On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Geoff Wicks <[email protected]>wrote:
> Sometime between 1998 and 2004 Nasta gave a talk at a North American show > and I believe this is how Dave came into contact with him. > I never met him in person, but we became good online friends. I met him through ql-users... > I had a conversation with Nasta and the problem that he outlined to me was > there was a general shortage of chips at the time and the price and > availability was fluctuating daily. (Ron Dunnett had also mentioned this as > a big problem.) You had to buy chips in large quantities and this meant you > could not have the luxury of first building a prototype, because by the time > you had got a working prototype the chips would be no longer available. This > meant you had to design the card on paper, build it and hope it would work. > If it didn't work you might be able to tweak it, but there was also the > chance that the money would have gone down the drain. > At the time, FPGA technology, SoC technology and fab technology were all marching forward so quickly products were superceded within weeks of launch. Any given device would be so outperformed by devices made just a month later, no devices stayed in stock for long. Traders demanded large bulk orders to not get landed with old stock, which would rapidly depreciate. The Coldfire processor was a part of the problem. The specific model Nasta chose had some rather unique characteristics in being more like a 68040 than a Coldfire. It was quickly discontinued and the later versions had instruction changes and supervisor changes that made them essentially incompatible to QDOS-alikes... That window has truly been missed. Dave > At the time there was a lot of hysteria - mostly on this list - with people > thinking the problem could be solved if there was a Maplins near by and > others suggesting that as Croatia was about to join the EU Nasta could be > accommodated in the UK to complete the project. In fact Croatia was not > joining the EU and Nasta was busy in Croatia holding down two jobs. A > scapegoat was needed and that was Quanta for being too mean with its money. > > I had quite a few conversations with Roy about the matter and we both > concluded that an approach to Quanta was an impossibility mainly because > Nasta had no enthusiasm for that route. Reading between the lines I think > there was a combination of Nasta no longer being a student, having two busy > jobs and probably being unhappy about taking a risk with someone else's > money. > > From then on the project faded from view. > > Can it be revived? I know very little about hardware, but I sense there is > a new interest in native hardware and some projects that people thought > would never come now seem feasible. It is for you hardware specialists to > determine what is possible and what is not, > > Best Wishes, > > > Geoff > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > QL-Users Mailing List > http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm > _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
