Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!mtune!icus!mozart!rosalia
From: rosalia@mozart.UUCP (Mark Galassi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: Opening the 3B1
Message-ID: <143@mozart.UUCP>
Date: 11 Dec 87 04:57:08 GMT
References: <7517@alice.UUCP> <629@umbc3.UMD.EDU>
Reply-To: rosalia@mozart.UUCP (Mark Galassi)
Organization: Mark Galassi Research, Stony Brook, New York
Lines: 27

>>Also, I'd like to know if you really can add a 68881 FPU.
>
>Mee Too! There isn't a socket on my mother-board for one, so if it exists, its
>a card. Has anyone actually Seen on or gotten a firm price for the thing? I'd
>love to do slick graphics on the thing if I could!

    Back in September, when I was trying to get someone to sell me a
3B1 at the fire-sale price, I talked to hundreds of AT&T hot-lin people.
Most of them were twits, and didn't know what on earth a floating
point processor was, but one finally told me the tragic story.  I
sort of quote him (I don't remember exactly, but close).

    "Oh, that was really a tragic story:  we had a board with a 68881
designed and built and it worked beautifully, but then someone in
'upper management' decided that there wasn't a marketplace for it."

    If the manager at AT&T who made that decision reads this newsgroup
(probably not), I would like to tell you that you had a bad idea.

    In any case, even though there *IS* a part number for it (!), AT&T
does not sell it.  Maybe someone who works for AT&T could find a few
thousand of them thrown away in some corner and distribute them to
the rest of us :-).
-- 
						Mark Galassi
					    ...!mozart!rosalia
{ These opinions are mine and should be everybody else's :-) }