🚀 go-pugleaf

Orignal posters' names omitted, because I only want to express my opinion, 
not to flame anybody.  And I do hope that Mr. neil@atari notices this.

>>... the blitter upgrade will be a motherboard swap for 520 owners.  It
>>may be a routine chip attachment for 1040s, but 520s HAVE to have their
>>motherboard exchanged.
>
>If so (and Atari doesn't make any provision for all of us who have
>done on-board upgrades to one meg...then Atari is going to lose a lot
>of loyal supporters in this area. Starting with me ....

If Atari acturally provides any upgrade path, they should be encouraged
by all user community not discouraged by owners of private or third-party
upgrades.  Upgrade path is a lower priority service than hardware
and software maintenance, and Atari has its right to choose what is
upgradable.  To me, including both original 520 and 1040 is a reasonable
decision.  If it offends the hardware hackers, then Atari stands the
chance of losing some of them.  For many other people like me, I want to
say my welcome to this upgrade, and don't want to see this discouraged.

On the other hand, I DO doubt whether this is a vapor promise from Atari.
If they want to IMPROVE THEIR CUSTORM SERVICE as they said, they should do
it (there is no overworked software engineer execuse involved here), and
do it right, which means:
1. confirms that they will, or consider to, provide the upgrade, or
   at least denies openly that they won't do it to terminate the rumor.
2. when the time is right, publicize the schedule and the cost, which is
   another factor to their customer relationship (no 1 Mb chip price
   issue involved here).

Uncertainty is the biggest complaint to Atari from customers and third-party.
This is one of the few chances left that Atari can demonstrate themselves
as a serious computer business.

Jeff JanePing Chiu
jchiu@gswd_vms.Gould.COM, ihnp4!uiucuxc!ccvaxa!jchiu

working for but in way reflecting the official opinions of
Gould, Computer System Division.