.
Now I've got an nForce motherboard with integrated graphics, which is
basically identical to the GeForce2 MX (so much so that I just yanked
the old card and gave it to a friend).

Good friend! ;-)

One thing of note: while the chipset does play a role in 2D image
quality, there are a lot of other features that come into play here.
It's very possible to get an nVidia video card with good 2D image
quality and another card from a different company but using the exact
same nVidia chipset but having poor 2D image quality.

Sure. Even if smart people design a wunnerful chip, idiots can
still design crap they're mounted to. ...another reason I
copped-out with Matrox again. The decision wasn't all that hard,
given all the crap out there.

 

[chrisv]

Sure. Even if smart people design a wunnerful chip, idiots can
still design crap they're mounted to. ...another reason I
copped-out with Matrox again. The decision wasn't all that hard,
given all the crap out there.

That's why I buy Matrox for work, and ATI-brand at home where I want
decent 3D capability. Why chance one of the off-brands that buy ATI's
chips and then sell them on boards costing less than ATI's boards?
They've got to be cutting something...

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

One thing of note: while the chipset does play a role in 2D image
quality, there are a lot of other features that come into play here.
It's very possible to get an nVidia video card with good 2D image
quality and another card from a different company but using the exact
same nVidia chipset but having poor 2D image quality.

Exactly! I believe it has alot to do with the quality of
the LC filtering installed on the analog RGB lines.
Sometimes too much in an effort meet emissions specs.
There are card mods that claim to increase image quality.

-- Robert

 

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

(e-mail address removed)
says...

Thanks for the reference. I pulled the patent and read it today
(53 pages!, which tells one something ;-). The patent, as the
article suggests, is all about user/machine-interfaces to control
noise of disk drives. It has *nothing* to do with the way the
heads are driven to optimize noise or performance! There are
references on how to calculate head movement, but these aren't
even claimed!

I wonder if the Seagate tech support guy mentioned all the patents
that applied. The Convolve press release sounded like they were more
concerned about Seagate using specially-shaped drive pulses.

-wolfgang

 

[KR Williams]

That's why I buy Matrox for work, and ATI-brand at home where I want
decent 3D capability. Why chance one of the off-brands that buy ATI's
chips and then sell them on boards costing less than ATI's boards?
They've got to be cutting something...

That's pretty much why I bought the Matrox card for my new
system. I don't do 3D, but demand the best 2D I can afford.
Though I was thinking about a 3D card, just because, I didn't see
anything that would guarantee me what I needed for 2D.

 

[KR Williams]

Exactly! I believe it has alot to do with the quality of
the LC filtering installed on the analog RGB lines.
Sometimes too much in an effort meet emissions specs.
There are card mods that claim to increase image quality.

I think that's an entirely simplistic view. I'd like to see you
substantiate this. There's a *lot* more to EMI reduction than
"LC filters".