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From: macman@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Dennis H Lippert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Price cuts on motherboard upgrades ???
Message-ID: <128923@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 16 May 91 12:46:40 GMT
References: <1991May14.155036.26366@zardoz.eng.ohio-state.edu> <13043@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1991May15.153159.29966@zardoz.eng.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Lines: 36

In article <1991May15.153159.29966@zardoz.eng.ohio-state.edu> gaynor@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu writes:
>In article <13043@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, cycy@isl1.ri.cmu.edu (Cowboy) writes:
>
>However, the reason that you might not be happy about the reduced
>price on motherboard swaps is that the Apple policy-makers -seem- to
>be putting motherboard swaps forward as a solution to the "dirty" ROMs
>issue rather than supplying a 32-bit Clean ROM upgrade for the
>Macintoshes in question (II, IIx, IIcx, and SE/30).  In addition, the
>SE/30 upgrade still doesn't include 32-Bit Clean ROMs.
>
>$1000-$1500 is a lot to pay when all you want are "Clean" ROMs...
>
I really think the only people who are really "missong out" on anything is the
people who bought SE/30's as "power users" because it was cheaper than a 
higher-level machine. The SE->SE/30 upgrade still doubles the available memory
in the machine (from 4 to 8 meg), and still gives it a real "kick" speed-wise.

This is what the upgrade was designed to do.

I think that the reason the SE/30 is not being upgraded to clean ROMs is that 
it *is* the oldest machine in the fleet, and will probably be discontinued in
the next round or two of introductions.

And as for applications which need huge amounts of memory, I think that a 
rethink of things is in order.  There really should be two ways to go about it:

1) ANy 32-bit color program, which uses a lot of memory to support such color, 
should be "downgradable".  My thought would be to make a "prefs" file (or 
some such) which would let you choose a no-color option.  This would then make
it runable on (hopefully) even a 4-meg machine.
2) The only other option I can see is to label the programs so people buying
them can clearly see that the program *requires*, say, 12 meg of addressable
memory.

At least it's my opinion....
Dennis Lippert - macman@unix.cis.pitt.edu