From The Mind Of <U39648@uicvm.uic.edu> (04/15/91)
> What kind of monitor is the 8512? It's IBM's ickiest VGA monitor: 14", no stand, an .41mm stripe pitch, which adds up to a somewhat fuzzy display. Standard VGA analog video signals. NOT to be confused with their other 14" monitor, the 8515, which is very nice: a stand, .28 dot pitch, nice and crisp, 1024x768 capable, and very low ELF radiation. > Also, I've heard a rumour that the chips in the PS/2 are not 16 or 32 >bit, they're 64-bit! Is this true? I *think* I know what you are talking about, PS/2 SIMMs. Standard SIMMs in clone systems are 9-bit SIMMs, which means they use 8 bits for data, and 1 bit for parity. On 16-bit systems (286s and 386SXs) you need to expand two SIMMs at a time, since it fetches 16 bits at a time. On 32-bit systems (386DXs and 486s) you need to expand four SIMMs at a time, since they fetch 32 bits at a time. Standard SIMMs come in three basic flavors: 256K, 1M, and 4M. IBM PS/2 SIMMs are 36-bit SIMMs: 32 bits of data, and 4 bit parity. They can be used by 16-bit or 32-bit systems with equal ease, since they were designed to be used like that. The end result is that if you use a 16-bit machine or a 32-bit machine, you only need to use one SIMM at a time to expand memory! (Note: minor difference in the super-high-performance XP models, the PS/2 Models 90/95... they used some strange memory fetching scheme that uses even/odd pairs and fetch 64-bits at a time! So they need to use two SIMMs at a time to expand memory.) IBM PS/2 SIMMs come in four basic flavors: 512K, 1M, 2M, and 4M. IBM has also announced 8M SIMMs and their description technically is known, but I don't know of any available commercially yet, but I've seen some in beta test. - Darius ========================================================================= BITNET: U39648@UICVM | "I'd rather laugh with the sinners Internet: u39648@uicvm.uic.edu | than cry with the saints, ====================================| the sinners are much more fun, "Don't set fire to strangers." | and only the good die young." - Mr. Zarniwoop | - Billy Joel