[ale] Buying a new motherboard

[R I Feigenblatt]

>I've got some cash burning a hole in my wallet and have been hunting
>around for a new motherboard to upgrade my 486-66.  I want to go with a
>some sort of pentium class chip and motherboard, but Amy has nixed the
>Dual Pentium idea...
>Anyway, what I've been looking at is ordering a Cyrix 6x86 120mhz (P150+)

Any computer purchase is just a "rental" of course: You can be reasonably
sure it will lose most of its market value in a year or two. But that doesn't
mean you never throw up you hands and buy to step up capability. That all
being said, you might want to wait for 6 months so you can buy a processor
with vector math (Intel's MMX) capability. Intel is keeping the specs open
enough for the other micro makers to add this feature too. This says to me
it will be a universal feature of Intel-like micros, the first substantial
programming model change since the 386 was introduced. MMX can boost certain
signal processing ops up to 8-fold in speed. Loooooove that multimedia! ;-)

>Anyone have any good/bad opinions on this setup before I send my hard earned
>money off to who knows where in California?  Has anyone on the list
>dealt with these mail order companies before?  

Never dealt with em. But then I have never bought a no-name motherboard
which gave me any problems. ASA claims to have been around since 1982;
since 1989 under its present name. Can you prove this (e.g. via ads in
older publications you can access?) Does the local Better Business Bureau
or local consumer protection agency have any complaints filed against them?
Why not try Alta Vista to see if they are flamed on someone's home page?

RF