Minimum hardware requirements (Was: Old, but not "Classic"

If I want to use b/w I choose TTL monitor and HGC or use any of few cards that emulates EGA modes to TTL monitor. CGA plain sucks. True and that is only windows itself! To be realatisc, 12~16MB and nearly all websites demands at least netscape 3.x. That is where this made any 286 and 386sx to throw their trowels in. Cached 386DX 25 and up, any low end 486 boxens w/o L2 cache excels at this. Yes, there is several alterative web browsers besides that horrid IE's but problem is how can one can read the PDF files? I have this problem for my low end machines but what program I can view those PDF's? I read them nearly daily. Many didn't realize that what I'm trying to say all along and getting 386dx and 486 machines or in parts to build with are best way because of easier interagation of extra memory found easily because of enough memory simm slots and better support of IDE, don't have to be over 504MB, drives due to user-defineable and no need for setup disks, usually. Everything is easily found, working, used and. cheaply. Dead right. Based on my experiences: Don't bother the win95 on anything lesser than 386DX 40, L2 cache and up with more than 16MB, good HD. CPU hungry, ram hungry and count on users download their favorites and quickly discover mistake if they didn't follow this specs I listed. Subbing cached 386dx 40 for cached 486 or mayble low end pentium types with good hd is best option, but still needs some type of accelerated video card to keep scrolling around confortable and sane. win98 is out it needs at least 32MB and weighs in at 200MB installed without anything extra just full configured win98 itself, loves accelerated video cards, 1< GB, at least DX4 100 and up with fully tuned, well designed hardwares for max performance motherboards. PnP get hairy if mainboard does have sick PnP better have none or 100% working PnP. Wonder why that I knew CPU performance profiles very well, I profiled all the way from 8088 to K6's. The 8088/8086 is very weak CPU even it really strains gobbing and processing dir requests (watch the HD light blinks, in off states between flashes, it's cpu is what doing the processing work!) 286 is much better at this but only small grouping of 10, 12, 16 (20 and 25 was seen but are found on crappy motherboards so they're out). But remember 286 boards often are found with 1 or 2MB max and many have SIPPS sockets, and very few actually have 8 SIMMS slots, 4 slots being common. 286 is good for general DOS and bit heavy DOS stuff. and in last resort, 8088 for very specific, limited use are perfectly fine. 286 and 386sx runs about the same in lockstep in performance wise. 386DX 16, 20 is tagging in and just ahead of highest performing 386sx 33/40 386DX 25, 33, 40 with cache just fine but the 486 at 16, 20, 25 significently overlaps on those 386DX 33 and 40. This groupings are best for 3.x windows use with 8MB to 16MB. Everything get blown out of their pond when 486 25, 33, 40 combined with 128K or 256K cache. Still good for 3.x and 95 and also best for dx2, dx4, 5x86 with 16MB+, sweet spot for win95 is low end pentiums with 20MB~32MB, low end accelerated video card a must, e.g. trio 64V+, Tseng et4000/w32i/p, ATI Ultra for example. This is not for HIGHEST performance. it is how good it can run without making things crawling too often or whipping the hd. Jason D. email: jpero(a)cgocable.net Pero, Jason D.