mike@ninja.cc.umich.edu (Michael Nowak) (03/31/88)
Does anyone know anything about the Wyse 286pc or 386pc? I'm curious about special features and the price/performance ratio. If anyone can point me to a published review, I would greatly appreciate it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Real Life: Michael Nowak "Seek truth from facts." Via Internet: mike@ronin.cc.umich.edu - Deng Xiao Ping Via UUCP: uunet!umix!ronin.cc.umich.edu!mike Working for but in no way representing the University of Michigan. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tr@wind.bellcore.com (tom reingold) (03/31/88)
In article <460@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> mike@ronin.cc.umich.edu (Michael Nowak) writes: $ Does anyone know anything about the Wyse 286pc or 386pc? I'm curious $ about special features and the price/performance ratio. If anyone can $ point me to a published review, I would greatly appreciate it. The Byte Magazine I got in the mail this week has a favorable review of Wyse's 386 machine. Tom Reingold PAPERNET: |INTERNET: tr@bellcore.bellcore.com Bell Communications Research |UUCP-NET: bellcore!tr 445 South St room 2L350 |SOUNDNET: (201) 829-4622 [work], Morristown, NJ 07960-1910 | (201) 287-2345 [home]
jxh@cup.portal.com (04/23/88)
Michael Nowak (mike@ronin.cc.umich.edu) writes: >Does anyone know anything about the Wyse 286pc or 386pc? I'm curious >about special features and the price/performance ratio. If anyone can >point me to a published review, I would greatly appreciate it. I own (and am using) a WYSEpc 286. I am very happy with it. It is a good, solid machine that has given me no problems whatsoever. Bear in mind that I daily wrestle with cheap AT clones from the furthest corners of the Earth which are "only slightly" bad, but that is enough. I cannot speak about price/performance ratios, as I purchased it from my previous employer at a fantastic discount (used); however, I wrote the original purchase req. after much evaluation of competing machines (this was 2.5 years ago). One special feature that made my desicion for me was the ambitious attempt at compatibility with 6MHz ATs. My application required using a 3rd party serial board with a Z80B-SIO on it (a 6MHz part); I was afraid that a 10MHz machine (the Wyse is 6 or 10, selectable by front-panel button and under program control) would cause trouble. Many anxious calls into Wyse ensued, the result of which was that I actually talked to the guy that created it. He said that the BIOS attempted to establish if a board in a given slot could withstand 10MHz operation, and it would kick THAT SLOT to 6MHz if 10 was too fast. Wow! I asked how the BIOS made this determination; he said, essentially, "never you mind; it just does." I told him that I had two uncommon boards, foreknowledge of which was impossible, since I built them myself. He said that if the BIOS didn't figure it out, send him the boards and they would make it work. Wow, again! At this point, I was convinced that my 6MHz SIO part would probably be OK, so I bought 3 machines. Some years later, I have discovered that another instance of the board with the Z80B-SIO on it has trouble (spurious RxCRC errors) at 10MHz. I think that the Wyse will insert wait states in I/O Channel cycles if it thinks it necessary, but the actual frequency on the CLOCK pin does not differ from the processor speed. Oh, well... It's close. The speed selection is done by hitting a button on the front panel (turning on or off the little lightning bolt LED); OR by a program that can change the current state. Also, the Setup program that comes with the machine can set the power-up default in CMOS RAM. Nifty! This is the only such machine I have seen that gets all this right! The SPEED program can also DISABLE THE BUTTON! My application now runs at 6MHz, and makes d*mn sure. I hope this helps. I saw an advertisement recently that leads me to believe that WYSE is shipping master-less machines with monolithic CPU boards to plug into them; both 286 and (soon?) 386 boards are available. This may color things differently, but the principles are probably the same, and the quality is not likely to have changed much. I recommended WYSE. Jim Hickstein, VSAT Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA (408) 435-8016 jxh@cup.portal.com -or- ...!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!jxh