🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <STORKEL.89Oct4144438@rudist.shell.com>, storkel@rudist.shell.com (S. Storkel) writes:
> 
> I was just looking at some of the product brochures for the new
> Macintosh Portable. Everything sounded great until I read the
> following paragraph:
> 
> 	Processor Direct Slot (PDS)
> 	* The PDS is a high-performance slot connected to the
> 	microprocessor bus that will support one expansion
> 	card. (Note: The PDS is not compatible with the SE,
> 	SE/30, or NuBus expansion slots.)
> 
> Maybe I'm being short-sighted here, but it seems incredibly stupid
> for Apple to have four totally incompatible interface slots. 

It does have some drawbacks...

> Only
> IBM would do something this stupid. 

Oh, I don't know.  Some other companies would do the same or worse.

> It would seem to me that the
> smart thing to do would be to make ONE type of interface slot that
> would be the same across the entire Macintosh family. 

This leaves you with either an LCD (lowest-common-denominator) slot,
or be locked into a suboptimal design when you finally get to the point
where you can use the nifty expansion features.

> What happened?
> Did the interface guys get bored with three totally incompatible
> interfaces and decide to design a fourth just so the engineers at
> other companies would have something new to do? Why couldn't someone
> have designed things so that there were at most three types of
> interfaces (best bet: SE/30 and Mac Portable sharing the same type
> of interface). Sure it would have been a little bit more complicated,
> but I think the payoffs would have been well worth the effort. Where
> am I missing the boat?

The Portable has *severe* power-usage constraints...also, with a 68C000
(or whatever the alphabet soup is) onboard, a lot of the the SEx's
requirements are superfluous.

There may be some problems with available space onboard, too.

------------
"...I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by 
reorganizing: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion 
of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
	- Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.