frison@cs.arizona.edu (Glen Alexander Frison) (01/14/91)
I am interested in purchasing a few 486's to replace a couple PC's with _real_ workstations. The market seems to be quite varied, with prices ranging from $3K to $15K for 'complete' systems, and I have seen 486 motherboards alone from about $1.5K to four times that. Although I am sure it is somewhat true that 'you get what you pay for', what is the difference in these motherboards among their type, for example, what is the difference between the several ISA boards out there (most are similarly laid out) and what is the cause of the price differential? The same question goes for EISA boards. (And, for that matter, is EISA really worth it? I am inclined to think it isn't, for a simple workstation application.) Price Club (out here in the West) has a 486 made by PC-Positive for a little under $3K. It comes with 1.2meg and 1.4meg drives, a decently large hard drive, a case, a keyboard, and etc. Does anyone know anything about this system and/or this company? Can you really get such a system for under $3K? A lot of the cheaper systems don't have fancy ESDI or SCSI drives, but have an IDE drive interface. While I've read quite a bit on the ESDI and SCSI interfaces (it's hard not to), what the heck is an IDE interface? What data transfer rates are we talking about with it, etc.? Can anyone suggest mail-order outfits, perhaps, that sell worth-while 486's? Thanks for any help. If 486's have recently been in discussion, can someone send me a summary perhaps? I would appreciate e-mail, since I don't get that much of a chance to read the news (unfortunately). -g frison (email: frison@cs.arizona.edu)
ries@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM (Marc Ries) (01/15/91)
In article <655@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> frison@cs.arizona.edu (Glen Alexander Frison) writes: ... >Price Club (out here in the West) has a 486 made by PC-Positive for a >little under $3K. It comes with 1.2meg and 1.4meg drives, a decently large >hard drive, a case, a keyboard, and etc. Does anyone know anything about >this system and/or this company? Can you really get such a system for >under $3K? This system was reviewed in the Los Angeles Times Computer Column and got good praise from the reviewer. I have seen the system, and called up the company for more info. The main drawbacks I have seen are: a limited number of expansion slots (for me, anyway). The standard configuration only leaves two slots open. Also, the "options" are way overprices, such as a $500 120Mb tape drive and $100+/Mb RAM costs, etc. The 106Mb drive is about 100Mb too small for my requirements. But it is complete, and has windows already installed. I too am still looking to buy a 486... at least on the plus side, the price keeps getting lower the longer I wait...
ries@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM (Marc Ries) (01/15/91)
In article <1991Jan14.171123.8461@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes:
-> I'm looking into buying the Price Club's machine right now. I've
->got some benchmarking to do, to see how close the machine gets to what
->it should be. By the time you bring the machine up to 8MB, and add the
->tape backup, you're at $4,000, but that's still a good price. It also
->includes windows 3.0. And, of course, if you don't like it, you can
->take it back. 8-{)}
On the other hand , Gateway 2000 sells a 486 with 8 Meg installed and
a >>200<< Mb disk (no tape) for $3999.00 (this month, it was $4395
last month). With the Positive machine, it will cost more to go
the extra 100Mb disk than to go for a tape machine, considering you can
get a tape machine for >$300 street price. The Gateway machine includes
a hi-res monitor, card, MS DOS 3.3 or 4.01 and windows as well. Gateway
also includes a 30-day money-back policy plus a one-year P&L. The Positive
machine has 30-days on site, one-year P&L but the money back is through
Price Club (14 days?).
On the other hand, a decent cached 386-33 with co-processor will be nearly the
same power as the 486-25, yet about $500 cheaper, if they are both using
the AT bus. With some 486 suppliers, the difference in the street price
of a 486-25 and a 486-33 is only about $500, about the same (best case)
between the ISA bus and a 32-bit VEISA bus.
"My crotch says 'buy', but my mind says 'wait a while'": Later this year,
Intel is supposed to come out with a smaller, more integrated VEISA
interface. If AMD comes out with a clone-386, then 386-prices should really
dive. Intel is also expected, according to an article on ALR in the Times
Business Section, to have a "low-cost" 486 out in the second quarter of this
year. God only knows what "low-cost" means, although another source
indicated that Intel is working on a i486 >>without<< the coprocessor.
-- Marc Riesphilhowr@unix.cie.rpi.edu (Bob Philhower) (01/15/91)
In article <958@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM> ries@venice.sedd.trw.com (Marc Ries) writes: >In article <1991Jan14.171123.8461@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: > On the other hand , Gateway 2000 sells a 486 with 8 Meg installed and > a >>200<< Mb disk (no tape) for $3999.00 (this month, it was $4395 > last month). > On the other hand, a decent cached 386-33 with co-processor will be nearly the > same power as the 486-25, yet about $500 cheaper, if they are both using > the AT bus. I went through the pricing game with Gateway recently and when I got their 386-33 and their 486-25 similarly equipped (co-processor, identical disk, memory, etc) the 486 was $11 more expensive. Moral: look carefully at the configuration when comparing machines, even from the same manufacturer. Robert Philhower (philhowr@unix.cie.rpi.edu) 1000 MIPS GaAs RISC Project Rensselaer Center for Integrated Electronics CII 6111 / Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute / Troy, NY 12180 / USA
flint@gistdev.gist.com (Flint Pellett) (01/16/91)
ries@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM (Marc Ries) writes: > On the other hand, a decent cached 386-33 with co-processor will be nearly the > same power as the 486-25, yet about $500 cheaper, if they are both using > the AT bus. With some 486 suppliers, the difference in the street price > of a 486-25 and a 486-33 is only about $500, about the same (best case) > between the ISA bus and a 32-bit VEISA bus. > -- Marc Ries I'm not at all sure what you base that on. A 486 is about 2.5 to 3 times faster than a 386 that runs at the same clock speed. That makes a 386-33 about half as fast as a 486-25. Of course, they both are going to run about the same if you have a disk intensive application and have equivalent disks. I've used both: the 486 wins. On the cost issue: I haven't been able to tell that the 386 alternative is $500 cheaper either, considering how much a 387-33 costs. -- Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc. 1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL 61874 (217) 352-1165 uunet!gistdev!flint or flint@gistdev.gist.com
sct@lanl.gov (Stephen Tenbrink) (01/17/91)
In article <958@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM>, ries@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM (Marc Ries) writes: > the AT bus. With some 486 suppliers, the difference in the street price > of a 486-25 and a 486-33 is only about $500, about the same (best case) > between the ISA bus and a 32-bit VEISA bus. > > -- Marc Ries Just for the record, it's the EISA bus not the VEISA. VEISA is the name of ALR's pc based on the EISA bus. We just received two with the 386 33Mhz cpu. The cost for a 5 Meg system with 80 MB disk (no display or display driver) was around $2500.