Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cbmvax!andy From: andy@cbmvax.UUCP (Andy Finkel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Autoconfig for expansions Message-ID: <3448@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 10 Mar 88 02:18:13 GMT References: <1408@sugar.UUCP> <507@xicom.UUCP> <2507@tekig4.TEK.COM> <1936@dino.cpe.ulowell.edu> <257@wsccs.UUCP> Reply-To: andy@cbmvax.UUCP (Andy Finkel) Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 89 Keywords: autoconfig hobby In article <257@wsccs.UUCP> terry@wsccs.UUCP (terry) writes: > 2) A small company can not afford to go out and blow 3 or 4 > motherboards making a hard-drive interface. Commodore is > not giving the kind of support Apple gives to it's developers, > hardware _and_ software. We don't ask for a business plan before we sign you up to a developer program either :-) > > 3) A large company is not willing to enter what is basically a > small marketplace. Hence no Western-Digital controllers for > the Amiga. > > 4) A large company is not willing to invest time/money into > providing software for a product which is not advertized. Possibly you missed the ads in Time, and other mags ? Or the ones on TV about the Amiga ? > why a programmer-type at Micro-soft told me they hadn't ported > Xenix... no built-in market/advertising channels. This sounds unlikely as a reason, somehow. Perhaps there were other factors ? >occur to me that a computer-readable hard-drive schematic posted here would >encourage a small company to offer a fairly cheap hard-drive interface (I >think almost zero developement cost would be an incentive for lower prices). > > For the touted ease with which you purported do these things, I have >yet to recognize your name from and ad for a reasonably priced anything. If >"it all worked the first time" is a correct statement, either share your skill >or inform us of where to acquire some of our own... Commodore is certainly no >help. It took some pirates to figure out 11k boot blocks, and they can afford 11K of data into the 1K a bootblock takes up ? That is a trick! BTW, hasn't EA been using custom boot blocks for a long time ? >projects to market, if nothing else. I think Commodore would enjoy finding >out that a 'simple' DMA interface is possible; they hem-and-haw every time I >ask them when theirs is due out. The 2090 will ship in...pardon me ? It shipped sometime last year ? Oh. Never Mind... (Yes, the 2090 has a DMA interface, and has been out for awhile) > > Also: Commodore, has it occured to you that Apple's success is due >primarily to their willingness to give hardware to schools? I was told to >my face by one of your representatives that you don't give an educational >discount Name names. None of this 'rep who wandered by , who we never heard of and you never did either' If we have a rep giving out wrong info, please let us know! (To explore educational discounts, things like that, have a rep from your school call the Commodore Educational Marketing dept at West Chester. I think there is a program in place.) >(I have an entire user group who heard it too), and he's one of your >big 10. What the hell, he told us 1.3 definitely wouldn't need a ROM update >either, and that he'd have techinical people at the next meeting (they didn't >show), Well, he's mostly right about that. The major enhancements are on Workbench. Things like the FastFileSystem, new printers, etc. Recoverable ramdisk. All on Workbench. The only thing the new Kickstart rom gives you is the ability to boot from a ROM-Driver equipped device. and that the 4 registered developers there would get their developer's >kit updates "real soon". I'm not sure what you mean by developer kit update. I'm pretty sure he didn't either. Registered developers have a phone number they can call to find out what happened to their orders, if something's wrong. -- andy finkel {ihnp4|seismo|allegra}!cbmvax!andy Commodore-Amiga, Inc. "Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle." Any expressed opinions are mine; but feel free to share. I disclaim all responsibilities, all shapes, all sizes, all colors.