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

To: pae who wrote (340)	3/7/1998 3:01:00 PM
From: John T. Harbaugh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Voice recognition: sound cards. I've been thinking about buying a computer that would be optimized for voice recognition technology. I have a new 233 Dell at work, and find Dragon Software to be somewhat slow, and prone to too many errors. My associate has a 300 MHZ Compaq and gets for better voice recognition peRformance. I wondered why until I found the following site. synapseadaptive.com (Click on "getting best performance.") Joel states that in his opinion, more important than processor speed, is the quality of the sound card input. Many of the expensive sound cards have excellent output (for games, cd playing) but their input is inferior. Any other suggestions to optimize a pc for voice recognition? Thanks in advance-- John

To: pae who wrote (340)	3/7/1998 8:04:00 PM
From: Spots	Respond to of 14778

Pae, I just did that to protect an investment. I bought a Tyan socket 7 motherboard for a P5-133 with Dimms and Simms, so I could put existing fast page (non-EDO) Simms in it but upgrade to SDRAM. But this was to protect an existing investment. Think it through before you do this for a new investment, though. I'm not saying it's bad, just be careful. What you risk is being locked in as the form factors and other factors multiply in the next few months. Use the strategy to leverage what you've got, but be really careful about buying new stuff unless you're willing to stay with it for a year or two or toss it pretty soon. Of course I say this as I think about buying another 64meg of EDO memory <ggg>. Do as I say not as I do, he says. I think you're comment about not being able to take SCSI and sound with you if it's built on the motherboard is sound. SCSI which? Ultra 3.141592654? (Of course I swear every day I'm going to SCSI then keep buying IDE, so WDIK?) As for NT, it is more stable than 95 but there is definitely mental ramp-up cost. You can get what you need from books if you have any feel at all for it (says the man with the blue screen of death in his face<G>), or post here; we'll help you. But don't discount it either. Recovery from failures takes some knowledge of disk formats, boot sectors, etc. Not to mention the registry. Sorry for the rambling, but this is the way people who have been rebuilding NT systems for 2 1/2 days talk. Regards, Spots

To: pae who wrote (340)	3/8/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Respond to of 14778

Memory reuse strategy..... The idea of working a motherboard/chipset from the PII 233 single CPU to the dual PII 333 with a memory upgrade along the way as prices come down certainly seems like a sure method of playing the upgrade path given the options available to us today. The short term horizon has the BX chipset and the 100 MHz bus. Estimates are for April 15 for motherboards and the 350-400/100 CPU. The 350-400/100 PII CPU's will require PC100 compliant RAM. In most cases 100MHz RAM available today will not service the 100MHz systems. I have seen PC100 compliant RAM for sale as of the last week or so. $329 64 MB, 8x64, SDRAM CM654S64-BX at ESC Technologies esc-tech.com A stiff premium to pay for buying into the future. Compare to $200.07 for Corsair 64 MB, 8x64, Unbuffered, SDRAM CM654S64-10 Both of the above will work in todays LX motherboards with at least one exception. The Intel LX motherboards do not appear to work with PC100 RAM. (from ESC above link PC100 modules are backward compatible, except for Intel AL440LX, R440LX, DK440LX, NX440LX motherboards that require specific modules.) Anand also indicates that the PC100 compliant RAM is downward compatible in his just released review of PC100 RAM. anandtech.com excerpts >>What became obvious to many users, as well as manufacturers was that a mutual standard for the manufacturing and mass production of SDRAM chips and Printed Circuit Boards (PCB's)had to be initiated. << >>The reason the industry giants, more specifically, the microprocessor industry giant, Intel,never stepped up to set a standard was because they were quite aware that a huge jump was about to be made in the memory bus speed the System RAM would have to operate at. Any standard Intel might have set would have simply been replaced by a more advanced standard in under a year, most likely angering the users that upgraded to the new standard of SDRAM only to realize that their DIMM's won't work with future motherboards<< >>Conclusion As a first look, there is not much we can tell about the compatibility of upcoming PC100 SDRAM DIMMs, however the current tests show that the DIMMs have no problems with even the most picky LX motherboards, older TX and VP2 boards don't seem to have any problems with the more expensive modules either. The bottom line is that if you're planning to buy SDRAM that will last you for some time, don't go after anything but modules that officially meet the PC100 specification. << bold added One might envision building on your hardware base PII 233 followed by PII 333 (X2?) followed by new motherboard and PII 400+. The following components should? may? follow thru to the next machine. Millenium II video(s), case, power supply, independent SCSI card, modem :( Network ,21 in monitor(s) and PC100 RAM. Need a little cost analysis on paying an upfront premium for RAM, SCSI, SOUND. Also, one must consider keeping the machine alive as a secondary networked computer for back-up or... Also, PC100 spec is relatively new and there will most likely be a revision or two :( Regards Zeuspaul

To: pae who wrote (340)	3/8/1998 5:09:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Memory reuse strategy....350-400-450 not worth it? from the PII site From Damion Valentine Subject Upgrading to a Pentium II? Hello all. I am a professional graphic designer and I have a few tips for those of you caught up in Intel's pricing game. Don't get too excited about 100Mhz busses because they are not going to make anything but a 10_ speed increase and that's ONLY for memory operations. This is because the only component that will be able to operate at 100Mhz is RAM. For now, this is just a gimmick by Intel to make people spend large amounts of money. Secondly, I hear over and over again people stressing about.."I'm gonna get the 350Mhz when it comes out!! Or I'm gonna get the 400Mhz!!" Let me tell you this, the best deal will be a 333Mhz when the 350/400 come out. I can see people spending ludicrous amounts of money on things right when they come out. That is a BIG mistake! The speed increase has no relevance to anybody but somebody doing SERIOUS graphics or audio or server work. All of you who want to spend all the money on the 400s, let me tell you, THERE IS NO POINT!! A couple of months later they will have a 450Mhz and then when Katmai comes out, all your expensive equipment will be junk. Katmai is actually the first processor worth upgrading to since it actually improves Intel's horrible Floating Point performance and get it on par with Mac's and RISC based systems. And it will only be at that time that you may get MAYBE a 20/25_ increase due to your 100Mhz buses. Oh, and by the way, the special Ram you are going to spend your money on for the 350/400Mhz systems, you are going have to throw them away because "Katmai" uses SLDRAM only (it will be out at the same time as the chip. So when you look at the whole picture the 350/400/450 systems will be the shortest lived, most costly (for those who buy it) generation of chips to date since you can't even use the SDRAM that you have now OR your ATX case. You're gonna have to bust a new ATX 2.1 power supply. So be forewarned my fellow computer compatriots...do not spend too much money and look for the best deal. bold added

To: pae who wrote (340)	3/10/1998 7:17:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Win NT vs Win95/98..."Win95/98 is quite a bit faster than NT" conitech.com from windows.nt5.general Shawn, Actually that's a good point -and I hope I didn't offend anyone when I said 95/98 is for the "average user" I should have amended that statement -there are a lot of users out there who use both 95/98 and NT -obviously there are pros and cons to both. I believe that the suggestion to go to the NT environment is because of several reasons: 1. NT is more stable -probably due to more limitations on hardware (likewhich brands are supported) 2. Because of its increased hardware requirements (RAM ....) it can support more apps/users. 3. It can support multiple processors. 4. Server support is amazing -a single server can support thousands of users-- 5. Eventually MS would like to see Win95/98 go away in favor of pure 32 bit operating systems (or 64-bit as the case may be) As far as speed goes, I would have to say that Win95/98 is quite a bit faster than NT. But this is concerning applications and their performance -speed differences in OS operation are minimal. Because NT is designed to run networks -it does that better than 95/98, while 95/98 can run apps faster in the foreground. On the issue of the speakers -I was wondering if it was software that would cause the problem. Now if I remember correctly I had a co-worker tell me that you could buy a "converter" for the USB connector to allow them to work as a regular speaker.. but I may be wrong. I don't have any cool toys on my PC's right now -spent all my $$ on RAM! And granted -it defeats the purpose of the USB connection -but better to have them working in the short run than not at all. Jason P Shawn Snyder wrote in message ... >Jason, >I highly respect your knowledge of the NT environment from what I have read in this group. Your answer to my question helped, thank you. However, with what you said in mind I will further my question. Why is it that everything I read says to migrate to the NT environment if your system is capable? I also hear a lot about Win95 crashes and worry about that impending doom. I also hear NT operates faster than '95. That is why I want to get familiar with the NT environment. If NT is more stable and eventually where Bill wants us to go, why not get used to it? > >As far as the Altecs go, if I do migrate to NT4.0 they are the only problem in my path I think. One, because Altec said the 495s will work with NT but the GUI software will not. However, the speakers are connected by USB and ,as far as I know, NT4.0 does not support that feature. The sound card is a Creative Labs AWE 64 VALUE Card and I have had problems finding the NT drivers for that as well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. >Shawn Snyder

To: pae who wrote (340)	3/14/1998 3:22:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14778

SCSI system...SCSI boot drives Is there an advantage to implementing SCSI floppy, SCSI harddrives, and SCSI CDROM? Would we be able to disable the IDE and floppy controllers. Would this free up system resources and increase overall system performance? A guy on the sysop forum disabled his ISA bus and increased his system performance. ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Subject: Re: Disabling ISA bus... sysopt.com >>>>My system is totally pci, nothing is sitting in any of my ISA slots... I have disabled my plug and play bus for ISA and my enumerator, as well as leaving all my irq's to pci/pnp. I have noticed about a 7% speed increase in doing so... What else do I have to do to knock out my ISA bus from sucking my system into that vile 8mhz hell... a response Increase the PCI latency setting. I heard it would increase the performance up to 20%. I tried it via a 3rd party software program called "tweak bios" but it didn't do me any good but i figure it was since it was a software program and not the bios is the reason it did nothing for me. I found that tip out of "boot" magazine so i figure it must be correct. (BTW you can get a free issue and CD from them bootnet.com I highly recommend it.)<<<< ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Six of the dozen or so computers I use at work are SCSI based. I did not set them up originally. I do not know the issues on original set-up. They are user friendly when it comes to swapping components. I have taken harddrives and CD ROM drives from "parts machines" and installed them in the "working" machines with very little trouble. Mixing IDE and SCSI in a boot sequence seems to pose some problems. Three machines were delivered with the IDE LS120 drive substituted for the floppy drive. The guy that did it for me told me he had trouble setting the LS120 as a boot drive. (he did and it works) SCSI LS120 is now available and would most likely be a better option if we were to try and make a SCSI based system. I found the following on a news group. I do not know how to post a link to the site. The author(s) talk of Adaptec 78xx SCSI controllers that support boot drives for any SCSI ID. It would be my understanding that CDROM, LS120, and harddrive could all be set as boot drives. Also comments about mixing IDE and SCSI boot devices Regards Zeuspaul __________________________________________________________________ Subject: Re: Two SCSI devices in one system? Yes the 78xx chipset is one of Adaptec's best, it's on the 2940UW's and some 2940U's that were built specially for Server useage. And you alter the termination thru the on-controller bios for it's term, most peripherals still use the"jumper" method. SCAM is nice, though I prefer to manually set the ID's so I can assign the order. >>>Tom L. wrote: Not trying to start an argument, however - I have an Adaptec 3940UW running a fully SCAM (Scsi Configured automatically) compliant set of devices (CD,CD-R, CD-RW and hard drives). The host adapter automatically assigns SCSI ID and termination for all devices. More and more SCSI devices are being made that are SCAM compliant and making all SCSI users life easier. Also, using the Adaptec AIC78XX chip (i.e. AHA-29/3940) allows the user to boot from any bootable device an any channel regardless of SCSI ID, a very nice feature for users of multiple OS's.> -- Later, Tom L.<<<< >>> But you still have to set the jumper to diable the terminating > resistor, is it right? That's true for all the device in my system though. Maybe something new will have Plug-n-Play features for termination also! Yes, you have to set the termination jumper on the devices at the ends of the chain. The only auto-termination devices I've ever seen are the controllers. Drives have no way of knowing that they are at the end of the chain. The ID number also must be set manually on everything but the controller. The controller is set to 7 as the default, but can be changed via a utility. The boot device is usually 0 and the devices are counted upwards (that is drive 80 - C: is 0, 81 is the next highest device found). Some systems work the other way (mainly IBM PS/2) and count down from 6. SCSI wide allows devices to be numbered 8 through 15 as well. If one has both IDE and SCSI devices it gets more complicated. Recent BIOS will allow either IDE or SCSI to be the boot device (drive 80). This is really up to the particular BIOS however. Keith R. Williams<<<<

To: pae who wrote (340)	3/25/1998 8:37:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Booting from SCSI...(converting from EIDE to SCSI) From the sysop forum sysopt.com >>Subject: Re: copying drives-- EIDE to SCSI Name: Slider I switched my system over from EIDE to SCSI a month or so ago and had the biggest freaking pain doing so. Apparently SCSI and IDE devices don't do too well together (at least in some instances). When I first put in my SCSI drive I needed to fdisk it so I connected it, the SCSI controller found it find and identified it correctly, but when I got into windows, it could not find it. Tried all kinds of funky things, rebooting in dos...fdisk couldn't find the SCSI drive, used the fdisk for SCSI (can't remember what its called) no luck. Pain in the freaking butt! After fighting with it for a while I asked some of the MIS guys at my work and they suggested unplugging the IDE drive and booting from a startup disk (I had tried booting from a startup, just still had the IDE drive plugged in!) so I did and fdisk found the drive right away. I fdisked it, formatted it, tossed on win95 and was good to go. I then plugged the old IDE drive back in and rebooted the machine with the startup drive being D (the SCSI). Unfortunately, even thought I had named the SCSI drive and the drive to boot from, the IDE drive still took over and it booted from that drive. (tried switching the boot drive letters with no luck) No big deal. I stayed in there and just dragged the whole freaking IDE drive into the SCSI drive into a folder I named "oldHardDrive" and it went perfectly. I unplugged the IDE drive and have been SCSI ever since!<<