The weakness of the EISA bus, which IBM was not slow to point out, is that it won’t start appearing in machines until late next year, and that is likely to put a crimp on the business of all the clonemakers committed to producing machines that use it – but could be good news for any manufacturer who promises to exchange old 80386 boards for new for a nominal sum when the machines do come out: otherwise, users are likely to postpone major purchases of top-end machines until the new bus does appear, in the meantime buying the cheapest 80386 boxes they can find as stop gaps.
