Seeking advice on adding memory chips.

Sep 21 14:02 UTC 1997

I have just purchased a Dell 486 33 computer which I plan to set up for
someone for e-mail & word processing.  I would like to put more memory
into this machine, but I would like some experienced advice first.  

This machine has 4 meg RAM now and I would plan to buy an 8 meg chip and 
install it.  Here are some questions I have:    

     1)  There are 4 slots to hold the memory cards.  Do I remove the   
         existing 4 meg card, put in the 8 and then move the 4 to the   
         next available slot?

     2)  Does a Dell 486 33 recognize the chip and reconfigure to 
         correctly use this memory, or do I have to reconfigure CMOS or
         the sys.ini file?  (If I have to reconfigure, does anyone know
         what needs to be done?  

     3)  Does anyone know how to access CMOS on this machine?   

     4)  I own a Gateway 486 66 and it is MUCH faster loading pages 
         from the internet.  My machine has 24 meg of RAM.  
         Both machines have only a 14.4 modem.  Are memory and clock-
         speed the reason for the faster performance of my Gateway
         or are there other re-configurations which I can perform to    
         help speed up the Dell 486 33?  

I would appreciate any advice you may offer.

Thanks

response 2 of 11:

Sep 22 12:03 UTC 1997

I'm on a 486 that use to run at 50 MHz.  I put a heatsink of the CPU and set
the jumpers to 66 MHz:  There was a significant increase in preformance.
Can't figure out how to access BIOS Setup?  Not good.  You may need to run
a setup program to do it.  Does Dell have a web site that might have this
on it?
You could put a DX-2 or DX-4 (Really 3X clock speed) in it for a pretty 
simple preformance increase.  You should have at least 16M in it for 
Windoze stuff.  Otherwise it might be using your HD as system memory and
HD's are pretty slow.

response 4 of 11:

Sep 30 12:25 UTC 1997

Another thing to consider is that memory may need to be installed in
matched pairs, ie 2 4mb simms instead of 1 8mb simm.  At this point with
memory so cheap though I would go with 2 8mm simms, the price differnece
shouldn't be more than 20.00 per simm.

response 6 of 11:

Oct 19 14:12 UTC 1997

Thanks gull, I'll try these.

response 8 of 11:

Apr 5 05:24 UTC 1999

More RAM won't help you download faster.  More RAM might allow more things
to fit in your browser's cache, but probably not.  Most browsers use disk for
most of their cache.  

More RAM may help in editing graphics files if they are large.  Your computer
can pretend to have more RAM than it really has by storing things it expects
you not to need soon on disk in swap space.  This is much slower than keeping
it all in RAM.  So more RAM would only help if you are swapping.  I don't
know the best way to tell if you are swapping on a Mac.

More cache as in your 128k to 1m would halp things run faster.  Not a huge
increase, though for most things.  Some graphics tasks like jpeg
decompression fit in the cache, and can see a larger speed benefit.  (I
should have clarrified above that the cache your browser is using is a
software construct, but the cache you can modify with a hardware upgrade is
a different thing not directly accessible to applications.  It helps the CPU
keep needed things close by [in faster access storage] compared to RAM which
is relatively slow.)  

Hope that helps.

response 10 of 11:

Apr 19 18:00 UTC 1999

I'm still looking into this.... I'd appreciate some clarification on
Disk Cache. My machine is supposed to have 256K as a separate cache chip.
I just discovered in the Memory Control Panel, that I had set it to
128K, which is what Disk Info reported. I found I could set it to
512K (and above) in the Control Panel, and Disk info would then report
that! What is going on? Is some RAM also being used for cache when
I set the cache size larger than the Disk Cache chip size? Or am I just
fooling myself? 

In an early version of _Mac Secrets_ they recommend 32K disk cache for
each 1MB RAM. That gets to a very large cache if one installs all the
RAM allowed in my machine (256MB). Obviously criteria have changed.
Any further clarification of issues of disk cache would be much appreciated.