🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca> goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:
>I am doing a bit of work for an office with a bunch of 386SX 16MHz machines.
>They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
>some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
>extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
>these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:
>
>1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
>   this make them?
>
Well, at least make them color-VGA capable, I don't think that windows supports
monochrome very well (if at all).  An accelerated SVGA card will help speed
up the graphics parts of windows (opening and moving windows, etc.) quite a
bit.

However:

>2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
>

Windows will be very slow without lots of RAM to work with.  It can run one
app at a time at very fast speeds with 4 MB RAM (512 K cache), and will meet
all your needs with 8 MB RAM (1MB Cache and optionally 1 MB RAM disk, with
the temp variable set to a dir on it).

>3) Invest in coprocessors?

Well, a co-processor (math-type, not video or any other) will only help if
the windows apps you plan to use were written to talk to it.  Otherwise, it's
basically a waste of money.

>
>4) Try something else (suggestions anyone???), or

Well, RAM is way to low for OS/2, wrong hardware for Amiga-OS and others,
UNIX is stable, but might not have the apps you want.

>
>5) Give up and go home?

Nah, give up and take a vacation in Tahaiti!