Posts by biomister

The Mac that saved Apple (and Steve Jobs)

3Dfx Game Wizard was the bomb :) I used it for years.

One funny thing about the Voodoo 2 card in the iMac was that it was a 3D card only. No 2D support at all. The onboard video still had to do all the 2D processing.

When you started a program that supported the Voodoo 2 card, the screen flashed off and on while the video feed switched from the onboard ATi card to the PCI Voodoo 2 card. During the installation of the PCI card, the CRT video cable was physically re-routed through the PCI card via a short extension cable that was included with the Voodoo 2 kit.

The Voodoo 2 card let me play Diablo II in 3Dfx/Glide mode (thousands of colors) on my iMac Bondi Rev A *much* better than my friend could manage on his iMac DV 400MHz. The ATi Rage Pro in the DV was absolutely no match for a 3Dfx (Voodoo 2 chipset) card. Nothing was until they added the GeForce cards with the LCD iMacs years later.

Later, I swapped the original daughter card (233MHz) out for a 333MHz from a 5 flavors iMac and I think the combo of the 3DFX + 333MHz processor gave me the best iMac (CRT) gaming platform there was.

If only there had been games... (sigh). Oh well!

Dell falls hard on 'soft' sales

Tech fall

Dell losing value = market correction

Apple losing value = good time to buy AAPL

The difference? One has an expanding market presence and a diversified future. The other is Dell.

GM shows off production electric car

And it is about time!

This is great news. Despite the rather frightening rant from a previous commentator, moving the power source from internal combustion to the grid is a wonderful idea.

Power in the grid is produced at a few well regulated points. Power from internal combustion is produced from countless barely regulated (and often poorly maintained) sources moving all over the roads.

If the cost of electricity from the grid frightens you, install solar on your garage. It can offset the cost increase and it is energy you are capturing all on your own. Try that with internal combustion. Any luck drilling and refining your own petroleum lately?

Drobo 'data robot' revamped with Firewire

Drobo = good, NAS not so good for Time Machine

If you are backing up using Time Machine, Drobo + Time Capsule = happy. Until Apple decides to let Time Machine do its thing with an off-the-shelf NAS this is the way to go for multi-Macbook homes.