Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!dogie!uwvax!astroatc!nicmad!madnix!perry
From: perry@madnix.UUCP (Perry Kivolowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AM(iga un)IX
Message-ID: <588@madnix.UUCP>
Date: 1 Apr 89 18:20:22 GMT
References: <1366@hub.ucsb.edu> <2426@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <6370@cbmvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: perry@madnix.UUCP (Perry Kivolowitz)
Distribution: na
Organization: ASDG Incorporated
Lines: 51

In article <6370@cbmvax.UUCP> jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes:
>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 

>	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).

Randell's interpretation of history is correct. While Rick is correct that
some CBM hardware releases *have* possibly aborted some research projects
among the third parties, the SDP was torpedoed by CBM software. In this
case, all for the better (since having the FFS for everyone does a lot more
good than having a few SDP's for the privelidged few. For sure, I wish the
experience had cost of less r&d time and money :-)). 

So far, I've been upset many times by impending Commodore hardware releases.
But, after time passes and the dust settles I've been able to see how and
why CBM felt it was appropriate to release their own product and that the
net result on the Amiga marketplace was a positive one. Discovering the
how's and why's has helped guide us into market areas which have extremely
low probabilities of direct CBM competition. (For example, the product areas
attainable through Twin-X such as the whole color scanner and related 
software market).

So, having gone into areas where CBM is not likely to follow we've been
happy to find that what was more often than not an adversarial relationship
is now more and more a finely tuned cooperative relationship where we, CBM,
and the Amiga community benefits.

------

So what's the moral of the story? Well, there are some companys that can
prosper in the shadow of CBM by offering lower cost/different solutions. 
There are some companys that seek to exist entirely outside the shadow 
cast by CBM by exploring new markets and going where no Amiga has gone
before. Those that can do neither...well...


-- 
                        Perry Kivolowitz, ASDG Inc.
ARPA: madnix!perry@cs.wisc.edu   {uunet|ncoast}!marque!
UUCP: {harvard|rutgers|ucbvax}!uwvax!astroatc!nicmad!madnix!perry
CIS:  76004,1765 (what was that about ``giggling teenagers''?)