HardwareZone's 10th Anniversary: The Y2K Era

Transforming SHZ to HardwareZone

With Singapore Hardware Zone gaining considerable traction, CEO Dr.Jackie Lee along with the founding group made the fateful decision to transform the popular tech hobbyist site into an established IT media entity when Hardware Zone Pte. Ltd was incorporated in October 1999. With that, the road to establishing a successful IT media portal was set in motion swiftly. One of the first actions to follow suit was renaming the online media entity Singapore Hardware Zone to HardwareZone to reflect the global reach of the site and to influence many more beyond its shores.

As the year 2000 dawned upon us, HardwareZone was busy prepping a brand new site, ditching plain HTML for a more dynamic site using PHP scripting, a fresh outlook and incorporating a lot more services to keep inline with the plan of cementing HardwareZone as a true IT media portal. As you might have guessed, Ang Chi Hoe, Poh Swee Hong and their team would have been pretty busy with the entire overhaul. In fact, the content management systems were also designed in-house by them. Sometime around the first quarter of 2000, the new HardwareZone was launched, along with a new community-centric logo:-

Now if you checked the larger view of the homepage in year 2000, you would notice several new services that weren't around in the 1998 to 1999 era. The most famous of these new services is the File Exchange service or otherwise known as FileX service. It offered extremely speedy uploads and downloads for several shareware/freeware related materials like utilities, drivers, trailers and demos. Internet connectivity speeds outside of Singapore those days were certainly not anywhere as fast as they are these days and a local mirror of sorts for these materials was a real boon to the community back then. To kick start this service, we initiated several community projects where the top 5 uploaders for various monthly themes such as motherboard drivers, graphics card drivers and so forth were rewarded with hardware prizes. Too bad, we don't have a detailed snapshot of the FileX service page.

Other notable services that were incorporated in 2000 are as follows:-

• HardwareZone Web mail service for members
• FileX sharing service
• Pricelist SMS Alert service (notification when a hardware price falls below specified value)
• Classified Ads service (a dedicated service in addition to the Garage Sales forums)
• Hosting Service
• HardwareZone Merchandise (for HWZ branded polo-tees, mugs and more)

HardwareZone Forums in Y2K

The forum's backend engine was completely changed as well and members started fresh in the new forums. This is the reason why there's no member dated prior to year 2000 when the forums service was actually around since 1998. Here's the snapshot of the forums in Y2K and a glimpse at the topics discussed in the Hardware Clinic, Garage Sales and EDMW forums:-

A Sneak Peek at GameAxis in Y2K

Technology and Hardware Highlight from Year 2000

We've seen what the first two years in HardwareZone was like and the technology progression back then. So let's move on to see what the critical year 2000 brought to the table.

The CPU Evolution in Year 2000

With Intel's Pentium III processors struggling, the company turned its eyes on a new micro-architecture known as NetBurst, which featured a very deep instruction pipeline and was supposedly capable of scaling to very high clock speeds. This touted scalability was expected to help Intel overcome the threat of AMD, though when the first processors based on this micro-architecture, the Pentium 4 (Willamette) were initially launched, they were still lagging behind their Athlon competitors. In fact, they were arguably not much of an improvement over the Pentium III. However, SSE2 was added for the Pentium 4, following up on the original SSE that was present on the Pentium III and these additional instructions made some difference with the proper application support.

Overall, the early Pentium 4 processors that we saw in 2000 were not at all worth its premium price, high temperatures and power consumption. However, even the early Willamette cores had clock speeds of at least 1.5GHz which meant that they had a numerical albeit false advantage compared to the 1.4GHz maximum managed by the Athlon Thunderbird (which was actually the better performer). This was to result in AMD's attempts to counter any wrong perceptions created by absolute processor clock speeds with concerted marketing efforts in the next couple of years.

The Motherboard Evolution in Y2K

• With the Athlon proving to be an able competitor to the Pentium III, manufacturers were soon jumping onto the K7 bandwagon. However, a major stumbling block to the adoption of the Athlon was the patchy performance of AMD's own reference 'Irongate' chipset, particularly when it came to its AGP performance. Fortunately, AMD could count on VIA to help them out here, as the VIA KX133 chipset turned out to be a very competent complement to the Athlon.

With support for PC-133 SDRAM memory (2GB max), AGP 4x and ATA66, this was a VIA chipset that brought parity in features to what Intel was offering with its newer i820. Except for the fact that the i820 was using RDRAM and that costed a bomb then. Instantly, Athlon users were drawn to this chipset and we saw quite a few of these boards in that year.

One of the earlier ones we saw was the AOpen AK72 and while the board itself was only an average performer and lacking in the overclocking department, "3D graphics performance will soar for the first time for AMD K7 CPUs" and that was the main grouse users had with AMD's reference chipset.

• Another notable board based on the KX133 chipset came from abit and it was a very feature packed board known as the KA7 , equipped with up to 6 PCI and 4 DIMM slots. The usual abit enthusiast oriented features like jumperless, SoftMenu III, extra fan connectors and thermal probes contrived to make it a complete package for the AMD enthusiast.
• VIA was to modify its KX133 chipset following changes by AMD to its EV6 bus, resulting in the KT133 and by the middle of the year, this newer chipset was found in a majority of AMD motherboards.
• VIA was not content just to cater to the AMD community. Intel's i820 chipset was proving to be too big an investment for the mainstream users who were content to remain on SDRAM. It was another opportunity for a third party to step in and VIA's Apollo Pro 133A chipset was exactly what users were looking for. Current features like ATA66 and PC-133 SDRAM support, with a 133MHz FSB and with AC-97 onboard audio support, this was a chipset for users on the Pentium III platform and Socket 370/Slot-1 solutions.

An example of this chipset that we saw in 2000 was the abit VT6X4 and it was "a pretty good board, considering its stability and performance, as compared to other VIA based boards around." A more extreme version of this chipset was conjured by DFI, which managed to support both Slot-1 and Socket 370 processors on the same board. "Part of a new series of boards from DFI which is dubbed as the 'Twin-Series' ... this is really a one of a kind motherboard" that has to be seen to be believed.

• Realizing that they needed another chipset for the SDRAM crowd, Intel came up with the i815 chipset. Enthusiasts were hopeful that this would be a proper successor to the 440BX and the specifications seemed promising. There was AGP 4x, PC-133 SDRAM and ATA/66/100 support and surprisingly, an integrated graphics core. However, this chipset cost much more than VIA's solutions and the company would continue to refine this chipset the next year.
• The first Pentium 4 chips based on the Willamette would be released in November 2000. Intel had realized it needed a new micro-architecture to match the K7 and the Pentium 4 and its NetBurst micro-architecture was its answer. However, this spelled a new Socket 423 for the new processors and this new format would be a short-lived one that was soon replaced the next year by Socket 478. Meanwhile, the Pentium 4 continued to rely on RDRAM and the performance of these early cores were disappointing. 2000 was a year that Intel was keen to forget and move on.

The GPU Scene in Year 2000

• To combat the threat that was the awesome GeForce 256, ATI came up with the radical ATI Rage Fury MAXX, which was probably the first card to ever feature 2 GPUs (Rage Fury chips) on a single PCB. It employed something called Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) and was fast enough to match the GeForce 256 cards which used SDRAM. However, its lack of T&L support ultimately meant that it wasn't a card for the future and it had operating system compatibility issues outside of Windows 98.
• It wasn't much of a matter, because later in 2000, ATI unleashed the Radeon. We had the ATI Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO AGP in our labs and found it to be a quite a capable card. At this point, things were really looking bad for 3dfx and they had to respond. Fast.

• 3dfx soon released the eagerly anticipated Voodoo 5. Looking back, Voodoo 5 was too little too late and some of its other features were too soon for its time. At that time, however, we thought that despite its shortcomings, the Voodoo 5 was still a good card and could even possibly herald the comeback of 3dfx. And ever present in the minds of the techies was the legendary Voodoo 5 6000, which had four GPU cores, powered by an external power brick and never saw the day of light in retail.
  
   

• Ironically, later in the year, 3dfx declared bankruptcy and was eventually bought over by NVIDIA. From this point on, the graphics card market was dominated by ATI and NVIDIA.
• In 2000, NVIDIA also built on the success of their GeForce 2 line by introducing the GeForce 2 MX GPU. The MX denotes that the chipset is for the more budget-conscious. It was much more affordable than its higher-end siblings and therefore was extremely popular, especially amongst OEM system builders, who now had a low-cost 3D solution.

Despite being targeted at the budget-minded, it was still a capable performer, as evidenced by the Asus AGP-V7100/Pure 32MB SDRAM .

Events from the Storage World in Y2K

• The first USB flash drive was made commercially available. The name "ThumbDrive" that we are so familiar with today came from Trek, a Singapore company, whose USB flash drive was about the size of your thumb and was hence aptly named "Trek ThumbDrive". Somehow, the name stuck, and today USB flash drives are known worldwide simply as thumbdrives.

We reviewed Trek's thumbdrive back in 2000 and were impressed by its size and ease of use. We also noted in the review that what users really wanted was a storage device that can be used across a multitude of systems, and the thumbdrive provided just that.

• Thanks to the proliferation of recordable optical media and USB flash drives, zip disks and drives are now rendered completely obsolete.
• This year we tested a very interesting and innovative gadget, probably the first of its kind - Romtec's Trios Multi-IDE Selector (RX-910T3) . The idea behind this gadget is that it'll allow you to boot from the hard drive of your choice. What use is this you might ask? With this, you can install different operating systems on different hard drives, and then later choose which hard drive to boot from just a button push. Of course there's always the BIOS equivalent for such adjustments, but it's just cumbersome. Being such a nifty device, it got the full 5 stars from us.

• Hitachi, in partnership with LG, formed the data storage company, Hitachi-LG Data Storage. The company was formed with the specific purpose of manufacturing optical data storage devices such as CD and DVD drives for desktops and notebook OEMs. As of July 2006, they started developing Blu-ray drives.

Notable Notebooks in 2000

• In 2000, we managed to get our hands on Apple's iBook Special Edition which was the first notebook to obtain a 5-star rating from us. Then again, Apple could do no wrong then, and it showed with its flawless integration of wireless networking. The iBook SE, like most other Apple products then, used a PowerPC processor to power the device, though the SE version utilized a much faster 366MHz processor compared to the 300MHz of the first edition. The iBook SE was both easy to use and set up, and it was also pretty to look at, as it was patterned after Apple's iMac. While a retail price of S$3188 that may seem pricey in today's standards, you'll be surprised to find that it was pretty much an average figure back then when compared with the rest of the other notebooks.

• Sony's Vaio line was known for being slim and trendy even back then and the Sony Vaio PCG-SR9G only served as a reminder that even their current crop of notebooks draw their inspiration and design aesthetics deeply from the past. The PCG-SR9G was not only weighed in at a very light 1.34kg while being no thicker than a normal 3.5-inch HDD. In order to maintain this svelte weight and figure though, some sacrifices had to be made, which meant that the PCG-SR9G had no optical drive and 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. No big lost on the latter, though it's probably safe to assume that the former would be used pretty often during the time period.

• Some of you readers that follow tech news may have realized that Acer had recently bought over Gateway, and older readers may remember a few Gateway laptops that we reviewed in 2000. Of interest was the Gateway Solo 5300, which featured a TV output, and a much faster 750MHz Pentium III processor (compared with others of its day). Given the specifications of the Solo 5300, it may seem surprising to some that instead of being thick as a brick, the Solo 5300 was relatively thin at that time and checked in at only 35mm. With a weight of 2.5kg, it was also a pretty portable workhorse to boot.

• Rounding up the year 2000 of our retrospective look was IBM's ThinkPad X20, a 1.43kg machine that valued portability over connectivity. While it did have a docking station to make up for its connectivity solutions, it didn't do too well for our review despite having scored pretty well in our benchmarking tests. This was mainly due to the cost of getting the X20, which based on just the unit alone, would set most users back by $3851. Tack on the docking station ($372) and the CD-Rom drive module ($230) and you're looking at something that's $4,453, which is mind boggling to say the least.

Portable Media Players in Y2K

•  As the new millennium approached, there was more development (on the digital audio player (DAP) front. Notably, the manufacturing giant, Samsung, joins the race and introduces one of its many DAPs to come, the Samsung Yepp YP-E2 . But as with previous other DAPs, the data transfer standard was still reliant on using the parallel port to transfer your MP3s from the device to your PC and vice versa. The Samsung engine was already working around the clock as it went full steam to get a bigger piece of the pie by roping in DAPs as part of their consumer electronics division back in 2000.

• Creative reigned supremacy for just a short period of time, and back in 2000, the introduction of its 6GB Creative NOMAD Jukebox gave consumers more choices with its EAX audio capabilities on top of its huge storage capacity (at that time). More importantly, the NOMAD Jukebox was one of the first few DAPs that adopted the popular USB data ports for MP3 transfers, which will be widely accepted in the years to come.

Mobile Phones in Y2K

• With the start of a new millennium, a new approach was taken on with a stronger focus on the consumer electronics market. Mobile phones were a serious business even back then, and undoubtedly, miniaturization was till the core focus of almost any manufacturer during that era. In the year 2000, we saw the unveiling of the Nokia 8210, which builds on the internal antenna design as seen on its Nokia 3210 and effectively shrinks it down below the size of your palms. With the Nokia 8210 making its entrance (followed by the blue backlit Nokia 8250 with its trademark butterfly navigation pad), the path was laid out for a new generation of phones that does not reveal the unsightly bulge in your pants.

• The turn of the millennium was also the beginning of a new trend that brings with it a new era of mobile entertainment and productivity. Utilizing its Windows CE 3.0 kernel and branding it as the Pocket PC operating system, major players such as Hewlett-Packard and Compaq were treading on a path where they envisioned a portable PC that could function as a cellular device in the coming years. This was hot on the heels of the Palm OS and its devices that had gained a fair amount of popularity amongst the tech enthusiasts of the time, and without a doubt, brought much changes and developments on the mobile device front over the years.

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