[ltp] 770 EOL????

[David H Elrod]

I was an engineer at Sun in the mid-80's. Management, called us
in to the lunchroom one day and announced the strategy for moving
from 68xxx processors (Sun 3 line) over to the new SPARC
processors.

The stategy was to develop for both processors and let the market
decide which was the future of the company.

As long as income from 68xxx based machines was above "W", Sun
would continue to develop the whole product line. When the
income from 68xxx machines dropped to "X" they would only
develop the high sales items (desktop machines - I believe),
When the income dropped to "Y" they would stop making new
hardware but would fully support 68xxx machines in software.
When orders for software updates dropped below "Z" they would
stop providing support 68xxx based machines.

Sun continued developing 68xxx based machines for several
years after they started pushing SPARC as the wave of the
future. However, they didn't upset the majority of their
customer base. They just made the 68xxx customer base pay
for its future.

I heard that some LARGE customers, who had written large custom
applications in 68xxx assembler paid a premium to Sun to have 68xxx
based  machines made for them even after Sun dropped all public
sales. 


I wish other companies took this approach: stop making
770* machines when the income from sales of that machine can
no longer support future versions of that machine. If the
new machine is really compatible and truely a better product,
then customers will move to it.

David

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David Hunter Elrod                   Rivendell Technologies, Inc
dhelrod@rivendell.com                1111 W. El Camino #109, PMB348
http://www.rivendell.com             Sunnyvale, CA 94087-0126
Voice: 650/254-1790                  Fax: 650/254-1792