Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!xanth!mcnc!rti!bcw
From: bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 386 motherboards
Summary: Motherboard vs Accelerator
Keywords: motherboards, 386, upgrades, AT
Message-ID: <2708@rti.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 89 03:59:20 GMT
References: <5815@gssc.UUCP>
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Lines: 35

In article <5815@gssc.UUCP>, bradd@gssc.UUCP (Brad Davis) writes:
> 
>    Does anyone out there have experience with any of those AT-compatible
> 386 motherboards?  Especially regarding AMI, Micronics and Haupagge brands
> as these appear to be the most popular/reputable.  In particular, have 
> you had any buss or bios compatibility problems?  How does it get along
> with Windows 386?  OS/2?  Unix/Xenix?  DesqView?  Would you do it again?
> 
>    The situation is that I don't really have the budget for a whole new box,
> and a brain transplant seems like a much better solution than an InBoard.
> 
I would agree that for most applications a new motherboard is better than
an accelerator product.  Nowadays, the only really good reason to go with
an accelerator rather than a motherboard is because you have some hardware
which is dependent on the old board (say, because the bus speed is not
compatible with the motherboard) that you can't get rid of.

I am not however convinced that replacing a 286 or 8088 motherboard with 
a 386 motherboard is cost-effective.  The cost of 386 motherboards is so
high compared to the cost of a complete 386 machine that it actually
becomes attractive to sell the 286 or 8086 machine and buy a complete
new 386 machine.  The differential becomes even greater if you have a
significant amount of memory on the 286 (you may not want to use 286
memory boards on a 386, so that means getting the 386 memory board which
often takes incompatible memory chips -- so you can't even cannibalize
the 286 memory boards!).  Likewise if you want to upgrade the disk drives -
if you just upgrade, you wind up with a bunch of parts rather than a whole
machine;  usually you can sell a complete machine for more than a handfull
of miscellaneous parts.

Obviously every case is going to have unique considerations - depending
on the hardware you already have (and may need to discard/sell/replace/keep)
and what you want to replace or augment it with.

						Bruce C. Wright