Re: LOGO-L> Upgrading to Pentium Pro-266?

[Konrad Neuwirth <konrad@neuwirth.priv.at>]

Yehuda Katz <yehuka@beitberl.beitberl.ac.il> writes:

I know that this is by now old stuff, I still feel that it's not quite
out of line to answer a few things still.  I don't want to turn this
list into a hardware discussion group, though---so I'd rather you sent
any comments to me personally, than to the list again. 

> 1. P-266 is very fast, but PentiumII 200MHz is considerably faster.

Personally, I just upgraded my machine to a AMD K6 200, which is
reasonably fast (it beats the heck out of our SparcStation 5), and
quite a lot cheaper than the Pentium II machines.  I guess it's enough
for most every application.  I do myself indulge in the luxury of not
running any member of the Microsoft Windows family, so I don't have
all that overhead and I find that this machine is amongst the fastest
and most responsive I have used yet. 
	But then, I didn't only choose a fast processor and left the
other components out, but I tried to go for fast stuff in most
everything in this box.  That means that I also got the faster 10ns
168pin Dimm Ram instead of the old 72pin EDO Ram (which has a 60ns
cycle), I got a fast SCSI Controller with an Ultra SCSI Disk, and I
have -- which I deem very important -- a fast graphics board that can
do a lot of the graphics work directly on the graphics engine and
doesn't take CPU performance to do that. 
	Modern Graphics Boards (like the ATI Rage chipset based ones)
have almost the same kind of processing power than your average
Pentium processor has!

> 2. You have to replace the computer case with a special mini tower one.

That's not depending on the processor you use, but instead on the
mainboard.  I personally choose one that still is AT form factor, I
assume that you have gotten yourself an ATX one -- those don't fit the
old cases anymore.  But both variants are still around, and I haven't
yet found a reason for me to go with the new standard (which was,
amongst other things, invented to make mainboards cheaper!). 

> 3. The "normal" keyboard needs an adapter to plug it in place.

That's also a question of the motherboard.  My new one still has a
Din 5 plug, and not a PS/2-style Sub-min Din one.  

> 4. There's no RESET button on the machine.

That's either depending on your motherboard or your case.  Personally,
I wouldn't want a machine to be without a reset switch -- and mine
still has one.  It's one of the few things from the front board that I
did in fact connect up!

> 5. There's no exit from the power supply to the monitor.

That's only a question of the power supply that you use.  But the
reason that there isn't one of those anymore is---or so I guess---
that the power saving options offered by modern mb/graphic card/monitor
combinations don't make it necessary anymore to have the monitor also
be switched by the computers mains switch.   You can power down the
monitor in software, and a lot of screen-savers already do so.  
	I don't know what the green functions on my motherboard do, I
haven't yet read the documentation thorougly, but there's a lot of
support for power-saving stuff in these new machines.  For them to be
used, you /do/ need a ATX power supply, though.  But those can be
bought extra, and the Gigabyte TX motherboard I use can take either
old AT or new ATX power supplies.

> You need another electric outlet to activate the monitor (and remember,
> when finishing the session, to shut down BOTH computer AND monitor).

Well, I find that I only shut down the monitor---the computers around
here run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (unless I'm on holidays).  And
that's not just my workstation, but all the others around here as
well.  So yes, I do collect old computers ;-). 

cheers,
//konrad

-- 
//konrad Neuwirth, at home. <konrad@neuwirth.priv.at>
PGP Key at http://www.giga.or.at/PGP-Keys/Konrad.Neuwirth

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