About three weeks ago I posed the following question to the group . Here is
the summary of the responses I got as requested by many. At the end you
will find a short overview of the system I bought and the things I learned
about USB in the process as well.
>
>
>I'm about to upgrade the workhorse PC contesting machine here in the shack
>and am looking to buy something in the 350Mhz range. (I do a lot antenna
>simulation work and faster is always better ~8^). My current P166 will go
>to replace the XYL's 486DX66.
>
>I've been out of the loop on the advances in processors over the last year
>and started doing some browsing in the computer shopper last week. Which
>produced the following questions;
>
>1) What are the major differences between a Pentium II, a CELERON Chip and
>a XENON chip?
In general the CELERON chip has the same heart as a Pentium II but less on
board cache memory (some CELERONS have none the A version CELERON has
128K). The XENON is basically a P-II on steroids and for moment beyond most
pocket books. In general at 300 MHz in most non computational situations I
was told not to expect to see much difference between a CELERON and P-II.
There is quite a body of literature about "over-clocking" (running them at
higher than advertised clock speeds) the CELERONS .
>2) What is the state of compatibility for the "clone" chips such as the
>ones from AMD and CYRIX?
No one appears to be having problems with the clone chips but CYRIX seems
to be lagging in the race.
>3) Anybody have personal experience with a clone mother board in the 350Mhz
>range they can recommend ( I currently have a clone board from ASUS which
>I'm very happy with, and probably will go with them again unless I get a
>better recommendation).
ASUS got the most votes ,others listed were FIC (First Int'l Computer),
Soyo, Gigabyte, Tyan.Abit, and Supermicro. No one replied with names to
stay away from. Given my past experience with ASUS, the number of votes and
a recommendation from Computer Shopper I bought a ASUS P2B
>4) I have heard a few stories about DOS applications that wont run on these
>faster machines (because of timing issues?). I would be interested to hear
>about personal experiences in this area as well.
The key to running DOS applications from Windows 95/98 seems not to be a
problem in general. I had one respondent with a horror story the rest with
no problems The trick seems to be to be sure that all the files are in the
same directory when running under a DOS window and you will have no
problems! This is what I have (unwittingly) always done in the past and
have not had problems. No special boots to DOS etc.
>5) Any experience with USB to RS-232 adapters for legacy devices like my
>PK-232's.
No responses I have done my own experiments since more on that below.
>6) Anybody have a circuit for being able to do CW keyeing directly from the
>USB?
No one has taken this on yet, one gentleman offered to design me one if I
could tell him what the protocols are but that is beyond me at this point.
WHAT I BOUGHT:
ASUS P2B Mother board with a PENTIUM-II 350MHz and 64MB of RAM, ATX Mid
Tower case with 300W supply.
In general it took less than 4 hours to transfer everything and be up and
running all went fairly seamlessly under WIN98. My DOS applications seem to
be running OK with one exception (see below).
WHAT I GOT:
A fully functional system with the equivalent of 3 COM and 2 LPT ports,
plus mouse support and dual on board EIDE all built in . The only add on
cards are a modem, a sound card and a video card (from the old system).
Lots of room left over for future toys. Plus the external USB adapters for
legacy devices. Apparent near unlimited expansion through the USB and a
very quiet (RF noise wise) and stable system running all applications under
WIN98 or from a DOS WINDOW in WIN98
UPGRADE GOTCHAS:
1)Most of the newer P-II mother boards don't support 72 pin SIMM memory ,
so you cant transfer your old memory to the new computer. Add $100 for 64MB
of new 168 pin DIMM memory.
2) The new ATX style mother boards built in port sockets wont line up with
the holes in your old AT style case. Add $75 for a new case. Or plan on
spending somequality time with a drill on your old case.
3) If you have lots of cards in your system you may want an AGP socket
video card so you won't tie up a PCI or ISA slot. Add $45 for a low end AGP
video card. (strictly optional).
4) If you still have an older style AT keyboard (big connector) the newer
motherboards only support the smaller mini connector. Add $5 for an adapter
of $50-100 for a new keyboard.
ADVENTURES IN USB LAND:
For some time now I have been intrigued by the advent of the USB (Universal
Serial Bus) and it promise of 128 ports and no more IRQ limitations. If you
are serial port or IRQ challenged (i.e. wish you had more) and have some
extra cash to throw at the problem then it seems to work as promised. Since
I have no directly compatible USB products in the shack I bought a USB to
RS232 adapter by Peracom ($69) to experiment with legacy RS232 devices and
the USB interface. So far the device talks flawlessly to my TS-850 through
DX4WIN and DOS based TRLog running in a DOS window under WIN98 . It also
seems to work just fine with my PK232 TNCS for Packet and RTTY under
DX4WIN, WRITELOG , WF1B (rtty), and TRLOG. The only glitch I have seen so
far is with is with a program called aeautil.exe which I used to setup the
PK-232. Something aeautil.exe wants to see isn't there and it blows up (no
big deal)
I also bought a USB to CENTRONICS printer cable which freed up the built in
LPT1 for the CW and PTT keying.
At least with my limited knowledge I could not get the USB to talk to
things when I REBOOTED in DOS. I think the USB is dependent on the WIN98
operating system, althougth there may be some body out there with a DOS
based driver for the USB.
I have not tried using the USB for networking yet another feature that the
USB is supposed to make easier but have plans to experiment with that as
well. This for two radio operation . However given the unlimited number of
COM Ports USB provides I think you should be able to do SO2R with only one
computer provided that the logging software will handle to higher COM numbers.
If you have further questions reply direct to : n7ex@athenet.net
Dave
K9NX
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