Sunday, July 2, 2000

Stupid RPM Tricks -- 5:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Loyal reader, Neil S., emailed me about my article on installing the NVIDIA XFree 4.0 drivers. He was trying it in Red Hat 6.2 using the latest XFree packages (4.0-0.19) from ftp.redhat.com. When he tried to install them he got this error message:

only packages with major numbers <= 3 are supported by this version of RPM
error: .rpm cannot be installed

After reproducing that error message by downloading one of the 4.0-0.19 XFree packages, I did a quick search of Deja.com. Apparently Red Hat upgraded to RPM 4.x for all their new packages. The problem is that the new RPM 4.x package is in 4.x format so the version that ships with Red Hat 6.2 can't even read it to do an upgrade!

Fortunately, one intrepid person found this version of RPM 3.x which can also read 4.x packages. Download and install that, then you can install all the new packages on Red Hat's FTP (even the 4.x version of RPM *cough*).

Bit of Downtime -- 2:51 pm CST, Update by The Master

There was a 5 minute downtime at 2:40pm CST for some maintenance. Since you can see this-we're back up again. Gotta love Linux. If this had been NT, I couldn't do remote maintenance without a teleporter . . .

Databases on their way -- 11:02 am CST, Update by The Master

Well, last night I finally finished my history database version 1.0 :-) Took 3 days, but I hope to put something online tomorrow or Tuesday. Then begins more automation. . .

Saturday, July 1, 2000

UT 422 Patch Info -- 4:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It seems that Epic decided to go skipping merrily past the proposed 421 patch and moved on to 422. Unreality has a list of the fixes. Thanks Stomped.

Rechargeable Batteries -- 2:32 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I'm in the process of looking into rechargeable batteries for my Visor. I'm going through Duracell AAAs at an alarming rate, which should be even more alarming if I would register Void. Right now I'm debating between Rayovac Renewals (rechargeable alkaline) or NiMHs. I'm leaning more toward the Renewals. Even though they can't be reused nearly as much, they can keep a full charge up to five years in storage (don't want to be in the middle of an important trade in Void only to have to wait six hours for a battery recharge!), and they "act" like regular alkalines (start at 1.5v and gradually drain to .9, as opposed to NiMHs which start at 1.2v but hold that voltage until is suddenly drops off at the end of its charge). Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

8M Visor Test -- 11:38 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I confirmed with Handspring tech support that some 8M Visor Deluxes shipped between January 2000 and June 2000, like their Palm counterparts (story). Handspring has a little 3K test program Visor Deluxe users can download to determine if their PDA has the faulty chip. See this page for more information. Unfortunately, it seems that my Visor Deluxe has one of the defective chips. Like Palm, Handspring is working on a software patch to solve the problem.

I will say this: a lot of people gave Handspring grief for their slow tech support. They responded to my request well within the promised 24 hours, even though it is Independence Day weekend here in the States.

UPDATE! According to Handspring, only Visor Deluxes with all the memory filled (or nearly filled) are susceptible to problems. I have 3198K free on mine, but I guess the test program caused me to get the memory error. I had to do a hard reset. Thankfully, the Palm software does an excellent job of recovering from this problem and so most of my apps and all of my data were completely restored when I HotSynced (following the instructions for HotSyncing after a hard reset).

Deus Ex Advanced Options -- 10:02 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Voodoo Extreme posted instructions for bringing up the "Advanced Options" (a la Unreal/Unreal Tournament) menu in Deus Ex. Here's the word:

Wondering how to get to the Advanced options menu in Deus Ex (demo & retail)? Well, here's how.

Open the User.ini in the DeusExSystem folder. Add/Edit the following 2 lines.
t=talk
T=talk
when in the game press the T key to bring up "Say", delete the "say" & any other text that appears & type in preferences & hit Enter.

This'll bring up the Advanced options menu ala Unreal/Unreal Tournament, as a result you can follow the UT tweaking guide on 3DS already to find out how to tweak those settings (as they do the same thing). Although the actually Deus Ex guide itself will be posted on Monday most likely so theres not too long to wait to "fix" the game now :)

Cracking Dreamcast -- 9:55 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It was just a matter of time, but a group of crackers figured out how to crack the Dreamcast's security measures. Sega claims to have patched their system to eliminate this "loophole", but all currently available games are vulnerable. Thanks Blue's News.

I must confess that I cannot understand why someone would waste their time downloading up to about 1G of information just so you can play a game without all of its original content. I'm as poor as the next guy (even more so, actually) but by time you figure in your bandwidth, media costs, time, and effort, I'm guessing you easily exceed the cost of the game. Doesn't make sense.

Past Two Days' News

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