At 18:10 Uhr +0100 25.02.1998, Colin Wood wrote:
>Mason Loring Bliss wrote:

>> Sorry 'bout wasting the bandwidth. (Incidentally, it's rather shocking to
>> find myself advocating the use of Intel-based hardware. Oh well... Running
>> a 40mHz 486 with twenty megs of RAM is just nice, when compared to my SE/30
>> running with eight megs of RAM. Kernel compiles are down to under an hour
>> and a half now, from seven. :)

But that's not far away from my Q700's speed... I suppose it's even faster.

And, sure: you can get 486 machines for the DM equivalent of $150 around
here, too. But don't even dream of SCSI; expect to open a can of worms when
you add a second IDE drive; don't expect a usable kbd and mouse. Expect to
spend a few evenings to find out about eerie partitioning schemes, IO
address conflicts, interrupt conflicts. Fight with a dozen worn-out screws
instead of simply popping open the case. Cope with not-quite-compatible
NE2000 clones and not-available setup tools. Been there, done that...

For me, the Macintosh hardware - especially that of former top models like
the Q700 and SE/30 - is 'sexy' in a way a clone will never be. But then,
I've been around and soldering my first computer when clones didn't yet
rule...

	hauke


--
"It's never straight up and down"     (DEVO)