Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!well!perry From: perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: SDP Summary: The Full Story Message-ID: <5992@well.UUCP> Date: 19 May 88 03:44:44 GMT References: <1953@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> Reply-To: perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) Distribution: na Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 69 People have been enquiring here after the SDP (Satellite Disk Processor). Here's the full story: The SDP has been dropped from ASDG's future plans due to the unmarketability of the product. Here's why we consider the product unmarketable: 1986 1988 Average Cost Average Cost Of A Controller: $500 Of A Controller: $250 Average Speed For A Average Speed For A Read On An Average Read On An Average Drive: 20KB/s Drive: 200KB/s Cost Of An SDP: $1299 Average Speed For A Read On An Average Drive: 600KB/s In 1986 the SDP cost 2.6 times more than an average controller but gave 30 times the performance. In 1988 the SDP cost 5.2 times more than an average controller but gives 3 times the performance. The SDP in unmarketable due to eroding price/performance ratios. We would think that VERY FEW people would find a 3 fold increase in speed (for an average 65 msec drive) would be worth 5 times more money. Noone feels worse than us. We spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars (hundreds of thousands if you include lost sales and lost credibility) on the project which at least earns us the right NOT to be accused of being purveyors of vaporware. Especially in light of the fact that if the product WAS available you probably wouldn't have bought it. Sure we made some mistakes. Mistakes which we won't make again. For example, the SDP design criteria was performance over cost. The mistake is that no designer should EVER abandon cost reduc- tion in favor of performance if the product is to be sold in a consumer marketplace. Another mistake was placing too much stock in the (then) current non-performance of Amiga hard disks. It is unfortunate and iron- ic that demise of the SDP is actually a testimonial to the hard work of Steve Beats et al at CBM (for the new file system). So sure, we made some mistakes. But noone will suffer as much for these mistakes as we will. And noone will profit from these lessons learned, as we will. So you can look forward to some pretty funky stuff coming from ASDG in the future. For example, we've brought an industry stan- dard daughter board interface to the A2000 with a new product called Twin-X. (Another lesson learned, Twin-X was finished be- fore we discussed it with anyone). Twin-X allows you to install any two of hundreds of IEEE-959 daughter boards already available on your A2000. A to D, D to A Serial Ports, Parallel Ports, Servo Motor Controllers, SCSI, QIC 02, GPIB - litterally any I/O function now plugs and plays on the A2000. We're looking for software developers who see vertic- al market opportunities with this board. Contact us, we'll pro- vide the board and help you locate the right daughter board. Anyway, I don't want to stray into too much commercialism. I did want to dispell any rumors concerning the SDP and explain why we have decided that it's too late to try to market it. Perry Kivolowitz (608) 273-6585