[ale] Re: Ale Digest, Vol 1, Issue 1455

[John Trostel]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 11:57, Byron A Jeff wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 05:52:09PM -0400, John M Trostel wrote:
> > I've cobbled together a system for my son from an old 100 MHz Pentium
> > (I) wt. 64 MB of RAM.... 4 M of that RAM is used by the on-board SIS
> > video chip.  It's got a whopping 1 GB HDD, a cd drive and a 3.5"
> > floopy.  An old SMC 10BT ethernet card rounds out his $0 cost system. 
> > (Actually $5, as I needed a PS2/AT keyboard converter dongle.)

... snip...

> You have a couple of hardware issues. First and foremost is the RAM. You'll 
> definitely swap in 60MB with almost any X setup. And disk is several orders
> of magnitude slower than RAM. So if nothing else double or quadriple the
> amount of RAM you have. Does the board take 168 DIMMs.

Phoeey ;) I've run X on 8MB of RAM.  OK... maybe that was 8 years ago
and even then it hit swap a bit. (Cold Molasses might be a good
descriptor there.)

> The second one is simply the fact that 100 Mhz is older than dirt and slower
> than molassas. Nothing short of an upgrade is going to fix that.

Actually, it does most things in an acceptable time.

> Sometimes it's worth investing some money simply not to deal with the hassle.

The hassle is the whole point ;)  It's a challenge.  (My wife thinks I'm
crazy.)

> For example here's a Duron 700 Mhz on a mostly integrated MB (no video):
> 
> http://www.softwareandstuff.com/mb_sk7d700.html
> 
> for $35. Throw in a $3 realtek NIC and a $8 PCI video. And you're in business.
> 

GIM has some surplus computer boxen too... They will be suggested when
Sean gets too frustrated with the 'clunker'.

Heck... it's a lot faster than the Sinclair ZX-80!

-- 
John M. Trostel
Atlanta, Georgia USA
jtrostel at mindspring.com
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