G'day Bob

30 May 04 13:14, Bob Lawrence wrote to David Drummond:

 BL>> What's the bandwidth of USB?

 DD>> The throughput of usb is 1.1Mbps.

 BL>  Bugger that for a game of soldiers, then. I wondered if I could use
 BL> USB instead of a network.

USB 2 is supposed to be 480Mbps. A newer Mobo would have USB 2 ports I'd think.

 DD>> The wireless NETWORK link has to deal with power limits vs
 DD>> distance, and overheads to combat interference? [...]

 BL>  All networks do the same thing, sending packet headers, checksums,
 BL> and encryption, but it only amounts to 10-20% extra. Power and
 BL> distance have nothing much to do with it.. it either works or it
 BL> doesn't.

Apparently distance _does_ matter with WiFi.
[...]
 DD>> 80Gb hard drives "near the end"? Much larger ones are easily
 DD>> obtainable already.

 BL>  I meant that 80GB is already too large, just as 3GHz and 400MHZ bus
 BL> is already too fast - for all practical purposes. I bought my new
 BL> computer on Friday: 2.6G ATHLON/333M bus, 512K L2 cache, 256MB RAM, 
 BL> 80 GB drive... all for $600. The funny part is that *now* it is fast
 BL> enough to run Win98 at the same speed the old 486 uased to run 
 BL> Win311!

Try it with WinXP - it'll run that at an acceptable speed too.

 BL>  I've been using Win98 (and Linux) for three years now and I have
 BL> come to the conclusion that neither of them are any more reliable 
 BL> than DOS and Win31... except that every time you open something, Win98 
 BL> and Linux check the registry and slows down because it does. 

What rendition of Linux are you using? None of the ones I've heard of have
a registry.

 BL> To me, the idea of a registry is insane! It's on the hard drive, and if 
 BL> anything is going to stuff up, it's the hard drive! Everything else is
 BL> non-mechanical and will probably work reliably, forever.

That could be why Linux doesn't have one...

 BL>  I've been using computers for 20 years now. My original 386 had a
 BL> dicky RAM chip that went queer in hot weather, with that result that 
 BL> I had to reboot occasionally. Since then, the only thing that goes 
 BL> wrong is Windows itself, or the hard drive crashes. In 20 years, I've had
 BL> four hard drives die... but never lost one bit in the RAM! What is 
 BL> the point of putting the registry on the *least* reliable part of the
 BL> machine? And what does it do anyway? If the hard drive crashes, 
 BL> you're rooted.

Because the RAM forgets everything when you power down.

 BL>  But... with a 2.9GHz ATHLON, it boots pretty quickly now (5
 BL> seconds). Of course, the old 16-bit Win311 is basically 
 BL> instantaneous.

Then run Win3.11 on it.

Regards,
David

--- Msged/LNX TE 06 (pre)