At 04:01 AM 4/28/99 -0400, you wrote:
>A better possibility would be to find some cheap old 1 Meg SIMMS that will
>fit, and install 4 Meg which will run at the motherboard frequency.
>
286s were so long ago now that I don't remember a lot of things that
clearly any more, but there have been a couple of things stated that I
don't believe are true.

Someone said that IDE hard drives would not work with a 286.  IDE hard
drives came out just before the switch from 286s to 386s.  My first 286 had
a 40MB Seagate IDE hard drive.  Most 286s should be able to use IDE hard
drives with the appropriate controller card but it is possible that with an
older 286 that it might be using an MFM or RLL controller card and drive.
You can still find these but they are expensive and you might be better off
looking for an IDE hard drive instead.

286s cannot use more than 1MB of RAM in the sense that we think of using
memory with Windows these days.  Windows needs "extended" memory.  The
other form of memory is "expanded" memory.  This works by moving blocks of
memory above 1MB into a space under 1MB when it is needed so it can be
directly addressed.  This is the reason why Windows 3.x will not run in
"enhanced" mode on a 286.  Even if you add more than 1MB of memory to a
286, it cannot be used to run programs that need extended memory.  Expanded
memory is used mainly to store data, not programs.  The primary use of
expanded memory on 286s was for disk caches or storing large spreadsheets
or documents while being worked on.

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