The Little Known Epson Equity Ie - An IBM PS2 Model 30 Clone
I have always had a fascination with 8086 XT class computers. Mainly because there were so few of them compared to the multitude of 8088 XT class computers out there. I own a Tandy 1000 SL with an 8MHz 8086 CPU (upgraded to an NEC V30). This is much faster than my Tandy 1000 SX with a 7.16MHz 8088 CPU (upgraded to a NEC V20). I have always wanted a 10MHz 8086 based system. These are as fast as you can officially go with an 8086. Intel only made them to run up to 10MHz. I had been keeping my eyes open for quite some time when an Epson Equity Ie came up for sale on eBay. The computer was in excellent condition and I ended up buying it. This is the only computer I know of outside of IBM’s PS2 Model 25 & 30 that have MCGA graphics onboard. This is basically a cut down version of IBM’s VGA chip. It only has 64K of ram vs 256K for the VGA. It supports the 320x200 256 color mode of the VGA as well as 640x480 2 color mode, but none of the VGA’s 16 color modes. This makes it pretty useless ...