Least PC-Compatible MS-DOS machines?

On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 4:02 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: There's no such thing as a 1-off quantity for an IWM chip. I suppose Apple probably established some internal price for selling one piece to a Level 2 Service Center, but that would have had little relation to what it cost. I don't know what Apple paid for IWM chips, but I know that at that time, for a similarly sized ASIC, one of my employers was paying about $2, in significantly lower volume than Apple bought IWMs. I'd be surprised if Apple was paying more than $1.50 for an IWM. My recollection was that the WD1772 was around $4.50 in quantity 10K, which suggests that it probably wouldn't have been less than $3 in quantity in quantity 1M. I'd expect the 1770 pricing to have been similar. Apple initially contracted with VLSI Technology Inc. to fab the IWM. At the time, VTI had significantly more advanced fab technology than Western Digital. Even though VTI's wafer cost was probably higher than WD's, the smaller process geometry would have yielded many more equivalent dice, for a lower per-die manufacturing cost. The IWM is not equivalent to but is actually significantly simpler than a 1770, for even more difference in die size and thus production cost. It seems likely that WD would have had to take a loss to sell the 1770 to Apple at the same price that VTI sold them the IWM.