RE: Bye-bye our API...Drove my Alpha to the...

["Mike Foley" <mikiefoley yahoo com>]

Maurice,

> Yes, we are now stocking and shipping these. With 4 or 8 MB cache (DDR)
> and 800MHz EV68 CPU. The Samsung website is out of date. Manual 
> shipped is now fairly complete.
> A lot of delay occurred as API originally threw weight around, claimed
> they wanted to market these, then bailed, leaving everyone in the 
> lurch. This slowed down English language document development.
	
	That's a cheap shot. There's alot more to the UP1500
	story that's not fit for this forum. Suffice to say, weight
	was thrown around on all sides. Remember, API was a Samsung
	company, not the other way around.
 
> API did not have the funding or will to design new chipsets. Compaq was
> not willing to spend the money.

	Huh?? That's another cheap shot. Compaq had its own Alpha products 
	and chipsets. And	Samsung provided most of the funding! 
	As I said above, there's more to THIS story than you 
	know. This is not the forum for talking about it.

> Now Samsung is using PC chipsets to deal with this, with some good
> results. At least they ARE still doing something and making 
>progress, slowly but surely.

	Yet another cheap shot. Using PC chipsets? What's on the 
	UP1000/UP1100?  A PC chipset!
	The cost of the AMD chipsets wasn't an issue. This issues
	were:
	1. The price of the CPU and the (EXPENSIVE!) cache
	2. The cost of making a board with more than 4 layers
	3. Component prices based on a TINY build rate
	4. The higher tolerances needed to support an Alpha platform

	All these and more had a hell of alot more to do with 
	the costs of API or Samsung Alpha products than a chipset.

	Oh, did I mention that the low-end products didn't sell that
	well? Why not? What does the UP1500 do better price wise 
	today that has you pushing it? Are you selling more than XXX
	a month?

	Could API and Samsung have done more/better? Of course, but
	like any story, there are two sides; the public and 
	the private and the private should remain so. 

	There's alot of people out of work today that tried 
	really hard against great difficulty to turn out
	products for you to sell. Did they make the best 
	decisions? It's easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback 
	and say they didn't. Those of us out of work today are
	a little sensitive to your cheap shots that attempt to
	point the blame in only one direction. Just let the
	whole thing lie and move on, ok?

							mike

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