WB2.0
Ron,
I agree — _ideally_ maintaining enough modularity at the motherboard level
to allow for chip-level upgrading of the system is a noble goal, and I'm
sure one the Amiga started out with. But no-one can predict the future, and
therefore no-one can design a system open-ended enough to take into account
the range of possibilities that might come along (the IBM systems are
crippled by their linearity of design and slow system bus, for two things,
for instance). Seems to me at least part of the goal in the design of the
A500 and A2000 was to keep the price down as much as possible (admirably
achieved), while allowing for some expandability. I suspect there was
initial eagerness over at CBM (esp. at the engineering level) around the
possibility of introducing WB2.0 and the ECS across all systems, and I
think some of us are frustrated because that eagerness seems to have been
lost. It expressed itself in a slip on the 1MB CHIP RAM upgrade for A500s
— from which CBM has pulled back, apparently, in order to keep themselves
free from an inundation of requests for further information and help
dealing with a variety of problems that were cropping up. That inundation,
as well I know from my old CP/M user group support days, can easily suck up
almost all available time and energy better spent moving forward, and I for
one am glad CBM have managed to protect themselves this way. Of course, I
didn't jump at the chance to upgrade my 8372, knowing full well that a good
year's worth of experience _in the marketplace_ is necessary before the
full consequences from the change of any complex piece of hardware can be
known. If I were eager to be a hardware pioneer, I'd be sure I had the
extra dough to replace my system if I were planning to experiment this way
(no company, no matter how much in-house testing they do, can successfully
predict all the possible combinations a device will be placed in in the
real world, as I'm sure you know). As it is, I've still got KickStart 1.2
in my A500! <g> Oh well, I've gone on long enough… — steve