Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!caen.engin.umich.edu!swerling From: swerling@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ace Swerling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Mac IIv - inexpensive Mac II box Message-ID: <42977063.1a7ab@cumin.engin.umich.edu> Date: 12 Apr 89 17:34:00 GMT References: Reply-To: swerling@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ace Swerling) Organization: University of Michigan Engineering Lines: 41 In article witting@topaz.rutgers.edu (Paul K Willing) writes: > >THE IDEA: Take a Mac IIcx box, pull out the 68030, the MMU, the math >co-processor, and any other expensive bits that aren't required. Drop >in the standard 6800 and a regular Floppy drive. Actually, Apple may >prefer to do a complete board revision to prevent quick and dirty >upgrades, but you get the picture. We could call it a Mac IIv (for >value or some such nonsense). > >THE RESULT: A low cost (chuckle, ok, less expensive) expandable Mac. >Idealy this sucker would sell for about what an SE does (maybe a >little less and put it head to head with the SE). It would lower the >entry level for color/greyscale Mac's, increase the market size for >Mac II series expansion cards, and maybe help lower Mac IIcx >production costs through higher volumes (esp if the board remained >common) > >paul witting@topaz.rutgers.edu The only thing that ocurrs to me about this is that the current Mac II's have trouble keeping up with all of the processing necessary for 8-bit color. It takes lots of RAM and processing power just to keep this system barely afloat many times. I don't think that it's possible to get the power necessary for this task out of a 68000. People are hungry for more power and despite the cost advantage, I think that people are going to buy more rather than less powerful Macs, especially as the OS requires it. People will still buy 68000 based Macs for a while just as people bought 8088 and 8086 based PCs for a while after the AT was introduced. Actually, they bought them for years because there was no reason to change. But the Mac market moves faster, and a powerful processor will be more and more necessary in the near future. I don't think that Apple will want to introduce a crippled machine and be blamer years down the road for doing just that when they knew it was going to be obsolete in a very short period of time. Beside that, by the time they got it out, I don't think *anybody* would want it. It would be a bad marketing move all the way around. Nice idea though. -Ace University of the National Champion Wolverines