Subject: NEC Vr4400 and ARC manufacturing kits

From: Youda He <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 93 18:08:46 EDT

I tried to get some info on the NEC ARC100/150 manufacturing kits, so far
not many people know about it, even within NEC, one tech support people
called me back said the manufacturing kits cost $5000. if that true, it 
is a great deal. it consists of:

ARC chip set and CPU, document, ROM, dssign info of:
 Schematics (soft and hard copy) of Vr4400PC,  Vr4400SC, Vr4400MC mother
board, Ethernet, serial board, audio/mouse board, video board.
 Netlist PAL/PLD
 Binary and source code for Baselevel firmware and Windows NT firmware, HAL
 System documentation
 Gerber tapes for five system motherboard.

How do you feel about this board? 

-- Youda

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From: Bill Broadley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 18:36:20 -0500 (EDT)

> How do you feel about this board? 
Sounds great.  Please post any/all info you get.  

Maybe we could get a discount for just one of the motherboard designs.  

Or promise to donate the linux port and then they could sell the motherboard 
design+linux for 5k.

The key would be getting enough people so that we could split the 5k enough 
ways. 

I'd love to get a hold of a mips 4k board cheap.   Any ideas on 4400 chip
prices?  4000?

I'd suspect we can't afford more then a mips 4k.

-- 
Bill					1st>	[email-masked]
[email-masked] <2nd 	3rd> 	             [email-masked]
Linux is great.         Bike to live, live to bike.                      PGP-ok

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From: [email-masked] (Neil Russell)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 93 16:00:23 PDT

> Maybe we could get a discount for just one of the motherboard designs.  

The five designs would seem to be the MB, Ethernet, serial, etc.  I'm
kind of interested in the other designs also.

> Or promise to donate the linux port and then they could sell the motherboard 

I doubt that NEC would be interested in linux.  Its not professional for such
a company to promote free software.

> The key would be getting enough people so that we could split the 5k enough 

With the mailing list the way it is (was) there would be around 100 sales of
a reasonably priced board in faily short order.  That is $50 ea for the design.

> I'd love to get a hold of a mips 4k board cheap.   Any ideas on 4400 chip

I would imagine that the design from NEC is copyrighted such that we wouldn't
make it generally available.  So it would take a company to buy the design
and manufacture it.  Its then up to that company to make the price right
for linux people to be interested.  The bad news is that the R4000PC costs
around us$700 right now (correct me if I'm wrong).  So the finished motherboard
would easily be $1500 or more.

In about 6 - 9 months, IDT release the Orion chip, which is a pin compatible
replacement for the R4000PC which should cost less than $200 in small to
medium quantities.  This adds weight to my argument for us pause this project
for about 6 months.

Don't forget though, that you automatically need twice the RAM, because this
is a 64-bit CPU.  (That is unless there is bus sizing logic on the board.)

-- 
Neil Russell		(The wizard from OZ)
Pyramid Technology			Email:  [email-masked]
3860 N. First Street			Voice:  (408) 428-7302
San Jose, CA 95134-1702			  FAX:  (408) 428-8845

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From: Youda He <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:51:32 EDT

> kind of interested in the other designs also.
The five designs includes 3 mother boards: Vr4000/4400PC, Vr4000/4400SC and
VR4400MC motherboards, it sounds like NEC/MIPS really want this thing
get to end users hand. they also have 4200, low cost, low power part.
from their flyer, they seems also have 3600A, with FPU.

> is a 64-bit CPU.  (That is unless there is bus sizing logic on the board.)
With kits like NECs and I guess other company will join, there may be more
than one start up company want to make MIPS based computer, since NEC will
have:
  .. And coming soon is an ACER designed, NEC manufactured PICA (performance-
enhanced IO and CPU Architecture) chip set which will offer another high-
performance solution... coupled with ACER's manufacturing kit, provides an 
optional complete system solution....

-- Youda