[rescue] Advice on Octanes

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 11:35:22AM -0500, Joshua Snyder wrote:

> Ok so now I have another question; are the TRAM modules swappable across
> the different video options or are they all specific to each each video
> card?

There are two types of TRAM.  SI TRAM, and SE TRAM.  In theory a SSI
uses SI TRAM, but it requires two of them (putting them on makes it an
MXI), and an SSE requires SE TRAM, but again it requires two (putting
them on makes it an MXE).  However, SE TRAM will work on SI and SSI
cards.  I have an SE TRAM on an SI card.  I don't know if you can get
away with both SE and SI tram on a single SSI card.  It wouldn't surpise
me since I think the difference is just how fast the SE is rated to be
run at.  

So, in short, if you have SI or SSI you can get away with buying SI
TRAM, which is usually cheaper (but on ebay not much cheaper), but if
you want to upgrade the card, you are stuck having to chuck it.
However, if you eat the extra cost of SE TRAM now, you will be set to
upgrade to SE or SSE later.  And SSI or SSE requires two matched TRAM
units rather than requiring some sort of special TRAM.

Does this make any sense?  I feel like I'm not typing clearly.

One thing to keep in mind is that SI TRAM seems to have no label on the
units them selves, but SE TRAM is labeled 37mhz TMEZZ processor.  I got
a killer deal on my SE TRAM that was listed that way.