RWilson@acorn.co.uk (03/22/90)
I've now been subjected to four postings about the AMD powered colour graphics display card for Mac IIs. And the first claimed (in market-oid speak, admittedly): >> Apple's Macintosh Display Card 8*24 GC, which >>uses the Am29000, is the first significant use of a RISC (reduced >>instruction set computer) microprocessor in a high-volume personal >>computer application. Well I waited for a while. But no one seemed to object, so I guess its up to me. The AMD/Apple marketoid that generated this is clearly well out of his/her/its tree :-). (A) Radius Inc (1710 Fortune Drive, San Jose) have been selling two RISC powered graphics accelerators for some time: QuickColor for 24 bit graphics acceleration and QuickCAD for CAD acceleration. Both boards use the VL86C010 RISC processor ("Acorn RISC Machine") at 10MHz to provide the umph. (More available when they use ARM3 (VL86C020).....) (B) Acorn have been selling high-volume personal (600-3000 pounds) computers based exclusively around ARM for quite some time now! So either Apple/AMD have generated a time machine in order to be first, or these other companies are guilty of "insignificant use of a RISC in high-volume personal computer applications". Not to mention the insignificant SPARCs and Transputers... --Roger [I'm not saying the card isn't nice, a boon to mankind, the best thing since sliced bread - just that it ain't the first] (modesty forbids saying just how many more ARMs (and SPARCs & Transputers) there are than the 29000)