sal@grip.cis.upenn.edu (Marcos Salganicoff) (12/30/90)
Please forgive me, i'm new to this group so if this topic has been beaten to death could someone please send me a thread summary. Anyhow, My head is spinning and my arms ache as I put down the latest computer shopper magazine. Goal State: 386sx box with monochrome vga, mouse, >= 40mbyte hard disk and 4mb of memory to run windos 3.0 _decently_ (i would like to become an ex mac+ user) and Unix workalike like coherent by mark williams). Possible Sol'ns: I'm am considering either buying a complete (zeos/dell/packard-bell ....) 386sx system or buying the goodies separately (i.e. bare-bones chassis/supply/motherboard combo, vga board, monochrome monitor, and hard disk etc. etc.) I've come up with a proposed system using the "roll your own" technique for ~1400 bucks (just hardware) which meets the above criteria, but I am new to the world of Clonedom. Is life really as straightforward as it seems? Can I just buy the goodies and load in the appropriate drivers by bootstrapping from a minimal floppy based system, or will it be a never ending fingerpointing nightmare of timing problems and bios-incompatibilities. I have access to monochrome display boards that I can "borrow" in this process (so as to see what I'm typing while I install the vga drivers etc.) Anyhow, if you've done something approximately similar I'd love to hear about the combination of hardware used and what was involved. Geez, I'll even post a summary fer gosh sakes :-) So the basic two questions are prepackaged vs. roll your own, and if so, roll with what? Any takers? Marcos Salganicoff General Robotics and Active Sensing Lab UPENN Philadelphia, PA (USA)
thoger@solan.unit.no (Terje Th|gersen) (12/30/90)
I've buildt a 386sx-clone from parts (Bought the case in Taiwan, the RAM in
the US, the HD in Oslo, Norway, the MB in Trondheim, Norway etc, etc..)
It took me about 2 hours to figure out where all the cables from the
powersupply and the 'Turbo' switches etc went. Everything after that was
pretty smooth riding. In all, perhaps it took me 6-8 hours or so..
It really was a lot of fun, i learned a lot.
Looking back, I'd say if you're after a standard system, like the one you
describe, I figure you can get a no-name clone for the same or less than
what you'll pay for the parts. The only reason I decided to roll my own was
the I had a lot of components around already, plus that I wanted a rather
expanded system. (170 MB HD, 12 MB RAM, SVGA etc..)
I don't think this is something you'll want to attemp unless you have quite
a bit experience with PC-compatibles, though.. The documentation I got with
my system is a grand total of 18 pages.. On the other hand, I guess this might
be kind of a flying start in the PC world :-)
Good luck !!
-Terje
--
____________________________________________________________________________
thoger@solan.unit.no | Institute of Physical Chemistry
THOGER AT NORUNIT.BITNET | Div. of Computer Assisted Instrumental Analysis
| Norwegian Institute of Technologywilliams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams) (12/30/90)
I have rolled my own twice. It is fairly straightforward. The last time
I got a 386-SX MB from California MicroChip. The VIP flavor, if you're
interested. My advice:
1. Buy your disk stuff from Hard Disk International, at least the controller.
They really know what they're doing, and their prices are competetive.
2. Buy a name brand Motherboard -- VIP, Orchid, etc. Orchid has a SX board
with floppy and IDE controllers on board, so all you need are drives, keyboard,
case & cables. I haven't used one, and they're a little more expensive than
VIP. I had a Magitronics MB for a while, and it seemed to be very nice
(well-made, high level of integration) but it blew a counter-timer after about
a week. Aside from that, it was a nice board.
3. If you're adventurous, you can often save a lot of money by buying memory
separate from the Motherboard. Most of the people who sell
motherboards low-ball the motherboard price and then jack up memory
25$ a megabyte to make up the difference. California Microchip is a
good vendor if you're leery of stuffing memory; their motherboard
prices are higher than the lowest, but their memory prices are rock
bottom. They'll stuff and smoke-test the board for free, for $25
they'll burn it in overnight.
4. The best deals in hard drives are discontinued full-height SCSI
drives. Try IME liquidators -- I got a 230MB maxtor drive for 600$
Controllers can be a problem. I have the Always IN 2000,which seems
to work fine. Adaptec is supposed to have a new, cheap, fast
controller out.
5. Be patient. At least one thing you buy is going to die, and you'll
have to send it back RMA and get a replacement. This happened both
times I put a system together. You might get lucky, you never know!
--
Kent Williams --- williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu
"'Is this heaven?' --- 'No, this is Iowa'" - from the movie "Field of Dreams"
"This isn't heaven, ... this is Cleveland" - Harry Allard, in "The Stupids Die"ted@helios.ucsc.edu (Ted Cantrall) (01/02/91)
In article <35204@netnews.upenn.edu> sal@grip.cis.upenn.edu (Marcos Salganicoff) writes: >Goal State: 386sx box with monochrome vga, mouse, >= 40mbyte hard disk >and 4mb of memory to run windos 3.0 _decently_ >and Unix workalike like coherent by mark williams). > >So the basic two questions are prepackaged vs. roll your own, and if >so, roll with what? Any takers? ------------------------------------ I just went through a similar process. I found that if you buy a "no-name" clone already assembled, you get a better price than if you bought the same parts seperately. I guess they can give a better discount the more they sell. I found my dealer (Sunwell Int.) to be very willing to work with me to get what I wanted. I had a problem with the Turbo mode switch after I got it home and they offered to come get the machine (~35mi) for repair. They ever exchanged the kind of ram they had installed at no cost. Caveat: if you want 1 Meg chips - not 256k - you must buy memory in 2meg increments. Get a board with 8 meg of sockets on board. I recomend AMI BIOS and a NEAT chipset (C&T or a clone). I've heard some bad things about DTK boards and stuff. The big advantage of buying a system (vs parts) is that you have somewhere to take your problems. -ted- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ted@helios.ucsc.edu |"He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the W (408)459-2110 |Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness H (408)423-2444 |and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8 (RSV)
davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) (01/04/91)
In article <35204@netnews.upenn.edu> sal@grip.cis.upenn.edu (Marcos Salganicoff) writes: >Goal State: 386sx box with monochrome vga, mouse, >= 40mbyte hard disk >and 4mb of memory to run windos 3.0 _decently_ >and Unix workalike like coherent by mark williams). > >So the basic two questions are prepackaged vs. roll your own, and if >so, roll with what? Any takers? Pro roll your own arguments: o PC's are so simple it shouldn't be too difficult. Unless of course it doesn't work. Does your insurance cover stress related illness? o Good learning experience. o You get exactly the components you want. This is the only good argument, but then the components you want are likely to be the most expensive. Buy it arguments: o Probably cheaper. Even for the exact same components. o Somebody already knows those components work properly together. At least you hope so. o Somebody else gets to hassle with it when it breaks. I mean PROBABLY it will all work when you put it together but do you want to try figuring out what is wrong when you can't access your hard disk? If you buy one put together get it from somebody who does a lot of them. Also make sure you see it running Windows 3.0 (in Super VGA if possible). When Windows 3.0 first came out it showed some subtle incompatibilities with a number of clones. Oh one other thing, I've used a monochrome VGA monitor and I really can't see any point to it. I mean either you want text or you want color graphics. Honestly I have a hard time even giving up color text as used by many popular programs nowadays.