🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9167@travis.csd.harris.com| mikem@travis.csd.harris.com (Mike McCole) writes:

| |4.	Is a local bus for graphics worth it?  The bad news is they are
| |	pretty new and non standard.  The good news is they will soon have
| |	a standard, and they make graphics really fast.  But I'm an American
| |	and I want instant gratification so I can't wait.
| | 
| |	I've read several reviews that say local bus graphics is the way to go.
| |	I've read a couple of reviews that say they aren't any faster unless
| |	you've got drivers for the chips.  I doubt Sierra is going to be
| |	writing a custom video driver for Fred's custom local bus.  On the
| |	other hand, there seem to be 3 main chip sets tied to the local bus:
| |	S3's chip, TI's chip, and the Weitek chip.  So software vendors only
| |	need 3 drivers, right?  (I feel I should put a smiley after that but
| |	I'm too ignorant to know if it's a dumb question or not).

No you shouldn't need extra drivers. Think of a local bus + video card as
a nonupgradeable built in video card. This may change when the VESA/Intel
standards appear. 


| | 
| |	And Orchid seems to make motherboards with a local bus tied to one
| |	of their top-of-the-line graphics boards.  Do they use one of the
| |	above chip sets or do software vendors need 4 drivers?

|   If you go local bus stay away from the "accelerator" chips, they only
|work with windows and windows games are LAME.  All great games run
|under DOS so that there isn't a lot of operating system overhead to get in
|the way of performance.  If you go local bus go with an ET4000 or VESA
|compatible chipset, they run dos applications (like games) faster than the
|windows accelerator chips.  Very few games use video drivers.  They are
|usually 256 color MCGA.  Games that use higher resolutions require your
|board be VESA compatible or have a VESA compatible driver, just about all
|modern svga controllers come with a VESA driver.

'Tis true that the S3 cards run VGA graphics slower than regular VGA. Still,
how slow is slower? Other accelerator cards may not run run VGA slower. The
Diamond Speedstar 24X sounds like a good deal at the moment. The ATI Ultra 
card will also do standard VGA fast.

| |5.	Some of the companies I'm looking at are Compu-Sys, Gateway 2000,
| |	Fast Micro, and Swan.  Any good/bad stories to tell?  Anyone want
| |	to mention another vendor?  I won't buy from any vendor that's been
| |	around for less than 3 years, I know Gateway meets this criteria
| |	but don't know about the others.
|
|   Criminy! you don't need the level of support you're going to pay for if
|you go with any of these guys.  You know which end of a screwdriver to
|open a paint can with so buy pieces from a company that is learning
|English and get a lot more for your money.  If the system goes down you
|are not going to lose your job.  Besides, when you buy pieces it is much
|more likely you will get quality components.  Buy Teac floppy drives,
|Quantum or Kalok hard drives, Gravis game card, Sony monitor, Diamond
            ^^^^^
Agh!!!! Their small drives were jewels but I've heard that their 
large IDE's are stepper motor drives.. every one else uses voice 
coils and embedded servos. I've seen postings about them throwing 
heads. Get a Maxtor or Connor. Quantums are also good.

|Speedstar (not Stealth).

Instead of buying separate parts try buying from up-and-coming mail
order firms. You'll actually pay less methinks. Most of them will 
be willing to put whetever components you choose together _and_ give
you a year's warranty. 

btw... that _monitors_ would one suggest for game playing?

Check out HD Computers in Computer Shopper.

| |7.	The thought of putting DOS on this machine makes me want to buy that
| |	286 dog I mentioned earlier, and windows is junk.  What other OS's
| |	are available?  Top runner right now is OS/2, although I've heard a
| |	lot about DR-DOS.  As it's a game machine something like UNIX is
| |	out of the question.  Unless someone knows of a UNIX clone that
| |	runs DOS programs with no special effort, I don't know of any.
|
|  Unix will stick you with "Hunt the Wumpus" and "Nethack", forget it. 
|All good games run under dos, OS/2 will cause you untold grief trying to
|run games, it can be done but you have to tweak for every little wierdness
|your games come up with.  Game software doesn't run nuclear power plant
|control systems and frequently wants the operating system to just go away
|so it can run on the bare iron.  Multi-tasking operating systems have
|problems with this, they want to proceess swap your game out on occasion
|to let other tasks run, (like op sys housekeeping) games that take over
|system resources (like clocks and I/O especially) give these operating systems
|fits, or strokes, or heart attacks or just hang them by the neck until
|dead.  Even "well behaved" games get annoying when they are made to
|stutter by "advanced" operating systems.  

This much is true. DOS games are currently top of the crop. 

|A big trackball is better than a mouse for most
|games and last but not least, get a case of Bondwell Quickshot II
|joysticks.  They are cheap, wear out fast, and have the best action and
|ergonomics of any joystick on the market.


I can't seem to handle a joystick for some reason. I play Battlehawks 
1942 with a mouse. With a joystick I'm constantly going out of control.

Where do you get these Bondwell Quickshots and how much is a 
case?  9-)



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Iskandar Taib                          | The only thing worse than Peach ala
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