timothym@tekigm2.TEK.COM (Timothy D Margeson) (11/04/87)
In article <6@accva1.UUCP> reza@accva1.UUCP (H. Reza Zarafshar) writes: >The twin board recently announced by Orchid Tech. will work according >to the Orchid rep. It is an expensive board, but I think the quality >of the Orchid products makes it worthwhile. >Reza Zarafshar Hi, Once you get past the hurdle of the 8088 vs. 8086 CPU, and get an accelerator that IS compatible with the 8086, you are left with another problem, that is the major problem with these boards is the incompatibility of the 80286 CPU and any graphics cards in the system. Orchid solves this problem by having the EGA on the same ECB as the added CPU. The third major hurdle for these accelerator cards is the PRICE$$$$$. For a bit more than one of these cards you can buy an entire machine, that performs far better than the add-in cards, even if the add-in has a faster clock, for the most part due to the 16 bit bus structure. You can get an AST 10MHz 0-wait box for as low as $1200 mail order, or a clone from the east for less than $900 (probably for less if you look hard). And for your money you get a power supply, disk drives, 16 bit bus, a better chance of OS/2 compatibility, full 16 bit memory... and the list goes on. Sure that is a bit higher than $500 for a add-in card, but will that card really improve the system performance $500 dollars worth. Just thoughts on the subject.... -- Tim Margeson (206)253-5240 PO Box 3500 d/s C1-937 @@ 'Who said that?' Vancouver, WA. 98668 {amd..hplabs}cae780!tektronix!tekigm2!timothym (this changes daily)