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Retro Rogue, on Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:04 PM, said:
16MHz was the launch rate, not 12MHz, there were no secondary sources at that point which would also be prohibitive with cost and sourcing ("bulk" had little to do with the supply chain of that scale). Everything's in "bulk" when you're talking about electronics manufacturing. It seems like you're trying to lay small business bulk orders of napkins and toiletpaper on to this or electronics aftermarkets, and that's not how it works - that's not the important factor in deciding end cost and usage.
I'm assuming a 100k order ( even factored over an 18month period ) would achieve a better price than a 100 off order ( The $487 number ) , that's the experience I've had with electronics orders before. ( I'll take your word on napkins and toiletpaper
)I'm also assuming the 12MHz part would be cheaper than the 16MHz part ( due to binning )
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I'm not sure what your point is, the workstation that first used the 68020 was not mentioned to compare markets. Very specifically, the workstation market (as with any new high end processor launch) was the only market that could support the chip cost wise, which is why it was brought up.. Mid and low level markets usually adopt a processor once it's been out for some years and either the manufacturing costs have dropped, supply sources are more established, a cost reduced version has been produced, or the introduction of newer higher end processors have pushed it to a lower pricing tier.
I was only pointing out that the cpu cost is actually not the majority of the costs in the workstation market ( As you mentioned that being the only market for the chip ) - it was just a bit of info that seemed interesting.
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Once again, saying you'd try to do that in 1984 is ignoring all these facts is pure unrealistic fantasy. Going after the higher end computer market in 1984 (which includes all the R&D since you'd be starting from scratch) with the mass amounts of debt that you just inherited would not be a favorable plan. Your market's limited (since the Atari brand had no previous inroads in that market to draw from), your dev time now just increased to a good year and half to two years instead of the year it took for the first 520ST's to roll off the assembly for evaluations and club use. This compared to the already established marketing and distributions chains that were just purchased from the previous Atari, and well established user group network to leverage for grass roots adoption support. You'd be throwing all that away as well, because the chains and marketing were for the consumer market not business (Tramiel had enough of a hard time making business inroads several years later), and there's no way the user group would have supported a jumnp to that high of a cost and model - there was enough of an outcry from those groups regarding the jumping from 8-bits to lower end 16-bits. Saying you'd do all that in 1984 is a plan for an ST fan in unclear hindsite that's going after a more general "wouldn't it be neat" personal want laundry list. There's nothing wrong with that if it's in that light, but it doesn't seem you're approaching it that way.
This is all fantasy
- take the workstation down to the 'home' workstation ( homestation )I dont think that the R&D costs of a 68020 machine would be anymore than those of the 68000 - only the chip costs. Why do you think it would increase from 1 to 2 years anyway?
Regarding the 'grass roots' support - that would be offset by the fact that the resultant machine would be way more comparable with Amiga / Mac / and PC - and also way more future proof.. ( In hindsight )
( I dont think the ST really hit 'consumer' until the 520STFM model came out anyway )
