Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 00:21:32 -0700 (PDT) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> To: karl@bagpuss.demon.co.uk (Karl Strickland) Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: zappa bios still broke? Message-ID: <199505150721.AAA05358@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> In-Reply-To: <199505150230.DAA04028@bagpuss.demon.co.uk> from "Karl Strickland" at May 15, 95 03:30:38 am
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>
> Any word on weather or not this is still brain damaged in the same
> way the plato bios is?
I looked at an Intel Zappa board and did my pre-buy visiual of the
board before I decide to spend by atypical 20 to 40 hours of product
testing before offering to sell them.
Basically it failed for these reasons:
1) Use of AMI WinBIOS. The worst BIOS I have ever used in my life,
except perhaps Mr. BIOS and early Pheonix stuff. But buy and
far it this is the worst thing AMI has ever done :-(.
2) The left off the some of the I/O stuff (forget now if it was the
floppy controller or the serial ports, but what ever it would
require using an ISA legacy card to replace the functionality.)
Since my currently qualified product has 2 EIDE ports, 2 16550
ports, and EPP/ECP parallel port, and the floppy on it this
was a draw back.
3) Support for P54C-75 and P54C-90 claimed, no support for P54C-100 :-(.
4) 20nS cache rams soldered to the board (probably the reason it can't
run a 100Mhz CPU.
5) Uses the infamous Intel VRM circuit that if the current carrying
diode fails it takes your CPU chip with it.
6) Requires use of tin plated SIMMS, you are not to use gold connector
SIMMS in this board due to the SIMM sockets Intel has choosen to
be there standard.
7) My cost on the board would be $60.00 more than I pay for the ASUS
boards I sell now and have already qualified.
My word again on this Intel OEM Products Division board know as Zappa
is ``DON'T'', buy the ASUS board.
--
Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation Company Custom computers for FreeBSD
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