Charles Angelich wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

CA>> Packard Bell with W2K installed (again). :-\ 

CA>> The fan quit in the power-supply and the owner didn't want to fix 
CA>> it? 

RJT> Wow. Sure wish I could run across some stuff like that... 

RJT> :-) 

CA> Just tell everyone you know that you will take their old computers. 
CA> If it's not worth keeping wait awhile in case they ask about it 
CA> then take it out to the street for the garbage men at night. ;-)

Maybe when I get better situated,  I'll consider that as I don't currently
have any room for acquiring any more junk...   Got too much (to the point
of absurdity) in this room,  and a whole storage unit stuffed full.

A number of years back I ran a small classified ad to try and get some
repair work,  and that didn't work too well,  but I did end up with some
old stuff.  A complete IBM (!) pc with CGA (!) monitor.  This actually
turned out to be profitable,  as a lady paid me $50 for the monitor,  to
use with an AT&T 6300 machine...

CA>> Computer: Operating System Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional 
CA>> Motherboard: CPU Type Cyrix 6x86MX/MII, 225 MHz PR300 Motherboard 
CA>> Name Unknown Motherboard Chipset SiS 5597 System Memory 125 MB 
CA>> (SDRAM) 

RJT> 125? Is that a typo, perhaps for 128? Or maybe there's some ram 
RJT> eaten for video, bios shadowing, etc.? 

CA> Yes, it uses 'shared memory' for the 2 meg of video ram. :-\

I'd *really* like to avoid that if at all possible,  when I get into newer
hardware.  Is it all headed that way,  do you think?  Or is it likely I'll
be able to find something I like which will give the video its own memory?



CA>> Multimedia: Audio Adapter ESS ES1869 AudioDrive Audio Adapter ESS 
CA>> Integrated Audio Controller 

RJT> That's a nice chipset, excepting me having had one go bad here a 
RJT> while back. I also have a couple of boards here with 1868 chips on 
RJT> them. 

CA> I have ESS on another '486 here and it does work well on that one. 
CA> :-) 

RJT> Here's a tip if you get linux going on that box, there will be 
RJT> several "extra" sliders showing up in the mixer in KDE, one of 
RJT> them, I forget which one, is a "width" control, sorta gives you a 
RJT> synthesized echo/reverb effect, like fiddling with the room size. 

CA> Sounds fun.

It was handy,  made some stuff sound better,  others not.  I would like to
know if there's a way to program the effect to be used with specified
tunes,  or something.

CA>> Storage: Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive Disk Drive FUJITSU 
CA>> MPC3032AT (3 GB, 5400 RPM, Ultra-ATA/33) Disk Drive Maxtor 90683U2 
CA>> (6 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/66) Optical Drive GoldStar CD-ROM 
CA>> CRD-8322B (32x CD-ROM) 

RJT> Nice! 9G to play with?! 

CA> On two drives no less. I'm thinking the 6gb could add to my main 
CA> box and the 3gb would be enough for a Linux install of say Slack 
CA> v7.1?

Even 8.1 won't go much beyond a gig or so and that's if you install
*everything*,  which I wouldn't recommend.  I did that the first time
around for 4.0,  just to check stuff out,  but you end up with more than
one thing for the same function (mail and news in particular) and it's a
wasted.  This last time around I didn't even install those functions at
all,  and won't until I get something set up with a connection.

CA>> Has a 'winmodem' (naturally) but otherwise might make a good 
CA>> dedicated Linux machine? 

RJT> Yeah, I'll say. If you can't manage, send it on over here and I'll 
RJT> give it a good home. :-) 

CA> Not sure just how this will wind up but I need more memory in my 
CA> main machine so this one may have to sit with zero memory in it for
CA> awhile. :-\ 

Heh.

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