AST Rampage/2

Hi,

I think I may want a RAM expansion card for my 8088 XT. I have an IDE CF, a Sound Blaster and a Network card. I have two expansion slots left and feel like a RAM Card is a useful option.

AST Rampage/2

Is the above what I want?

What is the best full length card with the most memory and what applications can I expect to take advantage of it? Like - do I really want it?

Chris

For $150 you might be better off finding another 2mb memory card, especially since half if that one's banks are empty.

What do you want the extra memory for? With an IDE CF, you may want much more than 2 MB to have a sizable disk cache to deal with the capacity of the CF drive.

I had a later version of the AST Rampage (with SIMMs). Great card. Price does seem high for what you are getting. AST's variation of the card with parallel and serial ports was called the Advantage which may be better if you only have two slots.

krebizfan said:

What do you want the extra memory for? With an IDE CF, you may want much more than 2 MB to have a sizable disk cache to deal with the capacity of the CF drive.

I had a later version of the AST Rampage (with SIMMs). Great card. Price does seem high for what you are getting. AST's variation of the card with parallel and serial ports was called the Advantage which may be better if you only have two slots.

Click to expand...

I want it because I think I should have it. I have no idea what I need it for. What is the absolute most I can get - full stop?

Chris

chjmartin2 said:

I want it because I think I should have it. I have no idea what I need it for. What is the absolute most I can get - full stop?

Chris

Click to expand...

The memory expansion cards that used SIMMs could have 8MB on the board and (sometimes) could also be equipped with a daughtercard that could handle another 8MB. It is a tight squeeze getting a daughtercard in place; an adjacent slot will often have to be left empty. That applies to the cards I remember including from AST and Boca. There were some other variations that I have no direct knowledge of. A search of on the online PC Magazine and Inforworld issues from 1988 to 1990 should result in a couple of articles evaluating EMS cards.

With cards that incorporated socketed chips, generally the maximum was 2 MB with some have an option of a daughtercard for another 2MB. Few cards shipped with a daughtercard so the chances of finding a daughtercard now is very slim.

If you don't have a plan for the card, you want an EMS 4.0 card which offers the most flexibility. The other item to look for is the number of register sets which improves multitasking with DesqView and Windows 2.x. AST did this well; some of the other brands wouldn't work with DesqView's multitasking.

The AST card you have identified is a good card. There were better cards but no telling how long it will be before one shows up for sale.