Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Computers--Mac & PC in one box



As someone who was burned by an earlier incarnation of the MAC/PC
combination--using a completely separate board (Orange PC) inside a 7100
Power Mac, let me advise:

1) The shared video system in our system was not 100% compatible causing
some strange behavior with certain PC software.
2) You need at least twice the memory (both sides Mac & PC) to be usefull.
3) The hard drive is impossibly small since it must be partitioned into a
Mac part and PC part. A two-meg HD is almost mandatory for PCs these days
and the Mac side should have at least 1.2 GB for itself.

The good news--RAM is cheap and so are Hard Drives--BUT, if the Mac isn't
using a PCI bus for the HD then you can't simply add another drive (on PC
systems today you can usually run 3 hard drives and a CD-rom from the same
controller). The PowerMacs we have can only support a single Hard Drive
and so we had to 'discard' the original drives when adding new ones. Also,
be sure to check if there are open slots for the RAM such that you don't
have to discard what's there to add more.

Bottom line here: You can get a 133Mhz Pentium, with 16MB RAM, 1.2 GB hard
drive, AND a monitor for under $1500. If you need both PC and Mac you are
better off buying BOTH rather than 'fooling' yourself that you can really
have both in one box at any kind of substantial savings. In my mind, the
only justification for such a combo is if you have only a couple pieces of
PC software you need to run.

Rick

----------
Try MacWarehouse 1-800-696-1727. Ask for item # CPU 0371 which is a
Power
Macintosh 7200/120 with Pentium, 16MB Mac/8MB DOS/1.2 GB HD & 8XCD.
Price
is $1799, but as usual, monitor & keyboard are separate.

Chip