Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!lll-crg!hoptoad!farren From: farren@hoptoad.uucp (Mike Farren) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Great big huge floppy disk? Message-ID: <1619@hoptoad.uucp> Date: Mon, 5-Jan-87 02:15:25 EST Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1619 Posted: Mon Jan 5 02:15:25 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 5-Jan-87 06:43:53 EST References: <346@csustan.UUCP> <5396@ukma.ms.uky.csnet> <1172@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> <1610@hoptoad.uucp> Reply-To: farren@hoptoad.UUCP (Mike Farren) Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 28 In article <1610@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >The question is, why didn't the Amiga designers build it so you could >plug in all those cheap IBM compatible hard disk drives? Like by including a >standard disk controller chip on the motherboard? (The chips, connectors >and all that would be cheap, since they are commercial parts used in >all the IBM clones.) At least they could have done a SCSI port like Mac Plus. > >I suspect the answer is: because they thought they were building >a "rock-shooter" (game machine) rather than a real computer. There's probably a bit of truth in that - after all, the Amiga DID start out as a game machine. However, I think that the bigger reason is simply that at the time the machine was designed, there were no "cheap IBM compatible hard disk drives" - a 10M drive cost approx. $1K. The development of a very large market was what got the drives for IBMs down to a reasonable price in the first place. Also, the idea of using IBM compatible controllers falls down when you consider that all of them are designed to the IBM I/O bus, which I would HATE to see in a 68000 machine. As far as SCSI, it's worth noting that Amiga hard drives are approaching SCSI drives pricing pretty rapidly. -- ---------------- "... if the church put in half the time on covetousness Mike Farren that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..." hoptoad!farren Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"