Firstly, I should say that I do like the idea of Waldorf producing the
boards in principle, but I worry about what sort of cost we're going to be
looking at to buy them. Someone mentioned a company's idea of "cost price"
being different to an enthusiast's - a valid point. Andy, is your company
prepared to take a _loss_ to produce these boards? That is, is Waldorf
Electronics willing to subsidise the cost of producing them? If the cost
climbs out of reach of the enthusiasts, you will have a much more limited
number of programmers available...
Anyhow, on a different topic, we still need to resolve some of the system
issues. If SMT is now an option, perhaps we could reconsider the Inmos
framebuffer controller (forget the number)? If I remember, the chip was
about $100 - how does this compete with the 34076+NSC solution (taking into
account the simpler VRAM interface)?
It seems that Steve, Jerry and I are outnumbered as regards the ISA vs
proprietry bus issue, so personally, I'll concede defeat. The other major
issue to be resolved as far as I can see is the 3730 vs 3041 problem. I
would _still_ prefer to see the 3730 on the board, as it eliminates any
shared-memory problems. Also, seeing as SMT is now possible, the PQFP
package is no longer a problem. The only obstacle to using the 3730 then,
is it's availability. Perhaps IDT might show more interest if they were
contacted by Waldorf Elec., who mentioned plans to produce 100 or so
boards?
Anyhow, apart from eliminating shared-memory and memory contention
problems, I see the 3730 requiring less development time to get going, as
well as providing a more integrated (perhaps smaller?) board.
Comments?
Pat -- "There's only one thing left to do Mama, I got to ding a ding dang
my dang a long ling long" (Jesus Built My Hotrod -- Ministry)
GCS d* -p+ c++ l++ m--- s+/- !g w- t- r
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