Roy -  I wrote this back on 12/15, but I don't think I ever sent it out.

Hello, Roy.   Turns out my msg was delayed quite a few weeks from when I
wrote it and when it finally went out.  Anyway, we were talking about -
"No More ISA slots"

 JH> I think if we have any ISA choice left now, it will be running old
 JH> ISA cards in old boards.

 RJT> Yeah,  that's probably the choice I'm looking at...
 RJT> It's cheaper,  anyhow!  :-)

OK, but surely you'll sooner or later have to do some upgrading which
will cost you some $$.   I see that 168-pin DIMMS pc-100 and pc-133 are
pretty low priced right now, but you mention in another post you're
thinking about adding memory to levels beyond that which some of the
older boards fully support (e.g. 128MB in Intel 430VX chipset board).
Unless you had a good plan for its future use, if you got out and
found a 128MB DIMM for $10, and put it in a VX mainboard worth about $1,
I  think that would be a spending imbalance which you should carefully
consider.

I'm thinking of trying to come up with some sort of a recommended
'formula for the advisability of upgrades' - something along the lines
of - Main System Expense Groups:

Case and PS
Mainboard
Memory
Peripheral cards, Incl Video
CD/ROM, CD/RW , DVD, and and other such drives

I'm thinking maybe some sort of "balance" between current values in each
of these 5 groups could be a reasonable guideline for upgraders.   Maybe
some sort of "steenking rule" that if you want to upgrade one or more of
these, investment in each group should not exceed maybe 2 or 3X the
"current resale value" of what you already got in any of the other
groups, unless you want to stop, think, and make sure that is what you
want to do.

Probably too complicated to work out, but anyway, seems to me that folks
thinking about adding even $10 memory sticks to mainboards worh $1 or
$60 HDD to system units maybe worth $15 need to carefully consider their
options.

Seems to me about the biggest obstacle to some of you die-hard
non-upgraders is the apparent new investment required to get ahold of a
reasonably priced ATX case and PS.

ttyl - - -  JimH.


... Jim, why does everything these days have to be so danged complicated?-Bubba
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