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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeuspaul who wrote (90)	2/1/1998 3:01:00 PM
From: edward shapiro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Zeuspaul, I have been following your thread since the beginning and enjoying your progress. I have also learned a few things. I am not a computer expert, but I also looked into building my own computer when I bought a new one last year. I was nervous and decided against it. I also had no need for a specialized machine. This was my first new computer since 1989 or 90.(too long ago to remember exactly) At that time I had bet on IBM and its MicroChannel Architecture in its battle against the world. We all know who won that fight. I thought clones were still shaky at that point. With my track record, I decided I better just buy a Dell this time around. Here is my two cents on your latest post. I vote for the IBM brand hard drive. Both of my computers have IBM hard drives. I have NEVER had a hard disk crash in all the years. I had a virus wipe my files out, but never a crash. The Dell was purchased in May 1997. The drive size is about 6 gigs formatted, so it is probably very close to the drive you are looking at. Ultra ATA was not available at this time, so my drive is probably a generation or 2 before the one you are looking at. My old IBM with its huge 60 meg drive is still running, although there is not much I can do with it. I had minor problems with it over the years, but nothing with the hard drive. I never did anything special to the computer, but I always had good power protection. I used a surge protector that also had a low voltage indicator. It only came on in the summer when the whole world was using AC, but I would always shut the computer down. I figured that if the voltage was low, then maybe the hard disk would not get all the power it needed and might not work correctly. Was I right? Did this help? I have no idea, but I felt better. Now I have a UPS and so the drive can never stop during a read or write. JMHO Ed

To: Zeuspaul who wrote (90)	2/1/1998 3:06:00 PM
From: GrnArrow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14778

I've enjoyed reading the thread even though a lot of it is greek to me. I've been a Mac user for many years, but now it looks like the time has come to make the switch :-( Considering a person who needs a setup for daytrading ( using a streaming data feed such as Comstock or PC Quote, a couple of brower windows, maybe an IRC chat room, all spread over 2 or 3 monitors) at what point does one of these dream systems become overkill? Realistically, I'm never going to build my own system, but I'll probably configure one from Dell or Gateway to suit my trading needs. I have to wonder though if the newest systems are just a waste of capacity. Would having a 333MHz PII provide any meaningful advantage over a 233MHz? Only a certain amount of data is going to be coming in, even with a cable modem connection, and if a 233 or 266 is adequate to handle it, why not save the money and use it on a bigger hard drive or something? I would be interested in other's opinions on this, especially from anyone who is currently using a trading firm like Watley, MB Trading, or CastleOnline with real-time level 2 data. I have a couple of other questions related to the issue of overkill. (I'm not a techie-type, so forgive me if these are stupid questions) 1) As I understand it, streaming data is written to the hard drive as it comes in, making a fast hard drive important. Are the Ultra ATA hard drives fast enough to handle this, or would it be better to get a SCSI drive even if it's smaller and more expensive? 2)At what point does adding more RAM become wasteful? Also, I noticed if I were to get say 64MB RAM on a single DIMM instead of 2-32MB DIMMs, they call it ECC SDRAM and it's more expensive? What's ECC, and is there some kind of performance difference to justify the cost, or is it just because it's freeing up another slot? It would be nice to get the fastest and biggest of everything, but realistically, a system that gives me efficiency without wasting capacity and money would be my "dream machine". regards, Mike