OS/2 e-Zine! - Pentium 133 System from MCA

Pentium 133 System from MCA

Mercede Computer Associates (MCA), in Stamford, Connecticut, are a great example of the many smaller computer companies that have sprung up across North America to fill the demand for quality systems with OS/2 preloaded. This month we had a look at a Pentium 133 system from MCA with Warp 4 preloaded and were pleased with what we saw -- with a few reservations.

Arrival and Unpacking

MCA is an company which normally sells and ships either locally or through mail/Internet order within the U.S.A. Since shipment to Canada is not their normal practice, there was some initial difficulty getting the test system past our ever fierce and bureaucratic Canadian customs agents, but with some perseverance, it was done. Possibly because of our unfriendly customs department, MCA has no plans at this time to make Canadian shipments a regular business practice.

Once we did get the machine though, we were slightly concerned since it appeared that it was non-functional. This was a fairly serious strike against MCA's machine for our review purposes but, happily, it turned out to be a very simple problem.

It was, in fact, just a loose video card. After setting up, the computer could be heard starting (and complaining that something was amiss) but no video information was being transmitted to the monitor. So we were forced to open the case of our new toy -- something a new user should not have to do (although, admittedly, many want to do).

When we got the case off, we were even more alarmed. Inside, as mentioned above, we found that the video card was not inserted all the way into its slot. We fixed this in a few seconds and were relieved when the machine booted normally afterwards. However, while we had the case open, we also noticed that the modem was not properly seated and both the floppy disk drive and the CD-ROM controller cables were dangling loose! The system also shipped with two serial port plugs of different sizes but the 9-pin connector that we needed was not plugged in so we had to do a quick switch there too.

In fairness to MCA, there was a great deal of pressure involved in sending this test machine due to press deadlines and it is possible that the components were jarred loose during shipping. But we were left wondering if equivalent pressure in normal business situations might not cause similar mix-ups for real customers.

Regardless, these problems were superficial and easily corrected. The motherboard manual indicated exactly where to plug the floppy disk cable and the CD-ROM cable connector was easily located on the sound card.

Since our problems were so easily fixed, we did not call MCA at the time to resolve them. However, Gregg Mercede, the owner of MCA, later assured us that it is his company's policy to immediately replace any MCA system a user receives in less than perfect condition. He told us:

Our policy is: Immediate replacement using cross shipment and we would then deal with any problems caused by the shipping services. MCA is founded on the principle of 100% customer satisfaction.

The positive side of this inconvenience was that it allowed us to view the arrangement of the "guts" of the machine. While the case was a typical mini-tower configuration, inside it had a convenient slide-in hard drive mounting bracket in the rear of the case instead of the front which is more common. This would make changing hard drives a snap since the whole unit pulls out for easy access and would also make it easier to work with the floppy disk or CD-ROM since it is less congested in that area. Other than the slide-out mounting bracket, the inside case configuration was fairly standard. The only notable inconvenience was that, as with every machine we have ever seen, the memory banks were hidden under impenetrable hardware and wiring, next to the power supply.

From the outside, the machine also looked typical with two 5 1/4" and two 3 1/2" drive bays, one of each occupied with the CD-ROM and floppy disk drive, respectively. There was a normal selection of power, turbo and reset buttons with standard information lights as well.

The Hardware

This machine was equipped with a Pentium chip from Intel running at 133 MHz (although the motherboard will accept other brands or speeds), 512K cache and an AMI BIOS dated 7/15/95. It featured "green" power management functions compatible with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Energy Star program (these features were enabled when we received the machine, which we liked quite a bit). The motherboard had two 16 Megabyte 72-pin simms in one of two memory banks for a total of 32 Meg of RAM (maximum 512 Meg of RAM). The Western Digital Caviar 21600 EIDE hard drive had a capacity of approximately 1.5 Gigabytes. The CD-ROM was a 12x Mitsumi drive (partially) plugged into a Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 PnP sound card. The only really generic item inside the box seemed to be the 28.8 modem, which we had trouble finding a model or brand name for (we later discovered it was a ZOOM V.34 28.8 fax/modem).

The motherboard featured 3 ISA slots (two of which were taken by the modem and sound card) and 4 PCI slots (one of which was occupied by the video card).

But the real joy of this system was the Matrox Millennium graphics card with 2 Meg of on-board WRAM. We had not seen one in action until we tested this system and were pleased to find that the high recommendations of Matrox customers seem well founded.

Manuals and Documentation

The Matrox driver disks and manuals were included in the box, as were manuals and disks for all the other hardware included in the system. While most of it, of course, had little mention of OS/2 (with the Matrox Millennium manual a nice exception) this certainly was not a concern since everything was set up and humming along nicely when the machine first booted. Also, the motherboard manual was unusually clearly written and helpful for a "clone" machine.

A Warped Machine

As required for our review purposes, this machine was preloaded with Warp 4, including all the bells and whistles of that operating system. Java (the Beta 1.02 version shipped with Netscape Navigator 2.02 for OS/2) was installed as was VoiceType Navigation and Dictation. However, OpenDoc support was not. MCA took the trouble to divide the ample hard drive into two partitions: an empty FAT partition, C: (about 500 Meg), and an HPFS partition, D: (the boot drive; about 1 Gig). Boot Manager was also installed in case the user should want to install DOS or Windows on the C: drive. This is an excellent configuration and should satisfy the needs of most users.

MCA obviously spends some time making sure their machines are user friendly "out of the box" so we were surprised to find that they had not modified the initial swap file settings. This should not be a concern for any Warp user with more than a month's experience but it would have been nice for the swap file to have been tweaked before shipping.

Our test machine also had the StarOffice Internet Pak v3.1 Beta installed with the StarOffice Manager object in the Startup folder. For those readers who are not familiar with StarOffice, it is a world calibre office suite for OS/2 with word processor, spreadsheet, drawing, image and charting applications included.

The other extra installed by MCA staff was Netscape Navigator 2.02E for OS/2. Finding the Navigator object on the Desktop instead of WebEx was a pleasant surprise since it saved us installing the application; for customers owning only one computer it would also save them a long download via the Internet.

All the preloaded software worked without complaint and as expected. There were no discernible system problems and the overall setup was well done.

Performance Impressions

If you have been waiting to upgrade from that old clunker of a 486, using this machine for an hour would convince you to do it now. It was a pleasure to use: boot times were minimal, every subsystem from hard drive to video was snappy. Even hard drive-hogging applications jumped to life and the video response left us smiling. Folders opened and populated briskly and using the WarpCenter was a pleasure instead of a chore. Even opening and using multimedia files or the usually sluggish IBM Works apps was quick.

The one time in our testing that we had this PC crash was when we were testing the multimedia. It appeared that MMOS/2 on this machine was unusually stable, even allowing us to smoothly play a MIDI file and an AVI with sound simultaneously. However, this was misleading and we subsequently experienced a few crashes while using MMOS/2. We are almost certain that this has nothing to do with the MCA machine and everything to do with Warp's multimedia abilities.

As standard practice we installed a few of our most used applications to make sure nothing in the system was too unconventional to cohabitate with Warp or typical software. The first thing we did was install the Iomega Zip drivers v2.34 and plug in a parallel port Zip drive. This installation went flawlessly and allowed us to install the programs mentioned above. We installed DragText v2.0, PMMail v1.53, Smalled v1.4, Info-ZIP's UnZip v5.20, NPS WPS v1.82, PMView v0.93 and (OK, you caught us) Trials of Battle v1.0.

This regimen was by no means comprehensive but it allowed us to install software from floppy, Zip and CD-ROM drives, using the standard IBM installation program and nonstandard installation programs. We encountered no problems and every application we tried performed well on this system with no conflicts.

If you are interested in more concrete performance measurements, compare the Sysbench 0.9.1c results for this machine to your own. (For details of what Sysbench is and where to get it, see the Editor's note on hardware reviews.)

Conclusions and Recommendations

Despite a shaky start with some loose cables, we liked this machine. It was well set up, had ample room for expansion, plenty of resources and performed quickly and solidly. It was a pleasure to use and proved to be an excellent machine for running OS/2 Warp. With a price of US$1,920 (without monitor) it is a good deal for a loaded mid- or budget level PC purchase.

Rating:

(4 out of 5 -- Good Buy)

System Configuration:

CPU: Intel Pentium 133 MHz
Cache: 512 K
RAM: 32 Meg
Video: Matrox Millennium w/ 2 Meg WRAM
Hard Drive: 1.5 Gig Western Digital Caviar 21600
CD-ROM: Mitsumi 12x
Floppy: 3 1/2"
Sound Card: Sound Blaster 16 PnP
Modem: ZOOM V.34 28.8 fax/modem

Price as tested: US$1,920
w/ CTX 15" monitor: US$2,295
Shipping Area: Anywhere in the U.S.A.
Applicable Taxes: CT Sales Tax is 6% on Computer Equipment until July 97, when it gets reduced to 5%, then every year, it will go down 1% until there is not tax on Computers.

Manufacturer:
Mercede Computer Associates (MCA)
880 Canal Street
Stamford, CT 06902
U.S.A.

Voice: (203) 975-0555
Fax: (203) 972-3445
e-mail: sales@mercede.com
WWW: http://www.mercede.com/

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