Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Street Walker who wrote (1245)	6/9/1998 8:07:00 PM
From: Dave Hanson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Street Walker's system continued "I am currently set on the ASUS mb. Is there a 100mhz AMD-type mobo that either has 5 pci slots or 4 pci and built in ethernet card?" Yes. See anandtech.com for a review of a promising one with 5 PCI slots. I know less about TMC than about Epox. As that review indicates, Anand seems very excited about a new board due out in the next week or two from California Graphics called the Photon 100, which also has 5 PCI. If this board is all it's cracked up to be, I may opt for it over the epox and TMC. But having said that, I don't think you'll be sorry going with the Asus board. It and a PII will cost about $150-$160 more, run somewhat hotter (but this is no problem in a decent case), and not perform quite as well, but you can always slap in a cooler running PII later when the price drops. What's more, it's probably a safer bet, with a bigger installed base. As for graphics cards, Matrox has a new press release on cheap multimonitor cards that may interest you. See matrox.com , the May 12 release. That might be something to try when it comes out, as it will free up PCI slots and give you added options for not much cash. Assuming you want to get up and running sooner than this, you might look into the G100 based Matrox Productiva (same chipset as the upcoming multimonitor card). Very cheap (< $80), very good, well reviewed, and AGP. Should do everything you want and then some. Moreover, it's been out long enough to have decent drivers--not a minor consideration. Good luck, Dave

To: Street Walker who wrote (1245)	6/9/1998 8:11:00 PM
From: Spots	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14778

SW. I have what three systems available to me, two on my usual work desktop and another in a nearby room, all networked together. I have two monitors on my desk. Potentially I can run software actively on either desktop machine. In truth, I run one. I use the others for alternatives and backup. I mean here failure backup; that is, if one PC is down I can go to another with relatively little loss of productivity. "Relatively" in my case means I'm out a half day or so playing catch up and updating software. This happens to me rarely enough that it makes up for the not doing more regular backups. For me, that is satisfactory. Apparantly Zeuspaul has more stringent time requirements, so it's worth the time to him. My point, which I'm getting to slowly, is that I find multiple systems in my environment relatively useless. I would prefer to have everything on one for day to day operations. Of course, my operations are software development, not trading. However, I would be (would have been) out of business without another reasonably similar machine available to work on in a few cases. Say approximately 5 times in the past two or two and a half years. Not frequent, but often enough to scary. In my particular case, the three machines are a P6 200, a P5 133, and a P5 100, all running Win NT. These are not powerful machines by today's standards, but they are ALL capable of running the same software in a pinch, and I can move resources from one to another, physically relocating disk drives, video cards, and monitors if necessary owing to an extended outage. On my next upgrade, my current thinking is to lose the second machine on my desktop and replace with multiple monitors. BUT I definitely want the second (and third) machines in the background as fall backs. Meanwhile, they work for backup servers and for other tasks around the house (my wife uses my "third" backup as her primary machine, for instance, and it contains the first level backups for everything critical; it's NT server with a mirrored disk and also domain controller, since I am on a corporate network and won't allow the corp to diddle with my personal files without authorization <g>.) Sorry, once again I started to write a note but ended writing a treatise. Anyhow, there are lots of ways to use multiple systems without having them equal to each other. Spots