jumper@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Michael Lanham) (10/20/90)
I have an *old* ps/2 30 with an 8086(?) chip in it. I want to upgrade. suggestions as to how to keep costs down and get to a 286 or 386 chip with more than 640 KB of memory. Would I be better off buying a 386 accelerotor(sp) board and plugging it in? if so, what kind of ports does my machine have(ie when i see ads for ibm xt/at is that the kind i need)? I have seen ads and heard people say that i could get an plug in board with a 286/386 that bypasses the 8086 allows extended/expanded memory access for 150-500 dollars. help would be appreciated. He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. --- Sir William Drummond Michael Lanham mjlanham@eos.ncsu.edu jumper@.catt.ncsu.edu -- Hewho will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. --- Sir William Drummond Michael Lanham mjlanham@eos.ncsu.edu
py@meadow.uucp (Peter Yeung) (10/21/90)
In article <1990Oct19.202534.7472@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> jumper@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Michael Lanham) writes: >I have an *old* ps/2 30 with an 8086(?) chip in it. I want to upgrade. Model 30 is just a ISA bus machine in a PS/2 box. >suggestions as to how to keep costs down and get to a 286 or 386 chip >with more than 640 KB of memory. Would I be better off buying a 386 >accelerotor(sp) board and plugging it in? if so, what kind of ports does There used to be a few accelerator cards (286 or 386) cards on the market for 8088 based machines. I doubt very much if there is anything for an 8086 box. The reason is that those card literally replace the 8088 chip: you have to unplug the 8088 chip and plug in a cable coming out from those cards. I have a Breakthru-286 card on my old PCompatible. It works fine and was benchmarked faster than an 8 MHz AT (I changed the xtal to a 10MHz xtal). A friend was using a March-20 card from Intel and it worked well too. An advantage of the Intel card is that you can get a daugther controller card to use high-density drives (both 5.25 and 3.5 in. drives). However, one catch is that - those cards run in AT speed but they are NOT true AT's. If I were you I would save the money and get a good clone. As a matter of fact, AT clones are so cheap these days (you can get one with 1Meg RAM, 40M hard disk, mono-screen for CAN$700), it would not make any economical sense to get a 286 accelerator card (if you can find one). -- 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