Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!jesup From: jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: AM(iga un)IX Message-ID: <6370@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 21 Mar 89 22:24:13 GMT References: <1366@hub.ucsb.edu> <2426@sbcs.sunysb.edu> Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) Distribution: na Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 52 In article <2426@sbcs.sunysb.edu> rick@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Rick Spanbauer) writes: > Yes, and as I recall one company was set to field a really > innovative disk controller that was basically killed by the > announcement of the 2090. By cutting the legs out of disk/memory > markets Commodore killed quite a few R&D buggets at third party > houses. Since at least some development cost is written against > sales of bread&butter products like disk/memory you no doubt > have a bit less innovation as a direct result of Commodore playing > in that market. However, if commodore has no product in that market, it isn't taken seriously by a number of potential buyers/markets, in particular the business market/hig-end home market/whatever the 2000 was aimed at. I think you're referring (above) the ASDG's HD controller project. What killed it was not so much the 2090, but FFS. Their incredible speedup over SlowFS HD's of the time (including the 2090) was due to smarts on the controller doing more or less the same things FFS does now (good buffering, large reads, etc). FFS made the speed differential they had (over anyone else) much smaller, and reduced the demand (also the estimated price kept wandering upwards, which doesn't help demand - I think it more than doubled before the project was dropped, and features kept being added, including a 68881). There is no magic answer that makes everyone happy. The 3rd party developers might love to see commodore sell _nothing_ but minimal systems, so they can reap the profits in selling every form of expansion. Commodore stockholders might be annoyed at not selling things that are profitable. Various markets/buyers often will ignore machines for which the expansions they want are only available from 3rd parties, since they see that as the machine not being supported. Users are often interested in the lowest price, especially for "jelly-bean" items such as memory - higher prices means less expanded amigas, less sales of high-end software that can use that memory, less buyers of amigas, less users to buy 3rd-party hardware. It's all related, and everyone can't be maximally happy. I'm no marketing person, I don't make these sorts of decisions, I don't know why any particular decision is made (usually), so don't ask me. Apple is well-known for letting 3rd-parties blaze the way, then changing the specs on them to make everyone break and releasing their own version, now the only working version. I seem to remember something about their telling developers "you can't draw power from appletalk signals", then after several 3rd parties built ones with power supplies, Apple introduced their own that drew power from the signals. (note - I'm not tightly connected to the apple developer community, and therefor don't take my comments as gospel truth). Disclaimer: these are just the meanderings of my own mind. These are not the meanderings of any commdore official position. TINAR, IMHO, So There. -- Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup