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Re: Macs with PC cards



Apropo of nothing in particular:

Imagine that CRAY decides to make a personal computer. It contains
16 600Mhz Alpha-based processors executing in parallel, has 512
megabytes of RAM, 4.5 Gigabytes of disk storage, a holographic
display with a resolution of 4096x4096 pixels, an artificial
intelligence OS, does 24-bit 3D graphics in realtime, relies entirely
on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt picket, and costs
$300.

What is the first question the computer community asks?

"Is it DOS compatible?"

We are in the process of acquiring hardware to equip a multimedia
platform for classroom use and, of course, the religious question of
whether to go Mac or PC has arisen. One suggestion is to purchase a
PowerMac with one of the PC add-in boards and have the best of both
worlds (or the worst). I read that the new PCI cards don't suffer as
much from the performance problems that plagued the old NuBus or PDS
cards. Has anyone used these? Are there speed or compatibility
problems to worry about? How about reliability -- are they prone to
bringing the system down? Most of them seem to have only a couple of
SIMM slots -- what memory expansion limitations exist? The one thing
I'm sure of so far is the need for a very large hard disk to support
both partitions.

Paul J. Camp "The Beauty of the Universe
Assistant Professor of Physics consists not only of unity
Coastal Carolina University in variety but also of
Conway, SC 29526 variety in unity.
pjcamp@csd1.coastal.edu --Umberto Eco
pjcamp@worldnet.att.org The Name of the Rose
(803)349-2227
fax: (803)349-2926

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! kyle forinash 812-941-2390 !
! forinas@indiana.edu !
! Natural Science Division !
! Indiana University Southeast !
! New Albany, IN 47150 !
! http://Physics.ius.indiana.edu/Physics.html !
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