Some techy questions

Here is my take on your questions - hope it helps

1. OEM is an abbreviation for Other Equipment Manufacturer
it means (in the case of processors) a company which buys
processors in bulk and manufactures PCs (Dell,
Gateway,etc). It has come to imply a processor sold
without Heatsink, user help details, or Manufacturers
guarantee to an end user. Because of this corner cutting
costs are less and therefore the price to the buyer is
reduced. My understanding is that a "tray" processor is
just another term for OEM. A box processor is supplied in
a retail package(box) usually with a fan & heatsink and
possibly with a guarantee of up to 3 years.

One of the guys in this forum has strongly expressed the
opinion that OEM processors are inferior, I have used
both OEM and boxed and have had no trouble with either.

Slot A is where the processor is mounted on a card (along
with it's Level 2 cache), and this card is inserted into
a processor slot similar to a PCI or ISA slot. Slot A
refers only to AMD Athlon classic processors (before
t'bird).. yes I know a few t'birds were mounted on Slot A
cards but not many have surfaced.

Socket A refers to a processor socket on the motherboard
which accepts AMD Duron and T'bird processors. The point
is that you actually insert the processor directly onto
the motherboard.

Your friend has a Slot 1 mobo ... Slot A is the AMD
equivalent of Intels Slot 1.
Sorry cannot answer your PIII question .. hope someone
else does.

I use 3Com Etherlink XL 10/100 PCI TX NIC (3C905B-TX) both at home and at work and they work fine with Win 95SE Win98
Win NT4 Win2K and Linux, I am sure you will get other good recommendations also.

Apologies for the long post regards
Fred

I thought <b>OEM</b> stands for <b>Original Equipment Manufacturer</b>(?)

You are right guys .. guess my mind was wandering - but I think the rest of the post was correct.
Apologies Original Equipment Manufacturer it is