At 08:10 PM 8/21/2005 +0300, you wrote:

>On Sat, 20 Aug 2005, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
>
>>Yup. I paid something like $900 US for a CPM 8048 assembler and simulator
>>on an 8" floppy back in the dark ages. I'm pretty sure the author wrote it
>>in 8080 assembly. Nine hundred dollars was worth a lot more back in 1980.
>
>But I think that the *ratio* between tooling cost and expected revenue 
>matters more. A $1000 compiler cannot be justified by someone who makes 
>1000 units of something that costs $20 each and can budget $2 per unit for 
>the tool cost alone. In 'those times' nothing electronic cost $20 and the 
>tool depreciation and amortisation would occur respectively slower, and 
>faster than today. Even if the margin would have been the same, 
>procentually, in 'those times' developers would have been ten times better 
>off than now. Now a $1000 compiler would last for about a year before 
>becoming obsolete. For how long could you use that 8048 compiler ? 7 years 
>? 10 ?
>
>Peter

A few years, IIRC. Then we got a PC and I bought another set of tools
from Pseudo Corp for about half the price, which were much faster. Those,
I used for many years.

I expect gcc will still be around, in one form or another, 20 years from
now. Same with Keil and Hitech.

But you're right, we never targeted products that had less potential than
$100K/year in sales, which would be more like $300,000 today.

>Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
->> Inexpensive test equipment & parts http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZspeff


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