andrew@aeras.uucp (Andrew Ward) (12/05/90)
In response to the inquiries on the Dataworld LP-320 laptop, I have
the following comments:
I bought an LP-320 from DW (salesman Bob Chang, nice guy). I
couldn't refuse the 30 day money back guarantee. It arrived in an
appropriate amount of time.
It does not run Windows 3.0 exactly properly. For one, it absolutely
does NOT run any background processes. Data World confirms this,
and blames it on the VGA bios they used a consultant to develop.
They say they may try to fix it in the future, but not in the near future.
It also seems to lock up occasionally when running other applications
in the foreground
The battery life seems to be about 1 hour with the drive running 85%
of the time. They (one of their sr. test engineers) recommends fully
discharging the built-in nicads (not changeable) periodically, then re-
charging. I pressed him on periodically, and he said weekly I should
do this. I believe that every 3-4 weeks is probably better, depending
upon usage. (I sure wish someone with some serious experience
and background would post a practical, non-theoretical article on the
care and feeding of Nicads! No Saturday techs or "I think..."'s
please.)
The really cool thing about the LP-320 is that it's half card slot is fully
integral and supplied from the battery. I have a Future Domain
TMC-850 SCSI board installed to give me tape backup and an
additional 200 Mb of SCSI 15 ms drive space. Here are some
performance characteristics with some anomalies. (My LP-320 has
0 wait state, 2Mb installed, although these tests used 8Mb of 0 wait
state mem.) These tests are from Norton utilities SI tests:
LP-320 LP-320 LP-320 Desktop reference
w/internal w/ SCSI w/ SCSI AMS 386-16
Conner 40Mb Maxtor Conner w/ Seagate
LXT-130 CP-3200 94351-230S
Compute 19.8 21.1 19.8 22.0
Index
Disk 5.3 5.7 5.0 12.3
Index
Perform. 14.9 15.9 14.8 18.7
The anomalies are why a 16 Mhz 386 has a higher compute index
than a 20 Mhz 386, and why there was an increase in performance
in one of the CI results on the LP-320.
A couple weird things: The power switch on the rear is a rocker
switch. If you set it down on a non-flat surface, the PC can easily be
turned on inside the case! Solution: I carry it sideways, with the side
pointing down. The power connector is weird and if you want to
provide a special power supply, you'll need this connector and 3
Amps @ 15 volts. The keyboard is kind of cheap; the space key fell
out at the beginning, but once I reinstalled it, never a problem again,
though I mostly plug in a separate keyboard. There is no audible
beep at low battery, just 15 minutes (yes: 15!) of flashing red LED.
I also use a Western Digital WD-8003 based ethernet board in it with
FTP software's TCP/IP package and have no problems whatsoever.
The external 5 1/4 in 1.2 Mb floppy is also powered from the battery,
no external supply needed like Toshiba. (Hey, my 1200H is for sale,
with lotsa accessories, anyone interested?)
All in all, I like the machine. I use it for word-processing, C++
(Borland) development, and some other stuff.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Andrew Ward ...sun!aeras!andrew (408) 922-8393 |
| Arix Computer Corp. San Jose, CA 95131 USA |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang) (12/07/90)
In article <1990Dec4.223137.23174@aeras.uucp> andrew@aeras.uucp (Andrew Ward) writes: >In response to the inquiries on the Dataworld LP-320 laptop, I have >the following comments: > >It does not run Windows 3.0 exactly properly. For one, it absolutely >does NOT run any background processes. Data World confirms this, >and blames it on the VGA bios they used a consultant to develop. >They say they may try to fix it in the future, but not in the near future. >It also seems to lock up occasionally when running other applications >in the foreground > I am just wondering what VGA bios is in your machine.. The Zeos 386-DX20 appears to be the SAME exact machine as the dataworld and the zeos comes with a CIRRUS LOGIC STINGRAY 4+ VGA BIOS version 1.10 I believe.. What version is yours? When I tried windows 3.0 on my machine I think a lot of programs (such as PROCOMM) appeared on the screen as BLANK.. I tried messsing with the advanced PIF options such as EMULATE TEXT mode and I think then Procomm worked... But I'm not sure about other programs... And yes, it did seem that programs didn't work in the background... Could you explain exactly what you meant when you said it doesn't work? Does the machine lock up or does the display go blank? >The anomalies are why a 16 Mhz 386 has a higher compute index >than a 20 Mhz 386, and why there was an increase in performance >in one of the CI results on the LP-320. I too have noticed this!! I suspect that the internal bus may be limited somehow in the laptop.. I think the motherboard may have been designed non-optimally.. I've got a 5.25" 1.2 meg drive attached externally and based on FASTBACK transfer rates the external floppy iS REALLY SLOW!! (about 1 MB/MIN) while the internal 3.5" gives a transfer rate of about 2-3MB/MIN !!... Norton's Advanced 4.5 only gave me a SI index of 19.4 (though I run a PD program called SPEEER which lowers refresh rate to give a SI index of 21.5 !!) I think other clone 386-dx20 desktop motherboards gives SI index of 21-23 right?? > >A couple weird things: The power switch on the rear is a rocker >switch. If you set it down on a non-flat surface, the PC can easily be >turned on inside the case! Solution: I carry it sideways, with the side >pointing down. The power connector is weird and if you want to >provide a special power supply, you'll need this connector and 3 >Amps @ 15 volts. The keyboard is kind of cheap; the space key fell >out at the beginning, but once I reinstalled it, never a problem again, >though I mostly plug in a separate keyboard. There is no audible >beep at low battery, just 15 minutes (yes: 15!) of flashing red LED. > I've also noticed that too! My machine one time just went on when I put the machine in it's carry case flat on the ground.. The rocker switch just turned on!! George -- George Wang University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (217) 332-4019 INTERNET: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu UUCP: gargoyle!igloo!gwang
atk@tigger.Colorado.EDU (Alan T. Krantz) (12/08/90)
In article <1990Dec6.164923.5100@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang) writes: >In article <1990Dec4.223137.23174@aeras.uucp> andrew@aeras.uucp (Andrew Ward) writes: >>In response to the inquiries on the Dataworld LP-320 laptop, I have >>the following comments: >> >>The anomalies are why a 16 Mhz 386 has a higher compute index >>than a 20 Mhz 386, and why there was an increase in performance >>in one of the CI results on the LP-320. >I too have noticed this!! I suspect that the internal bus may >be limited somehow in the laptop.. I think the motherboard may >have been designed non-optimally.. I've got a 5.25" 1.2 meg drive What is probably more likely is that this 20 Mhz system has 1 or 2 wait-states and the 16 Mhz has 0 or 1 wait states. This info should be in the documentation of both computers. If not you can probably figure it out by the speed of the memory (just look at the chips)... I think a 20mhz would have to have 1 wait state without a cache (using common 1mb chips) and the 16mhz could just squeeze by with 0 wait states using common 1mb chips (doubled banked) - but I forget these things... Anyways.... ------------------------------------------------------------------ | Mail: 1830 22nd street Email: atk@boulder.colorado.edu| | Apt 16 Vmail: Home: (303) 939-8256 | | Boulder, Co 80302 Office: (303) 492-8115 | ------------------------------------------------------------------
gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang) (12/09/90)
In article <1990Dec7.162834.24566@csn.org> atk@tigger.Colorado.EDU (Alan T. Krantz) writes: >>>The anomalies are why a 16 Mhz 386 has a higher compute index >>>than a 20 Mhz 386, and why there was an increase in performance >>>in one of the CI results on the LP-320. >>I too have noticed this!! I suspect that the internal bus may >>be limited somehow in the laptop.. I think the motherboard may >>have been designed non-optimally.. I've got a 5.25" 1.2 meg drive > >What is probably more likely is that this 20 Mhz system has 1 or 2 >wait-states and the 16 Mhz has 0 or 1 wait states. This info should >be in the documentation of both computers. If not you can probably >figure it out by the speed of the memory (just look at the chips)... > >I think a 20mhz would have to have 1 wait state without a cache (using >common 1mb chips) and the 16mhz could just squeeze by with 0 wait >states using common 1mb chips (doubled banked) - but I forget these things... The Zeos 386DX-20 is a ZERO wait state machine... The pheonix bios lets you change the wait states but the si indexes I quoted were for a 20 mhz ZERO wait state with a RAS Precharge of 3 CLK2... Anyone else got other ideas on why the zeos motherboard is slower than regular desktop boards? -- George Wang University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (217) 332-4019 INTERNET: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu UUCP: gargoyle!igloo!gwang