(This document is part of the PC-Clone Unix Hardware Buyer's Guide. The Guide is maintained by Eric S. Raymond ; please email comments and corrections to him.)

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Which Clone Vendors to Talk To

Some picks

If you've got the bucks to pay for high-end, high-quality hardware, I don't know of anybody better than VA Linux Systems. (Full disclosure: They've given me hardware and made me a director of the company.)

Some pans

Dell: treated the Unix community, customers and its own employees very badly by making an internal decision to kill its market-leading SVr4 port, then obfuscating and lying about its intentions for months after its actions made the direction clear. Their technology lead ain't what it used to be either. Send Michael Dell a message --- boycott his hardware.

EPS: Matthew Philip Upton <[email protected]> reports having been seriously jerked around on the purchase of a Local Bus 486DX2-66 by EPS --- incorrect assembly, an I/O card that was DOA, ordered CD-ROMs never delivered, a CD-ROM drive that died soon after first power-up, serial ports that won't exceed 2400cps, and "the fan on the CPU died last week". He was charged and still hasn't been re-credited for the replacement parts --- and he says it takes 2-3 days to reach tech support and they don't return calls. It sounds like EPS is best avoided.

Gateway: may also be a vendor to avoid. Apparently their newer machines don't have parity bits in their memories; memory is tested only on reboot. This is dubious design even for DOS, and totally unacceptable for Unix.

Eric S. Raymond