Um, I have _two_ PII's.  Perhaps that's where the confusion comes
from?

I *am* playing with the bochs emulator as an amusement in its own right,
now.  That is running under NetBSD.  I have installed a version of BillOS
on it briefly; it wasn't as fast as I had initially hoped, but was better
than I was beginning to fear.  I also tried Knoppix, and am now fiddling
with NetBSD on the emulator on NetBSD.  I currently am back to not being
able to boot the installed hard drive.  (End conclusion: No, it would
not have worked to run BillOS on bochs.  I won't need BillOS often,
but when I do, bochs would be too slow and would only support 16-color
(*not* 16-bit color), which would limit my ability to work on and run
OpenGL applications, etc.)


I was hoping that the plain PII would do the job, but it looks like I'd
have to throw some hardware at it.  That seems like a waste since it can
do a nice job exactly as it is---but filling another role.  Meanwhile,
a way over-powered machine was 99% idle (and wasting electricity being
up 24/7 as a DNS and fileserver).  The PII draws less current, I think,
is quieter, and for most of the work (when it's not just idling), it does
about as well as the Athlon.

Things would be different if one or more of the following held:

 * I could pick up SIMMs without going mail-order, or salvage
   them from being simply thrown away.
 * I needed more memory for what the machine is doing, now.  (I may
   yet get it more memory, but there's no longer any great need.)
 * I had reason to believe that this old PII motherboard could take
   parity RAM (I didn't count, but do not believe that there were 9
   chips on the SIMMs, so they presumably didn't do parity).
 * There was some reasonable expectation that I could use the memory for
   *something* else if I decided to juggle parts later.
 * I had a real need for the 800MHz Athlon outside of BillOS.  (And could
   neither dual-boot the Athlon nor alternate installations.)
 * I was absolutely sure that I would never need the more than a
   266MHz PII under BillOS '98.  (Well, this is a moot point now,
   anyway, as I've done the swap; (^&.  Now I won't likely switch
   it back unless I *need* the Athlon in NetBSD land.)
 * I didn't have a much faster system for my main NetBSD system.
 * I couldn't ever swap back if I changed my mind.

...none of the above is true.

I had a huge surplus of resources in one spot, and a deficit in
another.  I chose to rearrange my resources.  I think that that's
a better solution than buying more of something that, in a sense,
I already have plenty of.

As for the SIMMs: Yes, 2 16MB SIMMs with 2 unused slots.

(And, no, the Athlon isn't a $1000 machine.  (^&  It was $800
when it was new, 4+ years ago.)


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/