Re: Stellation Two Mill (was Re: A Saybrook 68k board now!)

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

BAD wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 19 Apr 2001 07:00:36 -0500, "J.Q.P." <jqp@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> >Others might include the Stellation Two Mill (or VitaMill), the
> >Alpha Syntauri synthesizer setup,  Rana Elite disk drives,  some of
> >the rare accelerated math chips (Computer Station FP -- used the AMD
> >9511,
> >or the Applied Engineering one with the 68881).    I dont know how rare
> >Corvus Constellation hardware is...
> 
> Is  the Stellation Two Mill  a rare card? I have had one for a few
> years, but could not find any software to use the board.

Well, it's hard to say.  Compared to the other co-processor boards
(which included many different Z80's, 68000's, 80x86'es -- and yes,
there was more than just the PCTransporter,  and various math chips),
the Stellation Two Mill was probably the longest lived.   It was
eventually replaced by the VitaMill, which included some on board 
RAM to go along with the 6809 processor.    Stellation Two also made
a 68000 coprocessor called the GNOME.  (it might have used the 8-bit
data 68008 chip)

> Does anyone know where I can find software/documentation?

Boy I wish I knew.    Like the Saybrook 68k card, since pretty
much the only software that was developed for it came with the card,
it was mainly of interest to programmers.   There were lots and lots
of coprocessor cards for Apple II's over the years, but no single
one of them ever gained critical mass to get much development.

The Mill, according to my info came with the following software:
   1.  an Apple Pascal speedup kit  (most of the coprocessors had
some form of Apple Pascal enhancement)
   2.  a DOS 3.3 based 6809 Assembler.  Said to be "on par with LISA"
(i.e. Randy Hyde's legendary assembler)
   3.  OS/9 operating system and Basic09 language.  This had
multitasking features and a new filesystem with hierarchical
directories.

(I'm getting most of this info from a Creative Computing article
reviewing six co-processor cards for Apple II's.  Dec. 1982, p40)

I'm a little questioning of the legality or ethics of a site like
Asimov...but if there were a standard repository of Apple II driver
disks for old oddball hardware, that'd be worth it to me.  Of course
that'd be of no interest to emulator users, and if it used some odd
filesystem, there'd be the question of how you'd archive a disk image
of such a thing.

--
jqp
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