Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ncis.llnl.gov!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!bingvaxu!sunybcs!sbcs!rick
From: rick@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Rick Spanbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Accessing PC cards from Amiga (also, NFS)?
Keywords: BridgeBoard, PC, Amiga, Ethernet, NFS, Ameristar
Message-ID: <2076@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Date: 27 Jan 89 01:45:27 GMT
References: <2482@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <86118@sun.uucp> <228@becker.UUCP> <241@becker.UUCP>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Lines: 70

In article <241@becker.UUCP>, bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) writes:
> In article <2052@sbcs.sunysb.edu> rick@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Rick Spanbauer) writes:
> 	A Western Digital ethernet board sells for about
> 	$180-$200 these days...
> 
	$395 + $180 is more than the quantity price we charge our VARs.
	Of course if I saw a tenth the volume of what Western Digital
	sells, our ethernet board would cost $180 too.  The point here is
	that parts + labor are not the only factors in determining retail
	price.  

> +-------------
> |	quantity one.  We charge $899, Q1 for our integrated ethernet/nfs/
> |	tcp/ip product.  So the PC solution is ~$800 -vs- native Amiga
> |	at $899.  A difference of $99 simple does not strike me as
> |	"*very* high compared to the equivalent...".  And of course
> 
> 	Do you supply FTP & Telnet? Implementations of these are
> 	in the public domain, and at least in one instance TCP 
> 	is provided over the serial port as well, in a package which
> 	runs on Amigas as well as PC's, etc.

	Yes, and NFS too.  And we have a VAR that has X11R2 in
	beta test.  And of course we have shown NeWS 1.0 running on the
	Amiga at last years Sigraph.  And we have a bunch of new software
	products in the works.  What is your point, sir?  PD software
	and professional software can coexist, you know.

	The ka9q code is PD and an excellent package at that.  But
	then Excelan, Interlan, Sun, 3Com, Bell Tech, etc all still
	seem to be in business and at least on the surface do
	quite well financially.  In spite of the PD product.  Why 
	is this?  (Hint: support)

> 	Public Domain NSF is still in the works - I'm not sure when
> 	it will be available, since some of it is tricky - but it'll
> 	be there fairly soon...

	And Amiga NFS has been available for ~2 years and cost US$899.  Ours
	has been characterized against practically all NFS servers known
	and has been found to run well.  NFS is not as simple as one might 
	believe by reading the NFS RFC.  Many things are left unspecified.

> 	Also it won't be all that long before SCSI ethernet boxes
> 	appear at reasonable prices, and the SCSI folks (or some
> 	kind net.persons) make some driver software to use them.
> 	Since the SCSI market isn't limited to one type of machine,
> 	the potential market volume will be comparatively much higher...

	But then again, IBM PC's and Amigas don't come stock with
	SCSI ports.  I suspect that the following relation will remain
	true for at least another couple years:

		$(ethernet/scsi port + scsi board) > $ethernet board

	Due to the way ethernet is partitioned in most products.  But these
	days of 120000 gate gate-arrays may change that :-)  Anways it
	probably true that ethernet will be the next rs-232 in 5 years,
	but before this happens chipset costs will have to come down to what
	a USART costs these days, ie < $5.

>    _  _/\	Bruce Becker	Toronto, Ont.

	Bruce, do me a favor.  Call up a distributor, eg Arrow, HamAv, etc
	and ask what an Intel 82586, AMD 7990, or National ethernet chipset
	costs.  Send me mail telling me the answer you get and why it is
	important.

					Rick Spanbauer
					Ameristar