mjg@ecsvax.UUCP (Michael Gingell) (02/26/86)
Join the Stamp out Redundant Lines Committee here.
I have been looking at the rash of adds in the latest PC Tech Journal
and Byte showing all kinds of speed up boards for the PC and XT. Most
use the Intel 80286 processor. Some are full cards with the capability
of going to 1 or more Megs of memory. Some are half cards with just
the basic processor, a socket for a coprocessor and some miscellaneous
logic plus possibly some cache memory.
Some of the adds. make wild or misleading claims. It seems reasonable
to me that you could get 30% faster than an AT if you run the 286
faster and if you have on board 16 bit wide fast memory. However
Victor Technologies for instance has a half card and their add in the
March 86 issue of Byte (page 165) claims it can make your PC function
600 % faster. Typically, they don't say faster than what or under
what conditions this 'can' happen or whether it will happen all the
time.
Here are some of the different products I noted and the claims extracted
from the adds. If anyone will send me their direct experiences I would
be most grateful and I will summarize for the net.
Victor Technologies 800-248-5252 SpeedPac 286 $795 ($595 till 3/31)
'can make your PC function 600% faster'
Univation 408-745-0180 Turbocharger $?
'Your PC will do everything it did before only 300% faster'
PC Technologies 800-821-3086 x100 286 Express Card $795
'200-600% speedup' (with 80287 ?)
Classic Technology Corp 408-434-9333 286 Speed Pack
'33% faster than the AT'
Seattle Telecom & Data 206-883-8440 PC-286 Card
'123 runs 3 times as fast as on XT'
Phoenix Computer Products 800-344-7200 Pfaster 286
'60% faster than AT'
Quadram 404-923-6666 Quadsprint 'less than $600' probably 599.95!
'Virtually as fast as an IBM AT' (Real Estate for half as fast?)
Earth Computers 714-964-5784 Turbo Accel-286 < $1000
'5 times faster than PC'
Personal experience on these or any others welcome,
Mike Gingell ...decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!mjg