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From: jmunkki@kampi.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacPluses and system 7.0
Message-ID: <1990Jan1.015227.11586@santra.uucp>
Date: 1 Jan 90 01:52:27 GMT
References: <7645@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu>
Sender: news@santra.uucp (Cnews - USENET news system)
Reply-To: jmunkki@kampi.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Lines: 33

I wonder how much it would cost to build a ROM SCSI drive. You would need
a very simple processor, an SCSI chip and a big ROM. I guess the ROM would
be the most expensive part. Apple could then put most parts of the system
file to that ROM. I guess all fonts (outline versions!) and most system
and finder code resources could be put in a 512K or 1024KB ROM.

It would have to cost about $150 or less to be interesting to schools
and floppy-only users. Macintosh Portable users would also benefit, if
a ROM-slot version of the same ROM would be available.

I guess anyone with a distribution Apple System Software license might
have the right to sell something like this. Apple doesn't license the
ROMs, but developers can license the system software with some limitations.

EEPROM would probably be too expensive, but a large ROM series would
bring the price down to something reasonable. An option to add 256KB
SIMM memory for RAM disk would make it even more popular. There will
be a lot of spare 256KB SIMMs once people start upgrading to 1MB SIMMs.
I wouldn't mind having a system ROM disk and a 1MB RAM disk even though
I have a hard disk. You can't beat ROM/RAM seek time. (Transfer rates
might not be all that great with a simple 8-bit processor.)

Nah...they'll never do this. The people who make hardware development
decisions never listen to us anyway. This might solve the problem of
forcing users to buy hard disks. Most users would prefer the hard disks,
but wouldn't it be great to be able to say: "System 7.0 doesn't require
a hard disk, if you get our ROMDrive product for only $150. AND you can
use the 512KB from your 1MB MacPlus."

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|     Juri Munkki jmunkki@hut.fi  jmunkki@fingate.bitnet        I Want   Ne   |
|     Helsinki University of Technology Computing Centre        My Own   XT   |
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