286 Overclocking

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(a)chac.org http://www.chac.org/index.html Computer History Association of California