8/12    http://www.sonic.net/~shatter/defcon8/dsc00388.jpg
        \_ dsc00202.jpg
        \_ So who's that?

8/12    I am looking for a good home loan; so far the lowest I've found is
        8.25%; are there better ones out there? Any pointers appreciated
        \_ yeah, mine's 6.625%.  Of course I got it a year and a half
           ago.  Why the fuck would you ask the MOTD?  Go to a loan
           officer.  -tom
           \_ Tried. She feigned activity, and then proudly presented an 8.5%
              one; a couple of hours of research on my own afterward yielded
              the 8.25, which she stared at and shrugged. Turned me off toward
              the whole idea. Asking the motd is (as most other things here)
              mostly as a large audience a fraction of which may have
              first-hand experience
                \_ Rates change daily.  There is not a large audience
                   of people who have gotten a rate in the past week.  -tom
                        \_ hey let people ask what they want on the motd
                           \_ don't talk back at tom, he is god -tom #1 fan
        \_ Keep looking. Check more banks/CUs/mortgage, perhaps even
           online. Variable or fixed? 30 or 10 year? Check the bizness
           section of the newspaper?  Used to know a sneaky slimy loan
           officer who could work the numbers to squeeze out a good rate
           so referral can help. Dunno what's current now.  --someone

8/12    Regarding earlier threads about upgrading a Power Mac.  Why is
        9600 not as easy to upgrade as 7600?  I thought 9600 has 6 PCI
        slots, unlike 7600, which has only 3.
        \_ PCI slots != upgrade path.  PCI slots == expandibility.
           \_ Granted, but the same acclerator boards seem to works for both
              machine, so what's the diff?  And more PCI slots mean USB,
              firewire, and video cards.  Please explain.  Thanks.
       \_ A 9600 has a tempermental motherboard, just like the 9500.
          Some PCI cards (esp. video) don't work at all or cause crashes.
          The problem is realated to the fact that 2 (or 3 don't remember)
          of the PCI slots are on a separate bus that is bridged in a non-
          standard way. Plus, it is not easy to open up the 9600 and put
          in ram, CPU or PCI cards. Opening it up and putting stuff in is
          a minimum 30 mins job. On the 7600, the entire thing pops open
          \_ You obviously haven't worked on a 9600.
             One button pops the side of the case off, and it unfolds
             in two halves in less than 2 minutes. Full access to PCI,
             processor, RAM and drives are on clip slots, screwed in on
             trays in front. 7600 is as described.
             \_ Thanks (to both). Is PCI slot on 9600 as flaky as described?
                \_ You're right, I was thinking about a 9500. My brother
                at another.
                   has one and its not very easy to upgrade.
             \_ Thanks (to both). Are PCI slots on 9600 as flaky as described?
                I heard that 3 of them are of one frequency and the other 3
                at another.  As for PCI slots, I can think of ultra-wide
                SCSI adapter, DVD decoder, additional video card, not that
                I necessarily want any of them right away.  And will I be
                able to run final version OS X, client/server with upgrades?
                \_ AFAIK both the 9500 and the 9600 had problems with the
                   secondary PCI bus (2 slots, not 3 AIR). I agree about the
                   SCSI adpater, but not necessarily the DVD card. The newer
                   video cards that are coming out all have DVD decoding
                   capabilities. You might be able to get OSX running on a
                   9600, but it won't be a supported configuration.
          easily and you can access the ram, cpu and PCI slots directly
          (no unscrewing required). Upgrading a 7600 is like a 5 min job.
          Also, it has onboard video (and standard video input/output
          including s-video). If you run under MacOS, just get a FireWire
          and USB combo card (its cheaper than buying both separately) to
          save a PCI slot. You can get a 450 G3 ($200) a Voodoo3 ($100),
          a combo card ($100) and a 10/100 card ($30) and have a pretty
          decent machine with a used 7600 for under $800. I'm not sure
          what other PCI cards/upgrades you would want.
          \_ And after all this wierd fucking around with mysterious upgrade
             daughterboards, extra PCI cards, and all that, you'd *still*
             have a Mac. A hacked-up, nonstandard one at that!