Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:28831 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:3020 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!gatech!emcard!dekalb!greg From: greg@dekalb.UUCP (Greg Philmon) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: JDR 386 Motherboard Keywords: motherboard jdr 386 problems upgrade Message-ID: <506@dekalb.UUCP> Date: 15 May 89 15:47:55 GMT Organization: PC Systems Consultants, Atlanta, GA Lines: 82 Someone called for experiences in buying mail-order. Ok, here's my ongoing story: One of my favorite MO places (to date) has to be JDR Microdevices. They offer a full year warranty on everything they sell, regardless of the original manufacturers coverage. Also a 30-day money-back guarantee. So when I decided to upgrade to a 386, I choose their MCT386MB25 (a 25 Mhz full-sized 386 motherboard). Wow, in their catalog it looks great! Here's some of the features: 1) Uses 256K or 1 MB chips at 80ns (memory interleaving allows such "slow" chips). 2) Adjustable bus speed. 3) Upgradable to 8MB on board. Well, I guess this is starting to sound like a commercial, eh? Ok, I'll quit there and you can get one of their catalogs if you're interested. Anyway, the board was $1050 w/ 0k. I then purchased (before the board arrived) 18 1MB chips from IC Express (great company - best prices and service). The chips were ordered around 1pm on a Tuesday and arrived by noon Wednesday (from CA to GA, no less). The board arrived Thursday and I set to installing it in a tower case (also from JDR). Here's where the problems began.... First off, the board came with 2 manuals; a "User's Guide" and a "User's Manual". Something had gotten all over the "Manual" and all the pages were permanently stuck together. Ok, no biggie, I've done this before and can figure the installation out, but now I'm annoyed. Next I discover that my RAM situation is not acceptable. The boards memory is divided into two banks of 36 chips each. I only have 18 chips. Uh oh. Now what? I have 1.5 meg in my "old" AT, but it's all 120ns chips. Why did I assume you could add memory in 1 MB increments? The JDR catalog said so! Okay, maybe not right out, but they have a "build-it-yourself" system with the parts itemized. It has this motherboard and "9 x 1MB 100ns DRAM" chips. So I had assumed it would accept 1 MB increments using 1MB chips. Oh well. This is the fun part - I, on a dare, went ahead and slapped one meg of 120ns 256K chips in the board. I made sure the Turbo switch was off and hooked up my monitor .... IT BOOTED! I made it past the memory check and it went to load the boot-strap ... and went dead. Oh well, what could I expect? So I tried again . This time I entered the BIOS-based setup program to see what it offered. Wow ... MANY options. I found the memory wait-state and toggled it from zero to one. It then booted fine. Geez, was I on cloud nine. I had been collecting various benchmark programs ever since the notion of a 386 entered my mind. Now I put them to work. Now remember, this is a crippled machine at the moment. It's running at 16 mhz (capable of 25) and has a wait state thrown in. I expect to purchase another 2 meg soon and see what it'll do at full tilt. Norton's SI shows 21.0, Landmark SPEED shows 18.5 (newest version - I had an older one that wrapped the screen and came in around 24 ... I liked that one better :-). The PCLabs Benchmarks put it right in the middle of the 20mhz machines reviewed in the recent issue (remember, this is running at 16mhz!). Especially impressive is the BIOS. It's from AMI and dated 3-3-89. Upon boot it configured itself; no setup was really necessary! It correctly identified my hard drive and both floppies (1.44 and 1.2) and wrote these values to the CMOS, as well as my memory (or lack thereof) configuration. I did go and enable the BIOS shadowing, as this really improved video times. All in all, I would highly recommend this board to anyone wanting a good machine. It will accept a 287, 387, or Weitek (sp?) coprocessor, if that's important to you. Ok, that's my lastest experiance with mail order, I hope it helps someone. Feel free to EMAIL if you have any questions. (I, of course, have no connection with JDR, IC Express, AMI, or anyone.) -- --------------------------------------------------------- | Greg Philmon ...gatech!dekalb!greg CIS: 72261,1724 | ---------------------------------------------------------