Loyd Case

About

Loyd Case came to computing by way of physical chemistry. He began modestly on a DEC PDP-11 by learning the intricacies of the TROFF text formatter while working on his master's thesis. After a brief, painful stint as an analytical chemist, he took over a laboratory network at Lockheed in the early 80's and never looked back. His first 'real' computer was an HP 1000 RTE-6/VM system.In 1988, he figured out that building his own PC was vastly more interesting than buying off-the-shelf systems ad he ditched his aging Compaq portable. The Sony 3.5-inch floppy drive from his first homebrew rig is still running today. Since then, he's done some programming, been a systems engineer for Hewlett-Packard, worked in technical marketing in the workstation biz, and even dabbled in 3-D modeling and Web design during the Web's early years.Loyd was also bitten by the writing bug at a very early age, and even has dim memories of reading his creative efforts to his third grade class. Later, he wrote for various user group magazines, culminating in a near-career ending incident at his employer when a humor-impaired senior manager took exception at one of his more flippant efforts. In 1994, Loyd took on the task of writing the first roundup of PC graphics cards for Computer Gaming World -- the first ever written specifically for computer gamers. A year later, Mike Weksler, then tech editor at Computer Gaming World, twisted his arm and forced him to start writing CGW's tech column.

Four High-Speed CD-RW Drives

If the new 52X CD drives could actually write at 52X speeds over an entire disc, youd be able to duplicate a 650MB CD in about 1 minute 20 seconds. But the units reviewed here are constant angular velocity (CAV) drives, so recording speed varies according to how close a track is to the center […]

A Pair of Very Different Hard Drives

Serial ATA Approaches MainstreamWe last examined Serial ATA drive technology when we took a look at (“the Seagate 120GB SATA drive”) back in January. SATA drives trickled onto the market in the past few months, but the floodgates are starting to open. In this review, we look at a pair of drives that are targeted […]

Buy a Hard Drive Each Year

Not long ago, I wrote a piece about ATA RAID (“RAID Goes Mainstream”), where I discussed some of my experiences with Intels recent release of ICH5R. I also outlined a few tips as to how to set up motherboard-down RAID. That spawned a very interesting discussion about reliability and backup. A couple of readers rightfully […]

Intel Redefines the Mainstream PC, Again

This is an era of rich media for both home and business. But multimedia and real time 3-D applications—ripping CDs, playing the latest 3-D computer games, authoring multimedia content, and the like—require substantial memory bandwidth, which has demanded high-end systems, in the past. Intel is altering that equation with the launch of the 865PE chip […]

IDF Research Day: Monitors and Mesh

Intel Developer Forum had traditionally closed with sneak peeks into Intels research efforts. Were not talking a specific product area — i.e., researching 90nm technology in order to build a CPU. Rather, Intel unveils research initiatives that are more far-flung. Some are clearly efforts to develop additional business opportunities, while others simply explore possibilities that […]

A Big and Flexible External Drive

Making Backups Easy Product: Maxtor 5000DV Web Site: www.maxtor.com Pro: Huge capacity, quiet, performs well Con: Pricey; no “off” switch Summary: An excellent secondary backup device for small networks or a small office environment with both USB 2.0 and FireWire connectivity supported. Score: Price: $399, check prices Backing up your system seems to get harder […]

DVD Recordable Standards Duke It Out

Dueling Standards Company: Sony Pioneer Electronics Product: DRU-500A DVD+RW / DVD-RW recorder DVR-A05U DVD-RW recorder Pro: High degree of format flexibility; excellent performance in most tests Significant improvement in DVD-R/RW write performance. Con: Only 1x DVD-RW writing. DVD read performance oddly slow. Only 8x CD-RW writing performance; extremely long format time for packet writing prep. […]

Build It: External USB 2.0 Hard Drive

The Conundrum of Big Storage”> My system has 240GB on it — two 120GB physical drives. I say that, not to brag — I know quite a few people with even more storage — but because having that much storage creates a major headache: backups. Backing up to CD-RW or even DVD rewritables isnt really […]

Blu-Ray Recorders Emerge

Blu-Ray is the new standard for optical recording. Offering capacities up to 50GB on a single, CD-sized disk, Blu-Ray holds the promise of HD-quality movies in the familiar CD/DVD-sized format. While it will be some time before off-the-shelf HD movies are available on disc, we may see Blu-Ray recorders as soon as the 2nd half […]

First Serial ATA Drive: Expectations Exceed Results

Note: for an in depth look at how Serial ATA really works, check out our companion story explaining the details. Product: Seagate ST3120023AS Web Site: www.seagate.com Pro: Surprisingly speedy — slightly better than the ATA version; less cable clutter; easy configuration. Con: Requires BIOS support or PCI host adapter; power adapter necessary; still slower than […]