bash@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Basham) (03/16/89)
When we last left our hero (me) he was locked in a duel to the death with the mighty powers at Computer Products United. At this point not only did they have his money, but they also had his machine that he'd returned for repairs. Well, I called every day (after allowing reasonable time for delivery) for a status check. They diagnosed it on the first day, decided to replace the mother board, let it burn for a couple of days, and sent it back to me. I got it yesterday afternoon. There are some changes. First, this motherboard is made by a different outfit called "Singa". It, like the previous one, has 1M onboard memeory, but unlike the other, this motherboard uses SIMMs and can handle up to 8M onboard. Like the other board, the clock is jumperable to either 16 or 20MHz, unlike the other, it runs at 16MHz (I was able to verify via CPU techs that my old unit did run at 20MHz). It doesn't have a "turbo" light, however, all other interfaces (reset button, disk access light, etc) are present. BIOS is Award with basic setup and diagnostics (the old machine didn't have diagnostics in ROM), but there is also a separate 5.25 floppy with additional setup utilities (special memory configs). So, I booted the machine naked (only the 5.25 drive installed) and it looked like "all systems go", so I plugged in my hard drive, 3.5" floppy, VGA and mouse. Everything came up fine. Using DOS 3.3 I had no problems using the 3.5" at 1.44M. It seems that I've come out of the encounter physically unscathed. This could be the end of the adventure. Tom -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The world was going down the tubes. They needed a scapegoat. They found the gun owners."