ON THE TRAIL OF THE DREAM PC

                    An article by Brian Burke

Way back when, I wrote into SynTax and asked for some help in
choosing a specification for a home PC. An issue or two later
this request was echoed by an equally hapless soul. We both might
as well have whistled at the moon for all the response we
received.

Some light began to dawn as I devoured my monthly diet of PC
magazines. For the last 15 months I haven't, apart from Strategy
Plus, been near a Games Magazine.  My reading input has been
PCthis and PCthat to the exclusion of any other type of material.
I am a total bore on the subject.

The goods news is that the price of the equipment listed below has
dropped by about one thousand pounds in the last year for my
dream spec and that this trend is continuing as I write. The bad
news is that it will still set you back around œ2500 from the
likes of Dell, Gateway 2000 or Escom on the highstreet. You could
maybe drop that by a couple of hundred by going to a local
manufacturer.

There are those who insist on going to Compaq, Dan or Viglen but
this'll add that couple of hundred at least. I'm hoping to meet
my target price of œ2000 by the time I'm ready to buy my system
in the late Autumn. If I have to make a compromise it's likely to
be in the Monitor size or Clock speed of the processor. I'm
fairly adamant on the RAM and Hard Drive sizing.

The wait is agony. There's always something coming along to delay
the event. Only last month I was burgled. The ensuing flurry of
activity which entailed turning "chez nous" into Fort Knox cost a
pile of dosh and last thing the Insurance Company wants to do is
pay up in a timely manner. And ...and....Oh pardon me while my
blood pressure returns to an acceptable level.

I don't have a mastery or understanding of the inner most workings
of the basic PC, yet I have been "persuaded" over the time I've
spent buried in all the various articles that the machine I
eventually buy should have the minimum spec which I've outlined
below. The thing that frightens me as I sit in my cloistered Amiga
world, where all I have to do is put the disk in the drive and turn
the computer on, is all the unbelievable hassle that PC gamers have
to go through just to get their games up and running.  But that's
another subject.  So, for the guidance of any waverers out there,
here's the dream machine you should be looking for.  Next year or
even next quarter there'll be some new MPEG Graphics chipset or new
drive or wonderful storage medium that will blow the socks off this.
But that's why no-one replied to my plea for guidance. Technology in
the PC world moves on at an exciting and frightening pace.

Herewegonow -

PENTIUM Processor, 75 or 90Hz -

All the new Windows 95 games developers are working on this type
of processor.  Hey! for all I know they've now got an Intel P6,
AMD K5 or a Cyrix M1 on loan for bug testing as well.

Hard Drive of at least 720Mb to 1Gb

Some of these CD-ROM games are so badly programmed that the only
way to get them to run as fast as the DOS version is to dump the
whole thing onto the Hard Drive.

16Mb RAM

Well how else is one to multi-task effectively on Windows 95. In
my case this'll mean getting stuck in Dungeon Master 2 and
calling up James Judge on my Modem to find out what I should do
next. You are playing DM2 aren't you JJ?

Quad Speed CD-ROM

Must have this to run all those "must have" interactive digital
Video clips on the games currently being developed on Pentium
machines (see above).  I can also listen to my Audio CD collection

(see below). On some of the new CDs I'll be able to see the hairy
monsters play as I listen.

Wave Sound Card

How else to effectively hear the delicious death agonies of all
those horrid monsters and demons one meets in any self respecting
RPG.

Independent Speakers

No good having an expensive Soundcard if'n I can't hear the
blighters screaming properly, and in stereo. When I'm bored with
that I can play my own CDs.

Graphics Card 2Mb VRAM (unless EDO present in which case DRAM).

Gotta drive those pixels onto the screen as quick as I can. Can't
wait to see if the water's still rippling from my golf ball


landing in the lake when playing the Manua Kea course. My god! is
that the wind rustling those leaves or do I need new spectacles?
Just watch those Video clips flow now - no jerks 'round here no
more, only those Trolls on the screen.

17" Monitor.

Hah, don't need new spectacles now. I can see plenty on this
screen. If I go to Gateway 2000 them pixels'll be 0.25 pitch with
no flicker at high resolutions.  Even Discworld is playable on
this display.

Modem V32 or V34

Can't get left behind on the highway. Have to grab my board and
surf the net. I'd be denying my child her educational future if
I'm not part of the communications revolution. A V34 will save
those 'phone bills as you download the Discworld solution.

Printer

Sorry, have to draw the line somewhere. Can't afford everything.
Still haven't got a Tape Backup on the list yet either. Just have
to dump text to disk and sneak it into work. Keep praying those
Lottery numbers come up.

To all those of you happily running on 486 processors with 80Meg
Hard Drives who are tut-tutting at the extravagance of the
hardware listed above.  You know your day will come. The day you
upgrade to that P7 System think of me.  I'll be the equivalent of
a 386 user now. You'll be shaking your head and thinking - "How
on earth can they keep playing on that old equipment, everyone
knows Virtual Reality Headsets with wireless links to the P7 is
the only way to go." - Dream on.

Brian Burke - May '95.


                              - o -