🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "Don" == Don McGregor (mcgredo@prism.CS.ORST.EDU)

Don> I don't know why they'd bother.  There are going to be a zillion
Don> low-margin clone makers making 586 boxes, so there won't be any
Don> shortage of them.

Yes, and they'll all be making PClowns -- no way to really use a P5
(or even a 386 for that matter). There's a heck of a difference
between a P5/PClown and a real workstation built around a P5 chip.
Real memory mapped video, no VGA nonsense, no crippled bus, no
hardware fuck-ups, real memory architecture, real MMA, real SCSI-II
and Ethernet in the motherboard, etc, etc.

Look at the NeXT HW design (or a Sun or whatever). Compare to a
PClown. Now, the major difference is *not* the CPU, it's support chips
and architecture. There much more to designing a workstation than
selecting a CPU, and PClown vendors can't do the things they should
because they have to be compatible with a machine intended to use
cassette port, 16 kbyte RAM, and ROM BASIC.

Don> NeXT has a neat factory, but I don't think they'd want to get
Don> into a price war with CloneTek Computers and Fishing Bait inc.

They won't have to, no matter the chip (and no, I'm not sure a P5 is
the best choice)

Don> yeah, the NeXT version might be a little more integrated and work
Don> out of the box, but the price differential is likely to be pretty
Don> big.

Maybe -- but it's *not* a matter of "a little more integrated".

/Lars
--
Lars Fischer, fischer@iesd.auc.dk | It takes an uncommon mind to think of
CS Dept., Aalborg Univ., DENMARK. | these things.  -- Calvin