From: aua@cs.tu-berlin.de (Daniel Tamberg)
Subject: Heia guys: New flame war starting (ok, let's do it civilized...)
Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 11:51:04 GMT

Hi there!

After watching the recent flame wars around John Kortink (who did not update my
registered !Tranlator et al.!!!), I would like to bring up a maybe more
interesting (?)  subject to be discussed here.

My hypothesis is: Why should Acorn bother with small steps in increasing their
computer's hardware  performance? When the Arc came to the market, it's special
appeal was that it seemed to have all we  ever dreamed to have - as standard.
But our dreams went on and today, we definitly do  *not* dream of a 4096 colour
display or 100MB disc drives or 4MB RAM, or do we?

I think Acorn should set a new level of default configuration with the next
model in  order to stay in the top end for the years to come. Today, Acorn does
only some sort of  tidying-up their hardware but another push of innovation has
yet to come, whilst the competitors do not sleep.

So my suggestion is: - Put in an ARM700 manyMHz *as standard* (the ARM250, as
seen in the A4000 is just some  technology-waste that was created on-the-fly to
an integrated ARM700, I believe). - Put in 64MB RAM *as standard*, upgradable to
128 on-board. Memory is *very* cheap  these days (30 quid per 4MB) and the MEMC
is rather aged. No more will we hear  complaints about the lack of virtual
memory. - Put in a 512MB SCSI II drive and a CD-ROM drive *as standard*. The
drives become  rather cheap when bought in bulks, CD-ROM would allow massive
amounts of data to be  accessed and the famous multimedia would become a usual
and useful every-day thing. - Put in some graphics with 1280 by 1024 pixel
resolution with 32-Bit colour *as  standard*. This would also need a decent
graphics sub-processor, but why not? This  could even be attached to the main
processor in much the same way as the numeric  coprocessor. Give it access to
some dual-ported RAM together with a nice instruction  set and here we go... -
Put in 16bit sound generation and sampling *as standard*. With almost every
CD-player  using it, this technology has become *really* cheap. - Put in
'floptical' disc drives *as standard*. - Put in massive connectivity for MIDI,
networks, serial and parallel, IIC etc *as  standard*. - Make it quiet *as
standard*. The noise of an airplane's take-off which the current  models cause
is no more necessary nowadays.

'What a dreamer!', I hear you shout. But if you think about these details
carefully,  you will admit (well, I hope so), that such an equipment would
hardly need to be  updated within the next few years - maybe except the
processor, which should therefore  of course reside on a separate drop-in board.
This means that it is likely that such a  machine, even if more expensive in the
first moment - may turn out to be cheaper in the  end. The very big advantages
of all these features being *standard* are (only two listed) 1. The manufacturer
could produce all necessary parts in big amounts, which makes it  much cheaper.
2. Software houses could rely on the qualities for their application's design.
Much  more functional software could be written.

Don't tell me that you wouldn't need all these features. The history of
computers has  proven that there can't be 'too much'. Even the requirements of
the home-users  increased drastically. Can you seriously imagine someone still
buying a C64 for his  daily letter-writing, database maintenace/use etc. by free
will? Much the same, nobody  will be able to imagine someone using a computer
without a decent screen display,  speech-input and immense mass storage capacity
in the near future (say in 5 years or  so).

My assumption about a price for the suggested system is as follows (might be a
little  optimistic - please correct me if I am completely wrong):

ARM700                         300  ps
64MB RAM                       640  ps
Disc drives (512MB SCSI & CD) 1100  ps
Graphics System                300  ps
16bit sound                    100  ps
Floptical drive                100  ps
Connectivity                   200  ps
Quietness                        0  ps
Bits & Pieces                  300  ps
----------------------------------------
SUM                           3040  ps

This is not too expensive for such high-end machine, even if you add some other
100ps  for the OS, keyboard, mouse and some more gain for the manufacturer.
Still, a Mac  Quadra 700 costs more than 5000ps (sort of) with a *much* lower
specification. Also, the various bits will become cheaper during the next few
years (especially the RAM chip and drive prices will go down considerably).

Any comments?

       Daniel

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