March 20, 1987
Number 177

Title: AST Advantage! Supporting 8 Mhz

Reference: Technical Bulletin Number 155

AST has indicated that the problems that they were having with some of their
AST Advantage! cards running at 8 Mhz clock speed have been resolved.  All
boards shipped by AST as of August 1986 have the 8 Mhz support added to
them.  These boards have 120ns memory chips and the manuals included with
them have an addendum which indicates that 8 Mhz clock speed is supported.

Our evaluation of the 8 Mhz AST Advantage! card indicates that the 8 Mhz
clock speed is fully supported.

The following machines and software were used in evaluating the new AST
Advantage! card:

Hardware:
Novell 286A file servers (8Mhz - 1 wait state, 0 wait state)
Novell 286B file servers (8Mhz - 0 wait state)

Software:
Advanced NetWare 286 2.0a
SFT NetWare Level I 286 2.0a
NetWare Tape Backup
NetWare Tape Restore.SFT Tape Backup
SFT Tape Restore
SFT NetWare 286 V2.0a Level II (although not used in the evaluation,
there is no reason to believe that it is not also compatible).

If problems with 8 Mhz clock speed are encountered while using an AST
Advantage! board, the following situations could be checked to isolate the
problem:

1. Configure the AST board with zero memory and insert it in
   the machine to see if the problem prevails.

2. If the same error is generated, contact AST technical
   support.

3. If no error is generated the possible causes could be:
   1. A bad memory chip.
   2. An incorrectly installed memory chip or set of chips.
   3. Improper memory configuration.


Please contact the AST technical support staff for help to resolve specific
AST product-related problems or Novell technical support for NetWare
product-related problems.