From: Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipset
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Nov 17 1992
Date: 16 Dec 92  12:16:00

> Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
> From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
> Message-ID: <BzBzGq.J3w@news.iastate.edu>
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
>
>   Hardly.  IBM clones are a special case.  Most of the hardware that you
> would hang off a SCSI bus is available in PC-specific versions, so there
> are fewer penalties for a PC having IDE rather than SCSI.  There are fewer
> tape drives, CD-ROM drives, etc.. available in Amiga-specific or Mac-
> specific versions, so that Amigas and Macs are forced to standardize on
> SCSI.  It works well enough in the Mac world, as all Macs have SCSI.  But
> when Commodore put IDE into the A4000, it cut substantially the number of
> options available to A4000 owners for expanding their Amigas.

The  first  thing  many people look at is the price.  IDE lets the A4000 be
cheaper  than it would be if it had SCSI.  This gives it a better chance of
being competitive with those IBM clones that all have IDE drives.

>   No it would not have.  Likely, the SCSI design that would have been used,
> had SCSI been inlcuded in the A4000, is the same design that is in the
> A3000.
> This design uses one major chip and a tiny amount of discrete logic (which
> Commodore no doubt incorporated in some gate array somewhere).  This design
> has been available for a long time, offers very good performance with
> standard SCSI drives, and is **CHEAP**.

It uses one custom DMA controler chip, the SCSI interface chip, connectors,
discrete  components,  and *motherboard real-estate* (the motherboard would
have to be bigger to accomodate these components, and that can make a large
price  difference).   It would have added more than $100 to the price.  IDE
costs practicaly nothing, and IDE drives are (slightly) cheaper than SCSI.

>   Hardly.  If Commodore had included SCSI as standard hardware, most people
> would have been happy with it and would not have bothered to upgrade to
> SCSI II.  Real SCSI II hard drives are EXPENSIVE, and there are no SCSI II
> tape drives or SCSI II CD-ROM drives or SCSI II floptical drives.  The only
> real major advantage of SCSI II over SCSI is the increased performance with
> a
> small number of SCSI II hard drives.
>
>   In other words, going from IDE to SCSI II will cost far more people less
> money than going from SCSI to SCSI II.  A lot of people will be purchasing
> this SCSI II card not to get the increased performance that it provides only
> with expensive SCSI II hard drives, but to get the flexibility that SCSI
> would have provided.  Lots of people will be buying the A3090 SCSI II card
> and
> hanging tape drives, floptical drives, CD-ROM drives, or slower SCSI hard
> drives off of it.  Senseless.

1. People who don't care about SCSI will save money on the A4000.
2. People who want SCSI-II will save money, plus have their computer earlier.
3. People who want plain SCSI CAN GO BUY A SCSI CARD RIGHT NOW for about the
   same price as your mythical "A4000 with SCSI the MB way".

>   I use an A3000 and like it.  I liked being able to take my A500 SCSI hard
> drive and plug it into the A3000 without having to pay an additional $200 or
> $300 to do so.  And as soon as Commodore comes out with this "CDTV
> technology
> for all Amigas" that Commodore mentioned at WOC, I will like being able to
> plug a CD-ROM drive into the A3000 without having to pay for an expensive
> SCSI II card to use it.

Good  for  you.   Dont fucking buy an A4000 then.  Stick with the A3000.  I
don't  hear  any  A4000  owners complaining about their systems (other than
that it's not very pretty, and that some early machines had minor problems)

> -!-
> | Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
> -!------------------------------------------------

 -Dances With Coyotes - World's slowest programer-Given that God is infinate-
 -AKA Dances V2.0, Coyote, Critter, Magnet, Major-and  that  the universe is-
 -- Former Net-Lurker - YES, an AMIGA godammit! --also  infinate,  would you-
 --- Still limping along with AmigaOS 1.3  :(  ---like a toasted  tea  cake?-


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