[comp.graphics] Shock! RISC graphics cards for Macs before AMD!

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)