To: 386users@TWG.COM Subject: 80386 mailing list, vol 4 #14 Date: 2 Mar 89 04:11:19 EST (Thu) From: "Wm E. Davidsen" 80386 User's mailing list vol 4 #14 Mar 2, 1989 In this issue: Wanted: Data acquisition software for 80386/80286 AT request for info on Spike New magazine named MIPS. 80387 in windows 386 Re: VP/ix performance? AST Systems Gateway 2000 386 Need 386 motherboard that holds more than 16MB DISPLAY MEMORY FAILURE with V7 V-RAM VGA in ALR FlexCache The addresses for the list are now: 386users@TWG.COM - for contributions to the list or ...!uunet!TWG.COM!386users 386users-request@TWG.COM - for administrivia or ...!uunet!TWG.COM!386users-request P L E A S E N O T E If you want to get on or off the list, or change your address, please mail to the 386users-request address, or the message will be delayed by having to hand forward it (for your convenience, not mine). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: barkdoll@cattell.psych.upenn.edu (Ed Barkdoll) Subject: Wanted: Data acquisition software for 80386/80286 AT Date: 23 Feb 89 00:22:12 GMT I am in the market for data acquisition software for an 80286 or 80386 based machine. Minimally the package would support several A/D channels, be capable of displaying 1 or more data traces in 'real time', be able to perform various operations upon the data such as smoothing, differentiation, integration, linear/expon. regression, be support various output devices such as a plotter or laser printer. Price limit up to several K for starters. Please send mail as I don't read all of these newsgroups. thanks, Edwin Barkdoll [barkdoll@cattell.psych.upenn.edu] p.s. I already know about ASYST and its derivatives ------------------------------ From: ward@eplrx7.UUCP (ward) Subject: request for info on Spike Date: 23 Feb 89 16:45:58 GMT I saw a request on the net a few months ago for info about SPIKE. I don't know anything about electrophysiology software, however, I do have an article about a product from Brainwave Systems Corporation. They sell an 80386 workstation with software which does a lot of real-time data analysis. The article was from a Infoworld Target Edition from some time last year. They definitely look worth looking into. Their address is: 3400 Industrial Lane Suite 3 P.O. Box 1043 Broomfield, CO 80020 (303)466-6190 their contact is: Bob Douglas The review is in Computers in Society, Infoworld Target Edition # 1 The issue was on Neural Networks. I hope this helps, I'm into software, not wetware. Rick P.S. Sorry about not responding sooner, if I hadn't just cleaned my study, I never would have found it. P.P.S. Sorry about posting this, but I couldn't get it through on email. -- Rick Ward | E.I. Dupont Co. uunet!eplrx7!ward | Engineering Physics Lab (302) 695-7395 | Wilmington, Delaware 19898 Just Say When. | Mail Stop: E357-302 ------------------------------ From: car@refuge.colorado.edu (Chris Roueche) Subject: New magazine named MIPS. Date: 23 Feb 89 21:09:19 GMT [ I included this because it may be of interest to readers of this list. I have looked over the first few issues, and it look pretty useful -wed ] I observed that some folks have been in mourning over the downfall (or death) of PCTech magazine. Well, there's a new one available called MIPS. I have received the first two issues and am reasonably impressed. Anybody else out there take this gamble on yet another computer magazine or am I the lone MIPS subscriber? :-) It's not for everbody; it covers high end machines -- no cheap stuff in these pages. They have given in depth reviews and comparisons of the NeXT machine, a couple 33MHz 386 machines, the Sun 386i, and other machines comparable to these high end monsters (386, 68030, RISC, SPARC, N10, Weitek, 486, etc.). They also cover current concepts, such as OS/2 vs. UNIX scheduling. Although the software testing seems minimal, they have compared the performance of several PC UNIX implementations. Their testing platforms are quite thorough. No, I'm not advertising. I just feel that this magazine fills a market gap that some people may be interested in. I am quite happy I took the gamble on y.a.c.m. (Not that I can afford any of the equipment reviewed...). Oh yes, let me mention the minimal advertising (compared with "other" mags [computer shopper -- :-) just kidding]) Chris Roueche Student -- CU @ Boulder [any trademark belongs to its respective owner.] ------------------------------ Date: 17 Feb 89 13:37:00 CST From: zielke@physics.rice.edu Subject: 80387 in windows 386 I have recently been testing MS windows 386. There seems to be a quirk in the system that it does not save the 80387 registers during task switch. Is this a general problem with the system or have I forgotten to set this up. I know of several people running into this problem. Thanks in advance. David Zielke =============================================================================== ARPA==> Zielke@Physics.Rice.Edu * Zielke@128.42.9.23 * After Three Days MaBell==> 713-527-8101 ext. 4018 work * Without Programming 713-666-2982 home * Life Becomes US Snail==> David M. Zielke * Meaningless 7490 Brompton #110 * Houston, Tx 77025 * -The Tao of Programming =============================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Feb 89 16:01:46 est From: "William E. Davidsen Jr" Subject: Re: VP/ix performance? CPU and disk performance should be about the same. Screen update is slower, particularly when the system is doing other things. Oddly, programs which use the BIOS seem less affected than those which write directly to the screen. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Feb 89 03:39:16 PST From: "Jeff Sicherman,CSU Long Beach" Subject: AST Systems I have been using an AST Premium 286 for a while and am quite satisfied with it but want to upgrade to 386 capability in the near future. I would appreciate any comments or experiences with AST's 386 machine, comparisons to others, and any thoughts on the 386 upgrade board for Premuim 286's. Jeff Sicherman JAJZ801@CALSTATE.BITNET ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 89 22:23:05 MST From: Ron Fowler Subject: Gateway 2000 386 >From: harrisMark Harris) >Date: 22 Jan 89 01:01:52 GMT >... considering buying a Gateway 2000 computer and would >like to hear of any relevant experiences from Gateway users. > ... Any comments on reliability, technical support, etc.? We've had a Gateway 386 20 MHz machine since last October, and have been very pleased with it. Gateway's shipping department is chaotic, but once you *get* the machine, it's pretty reliable, and their tech support department is available tollfree (although when they're busy, you might have to make an "appointment" for the next morning; they *DO* return your call). Be sure and request the Phoenix BIOS; ours was shipped with an Award, and we had a lot of flaky problems with the floppy drives. They all went away when Gateway tech support sent us the Phoenix eproms (they'll ship replacements with a credit card number as security; they don't actually charge anything to your card unless you fail to return the exchange item within the alloted 30 days). We purchased the machine with 2 MB (which requires 256K chips), and our salesman promised that when we were ready to upgrade to 4 or 8 MB (which require 1MB chips), they'd buy back the 256's at prevailing market prices, and apply the credit to the upgrade pricece. I'm pretty cynical about sales promises, but then a few weeks ago, we decided to upgrade to 4 MB. We expected to pay perhaps $700-$800, and maybe get $100-$200 credit for the old chips. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Gateway's buyback reflected market reality (wherein 256K's go for considerably more per megabyte than 1MB's). The total cost of the upgrade? $208! The only problem was getting them to ship the chips; we ordered them Air, but it took about 10 days and perhaps 3 additional phone calls to persuade them to actually send the chips. After four months, our tower configuration continues to run reliably; we have an 80 MB Seagate 4096 and a 40 MB NEC D4156, along with a Lantastic network adapter, bus mouse, Lasermaster Capcard interface to our Canon LBP-8II laser printer, Paradise VGA w/NEC Multisync monitor. We run Desqview 90% of the time, and have an alternate CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT startup that runs Soft-ICE (incidentally, probably the most powerful software-only debugger I've ever seen. It's better than most In Circuit Emulators for the 8086; it uses the '386 protected mode and paging capabilities to provide a very powerful set of breakpoint instructions, and the interface to Debug, Symdeb or Codeview lets you forget about SoftICE altogether after you've set your breakpoints). The only consistant problem we have is one I've seen on other 386's and many 286 machines: background file transfers (using Desqview) tend to drop characters at speeds of 9600 bps and above, if the foreground task gets too disk intensive. I suspect the BIOS, since this happens with a wide range of comms programs, but I've never been able to pin it down. --Ron Fowler NightOwl Software, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 89 23:30:27 PST From: steinmetz!uunet!cdp!scott Subject: Need 386 motherboard that holds more than 16MB [ if you can help this person, please post your answer to the list as well ] Does anyone know of 386 motherboards that will hold more than 16MB of 1MByte SIMMs? Hopefully it'll be cheaper than the $5,000 one I saw advertised someplace. And I'd appreciate a phone number or city for the manufacturer of any such motherboard. Along with any rumors about AT compatibility, and ability to run one of the V/386 Unixes. Thanks. -scott {sun,uunet,...}!pyramid!cdp!scott arisia.xerox.com!cdp!scott ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 18:38 From: Volker Blasius Subject: DISPLAY MEMORY FAILURE with V7 V-RAM VGA in ALR FlexCache I own an ALR FlexCache 20386 and wanted to add a fast VGA card to it. >From reports I decided on a Video Seven V-VRAM VGA and bought and installed it (256 KB, V-RAM VGA BIOS Version 1.04), but it never worked properly: only about 90-99% of the characters or pixels written to it actually appear on the screen; the remaining characters or pixels stay as they were or keep the color they had before. When I switch back from graphics to text mode, the shapes of the characters have changed drastically: a few dots have been added to the character matrix while others were turned off. The diagnostic program supplied with the card tells me most of the time: DISPLAY MEMORY FAILURE; PLEASE HAVE YOUR CARD SERVICED. So I took the card back to the dealer and he ordered a new one for me, but nothing changed. When we tried the V-RAM in a different PC, it worked perfectly, while a Video Seven VEGA VGA worked quite normally in my FlexCache. Everything we tried with switches and software had no influence at all on the problem. So the dealer finally told me that the problem is probably caused by a bug in the ALR BIOS (Phoenix 80386 ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 01/15/88) concerning memory refresh rates, but that's only a guess. Does anyone out there have an idea where the problem actually is and how it can be solved? The two dealers here (V7 / ALR) are cooperative but obviously completely at a loss - and so am I. And it's a LONG way from Germany to ALR or V7, especially concerning phone bills. Many thanks in advance for any helpful remark. Volker Blasius (grz004@dbngmd21.BITNET) ------------------------------ End of 80386 M/L ****************