Strange MSN convo (NEW)

[DEATH]

Well, I rarely catch you guys on MSN frequently enough (or simulataneously) to have these types of ramblings, with some exceptions. I do catch Donkey and GAH|s| every now and then, the produce of which is worthy. However, I never thought to chronicle an odd conversation until today.

This is a snippet of me chatting with an old buddy from Tech school about old computers and err.... how to build them as performance engines?

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Clayton says:
had to enter the number of heads, and cylinders

Brett says:
that, and you had to do all of this extra low-level formatting that you they got rid of with IDE

Brett says:
it was probably 30 minutes worth of work before you finally got to FDISK

Clayton says:
lol

Brett says:
and let me tell you, it was blazing fast piping all of that data (on a drive with probably 8k cache) through the 4.77 Mhz ISA 8-bit bus the controller card was attached to

Brett says:
and the other amazing thing....the max RPM on those old drives is pathetically low...think of like a diesel red line

Clayton says:
haha nice reference

Brett says:
one thing I will say about the ATs that I wish they still did....they were really well matched. It wasn't the CPU running at 2 GHz and the bus running at 400 mhz (like a P4).....on an AT machine, EVERYTHING ran at the same clock speed, so if you're 386 was turning 30 MHz, so was your FSB and everything else

Brett says:
think about how much faster things would be if they still did that

Brett says:
so do you EVER see ATs up there?

Brett says:
we got like 2 of them at Comp. Hosp. when I was there

Brett says:
service jobs, I should say

Clayton says:
yeah.. you can bore and stroke that motor all you want, but if your top end is stock, your still not going to get anywhere very fast

Clayton says:
i havent seen an AT up in here in awhile.. but we used to get them all the time when i first started here in 2003

Brett says:
lol

Brett says:
yeah, I tried to bore out a 486 once....didn't work so well....

Brett says:
it really freaked when I stuck that cam in it

Clayton says:
it might have been because you stuck with stock pushrods... we all know that it doesnt matter how fast your cpu is, your still cant play WoW without a decent gpu

Brett says:
yeah

Brett says:
I eventually went with NOS....those early 32 bit systems have forged internals, so they can take it.....I had to do subframe connectors though.....case started flexing if I launched it hard

Clayton says:
Yeah, now me and the mad scientist have to tear the engine block apart, because of the piston rings you fried. *sigh*... lucky you didnt blow the welds on the intake, that would have caused a complete reformat

Brett says:
yeah....maybe I should just go with one of these new fangled LS1s? I heard you can overclock the piss out of them...

Brett says:
air-cooled and everything....just need one of those fancy heatsinks

Brett says:
I wonder if it will do SLA if I keep the factory EFI, though.....could be a deal breaker

Brett says:
*SLI, I mean....I want to setup dual 9800s

Clayton says:
dude

Clayton says:
Are you aware of the fuel pressure it takes to run dual 9800s?

Clayton says:
you are going to have to drop the tank

Clayton says:
that is just not something you want to do in an LS1

Brett says:
yeah.....and I'd probably need to upgrade the power supply too.....700 watts is NOT going to cut it

Clayton says:
Now we are getting into using much more energy... Have you factored in what it will run you annualy on your utilities bill?

Clayton says:
This maybe something you want to discuss with your wife.

Brett says:
Well, I dunno....if I scaled back a bit and just went with a quad-core 383, I could probably sell her to offset the power usage and break even on it

Clayton says:
I would say it would be worth the investment.