rao@ka.excelan.com (Viswanath Rao) (03/21/90)
Has anyone used the Northgate Slimline 386/20 PC? I think it is called
the Northgate SL20.2 model and has been a regular feature in Northgate
ads in PC Week. I want to know any good/bad points about this PC and
whether it is a good buy as a home computer. The features quoted to me
by a Northgate sales person are:
80386 20 MHz
2 MBytes 80-ns RAM
5 expansion slots (2 full, 1 1-3/4 (?), 2 1/2 length)
1 parallel/2 serial
80387 co-processor socket
AMI BIOS and Setup in ROM
100 W power supply (seems like this is too low!)
40 MB RLL 3.5" Hard disk
1.2 MB 5.25 floppy drive
1.44 MB 3.5" floppy drive
MS-DOS 4.01
SmartDrive disk caching software
14" VGA color monitor
Omnikey 101/102 keyboard
Windows/386 or Windows 3.0 (when released)
1-year limited warranty and unlimited telephone support
All this for the incredible price of $3099.00. And I may get a $200.00
discount if they are still having some rebate going on!!
Any feedback will be appreciated.
Thanks.
vish
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Novell, San Jose (formerly Excelan)
UUCP: {ames,sun,apple,amdahl,mtxinu,cae780}!excelan!rao Viswanath Rao
Internet: rao@novell.COM
Ma Bell: (408) 473-8457
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Subject: Northgate Slimline 386/20 PC
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pchollyr@brspyr1.BRS.Com (Holly Raab) (03/23/90)
We happen to have that exact setup here (the VGA monitor is
a NEC multisync 2A). It works fine with the exception that
we cannot create fonts for Ventura with Bitstream fontware.
We orginally had the 2.0 version, and tech support for Bitstream
said that it wouldn't run on a 386 machine, so they sent us
the 1.0 version. We tried that, with no avail. It seems to
work on my system (same northgate 386 with a NEC monograph
monitor), just not with that particular setup (it's not the
computer, we have two setups like that, doesn't run on either).
The real problems started happening when we put the NEC monograph
{full-screen, for desktop publishing} monitor with my Northgate.
First we had problems with Ventura. Those (with the help of
a driver from NEC) have just about cleared up. The real problem
is communicating with the mainframe here. Regardless of the
communication package, characters are dropped. It seems like
a simple problem but it's not. The tech people here have tried
to fix it, as well as the tech support people at NEC and Northgate.
That about sums it up. Good luck with your purchase.
Holly Raab