RE: Freedom from Microsoft != Freedom from Intel.

Joe Barrera (joebar@MICROSOFT.com)
Sun, 22 Jun 1997 13:14:13 -0700


From: adam@cs.caltech.edu [SMTP:adam@cs.caltech.edu]

> Notice the subject line. It's not Microsoft alone who is the culprit
in
> our many-crashed machines. Part of the problem is that these Intel
> boxes --- "state-of-the-art dual processor 200MHz PPros"

Hmm. There are known bad PCI chipsets out there that cannot handle
multiple processors. If you care, I can get more info on this, and you
can check to see if you have this chipset... (You might first want to
tell NT to run on just one processor first, to see if things get
better...)

Maybe this had something to do with why these machines were donated? :-(

> --- shipped
> with these cruddy $3000 graphics chips that are allegedly optimized to
> OpenGL but suck for everything else.

The $3000 graphic chip rip-off is probably the only thing I've seen on
this list that has made me ANGRY. You can't fucking SPEND more than $300
that's three HUNDRED dollars for a graphics card at Fry's. My current
favorite graphics card (although getting a bit long in the tooth) is the
Matrox Millenium. Supports 1600x1200 at 65536 colors at 60Hz, dragging
windows around is FAST, and I think you can get these for like $200. How
dare anyone charge $3000 for a graphics chip set???

> Poor NT 4.0 didn't know what hit
> it; it tried its hardest to deal with this newbie Intel architecture,
> but there's only so much you can do in software, right?

You should here Dave Cutler flame about broken hardware.

- Joe