Upgrade or new system?

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keybuffer

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1a. Has anyone tried or considered one of these DMA66-support PCI cards? (I think it's supposed to give you improved throughput to your DMA66 drive if you don't already have full DMA66 support on your motherboard - and most boards out there don't, right? - sort of the UltraDMA equivalent to a SCSI card, I guess. I'm wondering if this should be an inexpensive option for my current set-up. I'm pretty sure my current PCI bus "speed" is 33.

1b. And, with my current set-up (see below), do you think a SCSI card and drive would be a better way to go?

2. In case I decide to build from scratch, I've seen at least one motherboard out there that will run two Celerons (and I think it has a fast bus - it's another ABIT MB). I guess total cost would be a bit more than running one PIII, but if I decide to build from scratch, do you think this be a waste or asking for trouble?

3. Back to an upgrade consideration - my current processor is a regular Pentium 200 (not a socket 1). From what I've seen advertised, there's nothing you can do to improve on it (the processor). Or did I miss something?

My current PC set-up:

Pentium 200 (plain vanilla)

DMA33 PCI bus

No soundcard (less than acceptable on-board Yamaha OPLA SRSG [surround yourself with garbage, and I'm not talking about the band] and I have it disabled in the BIOS - I think it's defective - everyone who's heard and played with the settings say it's defective)
I'm considering the Aardvark Direct Pro.

On-board video

Ethernet card (ISA)

No PCI cards right now - lots of free slots

One 3GB IDE drive, PP Zip, IDE CDRW (slave to HD) & IDE CDROM (master on 2nd IDE)

From this site and a few other sources, I do get the feeling that (for recording) bus "speed" and disk access time are very important things to consider - maybe even more so than processor speed.

Any advice or sharing of experience is greatly appreciated. If number 1 above turns out to be a good option, then I would add a large fast DMA66 drive with card drive to my system (maybe just a 9-gig) for recording rather than building a new system.
 
Howdy,

Well as I see it there are some changes that you can make.

1: Remove the ethernet card(if your not using it) This will free up recourses.

2: Remove the CD player from the secondary bus. Redundancy you don't need.

3: Move the CDRW to Secondary Slave.

4: Install 2 8gig hard drives. Put one on the primary bus as a slave. put the other on the seconday bus as a master. If you can afford the price go with a large SCSI hard drive and fast addapter.

5: Make shure there is at least 128meg of ram on board. 256 is better.

6: Install an Ark 20/20, or a Gina, or simular sound card.

Memory and storage are also key factors in recording with a computer. My first recording computer was an AMD K6 200mhz with 128 meg of ram and 2 10gig hard drives paired
a 1.5 gig boot drive and an 8gig drive used just for windows virtual memory. Using an Ark 20/20 sound card. Worked very well. So well I have been considering a resurection. And putting my 400 on the internet.

Good luck I hope this helps.
 
Thanks for the reply. Maybe I can use my current "old" 200 Mhz OK - I'll price out an additional 64k of memory.
 
Note that unless your machine accepts PC66 or PC100 DIMMs (doubtfull) you're going to be tossing your money away to some extent. 64MB of FPM or EDO SIMMs is up around $180, that's pretty expensive considering that you won't be able to use it if you upgrade to a Celeron/PII/PIII board at a later time.

A hard drive, however, might be a good idea. You can get a decent 7200RPM ATA/66 13+GB drive for well under $200 these days (Quantum is good). That'll help things a bit and be very usable if you eventually upgrade to a motherboard (or purchase a seperate card) that supports ATA/66, which should become the standard in IDE speed for years to come.

Slackmaster 2000
 
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