In the summer of '86 I bought two 286 clones -- one for me, one for spouse
-- from Rose Hill Systems in Scotts Valley, CA. These were 8MHz, 1 MB RAM,
20 MB disk, 5.25 HD floppy, and 14" Quimax green-screens. The total bill
should have been $5,130 but the vendor discounted it to $5,000 flat.
The vendor himself gave me, in a Ziploc, the xtals to overclock these pups
to 10MHz, at which speed the base computers worked flawlessly. The 2MB AST
RAMpage card I installed in mine went flaky at the higher speed, and AST
said that fitting the new ROMs was a factory job; rather than pay AST's
price I sold the card and bought an Everex equivalent which handled 10MHz
with a shrug.
These were the machines that convinced me, my wife, and everyone who saw
them that clones were the wave of the future. We later sold one, but the
case of the other is still here with a running computer in it.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby engine_at_chac.org
http://www.chac.org/index.html
Computer History Association of California
Received on Sat Mar 28 1998 - 10:54:48 GMT