Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!van-bc!questor!aberno
From: aberno@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Anthony Berno)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Upgrading
Message-ID: <0u89q1w163w@questor.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 18 Oct 90 20:24:20 GMT
Organization: The Questor Project: FREE World-wide News & e-Mail
Lines: 24

Hello everyone. As usual, I'm thinking about my next computer purchase
(no pun intended) about a year in andvance. When I buy, I have, basically,
a choice between the non-upgradeable station and the upgradeable cube.
I was quite impressed by the fact that you could just take out an 030
motherboard from a cube and replace it with the 040. 

My question is this: How far can this "modularity" go? I would like to
buy a cube rather than a station, simply because I can go for all-internal
stuff, spending a few grand per year and eventually accumulating an optical, 
a GB+ hard disk, the NeXTDimension board, and if it ever arrives, things
like RISC coprocessing boards and speech recognition hardware. Suppose,
three years down the road, I want to replace the motherboard. Is the cube
designed with such generality that I will be able to simply mix and match
motherboards/coprocessing boards/mass storage, etc? I would hate to
have dinosaur hardware lying around. What are the limitations to what
can be plugged into the cube with assured compatibility?

It seems to me that this is getting especially important with the huge
changes taking place in workstations. Already, I have heard of a prototype
64Mbit DRAM chip. (!) Of course, everything you buy is as useful 5 years
from now as when you bought it, but when something a LOT better will cost
you only $1000, it sure is a nice feeling to be able to upgrade parts
rather than throwing away a whole machine, even if it is worthwhile
abandoning old hardware.