> It's too easy to exercise wishful thinking on this topic; better is to
> look at what constitutes a dream machine in terms of both features *and*
> price, i.e. to try to find the knee of the price-performance curve and
> get as much as possible for a reasonable price.
> In this vein, a 486DX2 66 is preferable to a Pentium, because it's
> fast, but is far more affordable than the Pentium (this month). The
> 486DX 50 might be preferable, because despite hype, simple logic says
> that many non-benchmark real world applications may be memory intensive,
> and the DX 50 should beat the DX2 66 for those.
Nah. As long as locality principle holds, i.e. L1 cache miss at every cycle
doesn't occur, DX2-66 will be still faster. Also, for 50MHz bus you'll
need at least 60ns RAM and well-built motherboard that doesn't exert
wait signal for memory operation. If not, the memory access will be
as good as 25MHz.
Quote:> That choice also saves
> a little bit of money, but not much. It also means a 50Mhz rather than
> 33Mhz motherboard, if I understand correctly, which should make a later
> Pentium upgrade run faster. On the other hand, an upgrade to a speed
> tripled 486 DX2 99 would work fine with the 33Mhz motherboard.
You can't upgrade to a real Pentium. Period. You might be able to upgrade
to P24T *if* it comes out. Also, many modern motherboards have clock
synthesizers instead of clock crystals so that you can choose any bus speed
you wish to have. If you have one of those, you can get DX2-66 now,
and change the bus speed to 50MHz if necessary when P24T becomes available.
[stuff deleted]
Quote:> Big fast disk: The Toshiba 1.2G drive is 12ms, slower than others, but
> cheaper too ($850 at the best discount I've seen). Some 1.0G drives
> may be available around $650, mail order.
Toshiba is big, but not fast. The rotational latency is 1/60 = 16.66ms
which is greater than average seek time. When you consider a gigger
you should look for at least 5400RPM model.
Just get a 1.7 gigger. It has 70% more storage spage than a gigger, yet
only about 30% more expensive.
Quote:> Fast bus: PCI looks nice but it's too new. Not only is there a price
> premium, but BYTE and the net both say that there can be problems finding
> cards that use it, and in getting things to work right, and in finding
> drivers, etc. Therefore VLB is still a big win for speed of video and
> disk controllers (and one wants 2 to 3 VLB slots for such purposes).
A motherboard is cheap. Just use ISA+VLB until PCI price comes down to
current EISA.
Quote:> Quality video: along with SVGA compatibility, 1280 x 1024 would be great.
> I also want 24 bit color, but it's too expensive to get 1280 x 1024 x 24.
> So compromise and get a card with 1280 x 1024 x 8 that can also give
> 800 x 600 x 24, accellerated, like the Orchid Celsius or the American
> Megatrends VLB. I'm unclear on Linux & X support for either the high
> resolution, high colors, or accelleration, but I can always use SVGA mode
> while hacking drivers.
No. You can't even use SVGA mode for unsupported videocards such as Celsuis.
Just get a #9GXE and be happy.
Quote:> If possible one wants a 17" monitor. Noninterlace is a must. So is support
> for the maximum res of the video card. :-) Bigger than 17" would be great,
> but too expensive. If I read correctly, 17" 1280 x 1024 can be had for
> around $850, for a Viewsonic. I'm not positive that's NI, but I'm hoping.
Non-interlacedness doesn't tell you much. 60Hz is NI, but also flicker-prone.
When considering a 17 incher, you'll need at least 75KHz HSR for 1280x1024
at 70+Hz NI.
The $850 Viewsonic you are mentioning is probably a Viewsonic 7 which is
an old model. The new Viewsonic 17 costs ~$1000, and the new IBM 17"
with Trinitron costs less than $1300.
Quote:> Even that's still a bit steep, so one might drop back to either 15" (sigh)
> or support for only 1024 x 768. That would allow dropping down to a cheaper
> video card, and applying the money elsewhere.
I agree. 15" is still usable at 1024x768 at least for me.
Quote:> A double-speed CDROM drive seems to be the smart buy these days; single
> speed is too low end, and triple speed is still relatively pricey. That
> may change by the end of the year.
Single speed CDROM drive is history. The low-end Mitsumi double speed is
priced less than $250 I think. The price will continue to fall when Toshiba
comes out with 4x drive at down on earth price (unlike Pioneer).
Quote:> For sound, the GUS (Gravis Ultrasound) looks nicest at first, but the
> SoundBlaster emulation is in software rather than hardware. That might
> be ok for Linux, but apparently there can be problems with DOS and Windows
> games, and I'm always uneasy about s/w emulation anyway. My current
> favorite is the OPL4 chipset, which gives 4 operator FM synthesis and
> supports wavetable synthesis like the GUS, so that SB emulation is
> done in hardware. The Toptek Golden Sound Pro 16 does all of that and
> has other features such as onboard DSP, although again I might have to
> do some driver hacking under Linux to get GUS-like support.
ugh. GUS? nice? heh. It doesn't even have MPU-401 emulation which is
de facto standard in MIDI world. If you are considering MIDI, be sure to
check for MPU-401 smart mode support (Maui, Soundwave, etc).
I'd go for SB16 + Waveblaster or SB16 + Rio or SB16/PAS + Maui configuration.
to maximize sound quality and to minimize software driver hassle.
[stuff deleted]
Quote:> Any criticism, additional items, price comments, or bubble-popping
> about compatibility or driver hacking?
> Doug
You seem to have missed a topic: modem. Which 28.8K modem to get?
Heyes? Moto? Zoom? USR??
Jongyoon
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| Jongyoon Lee | _/_/ _/ _/_/ |
| University of California | _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ |
| Los Angeles | _/ _/ _/ _/ |
| Computer Science | _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ |
| | _/_/_/_/ _/_/ _/_/_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ |
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