• AST 202160-002

Accelerator card for IBM PC/XT and Clones. Turbo XTs up to 8MHz are supported. AMD 286 10MHz Included on card. Uses a unique ribbon cable to be inserted into the motherboard socket, with an additional DIP40 socket with support circuitry installed "on top" of the ribbon cable itself. A TSR can be loaded to switch between 286 and 8088 with a key combination while the computer is running, but a jumper can be set on the card to boot in 286 mode, bypassing the need for drivers. The clock crystal for the 286 and 287 is socketed. If one wants to use software to switch between 8088 and 286 modes, and an 8087 is installed on the motherboard, a 287 must be installed on the card to prevent crashes.

Eight DIP switches are accessible on the back of the card which enable caching for 0-640KB of Conventional Memory, UMBs, and specifically F600h (IBM ROM BASIC, very strange for 1988)

SW1 is permanently set to ON with a bodge wire, ensuring 0-256KB range is always cached. IBM PCs with less than 256KB RAM are unsupported by the HotShot.