bukys@cs.rochester.edu (Liudvikas Bukys) (03/19/91)
I am helping a friend shop for a 386SX or 386 machine. I have the following questions: 1. Motherboard What manufacturers/chipsets are best avoided/preferred? 2. BIOS Do I care who wrote the BIOS these days? "AMI" seems to be the most common. One vendor's ad said "Video/BIOS shadow RAM". Does this refer to some BIOS support for some EMS/LIM memory hack? Do I care? 3. MS-DOS Do I care whether I get MS-DOS 3.33 or 4.01? The machine will be stand-alone, with all-new software. 4. SuperVGA The incremental cost for SuperVGA over VGA seems minute. I am worried, though, that many programs won't know how to handle the SuperVGA display, or would only display stuff in a minute area in the upper-left corner or something. Is this a potential problem? Are there SuperVGA vendors/chipsets to prefer/avoid? I'm guessing that the default thing in the 1024x768 is still interlace, and I have to pay more to get an adapter&monitor which can support non-interlace and 70Hz refresh rate. Is there a particular adapter vendor/chipset to specify/favor if I want non-interlaced display? Thanks. Liudvikas Bukys <bukys@cs.rochester.edu> SUMMARY: CLONES: 1. Manufacturer of motherboard -- does it matter? 2. BIOS vendor -- does it matter? 3. MS-DOS version -- does it matter? 4. SuperVGA -- are there pitfalls? preferred vendors?