From deke@dekethegeek.com Wed Sep 04 12:32:43 2002
Subject:RE: A Better Clone? - In praise of the B4

I'm currently thinking of ways to tackle this project myself... my laptop is
out of the question (Dell Latitude PII-266 w/cruddy onboard sound) since I
can't seem to get the latency below 200 milliseconds, so I am pretty sure
I'm going to use a dedicated albeit small PC for the purpose. Have any of
you guys looked into those tiny aluminum cases? I don't really want to drop
the dough for one, but they are very chic and compact. The last time I
looked into these, they were around $300 without drives or processor or
memory, but that's still pretty cheap since it comes with a motherboard,
built-in video (yuk!), firewire ports, usb ports, network port, etc. etc.
The last one I laid hands on had one external 5.25" drive bay, and one PCI
expansion slot. I have a SoundBlaster Live in all my computers, and I even
have the Live Drive module that fits in a CD-ROM bay. So I figure I'll put
the Live in the expansion slot, the Live Drive in the 5.25" bay, and live
without a CD-ROM. Once I get the OS and software loaded, I can just install
anything else I may need later via a network connection.

Anyway, there are other alternatives besides laptops and big full tower
cases... anyone have thoughts or suggestions?

BTW, I have heard that ASIO drivers are far superior to standard sound card
drivers, but the only version I could find was for Win98, so it looks like
that will be the OS. I have heard of 1-5 millisecond latency settings using
ASIO drivers, and I have also heard someone mention an external sound device
(not an Extigy), that uses ASIO drivers... was it someone on this list that
mentioned that thing? Where can I find one?

Deke The Geek
-never knew how good it was B4 I tried it-