jk@utastro.UUCP (John Krist) (09/01/88)
During the summer, I replaced my old IBM PC with an Arche Rival 386
machine. Since I haven't seen any reviews of this particular machine
in the press, I thought I might give a little review of my own, to help
any who may be interested in this machine.
My configuration is as follows :
o 20 Mhz clock speed ( uses a 16 Mhz 80386 that's push up, but this
seems to cause no problems )
o 16 Mhz 80387 ( can accept 80287, and 16 or 20 Mhz 80387 )
o 2 Mb interleaved, 32 bit ram ( refresh time unknown ) (expandable
to 16 Megs using 32-bit memory cards)
o Phoenix BIOS
o 1.2 Mb 5.25-inch floppy and 1.44 Mb 3.5-inch floppy
o 40 Mb Seagate 251-1 drive (28 ms)
o 2 serial ports, 1 parallel port
Equipment brought over from my old PC includes a Compaq VGA card (16-bit),
a Zenith flat screen monitor, a 1200-baud internal modem, and a Microsoft
serial mouse. The Rival comes with a Hercules compatible card (some systems
come with a monochrome monitor).
Let me go over this topic by topic :
o Construction :
The board is nicely laid out and has a low chip count ( they seem to
use every chip that Chip & Technologies has put out ). However, the
i/o ports are placed on a card, so there goes a slot. Two 32-bit slots,
4 16-bit and 2 8-bit slots are there, with the memory taking up one
32 bit slot. The bus runs at 10 Mhz ( the cpu is switchable, 10 or
20 Mhz ). There is only space for 3 half-height drives ( so my machine
is full). The case is compact ( it takes up less desk space than my old
PC ). Overall, it seems to be well built ( built in the USA, no less ).
( As you can tell, I'm addicted to parentheses. )
o Performance :
Of course, anything would seem faster than my old PC, but the Rival
seems to cruise nicely. I haven't run any tough benchmarks, but for
what it's worth, Norton's SI gives a 23 and a Chips and Technologies
speed check ( which I got from somewhere else ) said it was 1.3 times
faster than a Compaq 16-Mhz 386, which is about right for the increased
clock speed.
The setup program has the usual shadowing of ROM into RAM for both
the BIOS and the EGA (the EGA shadowing didn't work with my VGA card,
so I disabled it).
The Seagate runs nicely, eventhough I know it's not state of the art
and may develop temperature problems in the future, as others have
warned ( nothing could be worse than my PC's Seagate 225 ). I've been
using the FLASH disk caching software, using 1 MB of extended ram.
I haven't had any trouble with the 1.44 Mb 3.5-inch drives. I have
heard that some manufacturers' disk control cards don't work well with
these drives, but the Rival's does.
I mostly use Microsoft's QuickC for my software development, and it
runs like a rocket on this machine. And for you game players, the
new Flight Simulator is wonderful on a fast machine. Deluxe Paint II
is also very fast.
o Documentation and Support
The documentation is so-so. There's a spiral bound book which shows
how to set up the thing and a myriad of booklets meant to be placed in
an IBM-like binder which describe the i/o card, setup software, display
card, and the included LIM expanded memory emulator.
I did have a problem at first with some floating-point operations
crashing. Looking in the documentation I found a jumper which sets the
387 speed to either the cpu speed or something called "Oscillator 3."
I called up Arche (using their 800 number) and was put in touch with
tech support (which includes the guys who actually built the thing).
It seems I was running my 80387 at 20 Mhz instead of 16, and it was
tripping over itself. "Oscillator 3", it seems, is 16 Mhz. Changing
the jumper solved the problem. They mentioned that all of the 16 Mhz
387s they tested worked at 20, so I just got a weak one (My chip was
bought from the store, not through Arche). In all, the support is
very good in my opinion (none of this stupid pay-for-support junk that
some other companies charge).
The warranty is two-years, a big plus. Also, they are arranging for
on-site servicing, but I have not called them back up to find out what
is going on now.
o Price :
I got my machine (without the stuff I previously had) for a total
of $4300, include California tax. The base system itself was $3000.
I purchased it from Computer Lane in Canoga Park, CA, while I was out
there, and they did some discounting, so check around.
Any questions - just give me a note.
John Krist
CCD Detector Lab
U. of Texas Astronomy Dept
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