🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Mar1.175823.10643@smsc.sony.com> amir@Sony.COM (Amir ) writes:
> 
>Talking about the price, I noticed that the hard disk is standard but
>ethernet board is not in the IBM systems.  This doesn't make much sense.
>Is this really true?  If so, how much is the ethernet card?  Also, if it
>is a microchannel card, what are the chances of it being high performance?
>Hopefully, it is not a PS/2 card....
>

Well, it does sorta make sense...from an IBM perspective.  Remember that
IBM is all hog-wild about 16-mbps Token Ring.  Thus, they are giving you 
the option of having TR or Ethernet networking (or X.25 or FDDN or whatever).
Not such a bad idea, IMHO.  As far as the `chances' of it being high-
performance, I don't see anything inherent in the Microchannel arch-
itecture that would keep it from being so.  Certainly, if it can, as
claimed, chug along at 20MB/sec., it will far outpace the ability of
ethernet to push data.

> 
>I don't see how it is going to be an IBM killer.  Motorola still needs to
>prove that it can be a computer company and not just a semiconductor company.
>It has failed everytime in the past.  Also, it is not clear how it is going
>keep its OEMs happy if it starts to compete with them.
>

I dunno...there seems to be a lot of 680x0-based VME boxes around, and
Motorola MVME cards have a huge share of the real-time and controller
market.  They seem to be doing okay selling boxes.  

Besides...lots of semi manufacturers `compete' with their OEMs.  Intel
has the 301 and 302 '386 motherboards, and the iPSC parallel machines.
MIPS has it's own line of machines.  National Semi had the ill-fated
ICM line.  As long as Motorola keeps up the supply of chips, I don't
see any of it's OEMs getting too upset...


-- 
       Ken Seefried iii             ...!<anywhere>!uunet!gatech!mm!ken
         MetaMedia, Inc.              ken%mm.uucp@gatech.edu 
           Atlanta, Georgia, USA        obquote: "I feel...like a god..."