Magnum One/Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso/d21/qemm1289.arc/QEMM1208.MSG

Internet Message Format | 1989-12-18 | 14KB

From:    Kenneth Roach                          Area: DESQview
To:      Robert Faison                          04 Dec 89 15:52:52
Subject: 386SX Motherboard

This is a follow up message about the 386SX motherboards Robert.  Over the
weekend, I installed two 386SX motherboards as well as a 286 motherboard.
What a pain....   With the 286/12 motherboard, we experienced modest problems
with the hard disk controller.  As I told the owner of the system, it was
clear that we were not praying to the correct gods.  Be that as it may, we had
it working by Sunday night.  For the first 386SX motherboard installed, two
problems occurred.  First, the case to be used was an AT case, drilled, etc
for mounting only an AT sized motherboard.  The particular 386SX board
installed was instead, an XT sized motherboard.  Despite my objections, the
owner decided to sort of set the motherboard in place on foam strips and use
the boards installed in the slots to hold it in place...  I certainly hope he
corrects this problem at some point or another, but in the meantime, it
appears to work.

Problems were also encountered when installing my own 386SX mother.  The
actual installation of the board required about 45 minutes, including
carefully noting what wires went where, removing all cards and the old mother,
and the opposite process for installing the 386SX.  After this was done, I
found that the video card I was using was too slow to operate properly in the
system.  It's a very old Hyundai thing, which saw life first in a 4.77mHz Blue
Chip system.  I spent $30 to get a new mono adapter, which worked much better,
and gave the old one to a friend.  The second problem occurred as the result
of using QEMM in this system for the first time.  In my haste, I'd forgotten
to tell QEMM to exclude the area of memory where the network card lives, so
the network software refused to function.  This was my fault, and it took me a
while to figure out what I'd done wrong.  The final problem related to a bad
chip in one of the simms.  The system wouldn't run for more than 3-4 hours,
and had to cool for some time after that.  Since this was discovered on
Saturday and I could not replace the memory until Monday, my BBS was down from
then until Monday night.  The upshot of all this I suppose is that while
installation really was quite easy, the few problems encountered I think were
significant.  Had I lived in Northern Saskatchewan and was conducting all
business via mail order, it may have taken considerably longer to correct the
problems.

As to whether or not the board functions adequately, and whether or not it was
worth it, I think the answer must be yes.  I was able to sell my 286
motherboard for $200, with the 1meg of memory on it.  I can't tell you how
little I really paid for my new motherboard and memory, but I can say that the
list cost was $380, plus I think, $180 per meg for 256x9 simms.  So using list
prices (that is, what HQ computers normally sells the stuff for), my final
cost would have been $360.  Plus tax.  Cheaper than an All Charge Card I
think.

What I actually purchased was a 386SX board with clocks of either 16 or 20mHz
selectable.  Since we're dealing with an SX (a system that accesses memory 16
bits at a pop) I was able to go with 1.5megs of memory, an ideal size for the
BBS.  For a real 386, I would have had to go with either 1 meg or 2 megs.  The
SX system interleaves memory on a 512K basis it seems.  At least, I discussed
the matter with HQ, and that's what we decided.  If this is the case then, I
must have 1 meg running with no wait states, and 512Kb running with 1 wait
state...  I think.  In any case, I use 320Kb for a small ram disk, 64Kb to
shadow the bios (but not the mono card's video bios), some portion for loadhi
support, and have about 900Kb left over for applications.  This is enough for
me to run four copies of my BBS program, or three copies, the network software
in server mode, as well as hae a 64Kb dos winodw open for file copying, etc.
BTW, the ability to run the network software (Lantastic) as a task under
DesqView is unique to 386 systems.  It is not possible to do this at all on a
286 system it seems (I never had any luck at that, and messages appearing here
now and again seem to indicate that it cannot be done).

The particular 386SX motherboard I purchased doesn't have a brand name on it,
nor on the box, nor in the manual.  It is made in Taiwan however.  In spite of
this, the manual is written in a pretty good imitation of English.  It is
equipped with an AMI bios.  Things that I was able to LOADHI include 30
buffers, the network netbios driver, the network "redir" program, two copies
of WatchKat, OpusCom, the Dos Share program and VDisk driver.

The Chips and Technologies MIPS.COM program indicates that the "overall mips"
rating is 2.31.  If I use the PD Speeder program, the rate changes to to 2.41
mips.  This compares to a true 386/20 mip rate of 2.50 without speeder, or
2.54 with speeder.  Note however, that the 386/20 had only 1 bank of memory,
so was not interleaving it.  The Mips program compares the system being tested
to a Compaq 386/16 on its own, and the average speed compared to the Compaq
was 1.17 times as fast.  Again, this particular 386SX is pushed to 20mHz...  I
think the cost/performance breakdown compares favorably to a 386/16 or a
386/20...  The Landmark program I consider to be crap, since it over-estimates
a given cpu's performance by comparing it to an IBM AT defined to run with 1
wait state.  This sorta seems to be to be like comparing a porsche running on
five cylinders to one running on six, and saying the latter is operating at
120% efficiency...  It seems to me that the latter runs at 100% efficiency, so
that the five cylinder model might instead be running at 80% or so, not the
other way 'round...  None the less, Landmark is used all over the place in ads
to tell folks that XYZ dealer's 386/33 is running at 55mhz.  Using Landmark
version 0.99, I got results of 25.5mhz.  From Landmark 2.00, I got 24.3mhz.
Note that most dealers use Landmark 0.99, no doubt due to the better lies it
tells.

The motherboard itself has some pretty artwork...  The 386SX chip however, is
a surface mount unit (soldered on, or built in) and looks somewhat tacky
compared to the rest of the motherboard.  I don't know how compatible it is
with every little thing.  I did have my daughter's EGA display on it for a
while, but didn't run any games or anything.  It does seem content to run all
the previously mentioned software however.

Two oddities were none-the-less observed.  When I ran version 5 of the PC
Magazine benchmark programs, the previously mentioned Speeder program had a
negative impact on performance measurements.  Speeder is a program which
changes the memory refresh rate.  Other similar programs are around under
different names.  While performace measurements under the PC Mag tests is
degraded by this program, the Mips program shows an increase in performance.
I do not know what this means.  Also, as a test, I wrote two dummy programs
which do very little.  The first program checks for a keypress and if none is
found, gives up its time slice to other tasks running.  The second increments
a counter and also gives up time to the other task.  The intent of these
programs is to measure how rapidly one can swap DesqView or DoubleDOS tasks on
a given system.  On a 386/25 with 8 megs of memory, I measured 75.9 task swaps
per second, with the bios shadowed.  On the 386SX, without bios shadowing,
86.7 task swaps per second were observed.  The only thing I can think of is
that maybe the extra memory on the 386/25 is slowing things a bit.  Oh yeah...
I found that I did have difficulty running an older version of DesqView (2.01)
with QEMM, in spite of having told QEMM "olddv".  No big problem...  switching
to a newer version of DV cured that.  And yet another PS sorta note:  I've yet
to have any luck at all running DoubleDOS on any 386 system, including the
386SX...  Dunno why.  Anyone?

I'm pleased with my purchase.  Given the caviats previously mentioned
regarding the problems encountered and how this might be effected by a mail
order set of transactions, I still think I prefer this path over that of an
ACC.  As I said, HQ Computers in Sunnyvale sells the basic 386SX motherboard
for


configurable to run at either 16 or 20mHz.  No brand name.  Their phone number
is [phone].  They also have an 800 number, but I don't know its range:
[phone] (24 Hours the note says...).  The board has a 1 year warranty,
and a 30 day money back guarantee.  To be fair, California Data Engineering
sells a Mylex 386SX motherboard for $410 ([phone]).  Both firms are in
Sunnyvale, Ca.  And an outfit by the name of "Big Chain" in Santa Clara
advertises 386SX motherboards for both $335 and $359, depending on the chip
set desired.  Thier number is [phone].  All these prices and phone
numbers come from a bay area free newspaper/advertising vehicle called
MicroTimes.  Many dealers are advertising complete 386SX systems therein for
$999 to $1200 or so.  One however, is advertising such a system for $715.  I
don't know what it comes with.  This outfit is called Advanced R&D systems.
They're in Fremont, Calif, at [phone].

Please folks, try not to flame me too much for entering all this.  Yes, I know
it lists items for sale...  But I am not a dealer and have listed multiple
other dealers so clearly am not attempting to gain anything...  I do think
that 386SX systems are of interest to many DesqView users, and represent a
valid, cost effective alternative to the All Charge Card, another "hot
property" for DesqView users...  I've mentioned this in more than one message
in the past, and consider this to be the final installment in that thread...
unless someone has a question about it.  I just wanted to report the results
of my having put my money where my mouth is...

Ken

PS: I just asked HQ for the specific manufacturer of the motherboard I
purchased...  It's "Shin Wa", again, from Taiwan...  Just so'se you know.

--- FX-BBS V3.0D
 * Origin: -=BerthaBoard=-  Manteca, Ca.209-823-0093 [HST] (1:208/204SEEN-BY:
208/204

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From:    George Weinert-v                       Area: DESQview
To:      Peter Jetson                           02 Dec 89 14:42:12
Subject: Re: Qemm Doesn't Work For Me!

 DW> Took awhile to get your reply so that I can't remember what problems
 DW> you were having.  Hopefully you have figured them out by the time.

PJ> The troubles have won - neither I, Quarterdeck or the helpful souls in
PJ> echo have managed to get QEMM running here.  I've given up.

 DW> If you could get on the Talk Channel Australia we could exchange notes
 DW> more quickly.  I'm AS1 (austin,tx account 1) if you get on.

PJ> I've never heard of "Talk Channel Australia"?  More info?

PJ> Peter Jetson
 Check out 386max for memory management - had similiar problems, and
after 386max, all is solved, for Gem/3 as well as Windows apps.

--- ConfMail V4.00
 * Origin: Publisher's Information Service (1:115/342)

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From:    Jan De-cocq                            Area: DESQview
To:      John Blumer                            05 Dec 89 16:43:00
Subject: Xdv

In a message to All <12-01-89 16:53> John Blumer wrote:
JB>Is there a reason why the DV manual says to rename xdv.com
JB>to dv.com?
JB>Is there some problem with typing XDV to start Desqview?

XDV.EXE will load a part of Desqvieq into expanded memoryry, thus incrasing
the amount of conventional memory available to run programs.
While DV.EXE will load at the conventional part.

see also you DV manual pg 138-139 and 162 !

(I'm talking about DV 2.25 and QEMM)

                Hope this was at your service

                                greeting from HOLLAND

                                 -=* Jan de-Cocq *=-

--- QuickBBS v2.61 [EVALUATION]
 * Origin: BBS Sussudio ++31-70-3212177 (2:512/111.0)

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From:    Bob Bradley                            Area: DESQview
To:      Dennis Schmitz                         05 Dec 89 11:47:20
Subject: Re: Questions

In a message of < 3 Dec 89 10:06:10>, Dennis Schmitz (1:106/1505) writes:

 ->  Last time I asked the sysop of Quarterdeck's BBS, (two days ago), he
 ->  said that neither QEMM 5.0 or DV 2.26 are ready yet.

Thanx for the info. Can I get that BBS number from you?


73 and CUL DE Bob SK


--- QM v1.00
 * Origin: HamNET [N5JZZ] * 386/HST Power * SDN 191 * 915-653-9077 (1:383/4.0)

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From:    Arthur Marsh                           Area: DESQview
To:      David Westman                          05 Dec 89 19:47:26
Subject: Re: Qemm Doesn't Work For Me!

In a message of <30 Nov 89 03:04:00>, David Westman (1:382/57) writes:

 >
 >When I hear the words, "so and so business, can you hold?"  I allways
 >shout in the receiver, "NO I'M CALLING LONG DISTANCE!"  And if she still
 >put's me on hold and it's not that important I'll hang up.
 >
I say "I'm calling from Australia" BEFORE anything else on international calls
(-: A$1.19/minute off-peak.

--- msged 1.99S ZTC
 * Origin: Arthur's point, Hawthorndene, near Adelaide (3:680/803.11)

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