forrest@sybase.com (03/20/89)
I just joined the crowd and ordered a 386 clone. Since I haven't gotten it yet this posting will just describe what I ordered. Future postings will describe how (and if) it works. I talked to a guy at work who does a lot with 386 machines and he recommended that I talk to a clone house called HQ Computer's (408-245-5836, in Sunnyvale CA) that he and some friends had dealt with. I did and I got the following deal: "DataExpert" motherboard with a 386-20 running at 25Mhz. All the circuits on the motherboard except the 386 are rated at 25Mhz, including the Chips and Technology chipset. The motherboard can accept either a 387 or a Weitek chip. This is a Taiwan-made board. 4 megabytes of memory consisting of 36 80nsec 1 megabit chips. These chips will allegedly be either Seimens or Motorola and go on a 32bit memory board. The extra 3 megs appears as extended memory so I'll have to buy QEMM. Adaptec 1:1 ESDI controller. (I don't know the model number. Does this matter?) Fujitsu 150 Megabyte 23 msec hard disk 1.2 Megabyte floppy disk 1 serial port Maxiswitch 101 key keyboard I deliberately didn't get any video stuff because I'm going to stick with the Hercules clone board and monitor I already have until either VGA gets cheaper or until > 1000x1000 (mono) gets really cheap. Anyway, now for the good part. I got all this for $3079 which seems like a pretty good price. Since everything except the motherboard is from a known manufactorer I'm pretty confident that everything will be OK. I've also seen a working system using the same motherboard and it looks good to me. My main concern is that, in spite of the year warentee, if something happens to the disk I may have trouble getting it replaced since HQ got it on some kind of special deal and says they won't have anymore for a couple of months. I'm going down to get it next weekend. I'll post a summary of what happens and how well it works. Jon Forrest forrest@sybase.com {pacbell,pyramid,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!forrest 415-596-3422