CompuServe Messages

Tom – If what Jim Drew said about the A4000's costing 2.5x what it should have because of Commodore's bad purchasing and manufacturing decisions (like paying $200+ for power supplies in bulk), then a 6MB A4000/040 with a 200MB hard disk should be going for around $800 now, rather than $2000. Perhaps CEI can make some simple cost-saving decisions before resuming production and surprise us with amazingly lower prices (or is that wishful thinking? <g>) As for the CD32…why in the universe should it have a 400MB hard disk and an '040?! The thing's a _game console_! Now, if you mean a special kiosk multimedia machine, sure — but game consoles will NOT sell at $900. I'd really like to see processor slots and a variety of boards on all machines. That way, if you just needed, say, a LightWave render farm node, you could buy an A1200 with a 68040/40 card (yes, I am aware of the heat problems that would ensue; this is just an example). Or, if you wanted a mid-size system, you could pick up an A4000 with an '020 or '030 board. (Before y'all jump on me, saying, "What about the third-party boards?", my reasoning is that it seems that it would be cheaper to do it this way.) >> Also, no more software with dongles. This is the only platform that >> uses them. I agree with the first sentence, but don't AutoCAD and 3D Studio use them? I once opened up my dad's angiogram (medical stuff) PC to install a Bernoulli drive. I was puzzled when I saw the CMOS battery on the _outside_ of the back of the case. When I opened it up, I saw why — there, affixed to the inside wall where the CMOS battery should have been, was a parallel-port dongle — _hard-wired_ to the internal parallel port leads!! The first thing that went through my mind was, "Gee…doesn't all this extra equipment qualify as a dongle _anyway_?!" Seems stupid to me. There's also some sort of dongle on a corneal topography machine of his, though I haven't seen it. – Jim, on AutoPilot!