From: skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls)
Subject: MB = More Bitching (was Re: Problems with the A4000)
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 16:04:34 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.083819.17967@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) bitches:
>
>For about a week or so, I've been promising to post my detailed explanation
>of exactly why Commodore's use of a super-cheap IDE HD interface in the A4000
>has very likely pushed the initial list prices higher than what they would 
>have been had SCSI been used.

No, you've been promising that ever since you sent me the information on
the A3400/A4000 several weeks ago.  The information that you got from 
that developer was close to the real thing, but not exact.

>The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself.  As has been
>rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
>a year ago.  What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
>that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset.  Indeed, none of
>the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him.  They
>were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.  

Okay, Mr. Know-It-All, what are the names of these engineers?  Tell us more
about the "good systems" that were canceled.  Hell, you were bitching about
those systems last fall, yet now you say that they are good.  Why don't you,
in your infinite wisdom, tell us what the A4000 should have been.  I know 
that you are CS, but you're such a genius that I'm sure that you could have
done a better job.

>The whole design of the A4000 can be summed up in a fairly short sentence:
>the A4000 is an A3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the AA chipset kludged 
>in, and with the SCSI subsystem replaced with IDE.  I will get back to the 

What did you expect?  As for being "kludged in", could you please elaborate?
Do you realize that most of your bitching sounds more like one of the 
assholes who write for magazines than anything else?  In other words, you
bitch and moan about surface details without having the first clue as to
how anything really works.  Grow up and learn to back up your whining with
facts instead of more complaints.

>issue of SCSI & IDE in a minute, but I would first like to explain what other 
>problems this has.  Basically, the A3000 was not designed for the AA chipset.
>The Ramsey and Buster chips in the A3000 were designed for use with the ECS,
>in particular the 2M Agnus chip.  The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the
>replacement for Agnus -- can potentially address 4M of chip RAM.  But since
>the Alice chip has been kludged to work with other chips intended for the
>2M Agnus chip, none of the new Amigas can use more than 2M of chip RAM.  The

2M Chip RAM is more than the 1M VRAM on the SVGA boards and equal to the
amount of VRAM on some Mac Quadras.  Do you really expect to use more than
2M for most applications?  Hell, I've never run out of memory on my A3000
with 2M Chip RAM, even when trying to.

>use of the A3000 architecture also has other problems, namely the 
>restriction of 16M of fast RAM on the motherboard.  This was not a problem
>several years ago with the A3000 was designed, but 16M is not all that 
>much anymore, with RAM prices at $34/megabyte for 60nS static-column memories.

How many Macs, PCs, etc. have 16M or more on the motherboard?  How many
people actually need 16M for typical use?  And if RAM is so cheap, use
the money that you save for one of the 64M Zorro III cards.  Don't be
such a dumbass.

>OK, I've established that the A4000 is an A3000 with the AA chipset kludged

No, you've established that even you can be more of an asshole than ever.

>in.  Now it makes sense to me that it would have cost less in development 
>costs to simply leave the A3000's SCSI design there instead of removing it 
>and replacing it with something else.  The costs of including SCSI in the 
>A4000, then, would have been practically zero in development costs.  

You moron.  In case you haven't noticed, a couple of C= engineers have
stated that IDE is cheaper than SCSI.

>   In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
>A4000's design, though, we also have to consider the costs involved in 
>designing the IDE design.  These costs would have been practically zero if
>the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600.  The problem is
>that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.

Don't kid yourself into thinking that designing an IDE interface is as
complex as designing the A3000's SCSI interface.  

>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>Amiga software.  This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
>situation, IMO, but the simple fact is that a design like this must have cost
>quite a lot to develop, and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
>existing SCSI design simply been left in the design for the A4000.

The A4000 motherboard is not the A3000 motherboard with a couple of changes.
Somehow I doubt that the IDE interface was a big portion of the development
cost for the A4000.

Sheesh, I don't know why I bother responding to you.  It's not like your
bitching is going to change anything, nor will my reply do anything to 
stop you from being such a whiner.

>As Dave Haynie and Randall Jessup have already pointed out, IDE -- even the
>new one in the A4000 -- costs next to nothing in terms of manufacturing costs.

And if the A4000 design is going to be used for lower end models, this lower
cost will become even more important.  If the savings over SCSI, including
the Demac chip, the SCSI chip, the drive, etc. were $50, this would result
in at least a $150-$200 lower retail price.  While this may not seem like a
huge amount of money in a $3000-$4000 system, I can assure you that it is
significant in a $1000-$2000 system.

>But the development costs involved in creating this IDE design must have been
>very substantial compared to the costs that would have been involved in
>simply carrying over the A3000's existing SCSI design to the A4000.  These

Why make such claims when you don't have a clue as to what really went on?

>development costs are still costs, and Commodore is going to want to recoup
>these costs as quickly as possible.  This means boosting the list prices
>to pay the development costs, and then lowering the list prices later as
>soon as these development costs have been payed for.  In the short-term, then,
>the prices on the A4000 and other new systems will be higher than if they
>had used a SCSI design. 

The pricing policy that you describe is not unique to Commodore.  While I
do expect prices to drop sometime in the future, I don't believe that the
price of the A4000 is unreasonable.  Of course, some bozos are going to
bitch that C= doesn't have an AGA based 030 machine for $500, but that is
to be expected given their mental age.

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

Go to hell Marc.

Skip Sauls
skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu




Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc