You guys may remember telling you that I wanted to hook up internet to my MAC computer through the broadband I already had. Well, I did that. I hooked up the ethernet to the router. Now I have three computers setup for internet access. After the connection was complete I went to google and it came up really fast like it was actually utilising my broadband speeds. However after that day and every day after it only seems to go at 90KBPS. What I want to know is why that computer is not working at 350KPBS or close to that. Even 250KPBS would be just fine. But 90 is a little slow. Any help would be appreciated.

Mac computer is a 7300/180 with 112 built in memmory and using 113 virtual memmory. 500MB HD with 130MB Left.

The internet on the pc computers utilise the speeds very well vs the mac does not.

 

What is the rated speed of your connection? Is it supposed to 350 kilobytes per second? Sometimes downstream rates vary by load and time of day.

I have dsl and get 150 kilobytes per second with regularity. Slow sites don't do well.

I keep remembering: a byte is 8 bits. T-1 is 1.5 megabits per second. 187 kilobytes per second. I just ran one of the speed test sites at 1.2 megabits per second for a small file. About 150 kilobytes per second. 56 kilobit dial up is potentially 7 kilo bytes per second.

The connection is what it is. How quickly the computer reacts to the information coming can depend upon the response of the video card. My server shows web pages slowly on the same connection as my other computers, but it has a wretched video card with only 2 MB of RAM. It won't even open program windows very fast.

You must have a good computer in the 7300 to have kept it since its production in 1997.

I don't have any good ideas. If they all share the same connection, individually they should all have similar download speeds.

 

I kinda got the idea that the computer is just alittle slow not much since it runs at 180MHS. Just enough to be slow enough to not keep up with the transfer. Actually if I think about it, these computers were in my high school when I still had attended there. And they were just as slow on a Fiber Optic connection. But another thing you got to keep in mind here is that most computers in the school was connected to the net therefor you could expect slow down. I am starting to realise that my bandwitch on broadband is 1.5M So I can not expect a whole lot greatness from it unless I had a T-1 T-2 T-3 or even the new T-4 connection. But who can afford that? LOL Downloading usually ranges on the fast server PC, 200 to 350KBPS. The slower PC in the living room gets 150 to 250KBPS. And the Mac in the computer room gets 80 to 90KPBS. I think its just the Mac myself. However any good information from you guys is greatly appreciated!

 

I just learned something that I should give to you from the wise. Its about Virtual memmory. On my MAC I have a 550MB HD. So after installing MAC OS 9, I had very little free space left. To be exact 280MB left. I went into Virtual memmory and noticed it was activated using 120MB of the HD. I tried to drop it down but it would only go down as far as 113. I figured that MAC OS 9 was made for these faster computer and expect the computer to have 5GIG HD. LOL So after I deactivated virtual memmory, I have more HD space. Exactly what I should have. Its something like 350MB or something like that left. This is really important for people who only have small HD. I even consider a 5GIG HD small. So this is something for all you MAC lovers out there to think about doing with your mac to gain space without trashing needed programs.

 

Just as a note, when Virtual Memory is turned on, even to 1 MB as yours was (it was set to 113, you have 112 built in, that means its turned on to 1 MB), the Operating system uses less memory to run. That's because system extensions that do not require a fast response time are loaded into memory off the hard drive, rather than physical RAM.

When you turn Virtual Memory off, the machine has to load all system extensions into physical memory. That means there is less left over for applications to run on your machine.

If you want to see how much memory you have left over for appllications, you can go up to the Apple menu and down to About This Computer. It will show you how much memory is used by the OS and how much is unused.

Note: Virtual memory use is not a 1 to 1 ratio to hard drive space. 1 MB of virtual memory takes much more than 1 MB of hard drive space.

One thing I would check in regards to the speeds is in the About this computer. See if you have very little memory left unused. If you do, the browser might not be getting it's full memory allocation and may not be able to download at full speed.

Chfite, Macs typically keep their value and reliability longer than other machines. They are more expensive to buy in the first place (although that has been changing) but you can use em forever. Some of my companies customers still use machines from circa 1992 for processes that run in the background.

 

Dustpup wrote:
No argument here. I was just observing that it must be good to have kept it all these years.

 

I wanted to let you know that internet exploror is getting 15MB of memmory. Is that enough? It sure looks like enough. With OS taking 34MB and internet using 15MB I am left with 60MB. This is all with virtual memmory turn off. If you think that not enough memmory for internet exploror, please tell me how much I should give it and how I allocate memmory.

 

Yup. I'd say 15 MB should be enough for IE. 34 MB sounds about right for OS as well from what I remember (it's been a couple of years since I worked in anything but Mac OS X). It could simply be a matter of the speed of the machine as your previously mentioned.

You're right Chfite, it is wonderful to be able to hold onto a machine that long. Seems like in todays society more and more becomes disposable. It's nice when something like a piece of technology can continue to be useful for 6,7, or even 10 years.