From: foax@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: I am giving up on the Amiga
Date: 24 Jul 92 22:08:13 EDT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell University

In article <1992Jul22.065748.3027@desire.wright.edu>
fheitkamp@desire.wright.edu writes:
> In article <62536@cup.portal.com>,
> TomK@cup.portal.com (Tom R Krotchko) writes:
> > Point of reference, a DELL 386DX-33 with 4MB ram, 80M HD, supervga and
> > monitor, DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1, 24 hour on-site service for 1 year
> > is $1550.
> >
> 	You know, I'm curious.  How do these people sell so cheap?
> 	Who's doing advanced development on the PC Clone architecture?
> 	Who's bringing advanced integration of the various subsystems
> 	to the PC?  Somebody has to pay for this.  The PC architecture
> 	is eventually going to fragment and die if no one carries the 
> 	advanced developement "ball", IMHO.  Although it seems to be 
> 	going OK at the present.  BTW, I use a PC and a Sun 4 at work
> 	and I use an Amiga at home.  

They can sell so cheap because the technology of the underlying
components is thoroughly understood and can be produced in large
quantities cheaply; indeed it has to be, since several vendors are
competing to sell each individual component--even the microprocessor!
(Unfortunately, the operating system doesn't quite fall into that
statement, although Microsoft is trying to keep OS/2 off.)
Clonemakers like Dell (or Gateway 2000 or Zeos or Northgate etc.) buy
these cheap components in volume and can assemble them cheaply.  They
then turn around and sell it to the consumer cheaply; again, they have
to, since a whole slew of clonemakers are competing to sell systems.
Volume is important here (as I believe another reply stated), since
the components and systems are cheaper when produced in volume; but
considering the popularity of PC clones, there will be plenty of
demand to justify the volume for some time yet.

As for advanced development on the PC clone architecture, it seems to
come from several sources.  There is Intel, of course, who is
constantly trying to produce higher-performance components that can be
fit into that architecture.  Other basic component manufacturers (e.g.
hard drive and memory chip makers) do the same.  Some manufacturers
produce special-purpose components (e.g. sound boards and graphics
accelerators) which can be fit into the architecture and which, if the
companies are smart and lucky, become popular enough to become a
standard.  SoundBlaster and the Tseng video boards come to mind; the
S3 and ATI coprocessor boards are still fighting it out but have
become more accepted.  IBM also comes up with innovations (like VGA
about 5 years ago) which can be implemented in the PC clone
architecture.  Finally there are the occasional industry commitees
which develop standard extensions to the architecture, like the EISA
bus (which widened the 16-bit ISA to 32 bits while retaining ISA
compatibility) and the new VESA local-bus standard (this specifies a
standard slot design allowing video boards and other components to
connect directly to the CPU's local data/address bus, which allows a
32-bit CPU to have a 32-bit connection to a video board at the CPU's
clock speed).

Obviously much (perhaps all) of the above sounds like hack and tack.
That's exactly what it is.  The trouble is that if you try to make a
clean sweep and change the fundamental architecture to take better
advantage of the newer compenents, you run into the fact that most of
the industry is set up to produce for the older architecture cheaply
and in volume, whereas your new architecture is only narrowly
supported (if at all) and that support is very expensive.
Consequently your new architecture will be costly, components for it
will be costly, and people won't want to buy into it, so it will
remain costly.  EISA is a good example of this, despite its
compatibility.  EISA systems are expensive (check the magazines) and
apparently boards that take advantage of it are also expensive and
hard to find.  The same is even more true of IBM's proprietary Micro
Channel; since it is proprietary, only IBM makes the systems, and they
can be far more expensive, and since people aren't stupid, not that
many IBM machines are sold, so few people make cards for Micro
Channel, and they are more expensive.  Therefore Micro Channel doesn't
become a market standard.  Can you blame companies for not rushing to
improve the PC architecture?

I'm not sure what you mean by "advanced integration of the various
subsystems".  If you mean bringing a better bus to the PC world, I
think I've already explained the problem.  If you mean chip-level
integration, I think this already goes on.  The 486DX already
integrates the microprocessor and math chip into one unit.  That
example may be a little too obvious, but I am sure there are other
chip-level integrations that have already occurred.  In fact, one
example may make EISA cheaper and therefore more accepted.  Opti has
apparently taken the Intel's 20-chip (!) EISA controller set and
cloned it using only 4 chips.  This might lead to a price drop in EISA
systems and an increase in its acceptance, but only time will tell.

I doubt that the PC architecture will "fragment"; indeed, the
community seems to have settled on a rather monolithic standard of 386
& 486 CPU's, ISA bus, and VGA-compatible graphics boards.  It will die
only when some company or set of companies produces a new machine
revolutionary enough to blow the doors off current machines and
markets it well enough to win public acceptance.  The marketing job
especially will require a combination of savvy (to convince the users
that they want this machine and that its older competitors are a
doomed joke, and to forestall attempts by the rest of the industry to
do the same to them), guts (to price the machine low and to make its
architecture open so that others can make it cheaply), and luck.
Commodore produced a pretty nice machine back in '85 (I remember going
ga-ga over it when it first emerged), but they totally failed to win
public acceptance.  It remains to be seen whether the
IBM/Apple/Motorola alliance to produce the PowerPC will do better.
-- 

--Colin Howell			email to howell@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu
--Cornell Astronomy Dept.	(hopefully switching to computer science)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy