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From: brianr@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Rhodefer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Amiga Hardware Wishlist
Message-ID: <815@tekig4.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Jul-86 01:55:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekig4.815
Posted: Tue Jul 22 01:55:28 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Jul-86 07:19:41 EDT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR
Lines: 65
Keywords: external expansion ram

-- You can't eat me, I'm a Gingerbread Line! --

Recent articles in this newsgroup have given me the
impression that net.micro.amiga is read by commercial
hardware developers working on products for the Amiga.

If this is so, I'd like to use some of these graciously
donated resources to suggest my idea of the "Perfect
Amiga Expansion Box":

1) Sits on TOP of the Amiga, not beside it, and obscures
   none of the Amiga's connectors except the expansion
   connector

2) Has its own line-operated power supply

3) Has a lot of memory, of course.  1Meg minimum.
   If the memory had hardware error detection/correction,
   (parity bit(s)), it might make folks more comfortable.

4) Has non-volatile timekeeper
   (e.g. battery-operated CMOS clock/calendar)

5) (optional) Has enough battery-backed RAM to hold the
   c: directory contents

All pretty ho-hum so far; in fact, I've heard rumors of
products with (more or less) these features already in
the works.  Now for the feature whose unavailability
astounds me:

6)  SCSInterface!!

Why are the pitifully few hardware suppliers for the Amiga squandering
their resources (USENET translation: they're resource's) on efforts to
paste one or two specific hard-disk drives onto the side of an Amiga,
when a SCSI port would instantly make a larger selection of disk drives
available at high-volume costs, and take far less engineering effort?

Well, maybe disk drives with integral SCSI controllers are a tad expensive
NOW, but which kind of disk drive is more likely to come down in price,
a Tandon Platinum Pygmy (I was going to put the price and features
of Tandon's drive here, but these statistics were SO bad I only remember
my hoots of derision), usable ONLY on an Amiga computer, or
"Mr. Data" SCSI hard-disk peripherals, usable on any machine that
has a SCSI port?

In addition to offering the larger choice of hard-disk drive storage
capacities and speeds, a SCSI port would enables one to augment one's
storage capacity in the future by simply plugging on more generic modules.
(e.g. CD-ROM??)

And, you can hook other equipment besides disk drives up to a SCSI bus!
It seems likely to me that more innovative products can be sold
(read: will come into existence) that "Plug onto any SCSI bus", than
ones that "Plug onto the MC68000 data and control bus which appears
on the 1986-vintage Amiga(tm) computer, as long as that bus hasn't been
made unavailable by addition of a non-self-powered memory expansion
unit X or by hard-disk drive Y".

Is the Amiga a machine for the future, or what?

Wishfully,

Brian Rhodefer   ...good_luck!tektronix!tekig4/brianr