Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Mylex vs. Micronics vs. AMI 386 motherboards Summary: Not as much as it used to be Keywords: which one? Message-ID: <477@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Date: 25 Sep 89 13:52:13 GMT References: <1235@mitisft.Convergent.COM> Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: GE Corp R&D Center Lines: 34 In article <1235@mitisft.Convergent.COM>, burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton) writes: | In getting a no-name 386 system, it seems that the motherboard choice is very | critical. Several months ago, PC Magazine reviewed about 110 386 systems. | | Among the manufacturers who used a "name brand" third party motherbaord, it | seemed that most used AMI. A few used Micronics, and almost no one used | Mylex. I think you will find that the choice of MB is not nearly as critical as it was at the time the 386 clones first became available. Any of the three brands you mention seem to run UNIX/Xenix just fine (hardware compatibility) and the Award, AMI, and Pheonix BIOS sets seem to allow good DOS functionality. I have heard a lot of bad things about other boards, but because they are often sold under several names and with various BIOS chips, I don't want to say "this is a bad one." If you look at the cost of boards in the back of _PC Week_ or _Computer Shopper_ you will see that AMI sells for a higher price. I don't know if this is because they cost more in qualtity or not (I got quotes on Q11 and they did) or if people are willing to pay more for them. If money was no object I would buy AMI (personal opinion, I have had one since Dec 86). Either of the other will probably be perfectly fine. Unless you're doing an upgrade of an existing machine, you might be able to get a complete machine for within $100 of the same base price, and add options as needed. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon