Re: Apple IIe TCP-IP w/ LANceGS Card

[Marsha <menacechgo@aol.com>]

[posted and mailed]

"Bill Garber" <willy46pa@comcast.net> wrote in news:w5ydnbvVKYCsI32iRVn-
jw@comcast.com:

> "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message
> 20031217152311.19091.00001002@mb-m13.aol.com">news:20031217152311.19091.00001002@mb-m13.aol.com...
 <snip>

>: I suspect that the cost of the LANceGS is part of the problem,
>: too, since most IIe owners see it as too expensive for the
> benefit
>: that they are likely to receive from it.
> 
> Yeah. As I said, why is that $150+ when others are $15.

Designing something to a market of perhaps a few hundered thousand 10-
year old computers is much more risky than millions of PCI and ISA based 
machines.  These millions of machines generally have the same instruction 
set and plenty of memory for drivers, e.g. a few of the files on my PC 
for it's network card VTDI.386=6K, VTCP.386=59K, VDHCP.386=65K, 
RTL8029.sys=20K.
This blows any standard //e memory availability if you want to do 
anything with it.
Having to design ones own drivers and/or translate coding from x86 code 
to 65816 code for a modern network chip, designing the board from 
scratch, etc.  If SSH want's to recoup even a percentage of costs has to 
hope to get it from those few that will say they really need a ethernet 
card.
And while a good old fashioned hacker would want to get theie Apple II on 
the net, for most of us it's easier to even go out and get an old pentium 
computer to have more connectivity potential than the Apple.

Marsha