eric@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Eric Lavitsky) (09/04/86)
<Oh I wish I were a news line eater...
Got this from the Well, thought it might be of interest to the net...
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from perry@well
How's $750 for a fully ZORRO compatible 2MB RAM board with no
wait states and fully autoconfiguring? We've just started final production
on our first run of boards. Shipping will begin Sept 22nd, but if you are
in a special hurry we can get a board to you sooner.
And how about a $150 two slot ZORRO card rack? Why reduce your
options with a terminal side mounted product? Or, why pay $1800 bucks for
an expensive ZORRO back plane? Buy a Mini-Rack-B (for Budget) and start
using ZORRO products NOW!
Two slots not enough? In November we'll introduce the Mini-Rack.
Its a four slot ZORRO back plane fitting above your amiga. If you bought
a Mini-Rack-B we'll buy it back at full price towards purchasing a
Mini-Rack. That's $300 or $150 with a Mini-Rack-B trade in.
ASDG Inc. No bull shit. Just excellence.
Perry (President, ASDG Inc.) Kivolowitz
Forgot to mention. All ASDG products have a ONE YEAR parts and labor
warranty.
See us at the developers fair.
Perry
The Mini-Rack-B is a two slot backplane fitting on the side of
the Amiga. It contains a 6 Amp power supply and does not obscure either
mouse port (imagine a higher, wider Alegra). The Mini-Rack-B's dimensions
are 6'' wide x 10'' high x 10'' deep.
The intent of this product is to provide as inexpensive a Zorro
backplane as possible to the consumer. ASDG will produce (starting Novem-
ber) a ``serious'' backplane at which time we will BUY BACK AT FULL PRICE
any Mini-Rack-B for upgrade to a Mini-Rack.
The Mini-Rack is a four slot fully Zorro compatible backplane
which resides above the Amiga, below your monitor. The final height has
not been determined yet but will be less than 5 inches. A 9 to 12 Amp
power supply will be contained within the Mini-Rack.
So, if you bought a Mini-Rack-B now, used it till November and
decided you needed more expansion space, we'll buy your Mini-Rack-B back
for what you paid for it when you upgrade to a Mini-Rack.
We don't anticipate any of our backplane products passing the
bus.
ASDG can be reached by mail at:
ASDG Inc.
280 River Rd.
Suite 54A
Piscataway N.J.
08854
And by phone at (201) 540 - 9670
The 2Mbyte card is only one way you can get ram boards from us.
We have:
.5M 1/2MByte Ram $450 List $370 Intro Dev/UG Price
1M 1 Mbyte Ram $650 List $550 Intro Dev/UG Price
and 2M 2 Mbytes Ram $900 List $750 Intro Dev/UG Price
The .5M and 1M are upgradable to the 2M simply by adding 256K ram parts. No
new PALS are needed. Normally, the .5M and 1M ram sections are not socketed
since we do not want to pass the cost of sockets on to every customer. We
will socket the .5M ram section for $75. We will socket the 1M ram section
for $50. Socketed ram means that you don't need a soldering iron to add the
256K parts.
The boards come with a one year warranty covering parts and labor
for the components we provided (ie: we do not cover any ram you might have
added).
In November or December we will come out with EDC versions of our
ram products (Error Detecting and Correcting) if anyone's interested.
Something I am looking forward to myself, is our SMGC.
S - 4 DMA driven serial ports
M - 68881 Math Chip
G - DMA driven GPIB (IEEE 488)
C - Battery backed up clock
This product will be available in any of 15 combinations (ie: any
combination ranging from just one section to all four). We haven't set
pricing yet (the product won't be released till November or December) but
our goal is to provide any TWO functions for LESS than other manufacturers
can provide one. Plus, four products taking up only one Zorro slot! Each
section will be auto-configuring and have its own AmigaDos driver.
Since ASDG's start in the Amiga market place we've had two goals:
(1) Five hardware products in 1986
Mini-Rack-B September 22nd
.5M, 1M, 2M Memory Board September 22nd
Mini-Rack November 22nd
.5MEDC, 1MEDC, 2MEDC Memory Board December
SMGC December
(2) We're out to prove that it's possible to make quality hardware
products and STILL become succesfull.
Perry
Re: Restorable RAM Disk
Our memory boards do not clear or otherwise alter their contents
during system reset (Cntrl-Amiga-Amiga). As such, provided their contents
were not blown away by the dying program, it should be possible to recon-
struct the RAM disk.
I'm not promising that the software to perform this function will
be part of our delivered product but we will work on it. If we do develop
this software, we will not charge for it.
(Or maybe someone out there in developer land has already developed this
code and would like us to distribute it?)
Perry
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Disclaimer: I do not work for ASDG or Commodore-Amiga, or any hardware
manfacturer that I can think of, though this *could* always change.
--
ARPA: LAVITSKY@RUTGERS or LAVITSKY@RED.RUTGERS.EDU
UUCP: ...{ihnp4,pyrnj}!topaz!eric
...hplabs!well!lavitsky
SNAIL: 629 Cheryl Drive, Iselin, NJ 08830perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) (09/05/86)
I should say that the referenced article was taken from the WELL's conferencing system. The text included in the article is actually several responses I provided to other people's questions. Their questions and comments were deleted by the poster so only my side of the ``conversation'' was left. Perry S. Kivolowitz