Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!caesar.cs.montana.edu!milton!seymour
From: seymour@milton.acs.washington.edu (Richard Seymour)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Mac Plus CPU mystery
Message-ID: <1233@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 90 01:51:18 GMT
References: <1009@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Reply-To: seymour@milton.acs.washington.edu (Richard Seymour)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 19

In article <1009@ux.acs.umn.edu> clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu (Charles Larson) writes:
>
>Here's a small mystery.  I opened up one of the Pluses in the lab today, and found that the 68000 CPU was labelled as a Hitachi product.
>
>What's the deal here?
>
><chaz>


no mystery -- Hitachi has been alicensed second source for Motorola CPU
chips for years...
many companies allow other companies to duplicate chips for a variety of
reasons:  (1) to provide THEIR customers with assurance that minor
 hiccups (flood, fire, earthquake, strikes) will not interrupt the 
 supply of chips -- there's a "second source"  the y can go to.
 (2) to acquire the rights to sell a chip or technology that the
 "second source" has developed. (3) to simply increase production
 capacity without building factories.
-- dick