Using PC HW

[Robert Harris]

Once upon a time there was created a device called a
laptop, and it was good and people mightily consumed 
this gift.  But some said - woe is me, I turn it on and it
takes too much time and now my life is sad and I can't
do what I want because I am unwilling to wait.

So the hardware god at Intel meet with the Oracle, Bill
Gates  and together they devised power management to
save enuff power so that the User would not have to turn
his laptop on and off to save power, but could run it many
hours on its battery and almost forever plugged it.

And it was good.  And the Greater Gods at the EPA looked
forth upon the land and saw it was good.  So they mandated
that hence forth all PC's would be power saving PC's known
as GREEN PC's.  And thus it came to pass.

But yet, there were many among the people who could not 
abide the thought of the time it took to come up from off to 
running solitaire, so the wailing and gnashing of teeth about
start up time continued unabated.  So again, the software gods
brought forth instant on off programs that saved the state of
the PC when turning off and reverted back to this state 
instantly (bery bery quickly) when turned back on.  And life
became good again. (But they only work under DOS and 
windows)

But the big question remains - if you are going to use late model clone 
mother boards - why bother to turn it on and off.  Your kick butt stereo 
will consume more power in minutes than an idling GREEN PC will in a 
month - yet I don't hear sniveling about how much power it takes with the
key off.  Also most automotive electronics such as radios, EFI's etc 
use a small amount of keep alive current so reprogramming is not
necessary.  Its kind of like whining it takes too long to dyno tune my
car, because I want to do it every time I turn my key on, instead of 
every once in a while when I have time and just starting the engine 
otherwise.

A further aside about late model mother boards.  Do not use anything found
in a Compaq, Packard Hell, Gateway 2000, IBM or similar production consumer

Computer.  The mother boards are highly proprietary and you'll have better
luck getting information out of the car factory guys about their highly
secret 
25 year out of production truck motors than you will from these guys.

AT standard clone aftermarket boards (which by the way includes some bery
bery good boards made by Intel or using readily available Intel chipsets)
ALWAYS outperform the factory boards, are months if not years ahead of 
the factory crapola board and if they have the award or ami bios (the two
most popular) allow the setup to be optimized for anything.  And since all
peripherals
are controlled by the BIOS, have allowed you to turn the keyboard on and
off
since Moby Dick was a minnow.  This opinion comes after having built or
repaired several thousand PC's since peace was declared.  Further, I have
seen clones
live from shop floors including controlling machinery to lawyers offices. 
Keep
them clean, and within human comfort range and you won't have a problem
with ANY reasonable electronics'.

Your choices about reasonably priced PC's boil down to basically using a
clone PC or a much less powerful developmental/prototype system like
68xx stuff. To find the competition to the PC with the exception of the MAC
and the rumored to still exist somewhere in Barvaria Amiga clone, you 
need to go dumpster diving - cause they ain't made anymore, they ain't
supported anymore, they aint worth anything anymore and you really have
to be into self-inflicted pain to even think of using them. 

But if I was really heavy into pain, and I had back door access to a major
game house, I'd take a real close look at SEGA or PLAYSTATION or similar
wazoo
high end game box.  Lot of potential there - if you can get the info
somewhere.

If you are thinking about rewriting the BIOS, reserve a few hundred man
years
its not simple, trivial, or easily do-able - else believe me, Phoenix, AMI
and 
Award would have a hell of a lot more competion.

I plan to use PC clone stuff - becuse I like it, I'm lazy, I steal what
works, am
not overly into self inflicted pain, can use my home PC to write, test,
debug 
etc. all my software on affordable tools - only the factory guys get
millions to
screw around with and above all - am cheap.  Wazoo Pentium mother boards
can be had for starting about $100. - Spiffy fast Cyrix 686 or Intel
Pentiums
in the $100 plus range depending on speed,  Ram at under ten bucks a meg
cheap software -etc. ect.  Besides if a little overkill is good, how about
a lot?

Too Much,  Too Much,  Too Much - is never enough!!!.
Robert Harris <bob at bobthecomputerguy.com>