-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-


 WC> Oh yeah, checked back on those Microtel minimalist computers at
 WC> Walmart and it seems there are better options I missed the first
 WC> visit. You can get one with Duron or Athlon processors and 1.3 GHZ
 WC> with 2 open PCI slots an AGP and one I've never heard of

 RJT> What was it?

 CNR whatever that is?
 
 WC> along with that 10/100 ethernet and 56K modem however they
 WC> penalize you in hardware if not cost. They are still 300 dollars
 WC> but the better hardware options with PCI slots available and AMD
 WC> costs you 2 USB ports, 128 instead of 256 RAM and a 10 instead of
 WC> 40 Gig drive.

 RJT> That's probably the one I'd heard about before,  since a 10G drive was
 RJT> mentioned.  OTOH for around $100 you can get 80G these days,  that's
 RJT> not that big a deal...

 Wish web sites would use standardized HTML. Looking for prices
 I can log onto Best Buy and peruse most pages but try
 their all hard drives link and my 4.08 Netscape locks
 up tight :-(

 WC> Oh yeah and one of them, not sure of the price with this option,
 WC> has a rw CD-ROM burner.

 RJT> Hmm.

 WC> I could still slap together a really good cutting edge bare bones
 WC> system from Price Watch for 400 but that would be excluding H.D.,
 WC> RAM and CD. Decisions, decisions One really puzzling thing to me
 WC> is they claim 2 _external_ open drive bays. Some new meaning to
 WC> external?

 RJT> Probably means they have openings to the front of the case.  The case
 RJT> I'm using for this system here has six bays (_no_ small ones!) but only
 RJT> 5 of them accessible from the front.  Got one hole,  two floppy drives
 RJT> (yeah,  I still have a 5.25 in this machine),  cdrom,  one filler
 RJT> plate,  and I forget where I have the HDs in there.  (Looking...)  It
 RJT> appears that there are 3 small bays below those,  none accessible from
 RJT> the front,  and that there are 2 drives in there,  one more behind that
 RJT> blank filler plate probably also a HD.  This is a pretty old case,  one
 RJT> I bought for around $89 new a bunch of years ago.

The Pentium I've out front has 4 bays open once I replace the drive.
It's an NEC and a net search on it reveals it wasn't very popular
and some hateful remarks about it but hey they say the same
about Packard Bell but here's mine almost 9 years later.
No real information out there on the NEC that I can find but perhaps
when I strip it down and check the underside of the motherboard
where they conveniently put the motherboard number :-(
The jumper settings for speed and processor however are on 
stickers inside the case.
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