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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
11 responses total.
1) You'll have to experiment, since it varies a lot. 2) Depends on the BIOS, again. It will at least complain about the extra memory, and them may tell how to get into the CMOS setup. *Warning*! Some 386s do not have CMOS! You have to set jumpers. I've even seen early 486s w/o CMOS configuration. 4) Memory can have a dramatic effect on performance, esp. under Windows. Your Gateway may also be caching pages and appearing to be faster.
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.
You are right about the HD - it is churning like mad.
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.
Some common ways to get in BIOS you might try: F1, Ins, or Del during the memory check (Del is common on AMI and Award BIOSes) Ctrl-Alt-C, Ctrl-Alt-S, or Ctrl-Alt-Esc after the machine's booted. (Common on Phoenix BIOSes.)
Thanks gull, I'll try these.
I would appreciate advice on what performance gain I might get by adding more memory to a PowerMacintosh 7200/120. It currently has 32 MB RAM and a 128KB cache. I can add up to 128 MB RAM (64 MB each in two remaining slots) and can replace the 128KB cache with 1 MB. (It has maximum VRAM at 4 MB). What I would like to gain is faster web page editing and graphics manipulations. (I don't think any memory upgrade would speed up downloads and web surfing - or would it?). I'm currently using Ram Doubler to attain 64 MB effective RAM, which I know is needed for what I do now.
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.
Helps some... :) I'm not running out of RAM currently, and I'd only want to spend the money for really noticeable performance increases. I gather I won't get that.
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.
No clarifications? Sigh... But, I soldier on... (or is that, solder on?): I've upped the RAM in this PowerMac 7200 to 96MB. Now I have a question on whether I still need to have virtual memory on. The Netscape (4.51) Get Info says that the Preferred memory is ca. 8 MB, but that it is 7 MB larger if virtual memory is turned off. What is Netscape doing? Does it create a default 7 MB virtual allocation automatically? Is there a good reason for doing this (like, it is called very seldom so why use RAM for that)? Is there an advantage to having virtual memory on or off, when there is enough RAM to support the apparent requirement overall of 15MB?
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