Re: New GS: Lots-o-questions

[dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <CG1vz6.25z@eis.calstate.edu> gachenb@eis.calstate.edu (Greg R. Achenbach) writes:
>
> First the stats:
>  
> ROM 1
> AppleColor RGB moniter
> Apple 3.5 drive
> Apple keyboard (slightly damaged)
> Apple GS memory expansion card with 256k on board
> Cost = $250
>  
> I bought this for the school office where I work.  It will be used
> mostly for productivity stuff; I'm not a game player.  The main
> reason I bought it was to have the ability to have a hard drive,
> Video Overlay Card, GUI (system 6), and Mac FST.  A very big priority
> of mine is to have a very stable system.  I can deal with little
> quirks and bugs, but several of my staff are either inexperienced
> users or outright computerphobes.  They can't deal with the bugs and
> quirks.
>  
> OK, on to the questions.  I know I need to upgrade this thing to make
> it useable.  My first question is:  What are the things I absolutely
> NEED to have?

In order:

- Extra RAM.  Buy a 4 MB RAM card.  They cost no more than US$120, and
you won't regret it.  You need at least 1 MB to use the IIgs with its
native software, preferably 2 MB or more.

- A hard drive.  The best option here is an external SCSI drive,
probably 105 MB (or larger, if you have a lot of large data files, are
using several applications or are doing heavy-duty programming).  You
will also need a SCSI card and cable to connect the drive to the card.

There is much argument on this group about which SCSI card is best.
I'd recommend getting the Apple High-Speed SCSI Card: it is reliable
and fast enough.  

The alternatives are the original Apple SCSI card (old and slow, but
probably cheap if you find one) and the RAMFast SCSI Card.  The latter
is a lot faster (and more expensive), but I have found them difficult
to use.  There seems to be a new ROM upgrade every once in a while
(the Apple High-Speed SCSI card has never needed a ROM upgrade).


If you need extra speed, I'd recommend getting a ZIP GS accelerator.
They are available in various speed and cache size options: I used an
8 MHz ZIP with 64k of cache, and that was fine.  Going much faster
than that starts costing big money.

Anything else depends on your needs.  What tasks do you intend to use
the computer for, apart from video overlay?
-- 
David Empson                                                               
dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz                                                
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand