grs@alobar.ATT.COM (Gregg Siegfried) (10/27/88)
A few days ago, I posted a request for information concerning the Northgate
386 system. I received many requests to pass on my responses, so here they
are. First of all, I'd like to thank everyone that took the time to respond,
in case I missed sending anyone an individual thanks. I didn't ask everyone
whether I could post their reply, so I will present them anonymously.
The responses follow...
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The only thing that I can say about the machine is dont buy one !! Dont
even think of it. We bought one, and found that none of the software we
wrote would run on it (Fortran, C, very math intensive w/ coprocessor).
When we called to complain, their tech support said that they DID NOT
guarantee that it was DOS compatible. (Yes, they actually said that). To
make matters better, the hard drive controller died two dya later. We called
and they gave us a list of 20 things to try. After nonoe of them worked, we
called again , and they told us that they had put the incorrect controller in
our machine. They promised to send us another one, Four controllers later, it
still didn't work. For over three months, we had a very expensiveeacart that
couldn't even run dos' dir function correctly, and the Northgate people told
us that they did not guaratnee anything. and THERE WAS NO WARRENTY !
After we threatened to report them to the BBB and they post office for
mail fraud, they finally argeed to take it back, minus a ridiculously high
"restocking fee". At least we got some of our money back. Our experience
with them has shown them to be a sleazy company, with questionable
business practices (of course, that is my own personal opinion ).
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Gag. A year ago (when I a senior in college) I paid $2500+ for one of their
desktop '286 boxes with EGA, etc. Lets see - I sent them my machine once, they
sent me 2 new machines, and finally the second one worked right. I had terrible
HDU troubles. Trying to get thru to their support dept is nearly impossible without an auto-dialer. It took 6 months for me to get a machine that basically
worked, although the keyboard regularly craps out in games now. I have been
having trouble with the CMOS setup lately. In short, I'm dumping the sucker
for whatever I can get to a used computer dealer and buying an AT&T 6386.
It was DEFINITELY NOT WORTH THE MONEY.
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I have one of their XT machines and love it. But I wanted to suggest taht
you look at the Byte review in the most recent Issue. Thye give some Plus
and Minuses of the system. I like their support and their police of one
year hardware support. I have had only minor problems that may be due to
some of the stuff I am doing. No hardware problems except that the machine
was not setup properly when I recieved it.
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I'd just buy a tower box, install a mylex board and a better drive than
Northgate offers and save some money in the process.
They use Mylex boards too. But don't let them sell you the 65 RLL 1/2 hight
drive. get a seagate 4096 for about $550+.
Northgate is nothing but a label on a box. Print your own. We do.
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Note two things about these beasts:
1) They use the ACB2372 controller board (Adaptec). This board has given
us MASSIVE problems here, in many different machines. It likes to lose
the drive geometry; you get to reformat your disk when this occurs!
2) They ship non-RLL rated drives with the above. That controller is a RLL
controller! You're asking for trouble in a process-intensive environment
where the drive will get the bejesus beat out of it (Unix, Xenix, etc).
Northgate is an interesting company. We've no direct experience with their
product, but have heard stories about #'s1 and 2. In fact, we used to
handle the ACB2372 board ourselves until we started seeing the wierd things.
It's no longer on our "approved" list.
I'd find something else.
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That is quite intersesting. I have heard several good comments by other
people on the net since I bought my system. My only difficulty has been
getting through to their tech support line because it was always busy. I
would be interested in hearing the kind of comments you have been getting.
My question to the support people have been about some of the details of
the hardware so I could add a secont drive to the system that I later found
out was not an MFM drive and not an RLL drive. Oh well good luck in your
search.
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First off, you should know that Northgate just changed their 386
machines - if you look at the latest Infoworld you'll see that
the system listed is not the same as the one they have been selling
since last winter. I have their (old - the one you've seen the ads
for) 386 tower. All of the components are standard items you could
get from other dealers in Computer Shopper - the motherboard is from
Mylex, the drive controller is the Adaptec RLL, the disk drive is
a standard Miniscribe 3650, etc. Hence you could build the thing
yourself (no soldering iron required) for less in little time. So
far I've had few complaints, although I don't use it with any *nix
type operating system. My only gripes/etc. so far (after 6 months):
-- you aren't supposed to be able to upgrade the motherboard from
1 Meg to 4 Meg yourself. You are supposed to send it in to be
upgraded, even though the memory chips are socketed and the
sockets are marked to handle 1 Meg chips as well as 256Ks.
-- the motherboard doesn't have a 387 socket, only 287. If you
want to use a 387, you need to buy an adapter board.
-- the Miniscribe drive isn't autopark. For 3K+ one could hope
for autopark.
-- I can't get the thing to run at 6MHz. Admittedly it is better
to be stuck at 16Mhz than 6Mhz, but I still should be able to
switch.
-- The on/off switch is messed up on mine - somehow it was made
such that when the side with the light is pressed in, the machine
is off, and vice versa. This is a really screwy mix-up - turning
it around 180 degrees fixes the "which side is pressed in"
problem, but then the light lights up under "off"! I believe
this was a startup quality control problem - I got my machine
when they were first starting up.
-- It is next to impossible to talk to their service department.
I spent several hours over several days before I got through.
Once I did, however, the person on the other end was quite
intelligent and helpful.
-- The MS-DOS manuals are in these horrible blown-plastic cases,
and the VOPT instructions are only on disk. No instructions
are provided for the disk caching software besides "here's
how to turn it on!" There also are no instructions for the
configuration and other software in the ROMs. There's a lot
of stuff there, but you're on your own.
My overall impression: it's fast (but then so is any 16 Mhz with
a cache), the price is OK. Last winter it was a good deal - now
its not so impressive. If I were looking for a '386 today, I'd
probably buy a 20Mhz Mylex motherboard and all of the other parts
separately and stick 'em together.
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If he's running UNIX, he'd better get a fast (<28ms) disk, not the
65ms job Northgate is pushing. UNIX does lots of seeks.
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Northgate uses the Mylex 386 mother board. Mylex currently comes in two
flavors and 2 speeds: the MB386 and the XT386 (or some such). Both come
in 16 and 20 MHz speeds.
MB386 - motherboard ram can be either 1 Meg or 4 Meg -NOT field upgradable
because the upgrade requres carving up the board.
- 80287 socket - there is an 80387 upgrade kit - but it can be tricky
- 64K of direct mapped cache - claims of around 87% hit rate.
Claims that expanding memory using 16 bit boards only cost about
5% in speed.
- 8 slots (2 8 bit and 6 16 bit)
XT386 - No motherboard ram - system memory is on a Mylex supplied board
which can be populated with 256-120/100 nsec DRams (100 nsec for
the 20 MHz machine). This board comes in two flavors: A and B.
The B board is reported to accept a daughter board which holds
1 Meg ram chips - the B board is set up to take the daughter on
the back side, so that it doesn't cost a slot. (I have a daughter
board and an A style memory board - so I haven't really confirmed
this one (:-()
- 80387 socket
- 64K of direct mapped cache
- 6 slots - I forget the configuration.
Northgate is reported (by someone at SEFCO East) to use the SEFCO keyboard.
Apparently they have exclusive marketting rights to one version of the
keyboard - we have one of the other version (purchased from SEFCO East) and
find it to be a nice keyboard. One feature: it is an `enhanced' style board
with the function keys across the top and the Caps Lock key where the Ctl
Key is supposed to be - but it has a switch on the back to put Ctl functionality
back where it is supposed to be.
I know nothing more - I do not own a Northgate computer. I discovered this
information by tracking down a source for Mylex mother-boards. We own
three Mylex mother boards: 2 MB 386 and one XT386 - all are 16 MHz. The
all appear to work well.
I have no connection with Mylex, SEFCO East or Northgate except that I
have talked to all on the phone and have purchased products from SEFCO East.
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Conclusion:
The responses ranged from quite negative, to indifferent, to positive.
Overall, though, the tone did appear more negative than positive, so I
will probably not recommend the purchase of the Northgate. As was mentioned
in a number of the messages I received, it would be easier to just buy the
parts and put them together myself. This we may do.
Have fun,
Gregg Siegfried
grs@alobar.att.com
Speaking for myself here, of course, not AT&T.