ral-clan wrote:
Surely there were more A3000s and 4000s made than accelerators.
Quite probably. But of all the A3k & A4k's ever made how many have now been destroyed or are just not used anymore?
ral-clan wrote:
Even generously estimating that there was one accelerator produced for every two A3000/A4000 computers, a third to half of these accelerators were probably Commodore's unexpandable 3640 and third party ones that had the 32/64MB upper limit
With no cold hard facts on numbers we're just speculating. But if you look at all the different models of accelerator that were ever available for the A3k/A4k:
Apollo = 128Mbyte
QuickPak = 128Mbyte
GVP = 128Mbyte
Phase 5 = 128Mbyte
Warp Engine = 128Mbyte
PPS = 32Mbyte
A3640 = 0 Mbyte
This admittedly crude estimate means that for every 4 A3000s/4000s produced, there was only 1 accelerator capable of accepting more than 128 MBs of RAM.
Quite possibly. But of those other 3 how many are still in use today? And of those, how many of those users want more RAM?
Is the main reason there are so many A3640 boards not because they came "free" with many A4000's? They are not exactly fast.
The A3k/A4k accelerators you see the most of on ebay are the Phase5 boards and were successors to many an A3640 which got stuffed in a draw as a backup.
I still believe there are far more A3000s/4000s surviving and in use than there are accelerators capable of taking 128MB RAM.
As an owner of one, what would you rather spend your money on? A RAM card or an 060 accelerator with RAM?
So I think a Zorro III RAM board would be useful.
Useful, yes. Economically viable as a new product, I am not so sure.
I could be wrong and there could be thousands of A3k/A4k A3640 users out there screaming for such a product, but I doubt it.