Bob, at 08:37 on Jun 26 1996, you wrote to Bill Grimsley...

BL> I bought myself 16Mb of RAM and a CD ROM; $270 and I'm really happy 
BL> with the bargain... plus 8 hours of stuffing around. ROFL! With the
BL> time I spent, I could have bought a whole new computer!

True, but look at all the fun you'd have missed out on.

BL> A mystery remains. My $10 2nd-hand VLB EIDE board has peculiar
BL> things written on it, especially "IDE MODE" with a choice of four
BL> settings: 600ns, 500nS, 400nS and 240nS. It came set at 600nS so I
BL> left it, but what does it mean? Should I set it to 240nS?

No idea.  What does the "manual" say (or didn't you get one) ?

BL> I started off with the idea that all I had to do was plug the CD on
BL> the end of the cable and my BIOS would work. Whata mistaka to maka!

You still need drivers.  Is this your first CD-ROM, by any chance ?

BL> But fortunately, the CD drive came with a full set of instructions on
BL> the floppy (so the nice Chinese told me)... in fact, the entire README
BL> was devoted to explaining the Hitachi driver's problems. The install
BL> program was determined to use something called MSCDEX and it took me
BL> an hour to work out it was meant to be part of DOS.

It sure is.  Sort of an acronym for "MicroSoft CD EXtensions".

BL> But Hitachi were right about their driver and install program. It's
BL> a heapa shit. When I let it have its head, it kept allocating Drive E:
BL> to the CD ROM, despite my list going to F. Sigh. And then I spent most
BL> of today trying to tease MEMMAKER into filling up the holes in upper
BL> memory with the bloody extra drivers. Fucking Microsoft!

Either the /D:n or /L:n switch in MSCDEX will force a drive letter.

BL> But it was a real bargain.

True, the industry is full of them at the moment.

BL> In fact, it's stunning. When I got the urge to upgrade back in March
BL> 16Mb of RAM, an EIDE card and a quad-CD was $700 at best. Three months
BL> later it cost me $270. I called around yesterday, and quotes went to
BL> $490! The range of prices is insane, at both ends.

It's amazing how much money you can save by spending just 30 minutes
ringing around before actually going out and buying.

BL> A gigabyte is only $240, and an AMD 586/133 motherboard is only
BL> $200, installed! They throw in free installation but they're crazy;
BL> labour is 40$ an hour. They're all Chinese who can hardly speak
BL> English, and the heavier the accent the cheaper the price. I got my CD
BL> at a house in Epping (circa $500,000!) where a beautiful loungeroom
BL> had been converted into a computer junk shop! Strange...

But ZERO overheads (plus a tax deduction for using part of his house as a
business).  These slopes are not as silly as they look, you know.

Regards, Bill
@EOT:

--- MsgedSQ/2 3.30