Re: Come visit my Apple IIGS webpage

[CUTjefbla@bconnex.net (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 14:06:41 GMT, "Mike Keppel"
<lps_keppel@hotmail.com> wrote:

>I've put together a webpage of old computers that I collect and I have put
>together some resources for the Apple IIGS.  On the page you can find:
>
>- IIGS Software
>- Apple II Advertisements and magazine ads
>- Message Boards
>- Chat Rooms
>
>I'd love to hear from anyone if they find the site useful.  It's mainly
>devoted to anyone who finds A IIGS (garage sale) and wants to get it up and
>running.
>
>Come visit:  http://hyperion.spaceports.com/~steakum/

Well I, like others, could not see your page at all using Netscape
v4.7 but when I tried it using Internet Explorer it came up fine.  I
guess you little icon at the bottom of your page should say "Only
viewable with Internet Explorer" instead of " Best viewed with
Internet Explorer".  :-)

By the way, I never use Internet Explorer.  The only reason it is even
on my system is that Windows 98 won't work without it unless I rip it
out using a program like 98lite.

Also on the Specs page, you have a quite a few errors.  I'm pretty
sure the IIgs was released in September, 1996, not January.  Also, the
data "path" would be 8 bits if you are talking about the bus width.
The 65816 only has 8 data lines.  I believe the slot types of the
Apple II series are called Apple Bus slots however, I don't know if
this was ever an official name.  The IIgs itself does not have any
floppy drives built in, they are add-ons and separate from the machine
itself.  The hard drive spec is kind of misleading as it sort of
implies that the IIgs comes with SCSI capability which is only
available as an add-on.  The display specs should mention that those
are only a few of the display modes and that the 8 bit colour mode has
limitations.  By the way, the 640x200 mode is also capable of 8 bit
colour by using multiple palettes like the 320 mode as well as using
dithering.  You also don't mention the 3200 colour mode which can give
some incredible results.  In the sound section, the headphone jack on
the IIgs is mono, not stereo.  You only get stereo by using an add-on
card and even then, not through the IIgs' headphone jack but only
through the outputs on the stereo card.  Also, you never mentioned the
joystick port or the fact that the system can output through both an
analog RGB port and a composite video port nor did you mention
anything about the Ensoniq chip for producing sounds.

You might also want to think about using some of the options of the
IMG tags to tell browsers the height and width of your images so that
Internet Explorer users won't have all the images resizing as they
download causing the page to keep jumping around until it is
completely redrawn.  Also, you might want to create real thumbnail
images rather than just squishing the full size images into a smaller
space.  It would make downloading and redrawing time much quicker.  It
kind of defeats the purpose of having thumbnails if you just squish
the full size images.  :-)

I won't go into the legal issues of distributing copyrighted software,
though, except for one small question.  How did you buy a copy of the
sales demo which I was under the assumption was never for sale and was
only for use by authorized Apple dealers on their demo machines?  :-)

--
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II Unversity on A2Central.com