Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Jinfu
From: Jinfu@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: New Apollo Workstations
Message-ID: <7508@cup.portal.com>
Date: 20 Jul 88 06:58:54 GMT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 46
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.2934

Well, is the comp.sys.apollo really quiet or somewhere the feed is
broken?

Just picked up this from InfoWorld News, July 18 issue. Here are some
excerpts without permision (words inside [] are mine): 

              Apollo Introduces Two 68030 Workstations

      The series 4500 Personal Super Workstation, rated at 7 MIPS, and the
series 3500 Personal Workstation, rated at 4 MIPS, both contain the powerfull
33-MHz and 25-MHz versions of 68030 and 68882 plus a 64K fast cache,
interleaved memory, and zero-wait-state operation.

...
      Analysts view the 7-MIPS Series, which costs $19,000 for a diskless
monochrome workstation with 8 megabytes of RAM, as comparable in both price
and performance to Sun Microsystem's RISC-based workstaion, the Sun 4/110.
      Apollo emphasized the software compatibility of the new worksations,
noting that software running on Apollo's installed base of Motorola
68020-based systems will operate on the Series 3500 and Series 4500 without
recomplilation.

...
      All configurations of the Series 3500 are currently shipping, with
prices running from $7,990 to $24,890. 
      The Series 4500 will begin shipping during the fourth quarter, with
prices raning from $23,490 to $36,490.

...
      Apollo's earlier workstations, the DN3000 and DN4000, are generally
rated at 1.5 MIPS and 4 MIPS, respectively.
      Robert G. Herwick, a senior analyst with Hambrecht & Quist Inc., in
New York, called the 4500 "well architeced" and added, "As a reslut, the
DN4000 is unquestionably DEAD [capitalized by me] in the water. It's got the
same price [as the new series 3500], but it's not nearly as good."
      Apollo's top management blamed customer anticipation of the new
machins, which resulted in soft sales of DN4000s, for an unexpected $8 to
$10 million quarterly loss[related stories about this in other page of
InfoWorld News as well as in EE Times mentioned about $10 million worth of
unsold Series 4000s in inventory].

-------------
      I heard a rumor that Apollo will sell a 25-MHz version of 4500 now
and provide upgrade to 35-MHz later when there are enough chip supplies from
Motorola. Is this true? And is the 3500 actually can be upgraded to a 4500 by
swapping chips or boards?