Hello:
Most of my fellow list subscribers do not report anything impressive when
comparing Arachne's performance on a 386sx vs. a Pentium. My own
experience is quite different.
I had been running Arachne for years on a 386sx, 33Mhz, 8 MB RAM. My
setup does not make use of a RAM drive.
My faithful old 386 finally died over the weekend. I cannot get it to
boot any more and it won't even perform a POST test. I suspect that some
components in the motherboard have suffered some electronic malperfusions
due to enduring many years of extremes in temperature variations, and
changes in humidity. Condensation might also be a factor. I heat my home
with a wood stove and the fire goes out when I'm not at home. My 386 would
usually never boot until the ambient temperature would rise above about 65
degress Farenheit. (That's 18 degrees Celsius.)
I removed the hard drive and the modem from my 386 and installed it into
an IBM 63 Mhz Pentium I, 12 MB RAM. I booted up this new system and
instantly I was running my version of Arachne from the same hard drive
as before and with the same modem and without the need for making any
changes in my setup. It is my subjective impression that my new system is
running Arachne about twice as fast and downloading web pages also about
twice as fast as before. Wow! I'm impressed! Is anyone surprised with
these results?
All the best,
Sam Heywood
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