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I don't know what version of MS you refer to or if you're trying to do
local HDD searches or via the 'Net with MS v7. If you're trying to do
local searches, then having a Kryotech-based PC won't help. If your
searches take longer than 30 minutes, there's probably something wrong with
your system. You may have too many apps loaded or don't have enough
memory. Give us your system specs, loaded apps, and MS search times.
If you truly want to have the fastest searches, then you'll need more than
a faster CPU. You'll need the new Ultra3/160 SCSI standard. SCSI UW2 has
a bandwidth of 80 MB/sec, Ultra3 160 MB. I believe SuperMicro has the best
SCSI motherboards (MB). SuperMicro has announced the Ultra3 based PIIIDM6
but I don't believe it's out yet. This is the URL:
http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/840/PIIIDM6.htm
It uses standard PC100 or PC133 SDRAM, not the expensive RDRAM. The only
problem I have with the board is that it has no ISA slots and substitutes
66 Mhz PCI instead. I'm not sure if you can use standard PCI cards here.
If you buy a SCSI based MB, get a Quantum Atlas IV or V HDD.
http://www.quantum.com/products/hdd/hard_disk_drives.htm
The reviews have been very good.
http://www.3dgameforce.com/hardware/reviews/atlas10k/
If you don't want to toss all of your ISA cards then you might want to get
the SuperMicro P6DBU.
http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/440bX/p6dbu.htm
It has an on board Ultra2/SCSI controller. It's BX based so you will be
limited to around a PIII 700 Mhz. It can't use the new PC133 memory and
only has a 2X AGP slot, not 4X. It has dual Slot 1's (you can use only one
if you wish), 2 ISA/5 PCI/1 AGP slots. If you're going to upgrade MB's,
I'd get the PIIIDM6 instead.
Another route would be to load up your system with RAM up to its highest
memory limit. If you have a Slot-1 based system, you might be able to put
768 MB of memory in it. If you have an AMD K6/K6-2 based system, your
memory limit might be as low as 128 MB. After you install your RAM, you
can install some type of RAM-Disk program. You could load all of your
Metastock files into the RAM-disk and then perform your searches. This
could be the simplest and easiest route for you since you wouldn't have to
buy a new system. Using a RAM-disk is the absolute fastest way to do
searches, no HDD can match the speed of RAM. There are some people on this
ListServ who use this method.
If you have Quotes-Plus v2.1, you also might be able to use this method by
making some changes in the Registry or possibly using QP Virtual to copy
the MS virtual files into the RAM-Disk.
You might be able to avoid the RAM-Disk scheme altogether simply by
massively increasing your Win9x HDD cache using a free program such as
Cacheman. I don't know what the limits are for the cache, but you might
want to try this after installing more RAM.
Since my Explorations are reasonably fast, I don't have to make any changes
to my system. In MS v6.52 EOD, using "Equis - MACD of Comparative Rel
Strength", it only takes 17 minutes to Explore 5,106 stocks. Run this test
for 5,106 stocks and tell me what the elapsed time was.
Daniel.
Nicholas Kormanik wrote:
> Have any of you had experience increasing Explorations speed by using a
> faster computer, or by switching to a SCSI hard disk?
>
> Any recommendations?
>
> Thanks,
> Nicholas
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