lotsa tech questions.. almost ante-basic...and opinions needed

[Steve 'n Paul K]

1. you guys know any groups/ vendors in my area [louisville KY]--providing good support/ guidance to REAL newbies-- email or private mail, if you please... if I'm looking to start collecting components for my own [ self-assembled, not self-designed] box
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2 .really basic knowledge, technique needed [ list is only an illustration of the BOUNDLESS ignorance you're encountering at this moment ]..
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some of the good 'sites I've found are no-where near simplified enough..
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a. memory -- 4 yrs ago, it was getting complicated..sounds worse, now.. ddr -not necessarily what I want ??
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b. boards --??

c. boards with RAID [what I've read about RAID doesnt tell me enough about why, when ]

d. boards with RAID, but RAID is disabled.. why would someone do that, except they happened to have a board around- with RAID, and used it for a nonRAID system.. but why??
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e. more memory-- 3 yrs ago, I started putting 96 MEGs into my k6-3D's... feeling slightly extravagant, but smart.. now i feel stupid: 256 is not enough ?? unless it's too much ???

.are you getting an idea of problems I'm facing??

[Bryan]

Its called the learning curve, don't beat yourself up over it.

First thing to know is most of these guys are working with bleeding edge ( aka Real new technology.) personal systems.

DDR, the best way I can describe this is it pushes twice as much data through the system at once. Dosen't mean its exactly twice as fast, but it is faster then SDR. (The current ram for most systems.)

Raid, this is where you use two hard drives (Preferabably identical storage size and other parts as well.) to back each other up while still running. It means that if one hard drive goes the other can compensate for this and continue to run.

The reason some people disable the RAID was to avoid problems they were having with the board.

Now for why you want more RAM, and what to watch for.
The reason why people are starting to get 256+ Mb of ram are that the Operating systems from Microsoft are getting more and more features to "push up" the need for more memory.

For instances Windows ME is stated as being able to run comfortably at 128Mb of Ram, in my experience this isn't true. I'd recomend 256 Mb minium and 512 Mb for comfort.

Why not a gig (1024 Mb.), well except for NT and W2k products, Win 9x and ME have a limit around 756Mb. After this the virtual ram (Hard drive being used as extra memory.) can't be used effectively because the programers didn't allow for more then a 800Mb area to be used between both RAM and Virtual RAM. (There are more technical answers but this should give you the gist.)

Hope this can give you some help, also try www.windrivers.com.

They got some easier to read articles.

[Steve 'n Paul K]

nice wrap-up!!

if you haven't published..you should!!