ken@mm.uucp (Ken Seefried iii) (03/02/90)
In article <1990Mar1.175823.10643@smsc.sony.com> amir@Sony.COM (Amir ) writes: > >Talking about the price, I noticed that the hard disk is standard but >ethernet board is not in the IBM systems. This doesn't make much sense. >Is this really true? If so, how much is the ethernet card? Also, if it >is a microchannel card, what are the chances of it being high performance? >Hopefully, it is not a PS/2 card.... > Well, it does sorta make sense...from an IBM perspective. Remember that IBM is all hog-wild about 16-mbps Token Ring. Thus, they are giving you the option of having TR or Ethernet networking (or X.25 or FDDN or whatever). Not such a bad idea, IMHO. As far as the `chances' of it being high- performance, I don't see anything inherent in the Microchannel arch- itecture that would keep it from being so. Certainly, if it can, as claimed, chug along at 20MB/sec., it will far outpace the ability of ethernet to push data. > >I don't see how it is going to be an IBM killer. Motorola still needs to >prove that it can be a computer company and not just a semiconductor company. >It has failed everytime in the past. Also, it is not clear how it is going >keep its OEMs happy if it starts to compete with them. > I dunno...there seems to be a lot of 680x0-based VME boxes around, and Motorola MVME cards have a huge share of the real-time and controller market. They seem to be doing okay selling boxes. Besides...lots of semi manufacturers `compete' with their OEMs. Intel has the 301 and 302 '386 motherboards, and the iPSC parallel machines. MIPS has it's own line of machines. National Semi had the ill-fated ICM line. As long as Motorola keeps up the supply of chips, I don't see any of it's OEMs getting too upset... -- Ken Seefried iii ...!<anywhere>!uunet!gatech!mm!ken MetaMedia, Inc. ken%mm.uucp@gatech.edu Atlanta, Georgia, USA obquote: "I feel...like a god..."