ee8kh@gdt.bath.ac.uk (K House) (06/20/91)
A couple of weeks ago somebody posted a message claiming to have seen a 486/33 motherboard for about $1200. Is this the cheapest ? Is it any good ? Where can I get a good quality 486/33 board from for a good price ? ISA or EISA, preferably 32Mb RAM expansion limit, decent cache also >64k I'm in the UK by the way, but I don't mind importing one. All replies would be appreciated. Kevin -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Kevin House | School of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, | | ee8kh@uk.ac.bath.gdt | University of Bath, ENGLAND | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
alan@starnet.uucp (Alan Deikman) (06/22/91)
In article <1991Jun20.163910.29478@gdt.bath.ac.uk> ee8kh@gdt.bath.ac.uk (K House) writes: >A couple of weeks ago somebody posted a message claiming to have seen a 486/33 >motherboard for about $1200. >Is this the cheapest ? >Is it any good ? >Where can I get a good quality 486/33 board from for a good price ? >ISA or EISA, preferably 32Mb RAM expansion limit, decent cache also >64k > I work at Mylex Corporation, one of a very few U.S. manufacturers of 486 EISA mother-boards. We do not make an ISA 486 board. On the pacific rim, there are over 300 mother-board manufacturers, all looking to buy market share by selling their products from $5 over cost to selling at a loss. The $1200 price I have seen is for a 486/33 EISA board WITHOUT CPU. You can probably get a CPU for around $450. For ISA boards, the prices are much lower. ISA boards from the Pacific rim tend to be pretty good. They have a lot of experience in making them at the lowest conceivable price, and the technology is well enough known that they do not have too many problems. I do get reports, however, of a lot of boards that work OK when they are installed, and fail a year later. The original manufacturer is probably not available then. The Mylex EISA board, the MAE486-33, comes with 128KB cache, and street price is around $2,300 without memory, but including the CPU. If you want an EISA board that has all the bugs worked out of it, you might want to consider this, even though it is quite a bit more than the Pacific rim price. We first started delivering this product in 1989. The more recent boards are trying to work out the problems we solved a year ago. Another deal is that Mylex occasionally gets "cosmetic reject" boards. These have a cosmetic flaw such as a scratched fab, a jumper wire, etc., and cannot be sold through our normal sales channels. I sometimes sell these at a low price to engineers who are buying one for their own use. You can call me by voice, U.S. (415) 796-6100 x279. In the U.S., use (800) 776-9539. Alan --------------------------------------