Red Wave Radio

(This is a repost of the earlier message ,due to wrong
formatting of the last one...)

Please point your browsers to the following _excellent_
review by Rich Wells. "Radio Shack PRO-2035/OS535/PROBE
Review". I don't think that the reviews come very much
more detailed (yet easy to understand) than this great
report.

http://www.qsl.net/n2mca/REV2035.HTM

Quote:
"PROBE is able to run with the most minimum of systems and
that's bound to please a lot of people. Should you simply
have an older machine or maybe you have your last PC lying
around doing nothing since being replaced by your new multi-
media, voice-activated,coffee-making,dog- walking, do every-
thing computer.

In either case, PROBE can do the job. It only needs DOS 3.3,
640K ,a serial port and hard drive. What could be simpler?
No extended memory, no expanded memory(although it will make
use of EMS/XMS if available) ,no CD-ROM driver and multimedia
extensions installed. You get the point.

The only thing to really consider is that the older the machine,
the slower it will run. The slower it runs, the slower your
scanning and searching will be. It may also be the case that
older PCs may have older UARTs which can not handle the higher
data rates for the serial port that we are all accustomed to
seeing these days. This too will slow your performance."
End Quote

I am pleased to see that Rich Wells also noted that optimizing
the software ("make use of EMS/XMS if available") AND optimizing
the hard- ware ("older UARTs which can not handle the higher data
rates for the serial port") can have significant effects on the
scanning speeds of this setup.

Only since around 1995 did we have "Fast Uarts" or "16550 UARTs"
that  handles the serial port data rates needed today. (for
handling the data rates of a common 33.600bps+ modem , for
instance.)

All the "older" machines we are talking about here (including
allmost every [if not _every_] ,porable,laptop- and notebook) have
old serial port interfaces.

Quote:
"The only thing to really consider is that the older the machine,
the slower it will run. The slower it runs, the slower your
scanning and searching will be"
End Quote

I want to ask the users of the Probe/2006+/456+ setup out there
if they agree that this is an issue to consider when otimizing
the scanning speeds.  

Are there for instance ways to upgrade the serial interfaces of
older portables ? (I doubt it, think that goes for all portables).

I think the only way to get an optimized scanning-speed is to use
a 16550 UART ,these are only found in post-1995 PC's or ones that
has been upgraded with a 16550 UART I/O card.

Regards,
Knut Otterbeck

You say you average around 100-110 cps ,that's very good! Is it
stable and picks up all the activity it is supposed to?

Do you think you could get an even better "score" with an even
faster CPU?

Would you know if it is the internal speeds of the CPU's or
the external speeds that are most important to utilize for the
faster scanning speeds. Or is it just the "upgraded class" of
CPU (from 486- to Pentium) that does the trick?

Regards,
Knut

GH

--
G.F. Hopper                                  

KB7WSD