[rescue] replacing an Ultra2

[Steve Sandau]

<snip>
>> I also want to avoid Pentium 4s. I have worked with a bunch, have one
>> as a desktop at work and am not impressed at all. (They are Dells.)
>> Using dd to copy a CD means that you can't do anything else until it's
>> done.
> 
> Quite a few early P4s have severe bandwidth problems. Later ones are OK.
> The P4 series in general was flawed. That's when AMD took the lead from
> Intel.
> 
> The problem above sounds like motherboard I/O issues.
> 
> Some motherboards have horrible I/O chipsets, even some new ones.

It certainly could be an I/O problem. The machine I am working with now 
is a Dell GX280. It just won't do much of anything when there is any 
type of moderately heavy I/O going on.

<snip>

>> One of the best machines I have had in terms of good components was a
>> Gateway 2000 486 from the late 80s.  The internals were generally
>> better than they needed to be and handled upgrades quite well. For
>> example, it had PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors--not unheard of,
>> but certainly not low-end.
> 
> In the early days, I liked Gateway, but over the years I started to find
> them suspect.

I am not as fond of later Gateways. I have a couple PII machines that 
are pretty much average. Still better than several Dells that I have 
worked with.

> Did you really have a 486 in the late 80s?  Intel released the CPU in
> 1989, so you must have paid a pretty penny for it back then.
> 

Might have been '90 or '91; I'm not certain. It was a DX33 (before the 
DX2s were around, and it was brandy-new. Didn't all top-of-the-line 
machines cost $2000 around that time? ;-)

Steve