-=> MATT MC_CARTHY wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 MM> 28 Jan 2003, 15:54, Wayne Chirnside (1:275/311), wrote to Charles
 MM> Angelich:
 
 WC> I do not believe this older on board IDE interface supports
 WC> Ultra 133 and that's what's going in here.
 WC> Fortunately hard drives are largely backwards compatable
 WC> but I will lose speed.

 MM> About what I've got here.  I'm running a UDMA66 drive and a UDMA100
 MM> drive on this board, and it only supports UDMA33.  In any case, I'm
 MM> very pleased with the speed of the drives at UDMA33.

 Really, figured it wouldn't actually be a problem but am
 a bit surprised you've no speed bottleneck on the board.
 I've not looked not having up to date diagnostics onhand
 but suspect this supports UDMA66 at a minimum.

 MM> I did buy my daughter a UDMA100 add-in card as she uses her computer
 MM> for 'real world work', and she was very impressed with the speed
 MM> increase.  For it to work though, I had to disable in CMOS the built-in
 MM> controller(s) (not mentioned in the instructions).  :-((

Not sure how I'd do that here lacking a manual and no luck 
searching the net. Some tell me NEC's motherboard model numbers
are printed on the _bottom_ of the motherboard, how nice of them :-(
That and the chassis has all sorts of mounting hardware pop rivited
in place that's in the way :-(  I _can_ set the drives in the
CMOS to none and perhaps that would be enough, what do you think?
If that were the case I could snag a Ultra ATA133 controller
and pick up quite a bit of speed.
Staples was having a discount on a 40 or 60 Gig. drives
as they are dropping the model, ATA100 and 5400 spindle speed.
It's limited to stock on hand so I'd have to act soon but seeing as I
don't want to throw money at a machine that so far has cost me only
the price of a coin cell that might just be the way to go.
I WILL be on the lookout for 4 sticks of 16 Meg EDO RAM which 
would make this a pretty fair box, currently 4 sticks of 8 meg RAM.
If I starve this coming month I might just swing it.
Needless to say this salvage job has exceeded all my expectations.
Thanks for all your help it's really made the difference between
having an _almost_ adaquate system and one I'm rather pleased with.
I've had this sucker sitting in the other room for months
never suspecting I'd be able to get it going so easily or
so well and only the fast page mode RAM in the 486 going South
forced me to attempt it's revival.
Now to pinch the nickles and project the budget and see if 
I get a large drive this month or next. Leaning towards next
month and getting a Ultra ATA133 for the next system I acquire.
Two things I always doubled up on in this life were motorcycles
and computers so as to never be without. Maybe someone
has a FPM RAM stick gathering dust with which I could revive
the 486 as well, if I luck across one and presuming that
was the problem with my extended memory dropping out
I yet have enough parts now to make a complete 486 computer 
with sound, CD lacking only an A diskette drive.
 
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