Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!aurora!labrea!jade!eris!mwm From: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Amiga 1000 buy-back & changing standards... Message-ID: <5550@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Wed, 21-Oct-87 04:00:38 EDT Article-I.D.: jade.5550 Posted: Wed Oct 21 04:00:38 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Oct-87 03:14:52 EDT Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 54 Warning: I'm about to vent a lot of steam at Commodore. Gee, what a neat buy-back program. Something else to leave me stuck with obsolete hardware. I bought into the Amiga expansion market early, buying an 2-slot 86-pin expansion and a half-full 8Meg board for same early last summer. So this summer, I go looking for a hard disk. Guess what? You can't get 86-pin disk controllers, period. Something about Commode-door changing the standard for the expansion interface. So I decide to try and treat the old package as a SOTS board, and get a disk controller to add in front of/in back of the thing. No go - after spending three months trying to find a controller/disk combination that would recompile mg1b without crashing, I give up. Sell the old expansion (eating $500 on the way), and use the money that had been put up for the hard disk to buy a similar expansion with Zorro slots. Only to find out that it's now obsolete and the makers of one of the boards I was interested in aren't doing Zorro I anymore. It seems that there's a new machine from Commode that has a different physical bus so they could put it in a different shape. Marvelous, just effing marvelous. The A2000, with the keyboard that makes my fingers ache, that ugly IBM-PC look, no keyboard garage, no pencil holder, etc. is what I'm asked to upgrade to. Not bloody likely. But now I hear "The 1000 -> 2000 upgrade is being offered only to A1000 owners. That should tell you what we have in mind for the 1000." And the A2000 has hooks for more CHIP ram, and the video slot. Well, maybe I can be talked into it. But you see, I've still got this "old" card. Since the standard changed again, it won't work in the new machine. And there's not much chance of getting anything back for it. The best that can be done would be to buy a bare A2000 card and move the chips. And wind up eating the cost of the bare board + $1000, just to get back to where I am now. Thanx, but no thanx. I'll stay with a machine designed by someone who knows the meaning of "ergonomics," and when it dies change to a machine from a company that understands that changing buses is not something one does on a yearly basis.