From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: 50z upgrade: an update
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 16:38:47 GMT

I ordered the Kingston SX/Now! 20MHz board and the 2MB memory module
from the SOURCE on Monday. They said there was a 5-day back-order on
the Kingston, but they'd send it express when it arrived. In the event 
it arrived in my mailbox yesterday afternoon (Tuesday). Well packed
and a manual, chip remover, and 3.5" diskette for the Kingston. I did
not have a grounding strap, so I picked one up on the way home. I fool
around with computers only about once every other year, so I was not taking
chances. I read the manual first! Luckily. The cache program has to be loaded
before installation. The actual installation was quite straightforward.
IBMs Quick Reference gives detailed instructions on swapping the Memory
Module, and I did this first. It involves removing both the diskette drive
and the disk drive, plus their controller cards, so its not that obvious.
Oh yes, a substantial sub-chassis needs to be removed too. Very poor design.
Once I got the memory swapped, I took out the MultiModem 224ES card (this
is an excellent modem. I use MNP class 5 and ger error correction and
compression. We have a similar setup at the other end, of course), and
then removed the 286 with the tool. Quite simple once you get the hang of
it. The Kingston board is a replacement for this chip, and fits snuggly
in place, I had no problems replacing the modem card over the top of all 
this. At least 0.001" left! Powered up, and immediately got the old 164
No-NO message. Looked up the Quick reference Manual and determined I
had to boot from the back-up Reference Diskette (which, by some magic, I
was able to find). Basically, it needed to be told about the extra 1MB of
RAM. At the second boot everything worked. Well, almost everything. Speed
was fine. WINDOWS was fine (but not yet in 386 Enhanced), but NORTON
had real problems (and continues to do) with the Disk Controller. Basically,
the machine now fails the System integrity tests for Drive C:. As follows:

		Disk Mapping Problems Found!

	Calibrate has determined that the disk
	mapping for this drive has problems.
	calibrate will not run on this drive.

In fact, NORTON gives 83ms for track-to-track, while Checkit gives
a more probable Twenty something. Also, Norton will not give a throughput,
while Checkit will. This problem does not go away with the ktccache
de-activated.

I then reloaded WINDOWS having removed HIMEM from config.sys and
SWAPDRV(?) from autoexec.bat (on Kingston's insistance). This time
WINDOWS automatically came up in Enhanced mode. Very nice. Well,
is it? With my modem activated I cannot open MSDOS for lack of
memory. Aaaagh!@#$. It seems that 590kb is not enough. So, if I
cannot talk to the net and run a non-Windows application this is all
a bit stupid. Solution? get a memory card from Fry's, I suppose.

Now, on the question of the drive. With my SX/Now!, kingston included
a blurb for a SCSI controller and four very fast Quantum drives, all
packaged specifically for the 50Z. I wonder what the price is. I'll check.
At the moment, tho', its memory thats on my mind.

I have exercized this SX/Now! quite hard, and I've found asbsolutely no
problems other than the NORTON thing. Nicely made, very well documented
complete with photos. Sighs of relief.

					Francis Muir

francis@sep.stanford.edu