RICK@MAINE.BITNET (11/10/90)
I have been given the challenge of choosing the upgrade choice
for my University. Can any of you tell me where to get
new mother boards or turbo expantion, coprocesser or processer,
for several types of compatables; Epson, Zmax, AT&T 6300, Zenith,
IBM PC's and Packard Bell computers. Could you tell me the
problems associated, pricing, dealers, and experiences you
have had with any of these situations. Thanks
Also I have a problem with an older Zenith laptop with no harddrive
the tranformer had become loose and shifted onto the plastic casing
and melted the plastic. Can you tell me if the plastic has caused
dammage to the transformer or if the transformer may have seen it's
better days and caused the screws holding it down to come loose
because of the extra heat. I have rescrewed it in and it has
started to have the same reaction. Any suggestions would be
appreciated. Thanks in advance again.
Rick Thibeault
University of Maine at Presque Islepy@meadow.uucp (Peter Yeung) (11/15/90)
In article <90313.163500RICK@MAINE.BITNET> RICK@MAINE.BITNET writes: >I have been given the challenge of choosing the upgrade choice >for my University. Can any of you tell me where to get >new mother boards or turbo expantion, coprocesser or processer, >for several types of compatables; Epson, Zmax, AT&T 6300, Zenith, >IBM PC's and Packard Bell computers. Could you tell me the >problems associated, pricing, dealers, and experiences you >have had with any of these situations. Thanks > If those are straight 4.77 MHz 8088 based machines, I think there are people still selling "accelerator cards" for XT type of machines. I was using a card call "BreakThru 286" which replaced the 8088 chip with a 286. A friend of mine was using Microsoft Mach 20 which also replaced the 800 with a 286. However, the prices of clone motherboards have came down so much, it would be much cheaper to replace the complete motherboard. E.g., I paid CAN$600 for the BreakThru 286 while you can get a clone 12 MHz 286 motherboard for about CAN$200. However, the catch is that most of those motherboards fit only layout of 100% XT compatibles. The problem with accelerator cards is that I have not seen any ads for quite a while. The BreakThru 286 I was using worked quite well and was very reliable. I had even changed the 8MHz crystal to 10MHz without any problems. It is still being used occasionally. The only incompatibility I have experienced was that I bought a floppy with built in driver in PROM such that one can use high density floppy drives in an XT. Somehow, the driver was written such that when it detected a 286, it assumed it was an AT and started addressing various (DMA?) ports in an AT. Obviously, it did not work on an XT. -- Peter Yeung Amdahl Canada Ltd., Software Development Center 2000 Argentia Road, Plaza 2, Suite 300 Mississauga, Ont. L5N 1V8 Phone: (416) 542-6300 Fax: (416) 858-2233