Re: ROM 1 better than ROM 3?

[thoang@orion.oac.uci.edu (Trangdaithi Hoang)]

In article <mjensen2.178.0@wpo.uwsuper.edu>,
MATTHEW L. JENSEN <mjensen2@wpo.uwsuper.edu> wrote:
>I still believe ROM 03 is better--more tools in ROM mean faster operation, 

Maybe, if you're running off of floppies or a slow mass media device.
The time it takes to load the equivalent tools on a ROM 1 with Ramfast,
fast hard disk, and accelerator is hardly noticeable.

>and there's less static in the sound.  Maybe the 01 has this one advantage, 
>but 03 still gets my vote as the ideal machine.

A lot of the noise you hear is interference picked up from neigboring
cards.  You can eliminate a lot of the interference by isolating the
sound card from other cards.  For example, I have the Sonic Blaster in
slot 4, three slots away from either the Zip in slot 1 or Ramfast in
slot 7.  It's about as quiet as the ROM 3.  I must admit that some
of the new features on the ROM 3 are useful, but I really miss the
compatibility of a ROM 1; the ability to run everything.  Even some
of the more recent stuff are not fully ROM 3 compatible (ie. DocVu
2.0).  Haven't run across a program that is ROM 3 compatible only.
Also, the ROM 1 can have 8 MB of ram without losing /RAM5.

>I'm not trying to start a ROM 1/ROM 3 war here--they're both much better 
>than, say, the Pentium I have now. That thing really sucks. No personality.
>               ^^^^^^^-> :-(

Have you heard about the FDIV bug in all Pentiums?  Sub-single precision
accuracy...  If you or the apps you run do a lot of double precision
floating point divisions you might want to give Intel a ring and find out
about getting a replacement.  My $20 Casio produces better accuracy. ;)