Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!m2c!ulowell!miner From: miner@dino.ulowell.edu (Rich Miner) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Autoconfig for expansions Message-ID: <1951@dino.ulowell.edu> Date: 21 Mar 88 02:03:53 GMT References: <1408@sugar.UUCP> <507@xicom.UUCP> <2507@tekig4.TEK.COM> <1936@dino.cpe.ulowell.edu> <257@wsccs.UUCP> Reply-To: miner@dino.ulowell.edu (Rich Miner) Organization: University of Lowell Productivity Center, Lowell MA. Lines: 83 Keywords: autoconfig hobby Summary: delayed reply, a long rebuttal/flame Sorry I did not respond and FLAME this person early, it sliped by: *FLAME ON* In article <257@wsccs.UUCP> terry@wsccs.UUCP (terry) writes: >In article <1936@dino.cpe.ulowell.edu>, Rich Miner writes: >> The EE students in our lab have designed the auto-configuration glue >> into several boards; and it all worked the first time. > Good. Mail the schematics to us and we'll do the same. Should I send you the schematics to a 35MIPs coprocessor board that we spent over 2 man years developing and writing software for? If you could not figure out CBM's example schematics, what good will our designs do you? > 2) A small company can not afford to go out and blow 3 or 4 > motherboards making a hard-drive interface. If the company can't understand CBM's autoconfig docs, I don't want their hard drive controller. Have you looked at there docs and compared them to what Apple, Apollo, IBM and others provide? > Commodore is not giving the kind of support Apple gives to it's > developers, hardware _and_ software. BULL! My lab _is_ certified as an Apple developer. The support Apple gives is _not_ up to what CBM has. Apple has more people and fancier news letters, yet it is harder to find answers! Look at the support on usenet and BIX, then compare the number of people each group has supporting these efforts. The NuBus breadboards are third party not provided by Apple. > Which brings us back to your flame. I have yet to see you post >(or anyone else, for that matter) schematics or code for anything resembling >a "helping-hand" to developers. We are trying to earn a living, what makes you think I should post the schematics to our designs? We are more then willing to help people, and have in the past. Ask a technical question, I can't respond to flames. Post/send a note or give me a call, thats why the number is in my .signature. > While I am not a hardware developer, Then what gives you right to state CBM's docs are not to adequate for a competent hardware developer to use? >...a computer-readable hard-drive schematic posted here would.... >...be an incentive for lower prices). What about the person that encurred the development costs? What are his incentives for giving away his development effort? >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. How about articles in Byte, Amiga World, Amazing computing Commodore Magazine, EE times, and ESD Magazine. We have been in CBM's booth at NCGA(march 87), SIGGRAPH-87, and COMDEX. The Coprocessor has been purchased by research groups such as Lawrence Livermore Labs and is being used in R&D efforts that require high performance imaging for medical and other uses. We are currently building a 1Kx800x10bit/pixel TMS34010 based graphics card and digitizer that will be licensed to others to market, We are not a marketing group, our money funds research and development, not advertizing. > 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... We used no magic, state a concrete problem you have with the material provided by CBM and I am sure we or CATS can help. > I think taunting people who need to feed their faces prior to a 18 >month product-works-to-testing-to-market turnaround "is as punishable an >offense as encouraging non multi-tasking software". Students have more time >to expend on these things. At _least_ bring your wonderously easily done >projects to market, if nothing else. Try 5 months for one EE student working part time to learn the Amiga and coprocessor chips, design and wire wrap the first proto-type with autoconfig. This was with Zorro I and prior to the nice bound technical manual which is now available. >All standard disclaimers apply, as I am going to get *chewed* for this one... Well next time lets do this via mail first so you can have your facts straight and I don't have to feel like I am on trial. **flame off.-- Rich miner@ulowell.edu 617/452-5000x2693 ULowell CPE Imaging Research Lab