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

To: Street Walker who wrote (1142)	6/6/1998 8:03:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

I know you answered this before but I forget. How do you connect to the world? Is the Internetjet? connection on this PC or is it through the network ?

To: Street Walker who wrote (1142)	6/6/1998 8:28:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Respond to of 14778

The what's good for you case There are 57 recent posts on Anands thread about cases. anandtech.net Here's what's said about the Elan case that Dave mentioned __________________________________________________________________ Acid posted 05-16-98 06:28 PM CT (US) I don't understand why everyone makes a big deal about enlight and inwin cases. The BEST case i've ever seen is the ELAN VITAL T-10AB, you can see it on their website @ www.elanvital.com.tw and on top of being a great case, it's not as expensive as those enlight and inwin cases I got one for $100 canadian.. _________________________________________________________________ pmwolf posted 05-17-98 04:00 PM CT (US) Wally, I too struggled with finding the right case for my computer, a P2-300/AOpen based system which I built a couple of months ago. I was torn between SuperMicro's SC750 ATX-300W and Asus/Elan Vital's T10-AB ATX, full tower vs mid tower. I considered MB fit, power, cooling, drive bays, and internal space as the key areas to investigate. In the end, I ended up going with a latecomer, AOpen HX-08, which I learned of thru New Frontiers, where I had already decided to buy my MB, CPU, & memory. It just happened to work out very well for me. This full tower case has it all plus some. Looks, fit, power, cooling capacity, and plenty of space to grow with. The price I paid was about $120. Even after saying all this, I can only recommend that you have to decide what's best for you. ___________________________________________________________________

To: Street Walker who wrote (1142)	6/6/1998 8:28:00 PM
From: Dave Hanson	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 14778

Comments on Street Walker's latest proposal In case you didn't happen to catch my previous post, Street Walker (which was in reply to Zeuspaul), you'll get some additional thoughts at my Message 4739327. Questions: -I gather you'll only want to run 98? Since your system is all business, stability would presumedly be quite important. Also, you're willing to throw lots of RAM at that beast. These might argue for NT (or dual boot), if you're willing to face the learning curve and don't use lots of DOS apps. -how big and capable are the monitors you'll be using with this system? This would affect my graphics card recs (as would the OS you'll use.) -Has Totally Awesome indicated that they'll acquire for you parts that they don't normally stock under the same great price terms you mentioned? I wasn't impressed with the case they normally used, but if they promised you they'd get what you want, that's pretty impressive. -Will you buy all new RAM, or reuse some? Any reason for 3 64 meg sticks? 128 meg sticks are actually cheaper than 2 64s now, and they leave more expansion room and draw less power. -Have you gotten much info on practical limits to Win98 multimonitor capability? Seems like 4 cards might tax 98's and PCI bus's resources (though I don't really know on this) -what other systems will you be using this with (see my previous post for more on this question) -how much data do you store? IBM drives are excellent, and if 8.4 gigs is more than you'll need, they may be a good choice. Still, the Maxtor 2880s offer a better price/performance ratio (and apparantly very high reliability), with capacities up to 11.5 gigs each. -if you really do think you might switch boards later (or monkey inside the case at all), a good case is well worth the investment. -I think you're right to put the cash into more RAM rather than a faster processor. I'd perhaps even go with the 233 myself. Processor upgrades in PII systems are _very_ easy. FYI, with Asus (and many other P2 boards), one can run the faster front side bus on the BX without using the faster processors. There are other minor reasons to do the BX over the LX (a bit more forgiving of RAM, a bit better performance), but LX is cheaper, and probably (tho not necessarily) more bug-fixed. Those plus the previous post are probably enough questions for me to throw at you now. I'm tossing them all out because knowing the answers would help me give a much better evaluation of your proposal. Regards, Dave

To: Street Walker who wrote (1142)	6/6/1998 8:42:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Respond to of 14778

What's good for you multimonitors BUT, using Win 98 and 4 X SGRAM cards at $50 each would save a lot of money. The downside is that all my PCI slots would be full, but what else is there for me to add to a Stock Trading specific computer? You do have an AGP slot on the P2B board. I recall Win 98 does work with AGP and multimonitors in some cases. We need the multimonitor experts here. If it can be done you would save a PCI slot. fastgraphics.com Would it be better to buy one really good graphics card and then three cheaper ones in case I decide to buy a game some day? It might depend on the AGP question. It's hard to imagine a machine without at least one higher resolution card.

To: Street Walker who wrote (1142)	6/6/1998 9:33:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Hard Drive: IBM 4.3($168) - 6.4($189) - 8.4($254). Still trying to decide. Will a bigger one make my system work better if I have plenty of RAM? The 8.4 does have an improved head. If your hard disc is anywhere near full you will notice a performance hit. Anything over 80 percent full I would consider too much. That said 4 GB for an operating system and trading software a spread sheet and word processor should be more than enough. ( no historical stock data, saved charts or graphics programs) Even the good ones fail. How long are you willing to be out of business and how much time are you willing to spend reloading software and reconfiguring from scratch? I suggest a backup solution. Best and my recommendation. Get two 4 GB hard discs ( Maxtors are $140 each Price Watch, or stick with delicious IBM) Use one as your operational disk. Use drive copy to make a duplicate ready to use fully functional working hard disc. If the first one fails or your configurations become corrupted for whatever reason, boot the system, go into the ASUS bios and change the boot drive. You should be up and running in the time it takes to boot your system. Not so good and doesn't save you much. Go for the 8 GB drive. Partition it and use drive image to backup the C drive to the D drive. Keep a copy of the backup on the D partition of your working machine and send a copy to another computer on the network. The restoration process will be significantly longer than that in option one but no where near as long as no option.

To: Street Walker who wrote (1142)	6/6/1998 9:39:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14778

>>4 x $40 PCI graphics cards (adequate MULTIMONITOR set-up with Win 98)<< Is the reason you are opting for Win98 the economical multimonitor support? Doesn't NT support low end video cards for multimonitors? Networks and multitasking are up NT's alley.

To: Street Walker who wrote (1142)	6/7/1998 7:12:00 AM
From: LTBH	Respond to of 14778

Purchase Decision Assistance I find doing a cost comparison a meaningful device in pointing out benefits when making purchasing decisions. Of course this is meant to assist you and is NOT the ultimate final answer. For instance, using your numbers: IBM 4.3 G costs $39.07 per Gig IBM 6.4 G costs $29.53 per Gig IBM 8.4 G costs $30.24 per Gig but has newer technology For me this makes my decision between the last two and one of actual total cost AND wether I prefer the newer technology. This method also applies to different RAM stick sizes and processor purchases. I always look at the price/performance numbers on processors since there has always been a sweet spot beyond which there is a large price delta with little corresponding performance increase. Networm