How is the Y2K controller
Despite the fact that such controllers are now produced by many companies, this type of equipment does not shine with a variety of technical solutions. Pay attention to the appearance of the most common controllers in the Ukrainian market: Year 2000 BIOS Enabler from American Megatrends (hereinafter AMI); SC2000 offered by Tessart (hereinafter SC2000); BIOS-Y2000 ProblemSolver, manufactured by Computers, (hereinafter ProblemSolver) and the E2000 BIOS Enabler controller, manufactured by EPOS (hereinafter E2000). They all look like twin brothers. The main structural elements of any controller are: ROM with a BIOS correction program written in it, an address decoder, an address selector, and a bus driver.
The design differences between these controllers are very slight. The AMI and SC2000 controllers have a mounting bracket (it is removed in the photo). I do not think that in the presence or absence of such a bar there is a significant difference for a computer that is not subjected to frequent transport. The SC2000 controller (Tessart), unlike the others, does not have a bus driver. Of course, there is a certain risk of unstable computer operation due to increased load on the ISA bus. But we installed this controller in various boards and did not notice much influence. The address selector of the ProblemSolver controller (“Computers”, unlike the others, has only two possible values for the start address. Potentially, this is a certain narrowing of the possibilities laid down in the ideology of building computers of the “IBC” architecture (now it is called the “Intelovo” architecture). In some cases, it may be difficult to configure the system. But honestly, I don’t think that it will be insurmountable difficulties.
Thus, the main difference between the controllers designed to solve the problem of 2000 is the logic of the program located in the ROM.
