5 Jul
2001
5 Jul
'01
1:53 p.m.
Jeff Hellige skrev:
>Similarly, the RAM may be hideously slow, but at
least it uses SIMMs.
>Getting hold of ZIPs is a bloody pain in the neck (are there any list
>members out there who happen to have any to spare? =).
I remember a review for the DKB Rapidfire SCSI board
a number
of years back. It had 72pin SIMM sockets onboard and one of the
points that the reviewer made was that as slow as the A4000's RAM
was, unbeleivably the Rapidfire's RAM was even slower. The Rapidfire
is a 16bit ZII card. I did use one to add cheap SCSI capability to
my A4000 though and you could mount a drive directly to the board
itself if you lacked additional drive space.
If the Rapidfire really is a Zorro-II card, then it's a magnitude slower than
the mobo A4k RAM. Our A3000 really went on its knees when we had put an old
(old!) 8-UP! ZII DIP memory board in it.
The majority of my memory is comprised of 30-pin SIMMs on a Fastlane Z3 SCSI
card. It's a really nice SCSI card (I particularly like the fact that it's got
a full CEN50 socket on the blanking plate), but even though it's a Z3 card,
the RAM only runs at 80% of the mobo speed.
>The A1200 is common, but it is essentially a closed
architecture. Unless
>you're adventurous and put it in a tower with a slot card and all that, but
>it still turns out as a mediocre imitation of a real big-box machine. Still,
>given a PCI backplane, it turns out a rather cheap solution compared to a
>similarly equipped Zorro Amiga.
It amazes me how expensive the later Amiga's
still are,
especially the newer A1200's and 4000's. Do people still pay those
kind of prices for the 'new' ones?
The A1200 isn't particularly expensive IMO, but the big-box 32-bit machines
are. See my post a week or two ago about how much faster workstation which
retailed for ten times as much now sell at the fraction of the price of an
unexpanded Amiga. =)
>run new software, though I'm not familiar with
EGA myself. Didn't it deviate
>somewhat from the usual WB look? ISTR screenshots in mags with gadgets which
>seemed to come from a Motif system.
Other than looking better on the higher resolution
screen, I
don't recall EGS changing the look of the WB at all. Maybe the
screenshots were using varous WB enhancers such as Magic WB and MUI?
These are rather old screenshots from a Spectrum review, but it could still
be.
>I didn't know that the Spectrum was a ZIII
board, and thought it was very
>similar to the Picasso II in performance. I run a Retina ZIII myself, and
>while it doesn't put up much of a match against newer boards, it is
>competent enough. Certainly better than the PII.
Yeah, it's ZIII. It is autosensing with a
jumper to force it
to use ZII if needed for compatibility purposes. It only has 2meg of
VRAM though vice the 4meg on other later boards. I've always heard
good things about the Retina boards, but have never used one.
And it can't be expanded either? Hm, sounds a lot like the PII.
>BTW, you do have a CD-ROM, don't you?
Yes, multiple SCSI drives around here. I even have
an older
version of AmiCDFS here somewhere.
I believe that AmiCDFS is bundled with newer OS versions.
BTW, a tip for old workstation users, I just found out that the CD-ROM in my
Compaq Prosignia 300 EISA/PCI server has a jumper for setting the block size
to 512 bytes. It's just a double-spin CD, but for me, it was free. Now it sits
in the PowerUser SCSI box I bought today, and the Prosignia will have to make
do with the 44 MB SyQuest which was in the SCSI case. =9
So if you're looking for one of those elusive "bootable" CD drives, look no
further than Compaq. =)
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6a.
It's amazing how many useful pieces of equipment are disguised as domestic
appliances: the machine for cleaning keyboard keycaps and shell cases does an
excellent job of washing clothes, while the tumbling machine for drying them
off also works for socks and shirts. The device in the kitchen for baking
small spray-painted articles can be used for pizza and muffins. And so on...
Pete Turnbull