🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8400065@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>I think Apple has shot itself in the foot.
>
>-- How much would *YOU* pay for an SE/030 upgrade and the 1.44Mb floppy
>in your machine?
>
>-- What if I said you *get* *to* THROW AWAY your MacSE expansion
>card(s), *NOW* how much would you pay?

>....
>
>Apple has made the same mistake as IBM!  And the blunder comes right
>after they watched IBM falter!  People resist PS/2's & the
>microchannel bus partly because they must throw away their AT/XT
>cards.  Now people can resist the SE/030 for the same reason!

While I admit that there is some problems to be seen in the upgrade,
there is a serious flaw in the logic in the poster's argument.

IBM user's had to throw away lot's of cards because you needed cards for 
just about everything in the PC.  But in the SE there seem to be pretty much
3 kinds of cards.

	1) Accelarators -- owners of these would presumably throw them out 
				or sell them anyway since there is not much
				point in "accelarating" a 16 MHz 68030 machine
				with an 8 or 16 MHz 68020.

	2) Display Adaptors -- here there is only a partial loss since the 
				display (which for 1 bit/pixel systems is the
				larger cost item) is still usable, you just 
				need a new card.

	3) Communications boards (ethernet, 3270, etc) -- here you have 
				(presumably, but see below) a total loss,
				but I suspect such cards count for a very low 
				percentage of the number of add-on cards sold.

Also, I would not leap to the conclusion that the boards will have to be
thrown out.  I haven't seen the new bus spec yet, but it sounds like it's
pretty much just the straight processor bus. There is no reason that i can 
think of that someone couldn't build an adapter.  There is a precedent for
this; my old 512e is now running a 16 MHz 68000 accelarator designed for the
SE but plugged into an adapter hooked to the 68000 on the 512e motherboard.
(this was a setup designed by MacMemory but now being sold by Siclone).

Just one man's opinion.

Josh




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Josh Hodas    (hodas@eniac.seas.upenn.edu)
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