CompuServe Messages

Scott – 32-bit ram will certainly make a difference in rendering times. I own the Imtronics board fully loaded with 32-bit RAM (4 megs) and the difference from the stock 68000 with stock memory is phenomenal (well, pretty darn good, anyway! <grin>). Just for curiosity's sake, I've booted the board without configuring the 32-bit RAM, and the difference from stock 68000 mode is barely noticeable. The reason is that the 32-bit RAM gives the '030 an instruction and data cache that it can access directly 32 bits at a time, versus 16 with the regular memory. Also, the configure program allows copying of the Kickstart ROMs to 32-bit RAM for much faster access to the ROM routines as well. As for the controller, if your 130 MB of hard drive is SCSI, you'll benefit from the SCSI controller on the Imtronics board. It's a 32-bit SCSI interface. My ST296N is giving me read/write DPERF values up around 250K/sec. 'Course, a Quantum would be faster, but I owned the 296 before I bought the accellerator; actually, it's why I went with Imtronics. The IDE interface on the GVP is not directly compatible with SCSI drives. The Hurricane SCSI was plug-and-play. Anyway, I hope this info helps a little. The main thing is, the 32-bit RAM is a MUST if you need speed from your '030/'882. Harry