Hello Mike!
Saturday March 21 1998 23:00, Mike Ruskai wrote to Jonathan Michaels:
 MR > Some senseless babbling from Jonathan Michaels to All
 MR > on 03-20-98  22:33 about motherboards and os/2...
 JM>> i suppose the subject line says it all, well not quite.
 JM>> recently i was discovered in a bad state of self pity,
 JM>> while crying over yet another bit, of equipment failure ..
 JM>> us senile sysops do that a lot, grin anyway, i was
 JM>> wondering if you all could help me with some war
 JM>> stories about the supermicro motherboards, i am being given
 JM>> a supermicro p6sne complete with an intel pentium pro 180
 JM>> mhz (and fan) and 128 mb of full parity (synchronius)
 JM>> simms. i hope to add to this an adaptec aha2940uw and a
 JM>> matrox millenium II with about 16 mb of video ram.
 JM>> my question is, quite simple, is this combination enough
 JM>> horsepower to run os/2 warp v4.0 with the whole tcp/ip and
 JM>> other networking stuff loaded ?
 MR > That's overkill.  You'll have no problems whatsoever.
yes, for a standard system .. but in my reply to another poster, i've 
utlined
someting of what i hope to achieve and it looks like i've got the right sort 
of
iron for the job at hand.
 JM>> are thier any real problems that i should look out for ? or
 JM>> would a gigabyte motherbopard have been better ? well for
 JM>> my next 486 failure i may get a gigabyte and a cyrix k6 or
 JM>> something like that.
 MR > I've got a Tyan Tomcat motherboard in my BBS machine, and a
 MR > Supermicro P6SLA in this machine.  I'd choose Supermicro over
 MR > Gigabyte any day.
any particular reason, other thn personal preferance ?
 JM>> currently i run warp v4 on a i486dx33 with 16 mb and an
 JM>> adaptec aha2542b and it is slugish to say the least ..
 JM>> especially with tcp/ip loaded and running peer to peer ..
 JM>> well i know i am old and slow but my system is slower than
 JM>> i am, grin.
 MR > That's really the bare minimum system for such a Warp 4 setup.
so i have discovered, but when you are tied to a limited budget, you waht you
can with what you have .. my current enterprise is sort of a gift and sort of
an experiment to work out if its possible to do .. i i can get it working on 
my
'fairly basic' supermicro setup then the sponsor wount have to go out and
purchase 30 or 40 sunsparcs or mips workstations at thier attendant costs and
overhead.
sort o like being inthe right place at the right time for once in my life ..
grin.
 JM>> on another slightly different track, this motherboard
 JM>> (p6sne) has a ps/2 mouse port, and i think a ps/2 keyboard
 JM>> port as well, is this going to be a problem for os/2, i
 JM>> have converted to ps/2 mice, the only rodents that you can
 JM>> reliably get in 3 button mode. i also got a brace of real
 JM>> ibm ps/2 keyboards a few years ago and have been using them
 JM>> quite happily via an adapter into the standard din5 socket
 JM>> on 'normal' motherboards .. sure beats having to get a new
 JM>> $65 clone every 7 or so months, and, i don't miss the two
 JM>> or three extra 'microsoft' specific keys. cheers and with
 JM>> thanks in advance.
 MR > PS/2 mice and keyboards were designed by IBM.  OS/2 works quite
 MR > happily with both.  In fact, OS/2's PS/2 mouse support is much
 MR > better than its serial mouse support.  The cursor moves much
 MR > more quickly across the screen.
that would be an added bonus .. i will keep that in mind, i am now a 25 year
veteran of keyboards and every day i use one i get onday closer to getting 
he
dreaded rsi. this is why i detest the the microsoft mouse system .. this has
been proven to not just cause rsi but ti severly agrivate existing 
onditions.
mice started out as three button beasties and their was no double clicking
involved . microsoft need to differentiate thier ice from everybody else, so
the droped a key and introduced the concept of double clicking, and the drs
have been thier freinds ever since.
 MR > I've been using old IBM clicker keyboards forever.  Can't stand
 MR > those new types (with or without Win95 keys - it's the backslash
 MR > placement that's important).
well thier is that issue but for me the key press is all important, a good
keyboard will push back when you press the keys, it should have wieight so 
that
it reamins stable in your lap or on the desktop. it should well built so that
is doesnt flex while in use, as a keyboard or a lever to jimmy open the doors
in winter when they freeze up the hinge (grin). i've been fortunate in that i
have allways used 'quality mainframe' terminals and they have always had
excellent keyboards. i only used one pc clone keyboard once .. only because
this persin insisted on a cheap system .. and couldn't understand why a
keyboard could cost $aud650 (ibm pc/at (it is actually an ibm rt or rs6000)
some 8 years ago), he cam over to my office a few months latter   and
discovered after an hours use he picked up some 30 wpm in corrected typing
speed .. he replaced every keyboard in his organisation.
it is still possibel to get good keyboard, the ones made by lexmark for the 
ibm
ps2 machines are not to bad, well thier costs indicate some of the corners 
that
we cut, they are about $aud350 i was fortunate enought o get two with a fire
damaged computer, the keybpards were clean. later i got another pair brand 
ew
stilll in the ibm box s a gift .. i finally could retire my old ibm pc/at
keyboard .. it had been repaired twice but is still serviceable and much 
better
than any of the new clone $aud30 wonder keyards .. even the ergonomic 
specailly
crafted microsoft desk furnitue keyboard .. that is a real joke, sorry i am a
real keyboard bigot. i suppose the fact that after some 20 years of 8 to
sixteen hours per day at a keyboard and still no rsi has got to say someint 
for
the kinds of keyboards i will let my hands go near.
oops sorry about the rambling, its that time of day again .. cheers
Jonathan
... i do what i can, with what i have, are you able to say the same ?
--- GoldED/386 3.00.Beta3+3022
(3:712/808)
---------------