19 Dec
2005
19 Dec
'05
10:33 p.m.
On 12/19/2005 at 10:06 PM Scott Stevens wrote:
And the shocking thing is it's always the same
schematic. You can
use that schematic to troubleshoot almost ANY XT clone motherboard
from a certain era. They all had the same TTL, and usually even
placed on the board identically.
The (Taiwan) government got behind the little manufacturers in a big way,
even commissioning a "legal" BIOS.
I think this was not lost a couple of decades later on the PRC; for
example, the cheaper musical instruments follow a common design, regardless
of where they were constructed. A design 714 tuba was a copy of an old
model made by Alexander in Mainz. Quality or lack thereof is variable, but
the design is always the same. Only lately has the quality and variety of
designs improved; mostly as a result of bringing in foreign engineering and
design talent. Some of the strings are very respectible.
-Chuck