Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Studebakers
Message-ID: <56089@sun.uucp>
Date: 10 Jun 88 17:08:42 GMT
References: <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 37

In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM> (Richard Sexton) writes:
> As a related question, given you had ONE improvement you would make
> to the amiga, what would it be ? 

Well I contend that it is a *lot* more capital intensive to develop 
hardware than it is to develop software. So I the improvement I would
make would be a "dumb" bridge card that connected the 16 bit Amiga 
bus to the 16 bit AT bus in the 2000, and I would make it *STANDARD*.

Then when you bought a 2000 you automatically had access to the AT slots.
Then small companies and individuals could write software that supported
a particular PC/AT card and sell it with the card as value added.

Some examples of things that would be much more common today if we had
this thing :

	o Networks - Ethernet, StarLan, Arcnet, LocalTalk, and MAP.
	    Sure Ameristar has done ethernet and done it well, but they 
	    could have done it faster and cheaper if they had an off the
	    shelf ethernet card they could OEM and just concentrate on 
	    the software.

	o Frame Buffers - Targa or Truevision cards could be running *today*
	    on the Amiga, generating *fantastic* ray traced images after doing
	    the 'check' on the Amiga side.

	o HardDisks - needs no explanation.
	o Serial/Parallel ports - more and more. Easy to find a parallel or
	    serial adapter, at a recent swap meet the little half cards that
	    had one or the other on them were selling for $5 each.

Nothing but benefits from this scheme, not to much work on C/A's part. Of
course if you bought a bridge card you would yank this thing and plug in the
bridge card instead.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.