Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!stevel
From: stevel@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Steve Ligett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: Re: The 'cost' of a '532 system.
Keywords: cheap nsc 532
Message-ID: <11120@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 22 Nov 88 16:15:43 GMT
References: <433@sdrc.UUCP> <2659@sultra.UUCP> <1041@raspail.UUCP> <256@aber-cs.UUCP> <2667@sultra.UUCP> <17658@gatech.edu>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: stevel@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Steve Ligett)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 38

First, some facts.  These are prices from NSC distributors.  They are "book
prices"; there's no use trying to twist someone's arm this early in the
game to get special prices when I don't have a PO# to give them.

The 532.  The designer's kit, at $532, is a deal.  Um, I don't have all the
facts on this in front of me (left 'em at home, I guess), but you get a
chip set w mmu, and fpu, 25MHz parts, I believe.  Compare that to single
quantity prices for the cpu alone: 20MHz is $750, 30MHz is $975.

The 332.  Sigh - there doesn't seem to be a designer's kit for this one.
The cpu costs $177.45 (15 MHz).  The databook mentions a 10MHz part, but
the distributors don't have it.

The 032.  The designer's kit is $75.  It's 6 MHz.  (Please correct me if
I'm wrong on that!)  The 10 MHz cpu alone costs $88.70.

Pc board costs.  I called my PC board maker for better costs than I gave
Der.  A 4-layer setup costs $400 or more.  It doesn't go up linearly with
board size.  So, a 8.5" by 12" board setup might only be $500 or $600,
depending on number of holes, assuming that traces are 12 mil or larger,
and pads aren't too small in relation to holes, and that inside layers are
just power and ground.  Then, boards cost $1.50 per square inch.  That
could go down some in large quantity, but we're talking small quantity
here, and this is a prototype house (i.e. small quantity) I deal with.
So, maybe $180 for a board, in quantities of 20 (including paying off the
setup).  You line up 100 people who'll buy a board and it'll be cheaper.

Memory costs.  If Hitachi delivers, I could sell memory to this group for
less than $300 per megabyte (100 ns, 1 meg by 9 simms).  I don't mean that
as a promise, or as an advertisement.  Just to give you an idea of memory
costs.  Another possibility is to collect 256k simm "pulls" - simms taken
from Macs (256k by 8, 150 ns), when they are upgraded to 1 meg simms.
Those should be pretty cheap, but I've never tried to buy such an
inventory, so my guess of $40 per megabyte (4 simms) is just that.

I'll go reread the articles I've saved before going into my opinions.
Steve Ligett       steve.ligett@dartmouth.edu or
(decvax harvard linus true)!dartvax!steve.ligett