Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!eneevax!hsu From: hsu@eneevax.UUCP (Dave Hsu) Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Re: Expand at your own risk! Message-ID: <536@eneevax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 09:14:24 EST Article-I.D.: eneevax.536 Posted: Mon Feb 24 09:14:24 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 20:02:04 EST References: <1355@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> Reply-To: hsu@eneevax.UUCP (Dave Hsu) Organization: Imperial Widget Research Center, Kingdom of Maryland Lines: 35 In article <1355@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> daemon@caip.UUCP writes: >From: michael@vlsi.caltech.edu > >I advise everyone to not buy either fixed hard disks or memory for their >Amiga yet. We are about to see the next quantum leap in the capacity of >memory chips, to 1 megabit per chip. A company called TheSys has >announced a single IBM PC expansion board containing 8 megabytes of 1 >megabit chips. Actually the board contains 12 MB; the extra capacity is >used to implement error correction on board. The memory is CMOS, meaning >it can be backed up with batteries. Cost: $800. Granted that it doesn't >need to be as fast for an IBM as for an Amiga, this is still much less >per megabyte than any board based on 256 kbit chips. This number is also >within a factor of 2 or 3 of the per megabyte cost of small hard disks. >The same company will also be making a 16 Mb board which looks like a hard >disk (even plugs in to your current controller), but one with a 10 >microsecond "track-to-track" access time. > >I hereby predict that fixed hard disks will be obsolete within a year. > > Steve Walton A friend of mine told me about this card last December, when its price was projected at near $1500 for a 15 meg version. Yes, it is CMOS with a battery back-up, but from what I was told, the company manufactures its own RAM's and they're not fast enough to be used as main memory. Instead, as you guessed, it was designed to replace hard drives, although I'd heard there was zero track-to-track time. -dave -- David Hsu Communication & Signal Processing Lab, EE Department University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 hsu@eneevax.umd.edu {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!eneevax!hsu "Godzilla has been spotted in Sector 5!"