🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <mike.724093217@starburst.umd.edu> mike@starburst.umd.edu (Michael F. Santangelo) writes:
>If anything I think (my own $0.02(US)) that NeXT would only gain respect
>for using HP-PA.  It's a very respected company with a very much respected
>RISC architecture that is [not] closed.  Common misconception.

PA is really killer, but Pentium already has better name recognition
than PA, and it's not even out yet!  Sure, unix weenies like you and I
know about PA, but most of the people NeXT is trying to sell computers
to don't.

>Most anyone can port to the backward compatible Intel 808x processor family...
>(UNIX requiring an 80386 or better).  Not alot of pride in it.  Only thing
>NeXT gains in going completely to the Intel family is reduced development
>costs by not needing to support more than one architecture.  

If NeXT produced a Pentium based machine, it would be a wildly
different beast from, say, a Dell Pentium PC.  The Sun 386i, most of
the Sequents (I think), and Scitex boxes all run on 80386s or 80486s,
but none of them will run either DOS or eachother's operating systems.
Same deal with old HP-Apollo's, Amiga's, Macintoshes, and NeXT's.
There's a lot more to a machine than it's processor.  So NeXT would
still have to support another architecture (in the form of different
device-drivers and other machine dependant code).


Steve Jobs doesn't think people should care about what processor is in
the box.  He's absolutely right, and I agree with him.  So he doesn't
think that, technological issues aside, NeXT needs use a processor for
marketing reasons.  Unfortunately, on the planet the rest of us live
on, people really do seem to care about what processor is in the box,
even if it's for all the wrong reasons...

perhaps that's one of the reasons why NS486 is going to be a smashing
sucess compared to NeXTstations.


andrew
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