If letters, reports, and manuals will occupy most of your PC's storage capacity, buy a DOS-based word processor and run it on a
386SX, 16-to-25 Mhz system that has 2 Mb RAM, an 80-to-120 Mb hard drive, and a monochrome VGA monitor.
The basic requirements are a
386SX computer, 4MB of RAM, a 80MB hard disk, a color monitor, a sound board, speakers, and at least one type of multimedia device, such as a CD-ROM drive.
What BCG wanted was a quick supply of 3,000
386SX computers for a vendor in the Ukraine.
Each of the dorm rooms contains a
386sx microcomputer, with 2 MEG of memory, VGA card, I/O card, UTP network card and a monochrome monitor.
A
386SX will be less expensive because it uses 286-based technology.
However, the rise of firms like Advanced Micro Devices, which rapidly developed the Am386SX chip that mimics Intel's
386SX chip, put tremendous pressure on Intel's rapid product development strategy.
The prevalence of the IBM
386SX client pc, with its noticeable lack of disk drives, is evidence of the flexibility that many MIS directors wanted.
Each Server supports anywhere from 5 to 10 NCR or Nixdorf
386SX workstations, which have printers, magnetic swipe readers, and smartcard readers as peripherals.
At the heart of the control is a widely available, relatively inexpensive, IBM-compatible
386SX PC clone.
The
386SX laptop computer has a full-size keyboard and a monitoring system that displays the status of internal functions (i.e., battery life).
In the System/55 XR it serves a local area network of Intel
386SX 16MHz PC workstations with 40MB storage and 14" VGA monitors.