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From: spp@zabriskie.berkeley.edu (Steve Pope)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi,comp.lsi.cad,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: no PALASM90 on workstations
Keywords: PAL PALASM AMD
Message-ID: <26931@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 10 Aug 90 23:09:50 GMT
References: <833@hls0.hls.oz> <1990Aug5.070528.4522@amd.com> <1990Aug5.161336.18508@ameristar> <1990Aug6.004614.24315@amd.com> <1990Aug7.162347.1597@mdivax1.uucp>
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Reply-To: spp@zabriskie.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Steve Pope)
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X-Local-Date: 10 Aug 90 16:09:50 PDT

It seems to me that when PAL's were first introduced, PALASM was
given away for free (the BASIC source was right there in
the PAL databook) and that this was key to the products getting used.

Now two things have happened -- the PAL's and their descendants are
much more complex, and a significant fraction of engineers want
to use SUN's for engineering computing as opposed to PC's.

IMHO if AMD supplied a free PALASM-90 product that runs on, say,
at least a third of the OS releases from SUN, AMD would be a step
ahead of the field of vendors that is trying to charge money for
their software products.  AMD is not a software house for
chrissake.  They make their money on chips.  Supplying PALASM
should be a freebie just like supplying a databook or application
notes.  

As Phil pointed out its too much work to keep every program running
on every combination of SUN hardware/OS, but hardly anybody has
their entire network running the same OS release for exactly that
reason.  For a freebie, hitting a major subset is good enough.  

steve