torkil@psivax.UUCP (Torkil Hammer) (11/30/89)
The beastie arrived last Friday, right on schedule. Here is the good, the bad and the ugly, all mixed up: The case is a desktop full size AT, with 3 halfsize bays for external access (5.25" and 3.5" floppies plus optional tape backup) and a full size internal bay for hard disk. Good. The motherboard is a Friend 386SX. It uses the NEAT chipset from C&T. It has 6x16 bit AT slots and 2x8 bit XT slots. RAM is 8 SIMM slots. The board looks clean. Very good. The NEAT set is software tinkerable, and the board documentation suggests that you can run the 386SX at 20 MHz with the proper tinkering, but that is not a Gateway suggestion. You get the tinker software. Standard RAM from Gateway is 2x1MB SIMMS, so you can upgrade all the way to 8 MB later without being stuck with 256 kB SIMMs. Good. Standard from Gateway is to have disk controller (16 bit card, controls 2 floppies and 2 hard disks), IO (8 bit card, 2 serial, 1 parallel, 1 game) and graphics (16 bit ATI wonder, upgrade option to 512 kbyte). You get the driver programs for the ATI card installed. The ATI card I got is the one that comes without mouse interface. If you plan to mouse around, talk to them first, since the ATI card is not mouse upgradeable. Bad. The cards are not positioned optimally. The I/O board sits in a 16 bit slot, and the game port connector in another 16 bit slot. But I guess I can rearrange them later. Ugly. The monitor is a 14" Crystal Scan 1024, which is Gateway's own brand. It is multisync and has analog as well as digital input. You don't need the digital, but the ATI card has the matching digital connector, so you can swap monitors and computers to your heart's delight. (You don't get the digital cable but you can get it somewhere else.) Anyway, it will do 1024x768 interlaced, 800x600 noninterlaced, and it will run all the old modes (VGA, EGA etc, and so will the ATI card). It has 3 adjustments on the back: Horizontal center, vertical center, vertical size, and 2 on the front: Brightness and contrast. Good. In addition, you get your copies of board documentation and tinker software original disks. These disks are also installed on your hard disk. The DOS 4.01 includes some hardware debug support. I don't have the DOS disk and manuals yet because they are on back order. The Seagate hard disk documentation was also missing. They also recommend that you get a surge protector. If you are using a modem you should get one that includes the phone line. You can plug your answering machine in at the same place and have that protected, too. Torkil Hammer.