Date: Sun, 13 Sep 87 22:19:40 EDT
From: Harry.Bovik@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
To: Harry.Bovik@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: AMT 386 warning

Article 7150 of comp.sys.ibm.pc:
From: mike@cimcor.UUCP (Michael Grenier)
Subject: Warning on AMT 386 machines
Keywords: slow RAM
Date: 5 Sep 87 11:46:31 GMT
Organization: Grenier & friends, Forest Lake, MN

I just received a AMT (American Micro Technologies) 386 based AT and
was rather disappointed. Their ad claimed the use of the Pheonix
Bios but the board came instead with a Award Bios. They use a
motherboard by Wedge Technologies (in my opinion, very low quality).
I have to grant though that it did power up.

   The thing that burns me though is that I bought $1400 worth
of high speed 32 bit RAM (only 4 megabytes) which I was told
ran at the full 16 MHz speed. In fact, AMT uses 120ns DRAMs running on
an 8 MHz bus even though the cards are 32 bit cards. The technicians
then told me that it was an 8 Mhz bus in order to keep compatibility
with other AT cards. I always thought that the two 32 bit slots were
supposed to be used for high speed RAM ( like Compaq and PC's Limited 386
machines use). The slow RAM did effect the performance of the
IOTEST program that was posted to comp.arch a while back giving me
a performance of about 58 seconds compared to Compaqs 33 seconds.

Just thought you all should know.....
    -Mike
    ihnp4!meccts!cimcor!mike