Re: A Saybrook 68k board now! Stellation Two

["J.Q.P." <jqp@hotmail.com>]

Mike Ford wrote:
> 
> While walking through a swapmeet today I saw a small box of Apple II
> cards priced ridiculously high. During the time I related this
> information to the vendor, I shuffled through the contents, and <word of
> excitement> plucked out a Stellation Two Q68 (68008) and paid the man.
> I've only been looking a few years for one of these, and now I guess my
> hunt shifts to software.
> 
> Other than Stellation Two Q-68 board, is the date 1983, and the rom at
> B2 says Debug 1.02 with a bit below that I can't read. I am archiving
> this whole thread, but would sure like to hear from anybody that has
> more information.

Well, the only site I can think of that directly addresses
68000 boards on Apple II's is the DTACK Grounded newsletter
archive:

http://people.delphi.com/paulrsm/68k/dg/index.html

This was more or less written by a guy who worked for
Digital Acoustics's, inc., which made one of the 68K addons.

(the DTACK grounded boards, which apparently came out as
early as 1980, 2 years earlier than I'd heard of them.
That board was ENORMOUS.  It was as big as the II+'s
motherboard itself and connected via a interface card and
a big, wide ribbon cable.  Over half the board was taken
up with SRAMs, which are about the size of one of the
original II's ROM chips.  It's 68000 ran 6MHz, and,
according to some of the later issues, they improved it
by adding a NS16032 as a math chip)

Anyhoo,  over the years there were probably 6 or 8 68K
coprocessor boards made for the II.  The more popular ones
being the DTACK, the Saybrook, and the PDQ II.    I have
to imagine that they were all incompatible, software-wise.

So, i figure that the likelyhood of finding the original
software for that card is in the realm of prayers-and-miracles.

IIRC, I thought Stellation Two (who also made the Mill
and VitaMill 6809 coprocessor board), called their 68K card
the "Gnome".   I seem to recall their ads in the back of A+
magazine...which, at that point, looked like they were made
with MacWrite, rather than the hand-drawn artwork of their
early-80s ads. I remembered it did use the 68008 chip (8-bit
data bus) though.


It would be interesting to see it working again, though.
Keep us posted.

--
jqp
(bogus email, reply to newsgroup)