josephs@ttidca.TTI.COM (Bill Josephs) (08/02/88)
Just got my Del 310 (last Wednesday -- seems like yesterday) after
about a six week delay and 4 slipped ship dates. I ordered it with
the 101 key keyboard, 1 MByte memory, VGA Plus, a 3.5 1.44 MByte floppy
and a 90 MByte EDSI disk. Enhanced MSDOS 3.3 (primarily a disk cache
but some other unix-like utilities like grep, find, mvdir (rename) and
a good disk cache). Machine went together like a charm -- ran
straight out of the box.
Comments:
1. It's fast -- CPU 6 to 7 times my 8MHz V30. On a Supercalc
calculations (a 1000x10 array with log(sin(cos(arccos(arcsin(10^...
(something like that) in each cell, it runs about 1/2 the
speed of the V30 with 8087. Otherwise, much faster on more
normal stuff -- and, of course, file loading and saving much faster.
2. Disk about 7x faster than a 1-3 interleaved ST225...Coretst
says 520KB per second -- my own benchmark shows signifi-
cantly higher throughput -- especially for contiguous files (How??).
3. Turbo C (1.5) is GREAT! -- 1000 line file compiled and
linked in less than 10 seconds -- makes debugging fun again!
4. Display is great -- some very very minor fuziness on line 1
-- but shadowing of VGA ROM (and BIOS ROM) in hispeed, 32
bit memory makes displays (both scrolling and direct writes)
FAST. Supercalc's 16 colors out of 262,000 really is GREAT
for contrasting parts of graphs. Black background is really
black -- and bright colors appear true (I'm a photographer
-- and print color -- so I have some passing knowlege of
color correctness) except for dim yellow -- which comes out
brown.
5. The 101 key keyboard is terrible (the feel is okay -- but
all keys are in the wrong place -- especially the function
keys and the backslash). I requested a replacement -- something
they were glad to do. It arrived yesterday (express mail at
their expense). The return is also at their expense.
Function keys back on the left where god meant them to be --
and esc and tilde are reversible by dip switch (the
correcponding key caps are not, however). BLISS.
6. The 1 MByte memory is completely used for shadowing VGA and
BIOS ROMs -- none is available for extended memory. So, no
improvement over the V30 machine. More memory is now prohi-
bitively expensive -- but that's the next thing I buy
(perhaps after a mouse).
7. I haven't yet moved my Hayes modem -- will do that tonight
-- but I have no reason to believe that they'll be a prob-
lem.
What else can I say -- they delivered what they said they would,
it works, and the price was great! Albeit a bit late...
Bill Josephs -- Citicorp/TTI
3100 Ocean Park Blvd
Santa Monica, Ca. 90405
(213) 450-9111james@bigtex.uucp (James Van Artsdalen) (08/04/88)
In article <3006@ttidca.TTI.COM>, josephs@ttidca.TTI.COM (Bill Josephs) wrote: > 5. The 101 key keyboard is terrible (the feel is okay -- but > all keys are in the wrong place -- especially the function > keys and the backslash). How IBM managed to start with a good keyboard and gradually move to the current wretched mess is beyond me. And these guys make/made top-rated typewriters? > [...] > Function keys back on the left where god meant them to be -- > and esc and tilde are reversible by dip switch (the > correcponding key caps are not, however). BLISS. Actually, if that's the Maxi-Switch keyboard they used to use, the grave/accent/tilde and ESC key caps are exchangable. I used a chip puller to get 'em out. -- James R. Van Artsdalen ...!ut-sally!utastro!bigtex!james "Live Free or Die" Home: 512-346-2444 Work: 328-0282; 110 Wild Basin Rd. Ste #230, Austin TX 78746