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Path: utzoo!utcs!lsuc!pesnta!hplabs!hao!noao!terak!doug
From: doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm
Subject: Re: Commodore's Lorraine
Message-ID: <388@terak.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Feb-85 11:45:55 EST
Article-I.D.: terak.388
Posted: Thu Feb 21 11:45:55 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Feb-85 02:24:27 EST
References: <705@topaz.ARPA>
Organization: Terak Corporation, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 26

> 2)  8 Mhz 68000 cpu with expansion slots able to handle 7 Meg. I know 
> the 68000 can address much more, and 7 Meg is a lot of memory, but why
> stop there?

I can't confirm/deny this.  But even if it's so, I don't understand your
problem with it.  At the current cost of memories, 7 Meg will cost the
manufacturer over $3000 in memory chips alone.  What with the support
chips, board costs, and markups, you could expect to spend around
$15,000 to $20,000 for 7 Meg of memory.  Even if the price of memory
drops by 2/3, you'ld still be spending over $5000 in memory for your
$700 computer.  If you had that kind of bucks, you'ld probably buy a
more powerful machine to plug the memory into.

Why stop?  Each slot connector costs money.  Address decoding chips cost
money.  The more slots, the larger the PC board, and that means more
expensive board, bigger and more expensive housing, more problems with
board warpage.  And bigger power supply (memory chips *love* power) and
more cooling fans (memory chips *dissipate* that power).

Next question:  what on earth would you *use* 7 Meg for?  Certainly
you aren't going to be writing programs that large.  And 7 Meg of
data is about 2000 typewritten pages worth.  I mean, we're talking
about a *home* computer here, not something that Bank of America is
going to use to run a 500-terminal on-line database.
-- 
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug