atc@waikato.ac.nz (04/28/91)
I need help deciding whether coherent will run on my machine. I have a 286 PC put together in New Zealand, the chipset is by headland It uses the AMI bios - which I believe means I cant run coherent and it also uses an IDE drive which may also cause trouble. Will coherent run on my machine? or do ide and AMI spell trouble? -- Andrew Chambers Computer Services University of Waikato New Zealand ATC@WAIKATO.AC.NZ
gsm@mailgsm.mendelson.com (Geoffrey S. Mendelson) (04/28/91)
atc@waikato.ac.nz asks: > >I need help deciding whether coherent will run on my machine. >I have a 286 PC put together in New Zealand, the chipset is by headland >It uses the AMI bios - which I believe means I cant run coherent >and it also uses an IDE drive which may also cause trouble. >Will coherent run on my machine? or do ide and AMI spell trouble? > The problem with Coherent and AMI bioses is with early versions of the AMI 386 BIOS. It's not just coherent, it's any protected mode software, i.e. UNIX, QEMM, VM/386, and probably Windows 3.0. It's also a minor bug, if you want to reboot, press reset instead of ctl-alt-del. Coherent supports IDE drives. As for it supporting your particular IDE drive/host adaptor/BIOS combination, the only way to find out is to try it. While IDE is a standard, the actual implementation varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, drive model to drive model and sometimes (due to rom levels) drive to drive. I would recommend finding a person who has coherent now, and trying it on your machine. If it works, buy it. (I know that this is not quite "kosher", but if you intend to buy it, I think it is ok.) The other option is to buy it and try it. Not very risky as Mark Williams will give you your money back if it doesn't work, or even if you just don't like it. Since you will loose several weeks in travel time (even using airmail) when you order I would ask them to allow you a liitle more than sixty days. I don't see why not, they have been very flexible to me. They also seem to be very willing to discuss problems, features, and enhancements. They also can be reached via the INTERNET at "uunet!mwc!support" or (for people with domain address mailers) "mwc!support@uunet.uu.net". You may also try "support@mwc.uu.net" but I have never used it myself. ------ Geoffrey S. Mendelson geoffrey@mendelson.com (215) 242-8712