This is NuBus-or-New-Bus in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 18-Oct-1991 22:09:04 From: thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark Thomsen) Subject: NuBus or New Bus It is three years since the NeXT was announced. From the beginning the NeXTbus specification has been a NuBus variant. There are a handful of products that plug into this bus. I am not aware of any existing NuBus products designed for Macintosh that work with the NeXTbus. I am not aware of anyone buying a NeXT because it has a NeXTbus or because of a hardware product unique to NeXTbus. I am aware of NeXT being eliminated from consideration because of the NeXTbus and dearth of products. A big win for NeXT has been interoperability - common I/O ports, standard file formats, TCP/IP/Ethernet/NFS, SMTP, etc. The interoperability stops at the bus. ----------------------------------------------------------------- But this does not have to be. NeXT could select another bus. The 9U Sun-VMEbus is out (too big and ugly), as are S-M buses (too proprietary and SPARCish). The old PC bus is out (too slow). The EISA or MicroChannel might be worth a look. We suggest the 6U VMEbus. In VME 64 mode you can really achieve 50 MB/s. There are 350+ products for this bus, including memory cards, CPU cards, and interfaces for virtually anything (e.g., FDDI). The form factor would fit in the 1' cube. A sizeable industry pushes on products and performance. And Motorola (a close partner of NeXT's, obviously) is a leader for VMEbus. And then FutureBus. If NeXT adopted the VMEbus there would be instant access to many boards and interoperability would increase. Performance would benefit. NeXT could leverage something moving without sizeable investment. There must be a right way to do this so as not to lose the early investors/companies with those handful of NeXTbus products. Mark R. Thomsen
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