f/f george wrote:

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 19:08:30 +1200, "~misfit~"
<misfit61nz@yahoo-mung.co.nz> wrote:

f/f george wrote:

I had 7 machines running Boinc full time when it is up and 10 more
running Seti Classic. They are all running Seti Classic until the
system is back up and running then i will switch the 7 back over to
Boinc again. My slowest Boinc computer is a 1ghz Intel, the fastest
is a 2800 AMD. I do have a 700mhz Intel running Seti.
All but 4 of my machines run Seti or Boinc EXCLUSIVELY! I fix
computers as a hobby and when I upgrade someones I keep the old
parts as payment, the old one then runs Seti or Boinc.

I do a similar thing, fixing computers for people as a hobby but
lower-spec computers it would seem. I usually end up giving PCs to
people who's old machine isn't fixable or is just *too* slow for
what they want.

ME TOO! That's why the slowest is a 700mhz! I gave one to my neighbor
last year, a 350mhz machine that was faster than anything else he
owned! I bought a 3200+ AMD barebones from a place on the net and if
they can make it work, I've sent it back TWICE, I will give my dad a
new machine. He currently has a 500mhz machine and I have a nice 1ghz
Gateway that he would like. He just can't seem to figure out that a
faster machine will make him more productive. He will sit for a long
time, and then complain about it, waiting for the computer to do
something. A faster processor will help ALOT! I went last week and
upgraded the memory from 96 meg to 256 meg of ram. It is faster but
still limited by the processor. He went out and bought a new 40 gig
drive and can't seem to understand why it didn't make the system
faster. Of course it's because the machine doesn't support the speeds
the drive is capable of. The old drive was not full and the salesman
told him the new drive would "make his machine faster".

The limitations of ATA33. A faster CPU will certainly help (I'm not sure
what he uses it for) but the combination of more RAM and faster HDD access
would probably also do the job. However an add-in PCI ATA100/133 card is
probably more expensive than replacing the mobo/CPU combo (or whole machine)
for something that will have faster IDE ports on-board. (At least for me).

I have two similar machines here. Both BX chipset boards, both running
Celerons at 900Mhz, both 256 or more RAM. However, one has an ATA 100
HighPoint RAID controller on-board (Abit BX133 RAID). I'm not using RAID,
just the ATA100 controller (and an ATA133 drive) and, without knowing the
specs, if you used both machines you'd swear that the Abit machine had a CPU
at least twice as fast as the other machine which is ATA33. I wish I could
get cheap PCI ATA100 cards, with PCs in the 350-900Mhx range that is by far
the biggest bottle-neck. Such cards would really extend the useful lives of
quite a few PCs.
--
~misfit~