OT: Re: Time to declare State of Massachusetts the ENEMY! He

From: John Ruschmeyer <jruschme_at_hiway1.exit109.com>
Date: Thu Apr 15 14:14:02 1999

> > The biggest irony, I felt, was when I was a consultant at AT&T Somerset.
> > Every where you looked there were big posters for "AT&T Cares" (employee
> > volunteerism). One of the items was "Donate computers to a local school
> > (486 and above)". I guess that's why they couldn't get rid of the *heaps*
> > of 386-class systems in the closets and storerooms.
>
> Remember: 486 33 is double of what 386dx 33 does in
> performance. Let say about 8,000 whetstones as mesured by
> Checkit 3.0 on cached 386 33. Plus very few 386 boxens are
> easily expandable with available parts. 486 stuff is very easily
> expandable due to plenty supply of 72pin simms and cdroms,
> many support LBA required for greater than 528MB HDs.

I'll agree on the performance issue, particularly since all but the
cheapest 486s had external cache, while only the most expensive 386s
had it.

I tend to disagree on the expandability, though. Pretty much every
386 I've seen had IDe on the motherboard or used an ISA controller
(though finding non-VLB ISA cards is a bit fun these days). For memory,
most used the ubiquitous 30-pin SIMM (1MB SIMMS being giveaways or <$2/meg,
4mb simms being a bit more expensive). For CD-ROMS, there is SCSI,
IDE (preferably off the sound card), or surplus proprietary boards
(Mitsumi, etc.). Since the 386 won't run software which is "fast"
enough to require a multiple-speed drive, it's a good place for an
otherwise "useless" single-speed one. As for the LBA, there is always
DiskManager, which tends to be needed on a lot of earlier 486s too.
 
> > Personally, I tend to draw the line at the 386. In a Windows and GUI
> > world, I really don't want the aggravation to trying to teach someone text
> > mode apps or of having to listen when they can't find *any* software. This
> > is the same reason I will never give another person an Apple II unless
> > they already know about and want one.
>
> S/W can be found but often I find some people buy "current" s/w
> and find out their computer is not capable of it. Happened to my
> friend w/ a 486dx 33, all it do good is surfing and email, word
> processing all kinds of business s/w. I told him to move up to
> pentium level in fall. That kids game in that regard is Logo, failed
> to run properly on it, that is because of puny 486 33 uncached.

Yup, I can believe it...
 
> > Of course, I'm also a person who's been known to travel with a 386SX-16
> > notebook (recently replaced with a 386SLC-25 one).
>
> I still have old notebooks. LTE 386s/20 now retired from use due to
> number of failures: edgelit lamp giving out, weak 386 even o/c to
> 25 and a cpu swap, keyboard is flaky. Aero 4/25 is pressed into
> use but bit weak yuk compared to 701C. Latest addition is TP
> 701C that bought in fresh of air into performance-poor area. :-)

Weren't the Aero's the ones with the PCMCIA floppy or were they the
pen-based ones? (I always get the Aero and the Contura mixed up.)
Around here, it's a pair of state-of-the-art circa 1992 notebooks:
An NCR 3170, 8/120 (my wife's) and an Apple Macintosh Powerbook 170,
8/40 (mine).
 
Would I like something faster, sure, but I really can't justify it for
what I use them for- basic connectivity and recreation while on the road
(though I have considered putting in a bigger drive in the NCR and
setting up a NetBSD partition).

<<<john>>>
Received on Thu Apr 15 1999 - 14:14:02 BST