Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!ucla-cs!wales From: wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (Rich Wales) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: PC/XT 286-based accelerator opinions wanted Message-ID: <14455@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Date: 15 Jul 88 22:31:47 GMT References: <14382@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU Reply-To: wales@CS.UCLA.EDU (Rich Wales) Organization: UCLA CS Department, Los Angeles Lines: 46 In article <14382@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> I wrote the following: I am thinking about buying a 286-based accelerator board for my Taiwanese turbo. My system has an 8-MHz NEC V-20 CPU. The clock speed is software-switchable to either 4.77 or 8 MHz. The RAM chips are 150-nsec. The accelerator I am currently thinking of is the "Orchid Tiny Turbo 286" -- a half-sized card unit with room to add an 80287 coprocessor. I just got off the phone with a technical support person from Orchid. She says -- very emphatically -- that the Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 *ABSO- LUTELY WILL NOT WORK AT ALL* on a dual-speed NEC V-20 system. It *MUST*, she says, be an 8088-based system running at 4.77 MHz *ONLY*. I was unable to get any intelligible explanation as to just why the Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 wouldn't work in my system. I asked, what if I kept the clock speed at 4.77 MHz all the time -- and the Orchid person said that wouldn't matter, their card still wouldn't work for me. She said that Orchid has another product -- the Twin Turbo 12 -- that does work OK in a dual-speed V-20 system. I also talked with a technical support person from AST Research, about their Hot Shot/286 accelerator card. Same story -- AST says their Hot Shot/286 *WILL NOT WORK* on a V-20 system; *ONLY* on an 8088 system. And again, no intelligible reason given; just that it won't work. I suppose my only feasible upgrade route may turn out to be to get an AT clone motherboard (something I'm not sure I'm prepared to do right now; and please don't flood me with "why not?"s). But let me ask again: Has anyone out there had any first-hand experience with 286-based accelerator boards for PC/XT systems? Can anyone offer a sensible explanation as to why an accelerator board built for the 8088 would not work on a dual-speed NEC V-20 system -- even assuming that the clock was *always* run at 4.77 MHz whenever the accelerator board was being used? -- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales "We would all become unpeople, undoing unthings untogether."