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From: rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi,comp.lsi.cad,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: no PALASM90 on workstations
Keywords: PAL PALASM AMD
Message-ID: <1990Aug5.161336.18508@ameristar>
Date: 5 Aug 90 16:13:36 GMT
References: <833@hls0.hls.oz> <1990Aug5.070528.4522@amd.com>
Organization: Ameristar Technology, Inc
Lines: 45

In article <1990Aug5.070528.4522@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes:

	Gee, Phil, usually you can be counted on for rational postings ;-) ;-)

>PALASM90 for Suns? Which Suns? Sun-3? Sun-386i? Sparc? Which OS of
>the week? (when we upgraded the OS, it broke "less".) Which window
>system? Suntools? Sunview? X? News? Now take all these choices and
>multiply them together. Sun-3 with X. Sun-3 with News. Sun-3 with
>Sunview. Sparc with X. Sparc with News. Sparc with Sunview. etc.
				   ^^^^ NeWS; palasm under rn would be fun :-)

	Let's try this: you've (AMD) focused on a particular instance
	of PC technology, ie PC running MS-DOS, presumably going directly
	to the screen (ega/vga?).  You could have chosen MS-DOS + Windows/3.0,
	MS-DOS + Desqview/X, or run under OS/2, QNX, etc.  Let's remap
	AMD's PC or die decision into a similar cutset of Sun technology: port
	your tools to Sparc, running Sunview initially.  Just as your PC stuff
	may eventually have to be moved on top of Windows 3.0, you may have
	to move from Sunview to OpenLook.  The truth of software, and I assume
	you know this, is that it always entails ongoing investment in 
	maintenance, support, and upgrades.  If you guys can't figure this 
	out, I would be happy to do it for you for some AMD con$ulting 
	dollars :-)  After all, if Lotus Corp was able to make their peace 
	with Suns, AMD should too...  FYI, companies with much less 
	development bucks than Lotus & AMD are porting from PC -> Sparc,
	eg P-CAD, CUPL, Pads-PCB, etc.

>I suggest you buy a nice cheap and fast PC, get PC-NFS for networking
>and MKS toolkit to make the command set somewhat like Unix. You
>might even find you have a nice word processor in the bargain.

	Sorry, but this is becoming less of an option for many of us in 
	hardware land.  My machine of choice for any engineering task is the 
	sparcstation - if your tools don't run there, I will not buy them. 

>Phil Ngai, phil@amd.com

					Rick Spanbauer
					Ameristar

PS.  We do, or at least used to do, a lot of business with AMD (for pals, and
     lance enet stuff) - so consider this message as constructive criticism 
     from a customer.  Observe too that a smallish company named "Sun" uses
     quite a lot of your stuff in their workstations, notably the 
     sparcstation.