Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!well!yoo
From: yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Sorry Guys, There is NO WAY!
Message-ID: <21991@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 6 Dec 90 08:03:16 GMT
References: <25701@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <21941@well.sf.ca.us> <14702@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 22

>the 68040 has begun just this week to ship. I wonder how a 
>68040 machine could be shipping when teh 68040 itself was not?

NeXT received its first allotment of 040s on Nov.15.  On Nov. 20, the
new 040 NeXTs were ready to ship, but the 2.0 operating system was not.
Around the 27th of November, the operating system was finalized and the
040 NeXTs began shipping.    The first lot of 040 NeXTs, according to a report
in the NeXT newsgroup, numbered 1000.  Steve Jobs claims 2500 040 NeXTs will
have shipped by the end of December.

How did NeXT get its 040s before anyone else?  Simply, NeXT was largely 
responsible for debugging the 040s.  

More importantly, although the 040s were ready for the NeXT by Nov. 15, they
were NOT ready for other computers like Hewlett Packard's workstation.  There
were still outstanding bugs in special features of the chip built specifically
for Hewlett Packard's machines.  These bugs had no relevance for the NeXT.
Again, this information is from articles posted in the NeXT newsgroup.

When they 040 NeXT did ship about a week ago, Motorola and NeXT took out a
large joint ad in a major national newspaper.  The NeXT thus became the first
computers to ship with the 040s.