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From: mjr@osiris.UUCP (Marcus Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Turning your IBM PC into a 386
Message-ID: <1322@osiris.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 10:33:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: osiris.1322
Posted: Wed Jul 22 10:33:00 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jul-87 06:31:03 EDT
References: <10048HDK@PSUVM> <1183@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Organization: The Bavarian Illuminati, Inc.
Lines: 39
Summary: like, yeah...

In article <1183@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, bolasov@athena.mit.edu (Benjamin I Olasov) writes:
> In article <10048HDK@PSUVM> HDK@PSUVM.BITNET writes:
> >
> >How to turn your PC into a true multitasking 80386 machine for 500$:
> >(Neither tools nor soldering needed except for a chip extractor).
> > [explanation of how to do it]

> [...] Are there any technical problems that could result?
> Any better ways to do it now?  I'd really like to know...

	Sure there are technical problems. Imagine taking a garden hose,
and hooking it up to a 12-inch sewer pipe. In this analogy, that is the
PC286 adaptor being hooked up to your PC. Now take the 12-inch sewer
pipe and connect that to the flood gate at the Hoover Dam. That is the
Cheetah 386 being hooked up to the 286 adaptor. What you're talking
about doing is ramming a lot of raw power through several layers of
kluge and expecting it to not break. Each of the various adapter cards
has various buffers/caches and other nasty kludges necessitated by
the braindead hardware. Each of those performs loops and twists and
transformations to allow the next layer down to understand the next
layer up. By the time the trickle-down takes effect, lord only knows
what kind of performance you'll get. If it performs at all. There are
going to be all manner of problems with timing.

	Nowadays, for under 500$, you can buy an AT clone board. That
will be functional (but braindead) consistent (but braindead) hardware.
If you want to add the 386 Cheetah adapter to that, at least the bus
will have some *CHANCE* of being able to handle all that data. The
total cost will come down. You're better off buying something at least
slightly capable, rather than investing your 500$ in hardware that 
is going to be scrap in 1 year. Wait a year, and an AT board will be
under 300$. By then a 386 board should be around 600$.

--mjr();
-- 
If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical,
go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I get as crude as possible. These
days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire
to crudeness...			         -Johnny Mnemonic