On 30 Jun 98 at 0:07, Felix Hernandez wrote:

> 1. Purchasing a motherboard with a built in SCSI

>   a. Does it restrict you from only installing SCSI Hard Drives or
> can you also install an IDE Hard Drive?

  Just like installing a SCSI adapter on a card -- you can still also
add IDE devices.

>   b. Dual processors, what is the purpose of having dual
> processors and will it increase the performace of a system (running
> graphics applications like games)?

  If you run an OS that supports dual processors (NT and most Unix
flavours do, DOS/95/98 don't), two threads may be executing at any
given moment instead of one.  This will speed multitasking, or
multithreaded applications.
  I don't think many games are significantly multi-threaded, and they
tend to prefer 95/98 over NT, so for *your* intended use, dual
processors would probably be a waste.  Multiple processors are a good
way to beef up the computing power on a server.


> 2. Purchasing a Network Card

>   a.  What information should I look for as far as the performance
> of the card?

  If you want to use BNC co-ax instead of CAT5 cable, you probably
have to go 10Mbps to get the co-ax connector.
  But 10/100 Mbps cards like the 3Com 3C905TX are only about $50 if
you shop around, so that's what I'd get if you get to choose.

>   b. Is the performance of the Network Card as important as the
> performance of the system?

  Well, the PCI bus (at 33 MHz) is nominally about 266 Mbps, so
you'd expect to see a difference between a 10 Mbps network and a 100
Mbps one.  But I'm not sure you'd notice a performance difference
between different cards running at the same network speed.  Quality
and compatibility are likely to be more important than performance.

David G