Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AM(iga un)IX
Message-ID: <7786@killer.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 8 Apr 89 04:16:13 GMT
References: <588@madnix.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 75

in article <588@madnix.UUCP>, perry@madnix.UUCP (Perry Kivolowitz) says:
>>In article <2426@sbcs.sunysb.edu> rick@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Rick
Spanbauer) writes:

Re: "Commodore is undercutting their independent developers by
releasing hardware!":

>>>	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

When the Amiga 1000 was released, I roundly flamed Commodore for not
putting a built-in hard disk controller. Said I: "You're intending to
market this as a business computer. No self-respecting business
computer is floppy-based. Somebody's collective business sense is
stuck up their a$$." Events proved me right. The few hard drive
controllers eventually released for the 1000 were, by and large,
kludges (e.g. the C Ltd. and Supra "slap-on-the-side"), and were twice
the price of equivalent solutions for IBM compatible computers. And
the first of the ones that really worked appeared almost a year after
the Amiga was introduced -- is it any wonder that people had trouble
seeing the Amiga as a "serious" computer?

So you can call the 2090 more a case of "too little, too late". Its
cost effectiveness is very suspect when Microbotics Hardframes give
better performance for the same price, and down at the bottom end
other controllers flourish by giving inferior but acceptable
performance at half the price (e.g. a $150 C Ltd. controller does
300K/sec with a 40ms RLL drive & Adaptec 4070 -- not bad at all, eh?).

Now someone says, "Unix without an Ethernet card is like a business
computer without a hard drive", and what happens? A maker of Ethernet
cards jumps their case! (although I can't blame him, if some of the
rumors of past CBM dealings are correct). The problem is that Unix on
the A2500 cannot be taken seriously as a viable Unix solution if it
cannot be hooked up onto the existing network of Unix machines. AT&T
and others are heavily pushing Unix as "the network operating system"
(similar to DEC's "the network is the machine" or some such bull). A
Unix that doesn't network? Average DP manager is likely to say, "Hell,
might as well stay with DOS!"

> 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...

Looking at other Commodore products that compete with third party
products, e.g. their Genlocks etc., again the 3rd-party solutions are
better supported, better quality, and suitably priced (TV studios
aren't as price-sensitive as ordinary consumers -- they'll gladly pay
$500 for a quality genlock, and count it cheap).

Commodore, by its very nature, is inept at producing small quantities
of a specialty product. Let's face it, Commodore's forte' is
mass-production and mass-marketing. Manufacturing and selling 800,000
Amiga 500s is something they can do without blinking, but making and
selling 8,000 genlocks... well, they can't do that any better than the
3rd party can, and because of the usual bureaucratic hassles of a
large company, by the time it's produced, it's likely to be obsolete. 

On the other hand, corporate customers want complete systems. They
don't want to have to deal with 90 different manufacturers.

And of course there's a sort-of-solution for that problem:
cross-licensing of existing technology. But that doesn't always bear
fruit. E.g. a random rumor I heard somewhere says that CBM bought some
of Ameristar's networking technology for cheap Amiga-to-Amiga
communications a couple of years back -- and that it immediately
disappeared into a black hole, never to be seen again.

--
|    // Eric Lee Green              P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509     |
|   //  ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg     (318)989-9849     |
| \X/            Amiga.  The homestation for the blessed of us.             |