Fox legend PR100

On present evidence, Intel is holding off the competition quite handily when it comes to Pentium-class processors. There have been some credible alternatives from NexGen/AMD and Cyrix, but they've never really managed to threaten the Intel hegemony. However, there are machines available with a non-Intel CPU fitted for those keen on shaving the extra bit off the cost of a Pentium class machine.

This mini-tower system from Fox Computers proved to be one such machine, fitted with the AMD K5 processor clocked at 100MHz. One of the problems with some of the Pentium alternatives is that, unlike the Intel chip, they don't have floating point calculation built in - NexGen and Cyrix both make FPU-less processors. This clobbers the performance of advanced games like Quake which rely on the FPU to calculate the complex graphics and engines. Fortunately, the current generation of AMD K5 chips does have an FPU, so it will be no worse off than its 100MHz Intel counterpart when faced with the demands of Quake or any other FPU-intensive application.

Apart from its processor, there isn't anything especially unusual about the Fox. It has a pleasant enough looking fascia and an acceptably quiet cooling fan, and isn't tricked out with clock-speed indicators or other unnecessary flashing lights.

It comes with a Microsoft mouse and a flyweight all-plastic narrow-border keyboard which had a straight rather than a curly lead. This lays you open to damaging the port or breaking the cable internally if the keyboard is dropped or jerked accidentally. I also didn't like the light and rather rattly action of the keyboard either.

Redemption came in the form of the monitor, an Idek Vision Master with a relatively flat 15in tube and a 13.7in image diagonal. It had digital controls including barrel/pincushion and trapezoidal correction, rotation and even RGB gun intensity adjustments, all of which are accessed through an on-screen setup menu.

The picture was generally fairly well focused except for some fuzzing at the corners, and the tube supports a stable 75Hz vertical refresh at 800 « 600 resolution. The catch is that you're left to figure out how to persuade Windows to shift up to it from the default 60Hz.

The Fox does well enough in terms of drive expansion with two 5.25in bays and a 3.5in bay free, all front-opening, but its motherboard is arranged so that the processor cooling fan gets right in the way of the card slots. So while there are two ISA slots and one PCI slot available, none of them will take anything over half-length.

However, this machine already has a sound card - albeit a cheap Aztech Sound Galaxy 16 - and a Trust 28.8K data/fax modem. Graphics are provided by a Tseng Labs ET4000/W32P-based card with 1Mb of DRAM and sockets for a second megabyte, although a faster replacement card might be a better option.

Our review sample came with 256Kb of secondary cache, but according to Fox it will supply 512Kb from now on for the same price. The motherboard has the usual ZIF Type 7socket and Intel's 430HX chipset, so it can be processor-upgraded to a Pentium/200 when necessary. I also noticed that it had the new universal serial bus port (USB) for daisychaining serial peripherals, although nothing was connected to it.

The speakers had accidentally been omitted from the packaging, but you usually get a small pair of mains-powered 10W Labtec speakers. From experience, I know these to be fairly average kit which will do for casual use, but aren't adequate for decent quality music reproduction.