Re: If you could design a $300 homecomputer today, what would you choose?

[Bob Retelle <bobr1@provide.net>]

On 17 Jul 2001 05:44:12 GMT, wbdesnoy@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron
Desnoyers Winmill) wrote:

>Bob Retelle (bobr1@provide.net) wrote:
>: Allied Electronics doesn't even stock them any more, but for only $200
>: they'll order you a 33Mhz 68020 chip.
>
>That price is insane, and I suggest that you shop around more.  And focus on
>the 68000, which I have seen in calculators costing about US$120.  I am
>quite confident that the manufacturer is not producing these at a loss, and
>likely have a healthy margin.

Well, Newark Electronics has the slower 20Mhz version of the 68020 for
only about $65 each, but they only have 65 of them in stock.

I checked the 68020 and 68030 because those were suggested in several
of the messages discussing Memory Management.

The 68000 requires an external MMU, taking up more real estate on the
motherboard and adding cost to the basic cost of the CPU.

>
>It is worth noting though that only parts of the Macintosh and IIgs operating
>systems are in ROM.

...
>
>Now why is that relevant?  Well, I would want the whole OS in ROM.  That way,
>if you goof up while creating patches, you simply reset the machine (or, better
>yet, disable patches while booting in order to recover your data).  This calc
>of mine (with the OS in flash memory) has given me a scare a couple of times,
>and certain parts of its software do not appear to work correctly to this day.
>It is, of course, poorly documented so that is a problem too.  Hopefully the
>ROM would be socketed, so that the OS could be upgraded (or the patches
>incorporated in some optimised form).*  But that is not a huge issue.  The
>other reason for a ROM based OS is to avoid the lengthly process of
>reinstalling the OS, as I'm certain many of you Windows users enjoy.  ;-)  The
>patches would have to be reinstalled, but your machine wouldn't be in an
>unusable form without them.  If the patch installation system is sensible,
>they should be quite easy to copy from a floppy disk to a system folder anyway.

Having lived through the "OS in ROM" with the Atari ST, it can be a
"double edged sword".   It WAS great to have the OS boot almost as
fast as you could blink.

Unfortunately though, if there were any bugs in the code, (HA.. IF)
you were stuck with them until the manufacturer could get around to
first finding them, then fixing them, then finally producing a new
version, then distributing them,  then finally you get to open your
machine and manually replace them.

With Atari, that manufacturing cycle took about as long as the useful
life of the computer.  It's far more difficult than releasing a
"service pack" on disk.

And, the cost to the end user was ridiculous.

(Of course, it DID generate a nice little "cottage industry" for
programmers to come up with fixes and patches while waiting for the
"official" ROMS to finally appear.)

Do you really want "Mom and Pop"  $300 computer buyers to have to be
prying ROMs out of sockets and jamming new ones in?

Actually what I always thought Atari should have done with the ST was
to put the OS on a cartridge.  That way they could issue updates which
could be swapped as easily as changing a game, and the old cartridges
could be returned in the same shipping box for a credit.  Sort of like
deposit soda bottles.

Only problem is, it would add $$$ to the cost of the original unit.  

(Cartridge shells, cartridge pc boards, sockets, bypass capacitors,
possibly buffer chips, EPROMs, socket for the motherboard, tooling for
the computer case, etc.)

When we would suggest improvements in the ST,  Atari would whine about
the cost.  For example, sockets for the memory would have made RAM
upgrades very simple, but they told us that would add $25 to the
overall cost of the original computer, so sockets were out.

>
>Byron.
>
>[*] Come to think of it, wouldn't flash memory have a write enable line?  If
>so, a manual switch or jumper on this line would be a suitable alternative.

Yes, FLASH RAM would be workable, but...   you'd also need a boot ROM
with the read/write routines for the FLASH update in it.  Otherwise,
one hiccup and your computer's OS could be toast with no way to fix
it.   Just like blowing away a motherboard with the wrong BIOS
upgrade.   And of course, add the cost of the boot ROM and
interfacing.


BobR