9fans archive / 1995 / 09 / 64 /    prev next

From: jmk@pla... jmk@pla...
Subject: PC-clone hardware
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 20:04:09 -0400


This is a little out of my experience, but if I had to buy a 486 motherboard
I'd look for one that would take a DX4-100 and even one of the new Cyrix M1sc
chips (i.e. handles 3.3V CPUs). Plus I'd opt for a PCI+ISA board with I/O on
the motherboard (I think only AIR makes a 486 MB with PCI+EISA). SIS or Intel
chipset should be OK.

Our only other experience with 486 motherboards has been Micronics in some old
Gateways. There have been troubles there with the Phoenix BIOS and accessing the
BIOS ROM areas from Plan 9, but that's probably because we don't make any attempt
to work out the 8/16-bit BIOS stuff.

The OS/2 and Linux newsgroups probably have some useful information.

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From:	Steve Kotsopoulos <steve@ecf...>
To:	9fans@cse...
Subject: PC-clone hardware
Message-Id: <95Sep5.001425edt.927@can...>
Date:	Tue, 5 Sep 1995 00:14:24 -0400
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In "What We Use - Last Updated 1-Aug-95", it says:
> Until recently we've used the AMI Enterprise IV:

What have you been using recently?

I'm thinking of getting a 486DX2-66, with 256K cache, but
I haven't been able to find any AMI motherboards around here yet.

One store I visited told me "the brand of motherboard is usually
stated as the brand of CPU on it", which doesn't jive with 
the above document since it lists an SiS chipset on the AMI board.

What's more important to look for, the motherboard or cpu manufacturer?

Intel and AMD seem to be popular in the local stores here,
which of those two would people recommend?

The variety in PC hardware scares me - sorry if these are basic questions.