Personally I would buy a dreamcast or playstation II for games (even cheaper than a PC). Ok you can't play "xyz" on a dreamcast that you can on a PC. Well the list would be reams longs and works both ways. You can't play final fantasy on a PC...can you?

PC Cards. Are they a good or bad thing? I think they're good if they are kept up to date i.e. if Aleph One were making PIII 800 Mhz cards (that sort of thing) then they are surely a very useful add-on

Surely a useful addon but a PC box, a keyboard/mouse/monitor splitter box (what's the name of those things??) and a couple of network cards would probably be a lot better buy. It would probably cost a bit more in the beginning and take more space but is a lot more upgradable and better suited for most uses, specially gaming if that's what people are after. Plus the heat and power consumption would stay where it's supposed to - in the PC box!

Gulli

Surely a useful addon but a PC box, a keyboard/mouse/monitor splitter box (what's the name of those things??) and a couple of network cards would probably be a lot better buy. It would probably cost a bit more in the beginning and take more space but is a lot more upgradable and better suited for most uses, specially gaming if that's what people are after. Plus the heat and power consumption would stay where it's supposed to - in the PC box!

Fair points, but the convenience of not having two great boxes is one of the main selling points of a PC card. Also, as you say, network cards and switch boxes add to the price considerably. Plus you are buying another HDD, another set of RAM, another box to put it in, another CD-ROM etc etc

Athlon 1GHz £145
Motherboard £100
Geforce 2MX £ 80
128MB SDRAM £ 50
Case £ 45
30GB HD £100
52x CD Rom £ 30
Floppy £ 10
KVM Switch £ 50
NIC £ 20

Total £630 (ex VAT)

All prices are approximate, from dabs.com

The point is that I paid £200 for my 486DX4-100 PC Card. It's now obsolete (OK it was then too!). I think I remember seeing P133 cards going for £400 or so. You've therefore got to do the job cheaper than the cost of buying a PC - 'cos space considerations aside, who is going to buy something as expensive as an actual PC?

You have to ask what you want a PC to do. If you want it for games, you'll need all the accompanying stuff like lots of memory, hard drive space and most importantly a bloody good graphics card. And of course all the hardware needs to be DirectX compatible - including the sound (I've had SO many problems with DirectX and sound).

If you only want it for Word, what's wrong with our existing cards (yes I know they're painfully slow and getting them to run Win95 is an epic accomplishment!). Obviously we need to update things, but if this is all you want it for, there's no reason why you couldn't put a cheap Duron 600 (£45) on a card and run it through the existing circuitry. And yes I know you were talking about the Imago etc.

The other problem is that the chipset has changed dramatically since the days of the 486. VIA's KT chipset for the Athlon/Duron is capable of handling so many different inputs/outputs and controls that most of them won't be needed by us. Having said that, there's not too many chips needed these days, since integration is very high.

A thought occurs to me: The new KM chipset is for mobile use, and includes NVidia's Savage graphics chips. Could we not put that on a card, along with a mobile Duron/Athlon (due out in Q1/2 next year). That way we get 3D graphics and a fast processor on the same card. And of course, it would be low power because it's designed for laptops.

Fair points, but the convenience of not having two great boxes is one of the main selling points of a PC card. Also, as you say, network cards and switch boxes add to the price considerably. Plus you are buying another HDD, another set of RAM, another box to put it in, another CD-ROM etc etc

And you can copy-paste bewteen PC apps and RISCOS apps.

Malcolm

[Edited by mripley at 15:11, 22/12/2000]

Micheal, your comment about RISC OS and the internet, were you refering to just Web browsing? RISCOS already beats windows hands down for FTP and email, I wouldn't dream of using a PC at home for either of these.

Not all PC email clients are as bad as Outlook Express. I use The Bat!, which I prefer to Pluto (which is what I used to use on RISC OS). I haven't tried FTPc but CuteFTP (Windows) is a pretty decent FTP client too.

As far as email goes, Agent is pretty good, but then again I use Outlook 97, and I find it quite good apart from the risk of viruses (but then again, I did manage to catch the Terminator.Icon virus on my RISCOS emulator, of all places!). Never EVER try setting up MS Exchange unless you have more hair than you need....

I've yet to find a good news reader on the PC though - or in fact, anything that beats that old Unix news reader...what was it called again, xnews, I think....

At least for Imago, there's no PCI slots (at least not on the first release. anyway).

And hopefully never, its as "standard" as anything else in the PC world. I recently came across a PCI video card which declared it would only run with Intel PCI chipsets (so ALI, SiS, AMD and VIA users - hard cheese guys).

I have found sound cards that won't work with certain PCI chipsets. This sort of nonsense we simply do not need in the RISC OS world.

If the price of being able to fit a cheap network card is to make the machine unstable and fidgity then the price is too high. PCI no thank you !!!

I have found sound cards that won't work with certain PCI chipsets. This sort of nonsense we simply do not need in the RISC OS world.

Sorry to be sarcastic but...

All of the upgrades in the RISCOS world work together ? Can I get a machine with a Kinetic upgrade, a Blitz IDE card and a Lightning graphics accelerator working together ? At least one of the reasons that we don't get as many conflict issues in RISCOS land is because there simply aren't as many upgrades and peripherals out there. If something doesn't work in your RISCOS machine for whatever reason, it tends to be an expensive way to find out.

There are indeed certain PCI cards that are not compatible with certain chipsets. But that's to be expected with such a variety of options, and most of these tend to be reasonably well known to a half competent computer engineer.

Give me the range of PCI cards any day instead of the limited expansion options in the Acorn world. I can put up with the very occasional device conflict for that.

Windows apps, in RISC OS windows on the RISC OS desktop.

Yes, that's what it does.

That would be nice, especially if they inherit RISCOS screen fonts.

No, they don't

It would certainly make a PC card more attractive, use the progs, don't have to see the OS.

It's still a little bit messy, and certainly nowhere near transparent atm.

All that the application does is take take screen-grabs of an application running in Windows (via the normal PC-card software) and sticks them in a RISC OS window.

Redraw errors abound, and on an SA RPC it's a slow ugly mess. However given the large bandwidth of new machines, there could be a dramatic improvement in performance, given that the application spends most of its time chucking large sprites about, the RPCs slow memory is obviously a limiting factor atm.

They'd have to implement RISC OS style drag and drop and translation of shortcut keys for saving, cut and paste etc. to make it truly useful. IIRC, atm it manages some simple clipboard features via another PC-card related bit of software.

Sadly I doubt the app is still being developed.

I made about six attempts at keeping to the thread - all of which argued for the stunning superbness of the PC Card concept, which will save me £60 later this week.

Along similar peripheral lines, with the PC card and winonse I can get my printer to do what it was manufactured to, without having switchboxes galore or wearing out my parallel port

Viruses NTP, but OK, I amend:

Viruses aside, RISC OS doesn't really beat the windozer hands down for e-mail.

As I said, Outlook isn't the only Windows email client .

Quite so. There are a larger variety than on RISC OS, but a RISC PC has the largest variety

Morning

Yes, the PC Card is lovely, an, this week anyway, indispensible.

Oh dear, it's quite distressing to see how many of us use Pee Cees Anyway, we are going slightly off course here - we want the
pros and cons of the PC Card etc etc.

Wonder how many people who have a PC-carded RPC use a PC?

One 'con' being that it runs Windoze, of course...

Silly boy, that's the whole POINT

Still, I'd rather a card that runs windoze that a whole flaming box for it.

While we're discussing this, does anyone actually have a 133 PC Card
they no longer need?

Haven't you got one yet? You may have my original IBM 486 one for £150 (it's an antique!)

The idea is fine but as you say the cost-performance is poor. The problem is the unit cost of a pentium is extraordinarily high compared to the final cost of the PC. Which means its as expensive to make a PC card as it is a complete PC.

It wasn't so bad when they first appeared though. Trouble is there's no development. Since the best we can get now is a P133, which is obsolete anyway, any price is overpriced.

Micheal, your comment about RISC OS and the internet, were you refering to just Web browsing?
RISCOS already beats windows hands down for FTP and email, I wouldn't dream of using a PC at home for either of these. (And I've taken an A3020 to work for FTP).ICQ and napster are both good under RISCOS too.

RISC OS doesn't really beat the Windozer <u>"hands-down"</u> for e-mail, be fair. And as impressed with RiscSter as I am (and I am!) it doesn't have complete functionality and can be rather odd about things.

(Yes, I know it's a free Beta, but NTP!)

I don't like Pegasus, never tried WS_FTP, and Netscape is horrible .

Pegasus was awful, but the latest version is very functional and friendly. Netscape also has its uses. They're both quite intuitive IMHO. Sorry

Same here. Also the stupid bugs that should have been fixed ages ago.

We all hate the dodgy W but let's hope that the stupid bugs and general aura of sheete stay there for a while so that RISC OS can shine.

Night.

well my idea about this is that IF RISC OS Ltd could join and update this software for the new version (32 bits) of RISC OS we could have a lot of advantages by this

1) we could use windows and it PCI management for use PCI cards without have a RISC OS driver for it.

2) we could use windows application under RISC OS without stress the ARM processor that could be dedicated to graphics and more hard work.

3) we could obtain a PC with a video board more faster than an AGP 4x, yes with reindexing flags etc.. we can lose a bit of power but it will be always like an AGP 5x that not exsist.

4) like in the first point i said we could have access to a lot of cheap hardware that could expand our world more easier than now, in the end also linux is moveing in that direction with the plug and play etc....

so in the end i think that PC CARD is not a so crazy idea, of course not watching about it like a PC emulator .....

Why not just build a fast network connection onto the motherboard as in the Imago and then forget about PCI expansion!!!

We're off topic again. PC Cards!

[Edited by arenaman at 23:59, 27/12/2000]

Pegasus Mail is a pretty nifty Windoze client. And WS_FTP is a nice FTP client, too. Netscape for browsing, of course

I don't like Pegasus, never tried WS_FTP, and Netscape is horrible .

Mostly it's the dodgy OS that I hate.

Same here. Also the stupid bugs that should have been fixed ages ago.

Anyway, Tim, what RISC OS machine(s) do you possess and do you still use it/them?

My parents own an A7000+ which I use sometimes, mainly for graphics work or AA related games stuff.