Imaginary PIs

[Loren Buck Buchanan]

In article <1411 at contex.UUCP> frank at contex.UUCP (Frank Perdicaro) writes:
>A Modest Proposal

In some respects similar to the "Personal Power IRIS" I have been asking
about for more than a year.  The answer I got at SIGGRAPH, is that it 
would be nice, but our engineering dollars are going else where.  The
most convincing argument they gave me (and the one that has finally
convinced me to give up) is for a Personal Power IRIS to really work
reasonably well is for it to get a private memory bus a la the Power 
Series.  By the time you add up engineering and manufacturing costs it
just doesn't make sense.  Besides, I can hardly wait for what they are
spending R&D dollars on (supposedly a machine that is getting into the
price range I would consider for a home machine, about 7-8K for what I
would guess would be a diskless 8 bit system).

>
>   The 4D 25S is a fine machine; it could be made into a better machine.
>Imagine this.  As the place where the GR1 board goes is vacant in the server, 
>it should be possible to place a second IP10 in there.  

What you are proposing sounds reasonable to me, but there may be a problem
of the two boards having a conflict on the bus (easy to fix, just cut the
bus in two).  
>
>Proposed Configuration 3.
>   Very minor sheet metal modification make it possible to run a full height
>drive in the top slot of a 4D 25.  Make these modifications and place a drive
>there.  Cut the existing SCSI cable in half, and have the top-slot drive 
>serve the secondary cpu.  This still provides for SCSI expansion in one cpu, 
>but provides two independent cpu in one box.

Or leave the metal alone, and just give the second CPU the largest half-height
drive available for local swap space.  This still gives room left over for a
tape drive, CD ROM, floppy drive, etc.

Of course all of the things you wanted in terms of faster CPUs, more memory,
and related stuff to improve performance would of course be welcome for us
ordinary users of PIs.

B Cing U

Buck


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