frison@cs.arizona.edu (Glen Alexander Frison) (01/14/91)
I am interested in purchasing a few 486's to replace a couple PC's with _real_ workstations. The market seems to be quite varied, with prices ranging from $3K to $15K for 'complete' systems, and I have seen 486 motherboards alone from about $1.5K to four times that. Although I am sure it is somewhat true that 'you get what you pay for', what is the difference in these motherboards among their type, for example, what is the difference between the several ISA boards out there (most are similarly laid out) and what is the cause of the price differential? The same question goes for EISA boards. (And, for that matter, is EISA really worth it? I am inclined to think it isn't, for a simple workstation application.) Price Club (out here in the West) has a 486 made by PC-Positive for a little under $3K. It comes with 1.2meg and 1.4meg drives, a decently large hard drive, a case, a keyboard, and etc. Does anyone know anything about this system and/or this company? Can you really get such a system for under $3K? A lot of the cheaper systems don't have fancy ESDI or SCSI drives, but have an IDE drive interface. While I've read quite a bit on the ESDI and SCSI interfaces (it's hard not to), what the heck is an IDE interface? What data transfer rates are we talking about with it, etc.? Can anyone suggest mail-order outfits, perhaps, that sell worth-while 486's? Thanks for any help. If 486's have recently been in discussion, can someone send me a summary perhaps? I would appreciate e-mail, since I don't get that much of a chance to read the news (unfortunately). -g frison (email: frison@cs.arizona.edu)