caram@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Rubens Caram) (09/08/90)
I am interested in getting a Bondwell Laptop. It is the B200 model. It has: 8 MHz 80C88 Dual 720 Kb FDD Non-reflective LCD Removable rechargeble battery. Price US$ 780,00 Has anybody bought a Bondwell Laptop? If so what is your opinion about this computer? Thanks in advance R. Caram (caram@sun.soe.clarkson.edu)
mikes@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (michael squires) (09/11/90)
In article <1990Sep7.185806.28431@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> caram@sun.soe.clarkson.edu () writes: >I am interested in getting a Bondwell Laptop. >It is the B200 model. >Price US$ 780,00 > >Has anybody bought a Bondwell Laptop? If so what is your opinion >about this computer? I bought the DAK version of the Bondwell B310 for $1300. This included the 286 CPU and a 40MB HD. It seems to be a good buy. (I'm not sure $800 for the 8088 floppy model is worth it.)
keating@motcid.UUCP (Edward Keating) (09/11/90)
I recently purchased the Bondwell B310 from Dak and have noticed a few software related problems. I was one of the lucky ones(??) that received the Miniscibe 40Mb drive instead of the Connor drive. Does anyone in netland have the spec's on this drive? They quoted a 19ms ave. access time. The PC Tech benchmarks place it at 17.5ms with a transfer rate of 990+Kb/sec. One of the problems that I have found is when the hard drive spins down. Depending on the next disk request, you might see this problem. With most editors, a copy of the file is brought into memory and the file is closed. When a save or file operation is performed when the editor is exited, the editor usually opens the target file with a truncate form of the open call. Note that this problem is only demonstratable if the request is to free up disk space. Wordstar and Personal Editor 2 both use this type of open (truncate) when the file existed at the start of the edit. The truncate free's up the files current allocation and writes a new file. A similar problem can be demonstrated in DOS by waiting for the disk to spin down and then use the del command to delete a file. (The resultant error message will only respond to an abort.) What happens is that DOS calls to INT 13 on the hard disk, with a write request. This starts spinning the hard drive and returns a not ready? condition to DOS via an error status in the AH register with the carry bit set. Dos then tries up to (5?) times to perform a DISK RESET call via INT 13 to retry the operation. It appears that at 12Mhz, the 80286 is just a tad too fast to wait for the disk to spin up. If a read operation is the first one performed, then the code seems to be able to wait for the disk to spin up. If you are in the editor and retry the save operation after the disk has spun up, then it appears to be ok. On the DEL command, you have to abort to continue. A CHKDSK /f command will find that there are unallocated clusters (which contain the original file contents). If after using a DEL command, you immediately type the CNTL-Numlock to freeze the proc while the disk spins up, then the command completes ok. Also, the floppy disk drive does not automatically switch between 720k and 1.4M modes. The only determination of density seems to be the 2.0Mb punch out on the disks. If you have used 720Kb mode on a 2.0Mb disk, then the only way to read the information is to tape over the hole. Is this a function of the BIOS or is it a restriction of the Disk drive used. Initial contact with Bondwell seemed to indicate that a Tech Ref manual was available. I attempted to order this manual and was then told that it wasn't available. Does anyone know if Bondwell or Award ( the Bios mfgr) is on the net and can address these issues? Other than these problems, I haven't found much else as a problem. It does seem to offer a substantial performance increase over other laptops in the same price range. Real soon now, I hope to open the RFI cage over the processor boards and see whats in that area. -- Ed Keating, Motorola C.I.D, 1501 W. Shure Drive uunet!motcid!keating Arlington Heights, Il 60004 A fool and his filesystem are soon parted.
aland@informix.com (alan denney) (09/27/90)
In article <57848@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> mikes@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (michael squires) writes: >I bought the DAK version of the Bondwell B310 for $1300. This included the >286 CPU and a 40MB HD. It seems to be a good buy. How did you get the 40MB version for $1300? DAK's normal price for the 40MB model is $1450... -- Alan Denney aland@informix.com {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland One of the 0.027% of Americans who thought "What Up, Dog?" by Was (not Was) should have won the Grammy for Best Album of 1989.