JIM HOLSONBACK wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

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

No,  I don't think it got here before.

 JH> Hello, Roy.   Turns out my msg was delayed quite a few weeks from 
 JH> when I wrote it and when it finally went out.  Anyway, we were 
 JH> 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... It's 
 RJT> cheaper,  anyhow!  :-)

 JH> OK, but surely you'll sooner or later have to do some upgrading 
 JH> which will cost you some $$.   I see that 168-pin DIMMS pc-100 and
 JH> pc-133 are pretty low priced right now, but you mention in another
 JH> post you're thinking about adding memory to levels beyond that 
 JH> which some of the older boards fully support (e.g. 128MB in Intel 
 JH> 430VX chipset board). 

Yep.

 JH> Unless you had a good plan for its future use, if you got out and 
 JH> found a 128MB DIMM for $10, and put it in a VX mainboard worth 
 JH> about $1, I  think that would be a spending imbalance which you 
 JH> should carefully consider.

I can see your point all right.

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

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

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

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

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

They were pretty expensive when ATX first came out,  but I would imagine
that the prices have come down some since then.  A case is definitely a
part of the plans,  when I do get around to getting a new MB I'll probably
end up buying a case at the same time.  But I'm in no rush to make that
particular upgrade.  The way things are looking,  I'll also probably end up
buying ram at around that same point in time,  too.

Which leave me with the other things I'm considering buying.  A Scanner, 
if I can find one that's SCSI,  a cd burner (and prices for those are
getting *real* low!),  and some nontrivial HD space.

I'm not doing much here that needs huge amounts of space,  though the one
thing I wanna do that will need some is get some of my music from vinyl and
tape on to HD,  perhaps with the possibility of burning some cds with it
and perhaps with just the ability to get random access.  I don't see a
problem with adding HD being tied into any other aspects of upgrading,  not
like some of the other stuff.  So I'll probably end up doing that one
first.

In the meantime,  I have some plans for pulling the drive that's in _this_
box out and sticking a different one in there,  one that used to have
Slackware 4.0 on it,  that I disconnected when I did my 8.0 upgrade,  just
in case I wanted to go back.  That'll get a copy of my dos boot partition
and the OS/2 boot manager,  and maybe an OS/2 install.  I'll check the 6.4G
I pull to see if the geometry shows up any different when I plug it into
some other MB,  and maybe I'll have an OS/2 install there,  maybe not.  In
either case,  that'll end up in the linux box,  giving me a bunch of
breathing room there.  And a fresh install of OS/2 will allow me to finally
move the BBS over to that,  since I actually did get the utility I need to
glue all that stuff together,  and I can use the linux box for the files
section.

That "digital" 486 will be a source for a bunch of the configs
and such that I'd already worked on,  and after that will be available for
use as a workstation.  Only I think I'm going to put a faster chip in it, 
yank the 66 that's in there now and put a 133 in there.  I don't remember
for sure if it'll go to 133 or not,  but I know it'll go to at least 100
which will be faster than what's in there now.  It should make a nifty
workstation for linux.  Then there's that NCR,  that's gonna be an
interesting project,  as I plan to get NFS and NIS going before that point
and do the install over the network.  

I have a bunch of fun stuff in mind here with just the stuff that I've got,
 and getting the energy to do it seems to be the main problem.  That,  and
the time to do it when we don't have something else going on...

---