gottloeb@trwrba.UUCP (Jeff R. Gottloeb) (08/28/84)
[death to the line eater] Be careful, a local dealer told me that the new IBM AT can not use the existing peripheral boards for the PC's and XT's in the AT.
cem@intelca.UUCP (Chuck McManis) (08/28/84)
In reference to the incompatibility of using PC boards with the AT, this is sorta of true and sort of false. The PC AT has an additional card edge connector in "front" of the PC compatible edge connector. This extra connector has the extended address lines and some other useful signals that are present on the 80286, the problem arises from the fact that some manufacturers, in order to get an extra couple of square inchs of board space made there boards with an overhang. In military jargon this "conflicts" with the second connector. Attempt at picture follows : Bad Good | | | | | | | | | +-+ | ------------------------+ | +---------------------+ +-------+ +-------+ So if you have a "good" board it will work. -- -- Chuck - - - D I S C L A I M E R - - - {ihnp4,fortune}!dual\ All opinions expressed herein are my {proper,idi}-> !intelca!cem own and not those of my employer, my {ucbvax,hao}!hplabs/ friends, or my avocado plant. :-} ARPAnet : "hplabs!intelca!cem"@Berkeley
gnome@olivee.UUCP (08/28/84)
It's true. The AT has another connector sitting side-by-side with the other 62 pin connector. Any card with an overhand automatically won't fit. Electrically, it's anyone's guess... Gary
hohensee@uiucdcs.UUCP (09/02/84)
#R:ucsbcsl:-15000:uiucdcs:10400151:000:179 uiucdcs!hohensee Sep 2 00:28:00 1984 I do hope that you happen to have wandered into notes net.micro.pc to see that fine job the net noters have done in digging through and throughout the PC/AT. Dooo take a look.
seaburg@uiucdcs.UUCP (09/07/84)
#R:ucsbcsl:-15000:uiucdcs:10400154:000:163 uiucdcs!seaburg Sep 6 19:44:00 1984 Absolutely. The AT should run most XT software I think. As for user- friendliness, well you're getting DOS 3.0. Not much better than 2.0 in friendliness terms!
STERNLIGHT@USC-ECL.ARPA (09/07/84)
From: STERNLIGHT <STERNLIGHT@USC-ECL.ARPA> My AT runs sidekick just fine. I modified my (legitimate purchased) copy to unprotect the program, following the instructions now widely available on RBBS systems, copied it to my hard disk, set it up to use its files on the hard disk path I stored it on, included its invocation in my autoexec file, and haven't had a bit of trouble with it on the AT. It's really nice, and instantaneous. I had been running it on my previous machine, a PC Portable (IBM) from a Ramdisk, and I cannot tell the difference (speed-wise) in running it from the AT hard disk. Boys and girls, that hard disk is really FAST. I infer it is because it is running on a 16-bit bus. I see no reason to use a RAMDISK on the AT, with a hard disk that fast. So unless you are getting Xenix or PC/IX, order yours with 640k of core, not the 1 to 3 megabytes possible, since PC-DOS 3.0 (and earlier) can apparently only handle up to 640k, except as a ramdisk. By the way, a useful thing to do is create a file called TODO, and make that your default notes file, using it as your rolling to do list. Then you have both an appointment calendar and a to do list in Sidekick. A really fine product; I recommend it without hesitation. My AT also runs Mite, Minding Your Money, 1-2-3 (unprotected and on the hard disk), PC-Talk 3.65 (compiled version), all the utilities I have EXCEPT the Norton Utilities that address the directory or disk (they say AT versions will be out in October), and all the programs I have tried in BASIC run fine with the new DOS 3.0 version of BASICA and BASIC. It does not run Framework. I am told by my dealer that it will run Symphony. It runs all the editors I have tried so far, including the public domain ones as well as wordstar. --david-- -------
grunwald@uiucdcsb.UUCP (09/11/84)
#R:intelca:-39300:uiucdcsb:4400074:000:178 uiucdcsb!grunwald Sep 11 13:10:00 1984 re: using the overhanging boards in the At Actually, I think that there are 1 or 2 slots which do not have the extended bus, and you can use the overhang boards on those slots.
billh@hpisla.UUCP (billh) (09/18/84)
In my ibm pc/at, there are two (out of 8) slots that do not have the second connector installed. Therefore, as many as two of the "bad" cards will fit without any problems. Bill Hunt (hplabs!hpisla!billh) p.s. The compatibility between the pc/xt and the pc/at is surprisingly good considering the processor/disk/keyboard changes. Lotus 1-2-3, (lotus devel) mince (mark of the unicorn), kermit (columbia univ) edix/wordix (emerging technology), VDTE (terminal emulator from inner loop software), and numerous compilers/assemblers/linkers all seem to run just fine. Sidekick (borland international) does not run (probably touches the keyboard hardware).