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From: GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA (Gern)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: Z-100 vs IBM-PC Challenge
Message-ID: <11021@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 24-May-85 15:53:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11021
Posted: Fri May 24 15:53:52 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 25-May-85 09:16:22 EDT
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 16

The Zenith Z-100 (Z-110,120) is not IBM compatible (well, about 70% actually...)
The Z-150/160 is the IBM compatible machine.    Lotus, DBASE II must
be tailored to each machine, but the compliers do not, the linkers do
to a degree.

The AT is slow due to IBM mucked the design, by having to use 1 memory wait
state.  (they put a V-8 400 engine in a volkswagon bug).  This slows the
machine down by about 20-30% (each memory reference takes 166 nsec longer
than if they did it right.  This takes their 6MHz machine down to about
5MHz throughput.   A beefed up 8088 at 7.37 to 8 MHz with no wait states
then has the edge with speed even though it is really an 8-bit machine
(which slows it down a lot also, but apparently not as much as the wait
state on the AT's 80286.

Gern
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