QMS news

We are having clan practice tonight at 10pm est. on the Clanring server. It would be nice to return to our 'old' ways once again of having a regular practice with the whole group. Our newest member HiOctane will also be here. Also, clan practice with Deimos (hey.. why dont we be the 'official' Quake sparring clan eh?) will be Thursday at 9pm on the clanring server.

56k line test from USR

I guess all you may already know, but the new 56k modems dont actually do 56k (FCC limits bandwidth to 52k) and in certain areas they cant even go past 33.6 speeds (AT&T's true-voice technology wrecks havoc on speeds above 28.8). So USR have come out with a line tester # you can dial into to see if your capable of sustaining 56k speeds. The number to call is 1-888-877-9248. This can be dialed from any terminal program (hyper terminal will do just fine) but dont set your connect speed above 19200.. thats about the only requirement. I had a result # of 3, which means I can support 56k but it wont be that much faster than my 33.6. I'd be interested in hearing what results you guys get.

Western Digital releases BIOS fix

Thank God mine wasnt in this category, but allot of newer WDC hard drives have a BIOS quirk which over time bangs the heads against the the sides of the drive (I'm telling a VERY rough description here).. this is uhh.. 'not' a good thing :), so they've released a program fix to see if your drive needs the fix and if so.. fixes it! Hey.. what service! You can get it here. Just go under drive fix.

Clan practice with Deimos update

Looks as if we are going to have practice at 9pm est. on the clanring server with Clan Deimos. It will be at port 26000 after all. If any of you observers show up.. 2 things; you 'can't' play (this means you Cruiser) and you cant sit there and have conversations while were playing. Remember.. I'm pretty 'kick' happy when it comes to crap like that :)

16x+ CD-ROM's are mostly a hoax

I'm not sure if most of you are aware of this information, but listen to a few people brag on how fast there 'new' 24 speed CD-ROM is can be pretty distracting. First off.. its fact that 12x is about the fastest you can nominally go on a CD-ROM today and that manufacturers can't get a CD to spin (within 'safe' limits) fast enough for the laser to track +12x speeds. The 16x+ speeds are accomplished by the outside tracks of the CD spinning at roughly twice the speed of the inside, thus letting the CD laser cut loose on the outside tracks, reading AT MAX twice the speed currently available. That means until CD-ROMS reach 'true' 16x potential, were gonna be stuck with 24x CD-ROMS for some time now. This 'quirk' in CD-ROMS is referred to as CAV (constant angular velocity) vs CLV (constant linear velocity.. true speeds). CLV drives spin the inside tracks of the CD at twice the speed as the outside, making a smooth linear plane for the laser to read from. Most 16x drives today are referred to as 16x max anywayz, in reference of the true nature of the CD speeds of 8x on the inside tracks, 10 or 12 on the middle and 16-24 on the outside. Don't be fooled.

K6 chip making a name for itself

I didn't realize this, but it seems that Vinad Dham (father of the Pentium itself) is heading up the K6 project over at AMD now. I've seen so much on this chip here recently that I dug up all the benchmarks I could find on this puppy (Comdex helped out a 'tad' too.. heh). The thing is totally compatible with the Pentium MMX, PPro and PII.. and totally smokes em all at the same clock speed. I dont know if youve seen the PII run yet.. but this thing amazed the hell out of me when I first saw it. The K6 makes it look like a Z-80. I'm not jokeing. Its 130 bucks cheaper (233mhz version) than the Pentium II 233 and doesnt need any 'slot 1' crap to fit in either.. it'll do quite nicely in a socket 7 Pentium MMX slot. I know what my next mb is gonna be. :)

Comdex '97 review

It is the last year its gonna be held in Atlanta, but they really went went out with a bang. Other than Comdex; CES, and Windows World '97 were on the same grounds this time.. featuring an all day blowout of the latest technology. I just cant wait till E3 in another month! Not much 'new' stuff was shown off, except for some new 3d cards that will curse the hell out of my Voodoo card, and some new game controllers (one actually read my brainwaves for input!.. not jokeing). For the first time, I saw a flat screen 21" monitor. SPOOGE! Jesus.. you can pick this thing up with the palm of your hand and it can be mounted like you do a picture on a wall somewhere! The 'best' thing though was playing Quake on a Pentium II 266 chip with some new 3d card (ran Quake at 120fps the guy said) through some next generation VR goggles. I played directly with the guy at the booth and beat em pretty bad on his amazement. His only coment afterward was "Looks like you've played this game before".. then he asked me into Clan Gib.. Doh! Just kidding :) Notice to all local QMSers (and HM/QM if yall wanna drive down this far).. we gotta make plans to attend E3 together in another month. I don't think my poor girlfriend could take another day like today :) "Honey.. just a 'few' more hours please"

Clan practice with Deimos

It seems Clan Deimos wants yet another clan practice with us. The first one wasnt official and this one has been changed to just a practice also. Maybe we'll get an official match with someone some day :) The time will be at 9pm (maybe 10) est. on the Clanring server. The port will probably not be 26000 as last time, we ran into some 'problems' doing that.

New version of Qtracker

This is a must have. Its like Qspy, but worlds better in ease of use, and overall useability. The new version supports such things as multiple server updates, and a timer showing the time left on the level. Download it off our ftp site: Qtracker beta 0.62.

The 'move' will take place shortly

All I'm waiting on now is confirmation from Internic that our domain name will be moved over to the new home. All of you should have the IP by now, so you need to upload your latest updates to the page asap, as the change will probably take place here within the next few days.

Bear with me here on the links. I've have a few people tell me they dont work. Well.. its cause they aint all there folks :)

Another tournament in the works

Ok, it could be far fetched, or you guys just might not want another one, but this one is gonna rock! Here's the deal, and I still dont have hardly any of the details worked out, but we're gonna try to have a 'league' set up here that would include teams of 2 (2 on 2 matches). We could have multiple divisions, and have schedules set up for each team. People would play people inside there own division twice, and play outside competition once (come on.. NFL is around the corner and I 'gotta' do something until it gets here ). Matches could be set up so that they could be played at anytime basically, just as long as its during a given period. We would have a win/loss column for each and have a whole season, and then a playoff setup. We 'will' make this happen, its just a matter of time. What I need though, is a consensus again on who can do it. Remember, its 2 on 2, so you will have to pick your partner very carefully, as it wont change during a season. If ANY of you have any idea on how you want it run.. rules, ect., give me a buzz. -Stryfe

Complete move should be soon

They told me 72 hours, so it should be any minute now really until the site gets moved on over to zoneit.com. Again, I need you guys to copy all your files over to the new site. You should have an e-mail from me on this. Speaking of e-mail. If the new site kicks in any time today (or early Monday morning) then our e-mail alias's will be screwed until I go in a fix em. I can't do anything with em until the change-over is complete.

Well, I'm putting the page through a huge overhaul.. so bear with me for the next few weeks here.. 

The 1997 Grand Vizier Tournament is over  

• The tournment is finally over with Death! beating me in the final game. It wasn't quite what I expected; I was way to nervous, but he played a great game in which he deserved to win. Congratulations Death!. I'm just glad a QMS won.. not to mention a 'Winder boy'. (Winder, Ga. that is) 
  Score was E1M2 (Death! 13, Stryfe 3) DM3 (Stryfe 5, Death! 2) 
  for a total of 15 to 8, Death!. Again, thanx to Bonz who set up the server and made the final possible for us all.

KeyGrip is released.. initial response is not too good.  

• Well, the much hyped KeyGrip demo/movie editor was released yesterday but has dissapointed many, including myself. I dunno what those guys were thinking, but the day I'm 'required' to run my monitor in 1024x768 is the day my eyes fall out of my head, not to mention the speed of this thing. Sheesh! I'll stick with Film at 11. 

QMS try outs tonight at 10pm 

• Think your good enough? Wanna join one of the up and coming elite Quake clans? Mosey on over to 165.166.140.156 tonight and play against the other contestants. Death! & I will be there, mainly observing, but just 'do good' and you'll be considered. Good luck..

We're movin! Pack your bags! 

• Yep.. you heard right. As of this weekend we will be hosted by Zoneit.com instead of Slip.net. Why? Simple.. 100 more megs than were getting right now, for less money. Support should be a 'tad' better too, Brian :) Just to make my life 'allot' easier.. I need all who is host of quakemarines.com to pack there stuff up and move it over to our new home. I'd hate to spend an afternoon xfering 50 megs. I'll e-mail you all with the correct info to start the process. Nothing else will change.. I'll take care of everything else. It will seem as if nothing has happened.. hopefully, except for the fact that each of your 'accounts' are gonna be boosted another 5 megs. Hell.. I might even have an AVI play on the main pages startup now :) 

(c) 1997, by Matthew Bradley
Page was designed in Front Page (tm)