Re: Modern A2 successor

["**** ****" <***@***.com>]

Roy and/or Janet Miller wrote in message <397E424A.1EECB43E@inetnebr.com>...
>**** **** wrote:

>Well, from one goofy person to another....
>
>The original Mac had no slots, the Mac II had the Nubus slots, the SE et al
had
>processor slots, and now PCI slots, the Macs have moved from 68000 through
the
>68020, 68030, 68040, and then the various PPC chips, the Mac has moved from
b&w
>9" screen to millions of colors and various sizes, and yet, the Mac is
still
>the Mac. Which is the point. If there ever was to be a successor to the
Apple
>II, that was still an Apple II, it wouldn't have to be a 6502 family chip,
nor
>to have the 70's Apple II bus to still be an Apple II, but it would have to
>have the friendly "open me up and do things with me" feeling that the II
had.
>And, of course, the ability to run at least 90% of the Apple II library.
>
>Roy

Roy,
    The mac is still the mac, but there is continuity there, and the
official seal of Apple. Besides, there are only 2 cpu families there, and
even they are similar enough to see it go from one to the next. I can see
that they are the 'same' even though my Plus has little in common with the
Cube.
    If we were to design and make a successor, it wouldn't bare the official
seal of Apple (in all likelyhood). Even continuity is going to be hard to
come by, seeing as how long its been since the 'last a2'. Time continuity
anyway. Hardware continuity is about all we can hope for, as I see it. It's
the same thing with the amiga, someone has bought the name, is going to
rubber stamp it on a bunch of intel junkers, and call it an amiga, even
though there is zero continuity. I can run an amiga emulator on nearly any
platoform I choose, but it will never be an amiga. Does this mean that I
think that a new Amiga needs to use a m68000 cpu? No, but it does need
SOMETHING. I mean, even were they to show some kind of acknowledgement of
what Amiga was. 3 PCI slots and 1 Zorro3 slot for legacy hardware. Maybe go
with the ppc for a cpu, its not the same family, but its as close as
possible.
    The same would have to be done for our Power Apple, were it to be built.
The "open me up and do things with me" feeling is just that, a feeling. Not
a bad feeling, don't get me wrong, but certainly not a feeling that is
impossible with a modern pc or mac. What would you have in the Power Apple
(for lack of a better name) ? PCI slots? Those are the obvious choice, but
since we'd be forced to make much of the hardware to go in it, PCI is way
too advanced, IMHO. Isa is simpler, but pc junk as far as I'm concerned. But
I wouldn't go with the Apple bus either, well, not exactly. Me, I'd do what
IBM did with isa, extend it, but still keep the original in the layout. We
could do a 16bit, or even 32bit AXbus (Apple eXtended bus), but put it in as
an extra card edge inline with the old one. New more powerful cards are then
possible, but each slot can be used for most of the old accessories.
    CPU's? I could be wrong, but I believe that even the most advanced 6502
variant wouldn't be acceptable. Nor could I ever accept any radical
departures from it. I don't know the answer to this one, but I have a vague
idea of maybe using 2 or even 4 of the 16bit 6502 variants, and trying to
tie them together in a smp type setup. Sure, on the high end of things, smp
is very tough and a job for the professionals, but we would be talking
6502's, none the less. Surely we could handle this? Also allows you to dream
about redoing prodos for the machine, as a primary OS. 4 simultanous  prodos
processes, perhaps even windowed. Now that would be a hoot.

John