Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!ncar!tank!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!osiris.cso.uiuc.edu!hoctor
From: hoctor@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Speeding up old PC's
Message-ID: <7700074@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 29 Sep 88 13:02:00 GMT
References: <3009@dalcs.UUCP>
Lines: 37
Nf-ID: #R:dalcs.UUCP:3009:osiris.cso.uiuc.edu:7700074:000:1813
Nf-From: osiris.cso.uiuc.edu!hoctor    Sep 29 08:02:00 1988


>/* ---------- "Speeding up old PC's" ---------- */
>I have two old 4.77 MHz PCs...they're true blue IBM's...one is a "5150" which
>is, I believe, a PC-2 and the other a "5160", an XT.
>
>I'm wondering what I can do to jazz them up, particularly with regard to CPU
>speed.  Could I replace the CPU with an 8MHz 8088 or V20?  Would I have to
>change the crystal?  how about the RAM memory? 
>
>Any suggestions on other things I could with these old clunkers (besides boat
>anchors :-)
>
><techical details ommitted>
>/* End of text from osiris.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.ibm.pc */

Given the age and ram speed of those old PCs (& XTs), do not use any
speedup device that will increase the speed of the motherboard!!!!
This will give you nothing but headaches.  As far as installing a V20,
the improvement is approx. 5% (in real life).  The most effective
means of speeding up these kind of boxes is to install and
ASYNCHRONOUS speedup board.  These sort of devices generaly run an 8
or 12 Mhz 286 on a seperate board (do you have an open slot?) that has
its own 8 or 16K RAM CACHE.  This sort of device will execute code in
this high speed ram instead of the PCs slow system memory.  These are
VERY effective devices.  Two such products that I am aware of are the
PCSG (Personal Computer Support Group) Breakthru-286 and the Microsoft
Mach 20 and Mach 30.  If you have no available slots, I believe the
Mach 20 and 30 can be had with a disk controller or printer/comm
ports.  Here where I work, I have purchased 3 of the 12 Mhz
Breakthru-286s as well as having an 8Mhz version in my own machine.  I
can attest to the great improvement.  The only problems that I had was
with floppy disk accesses, but that is taken care of with a switch in
their software.

I have no interest in either of the companies.

hoctor@osiris