🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <24370@galaxy.ucr.edu> insom@galaxy.ucr.edu (Chris Ulrich) writes:
>
>  I have been using a 1542A at the 8mhz dma speed with no problems
>at all.  It has an eteq chip set, and is a 40mhz 386.
>  I get tired of these absurd jinggoistic accusations about cheap
>"imported" clones.  I have had more problems with propritary 
>modifications to a standard to get more "performance" out of a 
>system at the cost of making the bloody system impossible to fix 
>or upgrade.  Systems from the tiawaneese clone venders are as good 
>or bad as any other system you might buy.

Who said anything about "imported" clones?  A few years back one of
the motherboards known to have problems with bus-master cards was
made by a well-known American manufacturer.  (They've since cleared
up the problem, so I don't want to prejudice anybody by naming them.)

The issue here is between getting a product known to work, and one
which is cheaper but unknown.  If you can find an inexpensive MB
which is known to be reliable, by all means, get it.

>  My advice?  Take the card to the store you are going to buy from,
>and try using it.  If they dont let you, take your money elsewhere.

"Try before you buy" is generally sage advice.  But there is a catch:
people tend to build their systems piece-by-piece, and often wind up
adding cards to their system that didn't even exist when they bought
it (for example, the problems some folks are having with the Gravis
UltraSound and certain OPTI-chipset motherboards).

In my case, I didn't have a bus-mastering disk controller or DMA-based
audio card before I bought my motherboard, although I planned to get
them.  So I bought a well-known, conservatively-designed MB to save
myself future grief.  And it happened to be from an American company.
Since then, I've added these devices (and a few other odd-ball cards)
and had zero trouble.  If I had already had these cards, it would have
made sense to get a cheaper MB with a money-back guarantee.  Instead, I
paid a bit more and got the use of the faster CPU while I saved for the
other components, (relatively) confident that they would work when I
finally added them.

Your situation may be different.  Or you might feel differently about
the risks involved.  I don't see anything to get quite so upset about,
however.

		-Ed Hall
		edhall@rand.org