🚀 go-pugleaf

Well I don't claim to have a monopoly on NRW dreams but here's mine!

[Science fiction alert! :-]

Physical Form:

NRW will come in only one form, the brick (at least initially)!

Video:

You buy the same brick for both color and mono.  Mono simply requires a special  
color'ish cable.  Color simply requires more video (and, pragmatically, main)  
memory on the motherboard.

CPU(s):

The base brick comes with one 88110 but is upgradable to the maximum  
configuration of four 88110's.  Each additional CPU requires a new 88110 and  
additional main and shared memory for that CPU.  The high-end configuration is  
nothing more than an upgraded base brick.  Each CPU will have its own main  
memory, but will have a limited amount (megabytes addressable) of shared  
memory.  The CPU's will talk over a high-speed internal messaging switch and  
over shared memory (or does the 88110 have a messaging mechanism already  
built-in?).  The motherboard will be upgradable to 512 MB main memory on-board  
(with all four CPU's in use).

External Connections:

Upgraded:
SCSI-2 bus will be built-in (not just a connector (:-) for peripherals, e.g.,  
printers, hard disks, tape drives, and scanners.  Internal, gigabyte disks will  
be optional.  The dedicated printer port will be dropped in favor of SCSI-2  
(and ethernet) printer connectivity.  The brick will have room for 2 3.5"  
internal hard disks.

"Upgraded":
ADB bus will be built-in (as with the new stations) for  
keyboard/mouse/trackball/pad support.

Upgraded:
2 high-speed (> 100K bits/sec.) serial ports will be built-in

New:
There will be a dedicated ISDN port for ISDN interconnectivity.  This port will  
include the ISDN extender functionality, obviating the need for an ISDN  
extender on the new bricks.

Upgraded:
There will be *no* DSP processor (since the CPU will support DSP functionality  
but in a shared, multitasking way), but there will be the same Digital Signal  
Processing port to support DSP applications and peripherals.

New:
The brick will have 3 (SUN SparcStation) SBus slots for I/O and video cards.   
The main video is built-in, but other video options can be added.  The ethernet  
is also built-in, but additional networking interfaces (e.g., ATM, FDDI, SMDS)  
can be added via the SBus.  Unfortunately, these slots and the ethernet will be  
visible only to the initial CPU (so other CPUs must channel information through  
the initial CPU).

Upgraded:
3.5" floppies will still be supported as now.  Built-in CD-ROM will be an  
option.

That's it!

Did I miss anything?

Cheers,

= Joe =

p.s., I needed that.  All these impending competitor announcements were getting  
depressing!   :-)
-- 
Joe Grace <JGrace@TetraSoft.com> (NeXTMail preferred.)
TetraSoft International   Business and Personal Productivity Tools for NeXTSTEP