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From: rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: A3000UX academic pricing (was Re: A3000UX at UniForum?)
Message-ID: <4fb2b745.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 8 Feb 91 21:34:00 GMT
References: <1183@telesoft.com> <1337@borg.cs.unc.edu> <32529@auc.UUCP> <1991Feb8.180341.22098@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
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Reply-To: rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
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In article <1991Feb8.180341.22098@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) writes:
>	The NeXT has a final version of the 040. NeXT is the only
>company currently receiving the 040 because they did all the
>debugging for Motorola, kinda an inside deal.

   Sorry, the second statement is patently untrue.  A number of systems
   developers have been working with '040s for quite some time; NeXT is
   far from the only "debugger" of this chip.

   And the fact that NeXT has apparently been shipping '040 NeXTstations
   for some number of months leads me to believe that not only is the first
   statement incorrect, but that they were either jumping through hoops to
   avoid floating-point bugs or just plain not exercizing the chip very
   well; not the sort of thing you'd want for your sole Q/A, I'd think.

   What is true is that the supply of '040s is somewhat tight at the moment,
   as Motorola ramps up and tries to satisfy pent-up demand (which was
   created in large part by their tardiness in delivering working silicon).

> If there are any
>bugs in it, they will be in everyone's.

   Motorola may very well decide that some bugs are too obscure to be
   worth fixing (strictly speculation on my part).  My impression is
   that they're placing most of their resources into their 88k RISC line
   these days.
--
"The goons are riding motorcycles, but WE'VE  | (Steve) rehrauer@apollo.hp.com
 got a whole big metal car! This will be like | The Apollo Systems Division of
 stepping on ants..." -- Freelance Police     |       Hewlett-Packard