Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!lll-lcc!unisoft!gethen!farren From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: CEBIT Commodore Announcements (A2500, A3000), shipping RSN Message-ID: <840@gethen.UUCP> Date: 29 Mar 88 21:57:41 GMT References: <7735@oberon.USC.EDU> <10260005@eecs.nwu.edu> <9454@sunybcs.UUCP> <3488@cbmvax.UUCP> <8649@g.ms.uky.edu> <8659@g.ms.uky.edu> <4012@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland Lines: 54 Keywords: I am pissed about CBM abondoning me. rlcarr@athena.mit.edu (Richard L. Carreiro) writes: > >Us loyal A1000 owners, whose purchases helped to SAVE Commodore, are >now being $%#%$*@#'ed over for our troubles. Loyal? You must be using an awfully strange definition of loyalty. "Well, I'm loyal until I die, or until you do anything new, whichever comes first" is a poor brand of loyalty in my book. >I'm not against the A2000, or A2500, or whatever. But DAMN it, they could >make sure that we can upgrade. If you have been paying any attention to the technical discussions, you would know that they could not make sure of any such thing. In order to provide a better hardware platform, C/A HAD to drop the A1000 configuration. There is no way in hell that you add all of the capabilities of the A2000 into the A1000 without major (and I mean MAJOR) reworking of the whole machine. In effect, junking the entire old box and replacing it with an A2000 (which, I must remind you, C/A allowed you to do, easily and relatively inexpensively). >As it stands you need 3rd party stuff (someone correct me if I'm wrong, >please) to make the A1000 the equivalent of the A2000. No, you CANNOT make the A1000 the equivalent of the A2000. You cannot have the video interface slot. You cannot have the coprocessor interface slot. You cannot have the integrated, shielded, easy-to-service (although ergonomically flawed) case. You cannot have the upgraded graphics chips. You can make your 1000 look ALMOST like a 2000, but you can't get all the way there. >It's a --ckin' SIN that it looks like A1000 owners won't be able to get >the new graphics chips. You can probably get them, you just can't use them. Oh, some enterprising hacker might be able to figure out how to hack and slash a standard A1000 to allow the graphics chips to be used, but it will BE a hack and slash job, and nothing any company in its right mind would support. The fact that you can't use the new graphics chips isn't a sin. It is a shame, and it would be nice if it were possible to do so, but face it - there is nothing you, I, or C/A itself can do about it. The extra capabilities of the chips needs extra capabilities in the design, capabilities that the 2000 has that the 1000 just plain does not. The A2000 is, for the most part, a better design than the 1000. It addressed many of the problems inherent in the design of the 1000, and if that means that there are things you can do with the 2000 that you can't do with a 1000, that simply translates to "This time, they thought it out better". -- Michael J. Farren | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just {ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}! | dogmatize it! Reflect on it and re-evaluate unisoft!gethen!farren | it. You may want to change your mind someday." gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame