Hi John,
        I think I found the answer to my question about the AsRock
motherboard.

 I bought the new computer of Friday, from a yumcha at Carlingford
(he's been there 5 years so I figured he was okay.. and he's cheap!)
and it was an Asrock. He asked what system I was going to run and when
I said Linux he panicked. "You need better board - more money," he
said (or something like that, it's hard to know what the fuckers are
saying) and when I gave him my I'm-being-screwed look and asked how
much he said ten dollars! For that I got a gigbyte board and a 64Mb
GeForce video card! 

 I've been saying that the PC will never get 100% market penetration
until it isunder $1,000. The time has arrived... it's incredible.

 For $610 I got a 3GHz Athlon, 333Mhz bus, 256M of ram, an 80 GB WD
drive, three-speaker sound, and the works. It's got 512K fast cache! I
can remember when 512K was aa lot of memory. I dunno how they do it
for the price - and it works like a charm... on Linux too. Now all I
have to do is discover the mysteries of networking and use it to move
my data across.. and finally, I've got a computer that runs Win98 as
fast as Win31 used to run on the old 486/100 with its 25 Mhz bus.

 3Ghz and 333 Mhz is just about right for Win98. I suppose XP is
larger and slower...

 It was funny. I ended up in the Carlingford Village shopping mall,
and driving around the parking lot looking for a spot I thought,
"There seems to be a lot of fucking slopes in here..." and next doro
in the school yard, and all the kids runnign around were Chinese.

 "Funny..." I thought, but when I went upstairs they were *all*
fucking slopes. It's like Chinatown in there (without Jack Nicholson
and incest). Every shop is Chinese! They're all Chinese! complete with
a kid in a cardboard box to keep him from wandering... in Carlingford!
I can't think of a less likely place for Chinatown.

 It's sad, really. The poor fuckers migrate to Oz, and they feel
so insecure that they cluster like bees in a nice place like
Carlingford. How the hell do they ever expect to speak English without
that awful accent? The funny part was that I didn't feel awkward about
being the only round eye in the place. I just thought they were
dickheads in *my* country.   

 ARRGH!! (And fuck!)

 I just went to plug in the network cable - no LAN card! The bastard!
I thought $10 extra was too cheap... he's left out the network card.

 Fiendishly cunning, are these Chinese.

Regards,
Bob
    

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5