jburnes@pnet02.gryphon.com (Jim Burnes) (09/07/89)
Anyone:
I'm thinking of constructing my own clone from the board level up
so that I can be sure of what's inside my computer (and getting a
good deal at the same time). Anyone know of the possible pitfalls
of this approach? I have been scouring the pages of Computer
Shopper and with various reviews I beginning to get an idea of
what a powerful and economical system might consist of. Some of
these parts I'm still not so sure of, so if you have any comments
regarding this configuration I'd be much obliged.
Part Comments
----------- ------------------
Half Height Tower Any reason why not?
72 Meg 18ms Miniscribe 3085? Any other MFM half heigts
4.6 Meg Ram cheap source of 1m simms?
ACER 386/20 MotherBd AT Jr. Anyone familiar with this?
Northgate Keyboard
Perstor ARRL Controller Doubles Storage
Zenith Flat Screen VGA Maybe Samsung 800X600
Undecided VGA Card
Undecided I/O Card
Fujitsu 3.5&5.25Floppies Heard Theyre very quiet
MSDOS Can you still get 3.3?
XENIX 386 Devel System For Cross Devel Work
QNX Any opinions?
Im especially curious about using a half height tower and if the
the ARRL Perstor Controller is reliable. Also I really want the
clarity of the Zenith Monitor but would prefer one that works
at 800X600 like the Samsung and other Super VGA Monitors.
How about mice and printers. I think the Seikosha printers are
a pretty good value.
Thanks very much!
Jim Burnes
UUCP: {ames!elroy, <routing site>}!gryphon!pnet02!jburnes
INET: jburnes@pnet02.gryphon.comdavidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (09/07/89)
In article <19568@gryphon.COM>, jburnes@pnet02.gryphon.com (Jim Burnes) writes: | Part Comments | ----------- ------------------ | Half Height Tower Any reason why not? Unless you have a good reason for a small case, a large case *tends* to cool better, and won't run out of room as fast. I'm looking for a tower with 3 HH and 2 FH bays now, you *will* run out of room. Get a big power supply, 250-275w for future use and reliability. | 72 Meg 18ms Miniscribe 3085? Any other MFM half heigts Unless you need the space again, why not a cheap half height. The Seagate 4144 (or 4096 if you feel lucky) run with the ARRL controller. | 4.6 Meg Ram cheap source of 1m simms? | ACER 386/20 MotherBd AT Jr. Anyone familiar with this? Look for another motherboard which allows use of DIP instead. There are a few which take up to 4MB DIP *and* 4 MB SIMM. | Northgate Keyboard The best! | Perstor ARRL Controller Doubles Storage While I have used one of these, a few words of caution. First, the cheap one (hard disk only) won't run UNIX, you need the high bucks version (about $300-375 street price). Second, the one I had didn't have hardware track buffering, which makes it slow under UNIX. I went to the WD1006VSR2 RLL controller (after using Adaptek) and it's much faster. For the price you could go RLL and buy a bigger disk. | Zenith Flat Screen VGA Maybe Samsung 800X600 Spend the bucks for the Zenith or NEC 4D. | Undecided VGA Card There are some good cheap ones. I use the Hedaka and with extra memory it goes 1024x768 and 640x480x256. It also runs all the standard modes I've tried, including some of the ones you get on a IBM VGA by diddling the registers. | Undecided I/O Card | Fujitsu 3.5&5.25Floppies Heard Theyre very quiet | MSDOS Can you still get 3.3? You can and should, but read on... | XENIX 386 Devel System For Cross Devel Work | QNX Any opinions? For cross development you could get Xenix, vpix, and the development set. Or you could wait until SCO starts shipping the development set for SCO UNIX and get OS/2 support, too. I will guess the street price for all of that will be about $1200-1400, but haven't seen the dealer prices on it yet. You can use someone else's UNIX, like INteractive, but they don't offer the cross compilation, and the last version of their compiler I tried was less ANSI compliant than SCO (neither is perfect, just diferent bugs). ________________________________________________________________ | | | Going on vacation... be back 9/18 or 9/25 weather permitting | | Replies will be delayed. | |________________________________________________________________| -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon
JLI@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (09/08/89)
I have built a few units for myself and friends, and each had very
different configurations based on availability of parts, prices, and
performance requirement. Almost all parts I got were through mail
order places (mostly advertised on Computer Shopper). The following
is my opinion on some parts.
Part Comments
----------- ------------------
Half Height Tower If it is large enough to hold
all drives you want to put in,
I don't see why not.
Some small Tower cases looks
very nice, but the power supplies
in them are not regular sized.
I have some problem with them
(higher failure rate than the
regular ones have, and you have
to go to the original manufacture
to get replacement).
72 Meg 18ms Miniscribe 3085? You can also try Mitsubishi drives
or Seagate 4096 or 4144R (full-hight).
Seagate drives are cheaper.
4.6 Meg Ram I haven't tried SIMMs myself yet.
I usually use 1M chips. No
comments here.
ACER 386/20 MotherBd AT Jr. I am not familiar with this board.
No comments here.
Northgate Keyboard No comments here.
Perstor ARRL Controller This controller is 2:1 controller.
If you are using 18 ms drive, you
better use a 1:1 controller.
According to some reviews, this ARLL
controller has some problems (it has
been discussed ealier in this news
group). I have been using ST-4096
with WD1006V-SR2 controller (RLL,
1:1 interleave) to obtain 122MB.
It has been used for more than 6
months without any problems.
Zenith Flat Screen VGA This monitor has nice display but
it can not reach 800X600 resolution.
Undecided VGA Card There are reviews on various PC
publications. I haven't tried many
of them. I have been using VRAM
VGA since it first came out. It is
expensive but has high performance.
Some people reported it has some
kind of compatibility problem with
certain mother boards, but it works
fine with the systems I built.
Undecided I/O Card No comments here.
Fujitsu 3.5&5.25Floppies No comments here. I use SONY and
TEAC drives a lot.
MSDOS No comments here. You still can
get MS-DOS 3.3. I am mainly use
MS-DOS 4.01.
XENIX 386 Devel System No comments here, but I have heard
it is good.
QNX No comments here. A friend of mine
told me that the SCO XENIX is better
than QNX. He is a XENIX user of course.mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (09/08/89)
Another thing you might consider is that:
a) All the component boards (especially VGA and Disk controller) might
have default setups that conflict (eg, shadow ram vs VGA BIOS extension
vs Controller BIOS extension). If you end up with such a conflict, they
are incredibly hard to find.
b) The vendors you buy the component boards from will almost always point
the finger at the "other" board manufacturer.
So, for about $200 more you get the same higher quality, plus a guarantee
that all the components will work together, which, in my limited experience,
is more than worth it.
Milan
mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
.
root@nstar.UUCP (Larry Snyder) (09/09/89)
In article <10892@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, JLI@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: > QNX No comments here. A friend of mine > told me that the SCO XENIX is better > than QNX. He is a XENIX user of course. I would agree with your friend on this. QNX is not standard - and even with the POSIX file system due out in 6 months - QNX will still not run Xenix or Unix binaries. QNX will also not support multiple DOS tasks per machine. -- Larry Snyder SCO Xenix 2.3.2 '386 uucp: iuvax!ndcheg!ndmath!nstar!larry Computone Intelliport AT8 The Northern Star Usenet Distribution Site HST / PEP / V.22 Notre Dame, Indiana USA Home of the fighting Irish!