🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5311@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) writes:
>      ...the monitor alone to display 1200 X 800 monochrome graphics is
> on the order of $1000 wholesale. Add to that the $200 price of *each*
> 68020 chip, multihundred dollar price of 68881 chips, 4 Meg of ram 
> (which at $3 per 256K chip is still $384)...

In article <398@atari.UUcp>, dyer@atari.UUcp (Landon Dyer) writes:
> I respectfully suggest that the prices quoted above are
> representative of the company buying the parts, and not what
> the parts really cost.

When I was at Sun, they had pretty aggressive purchasing people.
More to the point is that prices are a function of volume.  If Sun
hadn't bought 19-inch non interlaced 1152x900 monitors by the hundreds
in 1984, and gotten the bugs out of them, and ramped up from there, you
wouldn't see these monitors at $1000 now.  If next year Atari can bring
out a product that uses them, and sell 20,000 a month, certainly the
price will come down.  Similarly if Sun (and others) hadn't been
shipping 68020's for a year, Motorola wouldn't be ramped up to where
they could handle orders for Atari's volume.

When these (currently special) products become standard items, Sun's as
well as Atari's customers will benefit from the coresponding price
reductions.

Low price alone won't bring Atari customers, though.  Remember the
first mass market 68000 system (TRS-80 Model 16)?  Those clowns sure
didn't know how to make a 68000 hum.  From what I hear, Atari is doing
a similar trick with their 68020 project -- hiding it behind a slow
68000 "I/O processor" where it can't get to the outside world quickly.
(I/O speeds in Suns went way up with the 68020, especially screen updates,
disk access, and streaming tape drives.)  The Atari ST's I've seen have
been mostly I/O bound and cripped with bad software; a "back-end"
68020 won't fix that.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
		     May the Source be with you!