In reading the old entries, I'm amused at the remarks about the cheap
prices, ( 486sx for only $4000.00 ). What did you pay then and what did or
will you pay to replace it now?

28 responses total.

I paid $2500 for my Pentium 90 with 725 MB of hard drive, 8 MB of RAM, 4x
CD-ROM, 13 inch svga monitor, Sound Blaster Pro sound card, and speakers. 

I probably wouldn't pay much more than that to replace it.  However, it's
tough to say what I'd pay, because now I'm slowly building a new system.

        I forgot to ask, will you also mention how long ago you bought your
old system.

Sorry, I meant to say that.  It was 3 years ago.

Well I bought a Mac Classic in 1991 for 1,000, worth about 30 now I
expect.  BTW that has a 40 m HD 4 megs of ram and 10?" b & w screen.
After that in 1993 I upgraded to a used Mac LCIII 80m HD 8 m ram,
8 bit color & sound something like 700.  After that in the winter of
1995 I got a 386 notebook 80m HD 8 m RAM b & W LCD display & 14
color monitor, 4 bit color, no sound for like 600.  Currently I have
a pentium 75 desktop 1.6 gb, 24 bit color, 40 m.  That I have invested just
under a thousand in, I don't plan to upgrade it anytime soon.  I started
building this system last summer BTW.

Zenith 148 with two floppy drives, monochrome monitor (which required a $100
slot to be added), Star SX 9-pin printer, in 1985, about $2000.  Kiwanis is
now selling the above for under $50 total.

I bought my first computer (Tandon PC/XT clone, 8088-4.77MHz, 640K, 83-key
keyboard, monochrome/CGA 13" monitor, 2 720K 5-1/4" floppies, 25MB hard disk,
DOS 3.3, Win85) for $50 from some guy in a parking lot in 1995. I later
purchased a 386dx/25 for $10 from Computer Renaissance in A2, that came with
1MB RAM, and a 660MB HD. My current box, K6-233, 96MB RAM, 2.7GB & 1.6GB HDD,
6x4 CD-ROM, 3-1/2" & 5-1/4" combo floppy, Stealth II S220 video, 33.6 modem,
S23A/AW32 16-bit & wavetable sound, satellite/subwoofer speaker set, and NEC
15" monitor, cost me <$900 to assemble in the past five months, in that same
case that was originally a $10 386.

   My very first computer was a Zenith H89 that ran cp/m. It was free.

   I bought an XT with a 10M Hd, 640k of memory, 1 360k floppy, and
monochrome for $50. I had that for quite a while.
   Last year, I built a 386 from junk parts I had lying about the house. The
most costly thing was the $5 keyboard adapter. Still have it, and it is my
backup, should I need it.
   I am currently using a 486DX33 with VGA and an fast modem. I received it
as a birthday present from my Mom. I also have another 386 that I bought for
$25. It will serve also as a backup.

   I am building a 486DX66, but slowly. I still need to aquire the
motherboard, video card, hard drive, etc. I have no timetable on this project,
or could just be done with the whole thing and drop the DX66 chip into the
box I'm using now; but in the words of the immortal George Bush-- Not gonna
do it. Wouldn't be prudent. ;)

Why not?  You'd still have the 486/33 for your future machine, along with the
time you saved by  using the faster chip.

 Simply because A) I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to that and B)
I know to leave well enough alone. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it). Learned
that one the hard way. 

Anybody know where I can get a p5-166 (no mmx) capable motherboard for cheap
(20 or less)?

Are you looking for one with or without a CPU? Computer Renaissance has them
w/o CPU for around $30-40. I you want a CPU to put on it, those are a bit
overpriced there, IMHO. 

 Try Computer Alley on Jackson. They frequently have motherboards and other
fun stuff cheap.

  Hey, who would like to do a chip-ectomy on my 486? Not that I actually
need it, but it might make this monster run a little better. I still ain't
gonna fool with it. I would like to find someone who actually has done this
and who has a lesser tendency to screw it up. ;)

I have the p5-166 currently only running at 100 because my current mb maxes
out at 100 at least according to the pin setting on the board itself.

Chip-ectomy?  If you remove the CPU, it for sure won't run any better.
If the CPU is in a ZIF socket, replacement should be easy.

  Well I meant more of an transplant. I'm not going to do it simply because
I'm not qualified, and because I have $200 wound up in this machine.

It's really not that hard.  Many people have bought Overdrive chip kits and
done their own, with less experience than you have.

Or I could do it sometime.  I'm guessing you have another chip you want
to put in?  I hope the board is clearly marked with setting info, or you 
have the manual for that board.  Otherwise it can be kinda hard to get 
the settings right.

From a DX33 to a DX66 there *are* no settings changes.

If that is the proposed change, and we're not talking about the AMD 486 
DX-2 3Volt, and, and, and...

  My computer is an Austin 433DX, and the chip I have is 486DX66, I think.
Charles, you would know more about that chip (It's the one you gave me).

  I don't know what the exact advantage would be if I went to the other chip,
and I am guessing here, that there wouldn't be much of a difference.

I did that upgrade a few years ago, andf it seemed like about 20% faster.

Ah, that would be an Intel chip then.  5volt.  Should be pull and push unless
something unusual happens.  For serious computation it should be, at a guess,
1.8 times faster.  For anything I/O bound it won't be faster.  All in all
it'll be a bit faster.  Back when I did it I noticed a big speedup in .jpg
image decompression.  Loading Windows was about the same.

(Actually, since IDE requires the processor to handle I/O, it's possible 
that a faster processer would speed up I/O bound processes if they were 
disk bound rather than user bound.)

Except that everything outside the on chip (cache/ALU/FPU) is going
through the same speed bus on both chips.  That's why disk activity like
loading windows saw no improvement while tight computation loops like
jpeg decompression (that can live entirely in cache) see 2x improvement.

Except that PIIs have faster busses.  My PII can to more than 100 Mbps 
to/from the hard drive, while my roommate's AMD K6 and my PPro can't do 
more than 50.

Re: 26.  
100 Mega bits?  I suppose you mean Mage Bytes.  I'd like to know what disk
interface you have to your disk.  About the only thing fast in PCs is 
Ultra 2 SCSI at 80 MB/s, but not too many of those out there yet.  And you
can put that into any system you want, even a 486 if you really wanted to.
Most PII's these days have a 100 Mhz CPU to memory bus, but that's not 100
MB or Mb.  It's much more.  64 bits wide, not 8.  PPro uses 66 Mhz CPU to
memory.  My K6 uses 100Mhz as well.

No it's Mb/s.  I was measuring it directly, not reading any specs.  I
assume it uses UltraDMA IDE, since that's the latest buzzword in IDE
drives.  BTW, 100 Mbps is 12.5 MBps, so it's much slower than Ultra 2
SCSI, but still much faster than EIDE.

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