Originally Posted by Mr IGH

Combos are nice because the there's so many flavors of brake levers on old bikes and not all separate brake/shift combos match up nicely. The Shimano combo package includes cables/housing and works on both v-brake and canti brakes (with a little adjustment cam in the lever). They use a single band clamp instead of two so no position issues. It's esp an problem with narrow, curvy bars that many of those old MTBs had. Well worth the slight premium because everything will fit with good positioning and you'll have new cables