Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!anthony
From: anthony@unix.cis.pitt.edu (M. Kapolka)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1
Subject: Re: Looking at buying a 3b1
Message-ID: <97511@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 91 01:01:14 GMT
References: <1991Feb28.201501.1431@ccs.carleton.ca>
Reply-To: anthony@unix.cis.pitt.edu (M. Kapolka)
Distribution: comp.sys.3b1
Organization: University of Pittsburgh, CIS
Lines: 26

In article <1991Feb28.201501.1431@ccs.carleton.ca> colinm@ccs.carleton.ca (Colin McFadyen) writes:
>Hello all, I am thinking about buying a 3b1.  As far as I know
>it has a 20Mb drive and half/Mb ram (not sure about the ram) and
>is running 3.51.  Any comments and/or info about this machine
>would be very appreciated.

I'm not sure what you want to hear, especially as readers of this group
are probably biased. :-)

Check to see how much memory it has on the motherboard.  If it only has
.5 meg, you can upgrade to 2 but that is *alot* of work.  I used a
machine with only a half meg of RAM in it for awhile and the performance
was awful due to swapping.  Adding more memory is a must.  Boards are
available to add .5 meg (anyone have one for sale- please let me know!)
1.5 meg, and 2 meg, up to a 4 meg grand total (2 on the motherboard, 2
on cards).

A 20 meg drive is adequate, but barely so.  It is easy enough to upgrade
that when the time comes to a 67 megger (or even larger with hardware mods).

I'd suggest you ftp the FAQ (Freq Asked Questions) file from
cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu in the pub/att7300 directory.  Read that and
you'll probably have some more specific questions.

-- 
Anthony Kapolka					anthony@cs.pitt.edu