byu@csri.toronto.edu (Benjamin Yu) (05/07/91)
Can anyone give a brief description of benefits (if any) in upgrading
a 4 MHz XT motherboard to a 12 MHz AT motherboard without changing
the 8 bit hard/floppy disk controller and hard/floppy disk? What is
the net effect, say in running Pagemaker under Windows 3.0, in terms
of actual speedup (again if any)?
Thanks!
--
Benjamin Yu
University of Toronto CSNET, UUCP, BITNET:
Department of Computer Science byu@csri.toronto.edu
Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 1A4 byu@csri.utoronto.ca
(o)(416)978 - 4299 (h)(416)470 - 8206 {uunet,watmath}!csri.utoronto.edu!byuoneel@heawk1.rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov ( Bruce Oneel ) (05/07/91)
In article <1991May6.130002.13774@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> byu@csri.toronto.edu (Benjamin Yu) writes: Can anyone give a brief description of benefits (if any) in upgrading a 4 MHz XT motherboard to a 12 MHz AT motherboard without changing the 8 bit hard/floppy disk controller and hard/floppy disk? What is the net effect, say in running Pagemaker under Windows 3.0, in terms of actual speedup (again if any)? Thanks! -- Benjamin Yu University of Toronto CSNET, UUCP, BITNET: Department of Computer Science byu@csri.toronto.edu Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 1A4 byu@csri.utoronto.ca (o)(416)978 - 4299 (h)(416)470 - 8206 {uunet,watmath}!csri.utoronto.edu!byu Can't answer about pagemaker, I can give you ideas otherwise. I had an old (real) ibm/pc with a hard disk installed. I replaced the motherboard with a new 12mhz 286. I had to buy a new floppy disk controller (it was the origional), a new herc card, and a new keyboard. The floppy controller was ~$60, the keyboard was ~$40, and the new herc card was ~$40. The floppy controller and the keyboard were required to be replaced. The herc card wasn't. The herc card worked ok at 6mhz but not at 12mhz. Other than that the only other trick was to tell the bios that I didn't have a hard disk and it works fine. bruce -- | Bruce O'Neel | internet : oneel@heasfs.gsfc.nasa.gov| | Code 664/STX | span : lheavx::oneel | | NASA/GSFC Bld 28/W281 |compuserve: 72737,1315 | | Greenbelt MD 20771 | AT&Tnet : (301)-286-4585 | Thats me in the corner, thats me in the spotlight, losin' my religion -- rem
n65j@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (05/08/91)
In article <1991May6.130002.13774@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, byu@csri.toronto.edu (Benjamin Yu) writes: > Can anyone give a brief description of benefits (if any) in upgrading > a 4 MHz XT motherboard to a 12 MHz AT motherboard without changing > the 8 bit hard/floppy disk controller and hard/floppy disk? What is > the net effect, say in running Pagemaker under Windows 3.0, in terms > of actual speedup (again if any)? > > Thanks! > > -- > Benjamin Yu > University of Toronto CSNET, UUCP, BITNET: > Department of Computer Science byu@csri.toronto.edu > Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 1A4 byu@csri.utoronto.ca > (o)(416)978 - 4299 (h)(416)470 - 8206 {uunet,watmath}!csri.utoronto.edu!byu Have you ever tried to do anything in Windows 3.0 on an XT-class machine? Even the simplest things were excruciatingly slow on the 8Mhz 8086 machine I once tried this on (ATT 6300) and I would expect something like Pagemaker to require an extreme amount of patience on such a platform, if indeed it would run at all. With the 286 board and, say, 4Mb of memory (mostly extended) you could run in Win3's Standard mode and have a hope to use PageMaker and the like. I would place high priority on memory if you intend to keep your old hard drive; devote some of it to a cache and the slower drive will have less impact. Memory is now extremely cheap if your 286 motherboard has the capacity. Note that recent PageMakers specify a minimum 2M of memory is needed. In the one 286 machine I run with an XT hard drive/controller, I don't notice too much of a slowdown relative to another 286 machine with an AT controller and an identical Seagate 225 drive. I attribute some of this to the 512K-1Mb caches (in EMS) in use on both machines. Not sure that your old floppy controller would work. The hard drive controller should if it is a recent vintage; tell the AT motherboard that there is no hard drive installed, and the beast will still boot from the XT controller. In short, the new motherboard with ample memory should make a significant difference in your ability to run and live with Windows applications like Pagemaker. The hard drive (assuming that you have the capacity to fit Windows and applications this large) upgrade is a second step which may not be necessary to realize the most useful benefits. -- Steve Pacenka, Cornell U.