Now This Is A Sound Card! Ancient History Revisited

Introducing the Reveal Sound FX Wave 32 Sound Card aka SC600 + Wave32!
This sound card is 12 1/4" long and was released around November 1995.
Another component from the ancient ISA slot era, this sound card had plenty of 'new' features.

Built around the Ensoniq chip it was based on AMD's InterWave wavetable audio processor. During this time period FM synthesis was considered inadequate for the demands of emerging multimedia and Windows 95-based applications.

Initial reports quoted the selling price at $149 USD. The actual price was $200 USD. Back in 1995 that was a big chunk of change! And even though it was billed as a Wave 32 it still used the 16 bit bus.
















In the picture below you can see that the contacts were 5 1/4" long
with the remaining 7" hanging out the back. Notice that not many contacts are used.















Here's something you no longer see. 3 individual CD Interfaces that were 'keyed' to certain manufacturers. Each interface was routed to the proprietary interface driver. From top down they are as follows;
Panasonic
Mitsumi
Sony















Yep! Back in the day you had many manufacturers making hardware that was not compatible with other interfaces and there were very few standards.
Therefore you had to make sure the new hardware you were buying had the features needed to run your other hardware.

Something else that you may not notice on the card are numerous jumpers.
You had jumpers to set the midi and wave addresses and what type of microphone you used. Set an address wrong and you will either crash or have no audio.

These were the days when info and help was sparse and required some knowledge of addressing and IRQ's.
Ah! The good old days! LOL!!!

For a look at the I/O spec sheet click the link below;
Spec Sheet

The card performed okay and had sound quality that ranged from high quality to mediocre depending on what type of file you were playing. FM synthesis may have been considered semi-obsolete but the users and game manufacturers were still using it. This card didn't handle FM very well and the midi instrument sounds weren't that great either.

By today's standards this card would be in the $10 econoline of sound cards.
But back in 1995 this card generated plenty of news and excitement. It never did surpass the granddaddy of them all, the Creative AWE32 which was a full 14" long and was a must have audio card that was released 20 months earlier.
And a year after the release of the Reveal card the AWE64 sound card was released which saw many other sound cards end up in the trash.

I hope you enjoyed this time travel trip back to an exciting era in computer history.

TaZMAn

You Think Your Video Card Is Big? Check This Out!

Recently I was cleaning out my stock of old computer parts and came across an old ISA slot video card. Remembering many forum posts of users complaining about how long some of the new pci-e slot video cards, I decided to post some pics and spec's of this card.
Many younger readers have never seen this technology and this is a good way of preserving some computer history.

This video card is either a Cardex, Cirrus Logic or Gainward. All older search facilities are no longer available that would allow me to positively identify it. It measures 9 1/2" long and sports a whopping 2 megs of Ram and uses the ancient ISA slot structure.
The 8 IC's across the top of the board are the Ram modules. Each one is 256k in size for a total of 2 megs.















Notice how this card used the split slot configuration?
Many motherboards had ISA slots that contained 4 connectors to handle numerous hardware configurations.
This card uses the 1st, 3rd and 4th connectors.
Yep! It was a very confusing time.
















Here is a view of the Cardex Bios chip. Notice the large size of the slot contacts?
















Here's a close up of the Cirrus Logic processor.
Not made in China but in Korea!
















Here is another close up of the analog video connector that is for featured add-ons. However, those features never seemed to materialize.
















Other items that may not be visible in the pictures are several jumpers.
Back in the day you had to set jumpers to resolve IRQ conflicts, timing issues and a whole host of parameters that are now handled by modern hardware and operating systems.

This video card was state of the art in it's day and had a maximum display resolution of 800 x 600. Before that we were confined to a resolution of 640 x 480. A far cry from today's resolutions and large screen monitors.

So to those user's of the newer pci-e video cards that say their card is huge?
Try cramming one of these into your tiny system. LOL!!
The old cases of the day are another subject all together.

Hope you enjoyed this piece of ancient history.

TaZMAn

A Whois Tutorial Using Network Tools. Amazing!

The Whois tool is part of the Network tools found in Ubuntu and is readily available for all other operating systems.
It is also the feature tool of the following mini tutorial. I enjoy networking and network security. It's a hobby of mine. :-)

Many people don't realize how much info can be gleaned by using Whois. I hope to open the door and provide some education on the use of these tools.
The Network Tools feature is found in the System-Administration section of the Ubuntu menu.
Let's open it up and click on the Whois tab.

For this tutorial I will be using a page I found during a Google search of Windows anti-virus reviews.
I have numerous Windows customers and like to keep on top of the ever changing technology.

One of the first pages that came up in my search was a site titled 2009 Security Software Reviews.
The page had reviews for numerous anti-virus software. Many of the reviewed anti-virus software were easily recognizable but a few weren't.
And a few of the more notables were missing but I was after any info I could find and started reading the reviews.
Now the fun begins!

When using Whois you don't use the http or the www portion of the address. All you need is the website's name and the domain extension like .com, .net, .org, etc.
So let's put the following address in Whois and click the Whois button;
2009securitysoftwarereviews.com


A few seconds later Whois provides the following info;

Registrant:
Star Advertising
P.O. Box 8044
Delray Beach, Florida 33484
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Created on: 25-Feb-08
Expires on: 25-Feb-10
Last Updated on: 03-Mar-08

Administrative Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@frischman.com
Star Advertising, Inc.
150 West 25th Street
Suite 904
New York, New York 10001
United States
(561) 251-7198 Fax --

Technical Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@frischman.com
Star Advertising, Inc.
150 West 25th Street
Suite 904
New York, New York 10001
United States
(561) 251-7198 Fax --

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.RACKMY.COM
NS2.RACKMY.COM


Hmmmm....... We see that the contact info is Arthur Frischman at arthur@frischman.com
You want to make a note of that for later.
We also see that this review site is owned by Star Advertising.

Let's copy the above info and paste it into a text document for future reference.
Now let's take a look at the website of the #1 rated security software.
It can be found and purchased here;
pcsecurityshield.com

Clear out the Domain Address search window of Whois and insert the following address in Whois and click the button;
pcsecurityshield.com


A Whois search provides us with this info;

Registrant:
PCSecurityShield
601 N Congress Avenue
Suite 303
Delray Beach, Florida 33445
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Domain Name: PCSECURITYSHIELD.COM
Created on: 04-Dec-03
Expires on: 04-Dec-11
Last Updated on: 28-Aug-06

Administrative Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@pcsecurityshield.com
PCSecurityShield
601 N Congress Avenue
Suite 303
Delray Beach, Florida 33445
United States
5612433247 Fax -- 5612433249

Technical Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@pcsecurityshield.com
PCSecurityShield
601 N Congress Avenue
Suite 303
Delray Beach, Florida 33445
United States
5612433247 Fax -- 5612433249

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.RACKMY.COM
NS2.RACKMY.COM


Again we see that the contact info is Arthur Frischman at arthur@frischman.com
We also see that the street addresses are different but the city and state are the same.
They use different email address domains but both use arthur@.
They both use the same domain servers.
Isn't that interesting?!!!!

Now let's dig a bit deeper and use the resources found at;
http://www.robtex.com/dns

Doing a search of frischman.com gave me this page;
http://www.robtex.com/dns/www.frischman.com.html

I'll let you the reader make a decision and draw your own conclusions from the above info.
As you can see, using the Whois tool can provide some good info which allows you to investigate
website and domain info.
Never take claims on the internet at face value. Do a little research before making a decision.
It only takes you a few minutes and can provide you with good hard facts.

The foregoing shows how and why the use of domain proxies has become more prevalent.
A proxy allows the registrant of a domain name to hide all contact and address info from a search.
The implications and consequences of such secrecy should be obvious to the reader.
However, in an upcoming article I will show you more ways of finding who owns a domain name.
I will also continue my mini-series tutorials of the Domain Tools included with Ubuntu.


Be safe!

TaZMAn

Extend The Holidays By Helping Needy Children

I hope that after the holidays I will acquire plenty of used computers put out for trash that were replaced with new Christmas computers.

I will wipe the drives, install Linux and get them into the hands of the poor children in my community.

Christmas may be a bit late for them but at least it did arrive.
And I am asking the Linux community to join in and help those
in need in your local community.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

TaZMAn

Linux Is Saving Me Money $$$

I decided to see how much money I have saved by switching to Linux.
I took several of the software titles I had previously used (Except for Photoshop) and used Google to search prices. I believe that most of the prices fall within the average price range for each product.

So let's start off with the Windows PC. I prefer XP but seeing how it's going to be phased out
I would need to upgrade to Vista. The other software other then PS is pretty much standard fare for my needs.

Vista Home Premium.........239.95

Antivirus ...........................39.95
Office 2007 Std. ...............119.99
Photoshop CS3..................649.00
CloneDVD and AnyDVD ...... 76.95
Nero 9 ...............................79.99
ConvertXtoDVD ................. 49.99
UltraISO ............................29.95
______________________________________
Total ............................. 1285.77

So we have a price tag of $1285.77 USD with the addition of Photoshop.
Without the Photoshop option the cost would still be $636.77 USD

Now to the Linux system using The Gimp, Xara and Blender as a replacement for Photoshop.
As you can see, it cost me absolutely nothing for the O.S. and the software.
I saved myself a minimum of $636.77 USD.
And I didn't even have to buy upgrades to run it unlike Vista.

Linux ........................... Free
Antivirus ....................... N/A
OpenOffice ....................Free
The Gimp,Xara,Blender ..Free
K9 Copy ........................Free
K3b ..............................Free
DeVeDe, WinFF .............Free
ISO Master ................... Free
____________________________________
Total ............................$0.00


Many of you will object to me adding the cost of Vista to the list as it is installed in store bought computers. Well I only use systems I build myself. Therefore I need to buy Vista and that is what I must pay.

And I added Photoshop more as a joke rather then a necessary application. I honestly used Paint Shop Pro 7 that I bought on a discount rack for $49 USD.

But anytime a Linux user mentions The Gimp many others scream that it doesn't have all the features as Photoshop.
Well most people will never use all the features of Photoshop and I'd like those nay sayers to cough up their license key and not the crack key that is so prevalent. No user that only does home photos and simple graphics will ever convince me they purchased a $649.00 piece of software to do so little graphics work.

Anyway............ Thank you Linux for saving me money and providing me with everything I require.
In these troubling economic times, every dime I can save is much appreciated.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

TaZMAn

Benchmark Your PC - How Do You Stack Up?

Benchmarking and testing a PC falls into 2 categories;
Within a running PC or via a bootable disk.
The Inquisitor Hardware Testing and Certification System falls in both categories.

You can download the scripts to your PC and run them within your booted system or you can download the Live Cd and run the tests from a stable environment. I say 'stable' because you won't have a lot of background processes running in the Live environment then you would in a fully booted PC.

Another problem with running these tests inside a booted up PC is that the OS won't allow certain tests or portions of the test to access all of the hardware.
That's where the Live Cd comes in handy.

The Live Cd contains 25 various hardware testing modules. Each test has user configured parameters to allow for custom hardware testing.
Be advised!!!
The tests consist of destructive and non-destructive tests. The destructive hard drive tests will wipe your hard drive of all data. The other destructive tests have the potential of destroying your hardware.

It is recommended that the casual user selects the non-destructive tests and sets the time and cycle parameters to a low amount the first time they use this software.
That should not put any user off as these tests can be a very good tool for checking out a new computer or finding a premature hardware failure in an older system.

The Live Cd also has the benefit of not being tied to a certain O.S. or version.
It will boot up on almost any system that has sufficient Ram.
The installable test scripts are only available for Linux systems which makes the Live Cd the preferred usage.

Inquisitor also has an Enterprise version that allows the tests to be deployed over a network to 100's or 1000's of PC's in need of testing. This is geared towards the PC or hardware manufacturer who needs a quick and standardized method of testing their equipment before shipping.

So go and grab the scripts or Live Cd and see where your PC stands.
Test your friend's computer and see if it's as good as yours! LOL!!
Get the details and the files from their website found here;

Inquisitor Hardware Testing Website

Good luck and may your numbers be in specs.

TaZMAn

Recover Lost Windows Login Password With Live Cd's

So you have a Windows PC and you forgot the login password.
What do you do? How do you retrieve or reset it?
There are several solutions including making your own bootable Cd's with the needed tools but I'm going to focus on 2 solutions that only require downloading and burning to a Cd.

Those being PCLoginNow and Trinity Rescue Kit.

I find it quite humorous how Microsoft has made claims that their newest OS is so secure. There are no more backdoor Admin logins and the implementation of SYSKEY which is an optional feature added in Windows NT 4.0 SP3.
It was meant to protect against offline password cracking attacks so that the SAM database would still be secure.

Unfortunately, Microsoft underestimated the power of Linux.
Both of the following software are based on Linux and can achieve the same results. That is getting your password back or reseting it to a new one.

PCLoginNow is a small (55 Meg) ISO file that you download and then burn to a Cd. Based on Linux it is very easy to use and works on 2000, 2003, 2008, XP and Vista. It also has good driver support for most IDE and Sata drivers so you have the best chance of getting access to your hard drive.

And it can access both the Admin and User passwords.
You can also change or lock accounts, change policies or totally remove them.
The best part of all this is that this software is free.
You can read more about it and download it from their website.
PCLoginNow Website


The other software is the Trinity Rescue Kit.
A 130 meg ISO image that you burn to a Cd, this software is more then a password reset software although that is just one of it's many tools.
Again, this is a Linux based Live Cd with a twist.
It uses command line entries similar to the old Dos command days.
This is due in part to a bootable Dos utility disk he had once built.
It also keeps the size of the Cd down to a minimum by not having an integrated desktop manager like Gnome or KDE.

This software reads like a who's who of software and utilities.
It can rescue and repair a crashed PC. Both Windows and Linux.
It can clone a system across a network and more.
Be sure to read the documentation before you use it or even print it out although the newest version of TRK has the documentation built in.

You can read about and get TRK from their website;
Trinity Rescue Kit Website


As I said earlier, there are several other password reset/recovery tools available but the above 2 are easily available and bootable without requiring the user to create their own bootable Cd.

Enjoy!

TaZMAn