Details--Whither the 9900 and its customer base?

With the emphasis on the 68000, Marinchip will cease to actively market the 9900 system to new customers. We will continue to support existing customers and OEM's, and we will continue to sell and service all our existing 9900 products. OEM's using our system will not be impacted by this change in direction, except if they anticipate future 9900 based products, which will not be forthcoming.

We will continue to market the 9900 software through Lifeboat, and if a new 9900 OEM walks in the door, we will not turn him away. However, we will be up-front about where we are going and what this means.

Our large-system OEM's will be encouraged to configure and expand systems by adding 68000 node boards. Our converted software should make this relatively painless and advantageous. We hope to keep these OEM's with Marinchip by offering them the same software, much better performance, less big system slowdown effects, better reliability, and a migration path which doesn't make them throw away either hardware or software.

We want to make it clear, though, that if an OEM is happy with the 9900, he can continue to get them for the foreseeable future.

We will announce all of this in the Shifting Bit in a message for end users. We will basically say that support continues, sales continue, but most new products will be 68000 based. We'll explain the reasons and show how a user can upgrade at minimal hardware cost.