Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!dimacs.rutgers.edu!mips!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!boulder!snoopy!hunt
From: hunt@boulder.Colorado.EDU (HUNT LEE CAMERON)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Editorial comment: Why isn't Dave Haynie designing Bridgeboards?
Keywords: Dave Haynie, Bridgeboard, 80386, C= Germany
Message-ID: <25204@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 26 Aug 90 04:30:38 GMT
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: hunt@snoopy.Colorado.EDU (HUNT LEE CAMERON)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 31

This is just sort of a gripe, but I just *had* to say it:  why isn't
Dave Haynie responsible for the Brideboards?

From what I've seen on the topic of 80386 Brideboards, Dave seems to
really know about the 80386 architecture.  He also was the lead
designer of the A2630 and of the famed Amiga 3000 and its CPU expansion
slot (read: 68040 expansion slot).  Furthermore, He is both a hardware guru
and an experienced programmer (as well as a nice guy) -- important traits
for this inharently (?sp) hardware and software intensive project.

From one of Dave's postings, he said that C= Germany was responible for
the Brideboard designs.  Well, from C= Germany we also got the original
A2000 (which had to be replaced by the B2000), the first slow 8088
Bridgeboard (which seems to have started the shared-memory tradition
of interprocessor communication -- an inheriently slow method),
and the 80286 too-thick-to-be-believed Bridgeboard which 
physically obstructs an adjacent slot.

Maybe I'm way off base about these apparent design problems.  Perhaps
they were too hard to overcome via other methods at the time.  But, I still
feel that Dave should be in charge of the (perhaps nonexistant) 80386
Bridgeboard because it is a technically challanging problem which could
either be done well, or done easily and poorly.

A cheap, well-designed '386 Bridgeboard would be so popular and important
to the Amiga's livelyhood that it must be taken seriously.


--Lee
"Nothing is more disorginized than Calvinball!" -- Calvin & Hobbes
hunt@spot.colorado.edu   ...!ncar!boulder!spot!hunt