'90s era PC recommendation.

[Ken Seefried]

Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
> Does anyone have any recommendations for a '90s era PC that has PCI and
> ISA slots?  Ideally I'd like to have EISA slots too.  ?  At least I
> think that's what I want.

EISA is a nice-to-have, especially if you want to run multiple
interfaces (much better irq handling than ISA) and/or higher speed
stuff like FDDI, 100Mb enet, T-3/ATM, etc.  Or you already have a
cache of EISA cards.  That said (and this is x86 specific, because
there's a whole HPPA EISA world I don't know a lot about with all
sorts of weird stuff):

1) PCI does a better job......usually.

2) EISA motherboards, desktop machines and fun/exotic network cards
seem to be getting increasingly rare and ridiculously expensive, at
least on evil auction sites.  On the other hand, 10Mb EISA ethernet
and scsi cards are chump change.

3) There are some interesting network things that just don't seem to
have ever been made for EISA. For example, I've never heard of a fibre
ethernet or HSSI card for EISA.

4) I think EISA limits you to 386 through PII CPUs (and probably PII
as a PPro Overdrive upgrade outside of a server class machine).  At
least, I can't think of a P3 machine with EISA. YMMV.

5) The video card options are a bit thin on EISA.  The Compaq QVision
VGA is common as dirt (and just as dumb), but outside of that the ELSA
Winner and ATI Mach32 are the only "real" graphics cards I seem to see
often.  There's probably some awful TIGA boards out there somewhere.
Go PCI.

I held on to a couple of Intel Xpress machines for the EISA bus.  I
doubt I'd pay the premium  over a solid PCI/ISA machine.

Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> Depends on your CPU needs, but if you're willing to settle for P2/P3 era,
> anything using the Intel i440BX or GX generally has very good ISA support.

Yeah, but didn't the GX (and KX) have some pretty serious bugs until
really late steppings?  Same to a lesser extent with the NX.  The BX
(and FX) however was very reliable, as I recall.

Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
> I've long had a soft spot for the Pentium Pro.

Yeah, me too.  Great chip with a long useful life.  I ran a couple of
Intel PR440FX based machine for years past their expiration date
because they kept up with the load and just wouldn't die.

> A LONG time ago I saw an advertisement for a system that could accept six Pentium Pros.

ALR Revolution server, probably.  NCR and Corollary made 8-ways.

> I /think/ it's a Compaq Deskpro XL 560

Great machine; built like a tank.  Much better quality than the
Xpress.  I had an XL 6200 (200Mhz PPro) for many years and still
regret getting rid of it. Lucky you you got yours back.  The HP Vectra
XU was also pretty nice.