Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrwic!mlawless
From: mlawless@ncrwic.Wichita.NCR.COM (Mike Lawless)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: PC-Turbo 286e by Orchid
Message-ID: <5357@ncrwic.Wichita.NCR.COM>
Date: 7 Jun 89 15:47:15 GMT
References: <688@lakesys.UUCP>
Reply-To: mlawless@ncrwic.UUCP (Mike Lawless)
Organization: NCR Corporation, Wichita, KS
Lines: 28

In article <688@lakesys.UUCP> davek@lakesys.UUCP (Dave Kraft) writes:
>Hi,
>I am contemplating buying a used PC-Turbo 286e add-on board that comes with
>1 meg ram, which is manufactured by Orchid.  Anybody have any good/bad    
>comments about this product or company?

I have had one for a couple of years now, and it generally works pretty well.
I have never tried any protected mode software on it, however; I got it
strictly for the speed.  One big caveat:  if you have Hercules graphics on
your system, then some recent-vintage Microsoft programs that use graphics,
such as Chart 3.0 and Word 4.0 (I don't know about 5.0 yet) will cause a loss
of horizontal sync on your display, which, if allowed to persist for more than
a couple of seconds, will smoke the horizontal output transistor in your
display.  I found out the hard way.  Interestingly enough, Chart 2.0 and Word
3.0 did not exhibit this behavior.  Note also that no version of Windows has
been observed to exhibit this effect.

As usual, Orchid says it's Microsoft's problem, and Microsoft says it's
Orchid's problem, and both steadfastly refuse to do anything to correct the
incompatibility.  So much for customer satisfaction.  Therefore, if you
want to use Word in the graphics mode, or Chart at all, you would be well
advise to steer clear of the Orchid PC-Turbo 286e.  

-- 
Mike Lawless, NCR E&M Wichita, Box 20     (316) 636-8666   (NCR: 654-8666)
3718 N. Rock Road, Wichita, KS  67226     Mike.Lawless@Wichita.NCR.COM
{ece-csc,hubcap,gould,rtech}!ncrcae!ncrwic!Mike.Lawless
{sdcsvax,cbatt,dcdwest,nosc.ARPA}!ncr-sd!ncrwic!Mike.Lawless