c15102151@uavax0.ccit.arizona.edu (02/01/91)
Im interested in buying a 386SX machine, and the company that has been most willing to work with me, has been Insight, located in Tempe Arizona. Has anyone out there have an opinion of the machine or has anyone heard anything about them at all. Your info is much appreciated. Adam
dank@eng.umd.edu (Daniel R. Kuespert) (02/01/91)
In article <1991Jan31.145159.1@uavax0.ccit.arizona.edu> c15102151@rvax.ccit.arizona.ed writes: >Im interested in buying a 386SX machine, and the company that has been >most willing to work with me, has been Insight, located in Tempe Arizona. >Has anyone out there have an opinion of the machine or has anyone heard >anything about them at all. Your info is much appreciated. I've got one of their 386SX machines and like it. While it's not the fastest thing I've ever used, it's good for running windows and light multitasking. I had a few problems with it when it arrived: a couple of SIMMs had worked loose in shipping, but that's negligible. More seriously, they didn't ship the copy of Windows I ordered bundled with it and they made a slightly inferior substitution of video card---they had spec'd me an ATI VGA Wonder+ and sent a Paradise OEM card. When I complained, they exchanged it for a Boca SVGA card (Tseng 4000 chip, 1024x768x256) that has worked out well. The only other problem I had was the I/O card, which wanted to be the only thing in the system using I/O interrupt lines. This conflicted with my internal modem and made it impossible for me to use my mouse and my modem. They replaced that as well (by Federal Express) and sent a Boca card as a replacement; they said they'd been having problems with the other supplier's cards (Precision) and were switching to Boca. In all cases, they were responsive and replaced the offending cards with ones that exceeded the original specs. The rest of system consisted of a Chicony keyboard (kinda flimsy, but for $100 you can get your own) motherboard and case (also Chicony; cleanly manufactured), Mitsubishi hard drive (nice) and TVM monitor (clone of NEC MultiSync 3A). The whole thing is well made and reasonably sturdy. The biggest problem, aside from the card troubles, was the documentation, which is garbage, but they include the manuals from all the peripherals and the motherboard, so if you're reasonably experienced, you should have no trouble. -- Daniel R. Kuespert | Disclaimer: Chemical Process Systems Lab | University of Maryland, College Park | "I lied; it's a vice I have." dank@eng.umd.edu |