SCOUG-HELP Mailing List Archives

<< Previous Message << >> Next Message >>

Date:	Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:20:20 PST8
From:	"John A. Morrow, Jr." <ja_morrow@yahoo.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Graphics Card Questions

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

. Is there collective experience with
> the integrated video? Does it work with eCS 1.2?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> John Morrow
> Atascadero, California
>
John,
I bought a Dell Dimension 8400 at the very beginning of this year. I
installed eCS 1.2 on it, after buying a second SATA hard drive. (I was
loath to try to resize or completely blow away the WinXP Home which
occupied the entire 80GB hard drive.)

Naturally, 12 months later, this has gone from nearly top of the line to
practically obsolete. Dell's XPS line was and is their top model, but
now, Dimension 9150 seems to be "next", and 8400's are no longer offered.

At any rate, this machine came with an ATI Radeon X300 Series (128MB)
video card, and eCS and SNAP knew right off what to do with it. I'm
using a 19" flat panel display that was "free" with my system, at a 1280
x 1024 resolution and 16M colors.

I believe that the on board NIC would have worked, but I added an Intel
PRO/1000 card, and that works fine with a driver available from Intel.

I ordered a Sound Blaster Live card, but I couldn't get that to work, so
I finally unplugged that in favor of the on-board sound, and UniAud
works with that.

The box I ordered has a pretty fast Pentium, 1GB of memory, a floppy
drive (!), and a DVD burner and a CD burner. I spent around $1500,
including buying three years maintenance.

I'm not suggesting that you or anyone buys a Dell, but I'm happy enough
with it, and I think I'll have a good, usable system for several years.

Naturally, you don't have to spend anything like what I did to have a
good system.

Happy hunting!
Colin
Colin:

Thanks for the feedback. I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with 512MB here at work, which I have been quite happy with. However, I didn't have to pay for it, and with one son at college and another about to join him, we are pinching pennies, nickels and dimes!

The idea of a second hard drive seems to be a good one, and if I buy another PC I may take that approach, too.

The ATI Radeon X300 is a "PCI Express" card, although I don't quite grasp what that is. Is PCI Express a new kind of graphics card slot on the motherboard? Or does it plug into a normal PCI slot?

Thanks again for the info,
John

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Shopping
Find Great Deals on Holiday Gifts at Yahoo! Shopping

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

. Is there collective experience with
> the integrated video? Does it work with eCS 1.2?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> John Morrow
> Atascadero, California
>
John,
I bought a Dell Dimension 8400 at the very beginning of this year. I
installed eCS 1.2 on it, after buying a second SATA hard drive. (I was
loath to try to resize or completely blow away the WinXP Home which
occupied the entire 80GB hard drive.)

Naturally, 12 months later, this has gone from nearly top of the line to
practically obsolete. Dell's XPS line was and is their top model, but
now, Dimension 9150 seems to be "next", and 8400's are no longer offered.

At any rate, this machine came with an ATI Radeon X300 Series (128MB)
video card, and eCS and SNAP knew right off what to do with it. I'm
using a 19" flat panel display that was "free" with my system, at a 1280
x 1024 resolution and 16M colors.

I believe that the on board NIC would have worked, but I added an Intel
PRO/1000 card, and that works fine with a driver available from Intel.

I ordered a Sound Blaster Live card, but I couldn't get that to work, so
I finally unplugged that in favor of the on-board sound, and UniAud
works with that.

The box I ordered has a pretty fast Pentium, 1GB of memory, a floppy
drive (!), and a DVD burner and a CD burner. I spent around $1500,
including buying three years maintenance.

I'm not suggesting that you or anyone buys a Dell, but I'm happy enough
with it, and I think I'll have a good, usable system for several years.

Naturally, you don't have to spend anything like what I did to have a
good system.

Happy hunting!
Colin

Return to [ 15 | December | 2005 ]

SCOUG, Warp Expo West, and Warpfest are trademarks of the Southern California OS/2 User Group. OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.