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From: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Wanted: Info on tried and true roll your own 386sx system.
Message-ID: <3761@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 30 Dec 90 15:05:13 GMT
References: <35204@netnews.upenn.edu>
Sender: news@ns-mx.uiowa.edu
Reply-To: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu.UUCP (Kent Williams)
Organization: U of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Lines: 38

I have rolled my own twice.  It is fairly straightforward.  The last time
I got a 386-SX MB from California MicroChip.  The VIP flavor, if you're
interested.  My advice:

1. Buy your disk stuff from Hard Disk International, at least the controller.
They really know what they're doing, and their prices are competetive.

2. Buy a name brand Motherboard -- VIP, Orchid, etc.  Orchid has a SX board
with floppy and IDE controllers on board, so all you need are drives, keyboard,
case & cables.  I haven't used one, and they're a little more expensive than
VIP.  I had a Magitronics MB for a while, and it seemed to be very nice
(well-made, high level of integration) but it blew a counter-timer after about
a week.  Aside from that, it was a nice board.

3. If you're adventurous, you can often save a lot of money by buying memory
separate from the Motherboard.  Most of the people who sell
motherboards low-ball the motherboard price and then jack up memory
25$ a megabyte to make up the difference.  California Microchip is a
good vendor if you're leery of stuffing memory; their motherboard
prices are higher than the lowest, but their memory prices are rock
bottom.  They'll stuff and smoke-test the board for free, for $25
they'll burn it in overnight.

4.  The best deals in hard drives are discontinued full-height SCSI
drives.  Try IME liquidators -- I got a 230MB maxtor drive for 600$
Controllers can be a problem.  I have the Always IN 2000,which seems
to work fine.  Adaptec is supposed to have a new, cheap, fast
controller out.

5. Be patient.  At least one thing you buy is going to die, and you'll
have to send it back RMA and get a replacement.  This happened both
times I put a system together.  You might get lucky, you never know!


--
             Kent Williams --- williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu 
"'Is this heaven?' --- 'No, this is Iowa'" - from the movie "Field of Dreams"
"This isn't heaven, ... this is Cleveland" - Harry Allard, in "The Stupids Die"