soup; I agree with most comments, but the shutting out of cloners is unwise as you)Apple) need to rely on them to spread the installed base, and as long as they net a good margin let them run, as the expand the market your market potential increases. more developers, more cards etc, and upwards spiral.
It would be very wise to allow the boards to use as many standard clone parts as possible, like cases and power supplies, and monitors, and stdndard DIMMs so the only proprietary thing is the motherboard and the keyboard. It would be asy to design the motherboard to fit an IBM clone case and the same with the cards, (IF THEY ARE NOT THICKER THAN CLONE CARDS, I think they are just a bit thicker, but within the clone outer limit. This would imply a new physical standard, but perhaps the back of the clone case can be modded to fit Apple cards?? STD SCSI drives fit, A parallel printer port would be a good option to throw in, as more printers are made for Wintels than Appletalk. I used to put old Mac boards into IBM cases years ago. There was a company near Ottawa that bought Macs and gutted them for Gas station controllers(cheaper than buying a special) and when they upgraded I got 500 128K macs for $10 each(motherboard only) I made a power supply adaptor and another fellow made a TTL monitor adaptor and we bought taiwan mice and Taiwan Apple keyboards and sold them all. Some we even out little 512K memory boards on as well.
Bill
Bill |
