Thought on new Apple hardware.

CobraBoy (tbyars@earthlink.net)
Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:26:16 -0800

So I got to thinking which is always trouble. What IS Apple the hardware
company going to do about new hardware? And I got to thinking about what
they already have. And what NeXTStep brings to the picture. Gone completely
is the need for the "Mac" ROM. That can be written into software and
shadowed if need be. So this is what I came up with.

The new hardware would be a box that looks surprisingly like the
NeXTStation Pizza box (IMHO one of the most beautiful pieces of hardware
ever.)

The logic board would contain the following;

UW SCSI and FireWire (Adaptec)
10/100 Base-T and AUI (Intel)
64 bit AWE SoundBlaster (Creative Labs/Yamaha)
PPC 8500 Video/Audio
Direct Hardware Video Acceleration
Processor on card
Some form of RJ-12 (freon) cooling system for the Processor.
Standard EDO RAM
ADB/PS-2 (switchable)

Ok so here's the deal.

The boxes would all be made by Apple. Apple would then sign up various
vendors to supply the Processors/OS. DEC with Alpha/Win NT, Sun with
UltraSparc/Solaris, Dell with Pentium/Win'95, Motorola with
PPC/Apple/Rhapsody. The boxes would be interchangeable. Pull the CPU and HD
out of one to put in another. Apple would have to write a total of what 20
or so drivers if that.

The logic behind all this is that the corporate buyers would be able to
single source hardware.

"Give me 1000 MacStations, 800 Dell/Win'95, 100 NT, 20 PPC, 4 Ultra's, 4
Alpha's, and the rest Sinclair."

What do you FoRKers think?

Tim

Tim

-

Lets put the *fun* back in dysfunctional...

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