Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!world!awm
From: awm@world.std.com (Andrew W MacDonald)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: 68040 Compatibility Warning
Message-ID: <1991Jun6.152437.25024@world.std.com>
Date: 6 Jun 91 15:24:37 GMT
References: <1991Jun4.111333.31246@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1991Jun4.171550.27854@world.std.com> <2951@public.BTR.COM>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 45

In article <2951@public.BTR.COM> valentin@btr.BTR.COM (Valentin Pepelea  valentin@btr.com) writes:
>In article <1991Jun4.171550.27854@world.std.com> awm@world.std.com (Andrew
>W MacDonald) writes:
>>
>>A company I work for recently bought an 040 board from Motorola, and
>>we discovered that they didn't put the floating point support code in
>>their own ROMs.  When we called them to get some help, they said they
>>would sell us the library for $5000!  Needless to say, we wrote the
>>library ourselves.
>
>Last time I talked to a Motorola rep, the $5000 included source code and an
>unlimited distribution license. Needless to say, that's pretty cheap. Take
>an employee at $60K, let him work for one month, and you've already spent more
>than that.
>
>Valentin


You're quite right that $5000 is cheap in the business world -- but we were
still getting ripped off.  First of all, Motorola advertised their board
as being upwardly compatible with their 030/882 boards (source code compatible
that is), which implies to me that they provide floating point support.
Second, we have bought compilers with full source to C and math libraries
for about $5000, with unlimited distribution rights (I think), and the
040 math library isn't anywhere near that complicated.  Third, Motorola
didn't seem to be offering any version other than their development source
package; if we had just wanted to link to a math package to get up and
running and evaluate the speed of the 040 relative to other platforms, 
we couldn't have. And fourth, Motorola is selling chips, not software.
It would cost $30 to copy their source code and send it to developers, who
could then use it to sell more 040's.  Why does Moto want to make life
complicated for developers, especially when there is so much pressure to
switch to other chip lines?

Sorry if this sounds like whining, but it was very frustrating to have this
wonderful board which will increase your system performance three times, and
then have to wait to use it.

To be more Amiga relevant: I suspect most Amiga software developers can't
afford to spend $5000 for a math library.  (I know I can't.)  Let's be
careful out there :->


Andy MacDonald
awm@world.std.com