Desktop

My first computer (PC that is) was (and still goes!!) a 386DX33 with a whopping 4MB of RAM and a vast 100Mb of 19.5mS IDE hard drive.

I have sat in front of me, a modest beast with a 20Gb Hard disk and 256Mb of RAM and a 1GHz Duron.

Just for gag value...created a 120Mb 'RAM DISK', copied entire HDD from 386 to ram disk, cranked her up and off she went!!! Running Dos 6.22, W3.11 and Word 1.1, Excel 3.0......like greased weasel **** off a chromed shovel!!!!

Oh yes....bypass the HDD and these 'puter thingys really fly. But what do peeps expect from motor and solenoid technology?!!! We use solid state disks (like ram disks) that fit onto the IDE interface. Yes, they are volatile, but they have the option to dump to flash on shutdown.

Hmmm....PC133 memory is what now, pennies per meg?? Ram controllers are cheap, lithium ion batteries are cheap....

One question though....how fast do we really want our computers to go?? Faster than we can type and look at the screens?!!! All the processing is done in the CPU and the ram anyway....and our beloved software companies give us pretty animations to look at while our drives are spinning.....so who really gives two hoots?!!!

:)

Yes, it it to be for fun around town, on the highway, or just for the exhilaration at Bonneville for the hardy few :)

Your machine sounded pretty fun!

The new standard for ATA should speed up EIDE to SCSI speeds...according to the industry magazines I've read articles about it in...although how one can speed up an interface by dropping back to serial (vs. parallel for current ATA) is beyond me. Parallel would seem, at least on the surface, eight to ten times faster than any POSSIBLE serial connection. However, your jibe about "If you are a Yugo customer forget about high performance and be happy with the economy" was unwarranted IMHO. The fact is that SCSI drive technology is well overpriced for what you get, and that was proven multiple times.

Want to know my biggest gripe about current drives? The sheer size! I tremble to think what damage will be done by losing a 120Gb HDD (who hasthe capability of running a full backup of such a monster? Nobody!) with most of its data? It would be (to me) much better to have four 30Gb HDDs or three 40's than one 120Gb, yet that is EXACTLY what some "high-end" systems come with...a 7200rpm 120Gb HDD.

SATA drives havn't hit the market yet. We will have to wait and see how it works in the wild. One of the advantages of high end SCSI drives is dependability and durability. I prefer Seagate Cheetah for the speed and relibilty. Most IDE drives targetthe consumer market, you can't expect a $60 drive to work as well or as long as a $250 drive and although IDE drives are much cheeper I have no desire to replace them as often as they fail. If SATA drives are consumer level products they offer little improvement over current ATA products.

What planet are you on?!! I've been using one for weeks!! They are not as fast as IDE, for the same reason RS232 is not as fast as parallel for printing. A nice idea, but UDMA 133 or SCSI is still better.

Are you using a serial ATA drive or a USB drive?

I think I know how to tell the difference!!!

Whose drive and controller are you using? Seagate has planned release for 3Q or 4Q 2002.