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From: phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: All Charge Card - What is it?
Message-ID: <1990Sep9.055927.15825@amd.com>
Date: 9 Sep 90 05:59:27 GMT
References: <27572@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: usenet@amd.com (NNTP Posting)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc; Sunnyvale, CA
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In article <27572@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
echuang@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ernest Y. Chuang) writes:
|Recently I came across something called the All Charge Card in a catalog
|from MicroWarehouse.  From the short paragraph description, it seemed to 
|claim to be able to manage any extended or expanded memory so that it 
|could be used under DOS.  Does anyone have this card or has a better idea
|of what it can do?  (Does it break the 640K limit?)

The ACC is, in this day of $300 386sx motherboards, a useless product.
List Price on the ACC is $400 and if your 286 is anything but a PGA
(most 286s are not PGA because PGAs are much more expensive) you will
need a $100 adaptor cable. That's $500 and even with a 30% discount
for street prices, it's still $350.

The ACC gives 286 systems a MMU and allows mapping extended memory into
expanded memory. This was interesting when Windows didn't know how to
use extended memory but Win3 runs much better with extended memory.

Desqview works well with the ACC but works better with a 386sx.

An MMU can give you more than 640K of memory if you have a CGA or
Herc video interface. VGA users are stuck with 640K for DOS apps.
But for the money, you're better off getting a new 386sx mother
board. It will be faster, 16 Mhz vs 10 or 12, work better with
Windows, probably allow you to stick more fast zero-wait state memory
on the motherboard (expansion bus memory is usually much slower)
and not limit you to 16-bit software.

The All Charge Card: a big waste of your money.

--
Phil Ngai, phil@amd.com		{uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil