H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-02-20, 08:44:
ragefury32 wrote on 2020-02-20, 05:52:Took delivery of a Compaq Evo n600c - suppoedly the "ultimate DOS compatible" 2 spindle P3 laptop,.
Why? Tualatin P3m CPU (al […]
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Took delivery of a Compaq Evo n600c - suppoedly the "ultimate DOS compatible" 2 spindle P3 laptop,.
Why? Tualatin P3m CPU (all the way to 1.1 GHz), i830MP chipset, ATi Radeon M6, and an ESS Maestro 3/Allegro chipset, which is supposed to offer both DOS mode SB emulation and AC97 support all in a relatively svelte 5 lb package (technically the Dell Inspiron 8100 has the same audio chip and a Geforce2Go or Radeon M7, but that machine uses the older i815EP which limits it to 512MB of RAM, while this one can do 1GB. The 8100 is also bulkier at 7 lbs - the Evo n6x0 series is arguably one of the last truly Compaq machines made before the HP accquisition - Thanks Carly Fiorina).
Of course, it's still just a Radeon M6 (no hardware T&L, and ATi is buggy in older DOS stuff), and the Maestro doesn't do FM synth so audio quality in DOS is...kinda questionable. Came with 128MB of RAM, a 20GB HDD, a DVD/CDRW drive and a dead battery (both primary and the ML1220 within). Oh well, some minor work needs to be done, should be able to use most of the configuration from the Dell Latitude C600 that I also have.
Cool! That i830MP chipset apparently is not very widely known ...
"2 Spindle"? What do you mean with that?
Oh yeah, the i830MP Almador-M mobile chipset. Intel killed the desktop version when they did the big push to P4+RAMBUS, but on the mobile end Rambus didn't have a solution (the P4m were also terrible, power consumption-wise), so Intel's arms are twisted to offer a Tualatin+PC133 solution. The mobile space never got a P4+RDRAM solution, and for the i845 P4 chipset they used DDR instead (which was arguably better). The Almador-M was found in quite a few machines (Thinkpad T23, X22-24, Compaq Evo n600c, Dell C610), but the deluge of P4m stole its spotlight - smart money held out for the Pentium-M, and comparatively few mainstream P4ms were sold. At similar clock speed the Tualatin+i830 were better machines than the Norwood P4+845MPs, but the Norwoods can be clocked much higher. In a way the Pentium-M Banias + i855PM was the better solution - P6 but with a 400MHz Netburst FSB, ICH4M southbridge with native USB2 support, and much more comprehensive speedstep support. It was so good some made it onto boutique SFF desktops.
Oh, the spindle thing? Back in the 2000s back when machines still have spinning drives, the number of spindles denote how many spinning drives it has, and hints at the size/bulk of the machine. For example, a Thinkpad X24/Vaio SR17/Dell D420 ultraportable will be considered a one-spindle. A mainstream Latitude C640/D600 or Thinkpad T22 will be a 2 spindle (one hard drive bay and one optical drive in the hot swappable bay), and a 3 spindle will be something with a bullt-in floppy, an HDD and an optical drive, like a Thinkpad A31p or Dell Inspiron 8100. Of course, a 2008 Dell E4200, a 2011 Samsung NP900 X3A or a 2013 MacBook Pro 13 will be a zero-spindle by that definition despite their rather substantial difference in size.
