Re: co processor board for a2's

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Phoenyx <quazar@dcnet2000.com> wrote:

>Hi Jeff,
>
>What exactly in the GS is capable of taking advantage of the
>benefits of a co-processor? Most programs I know of would have to
>be re-written to take advantage of it. I know this was considered
>for the 65816 cpu, but AFAIK it was never developed properly.
>
>Unlike the current crop of PC compilers which supply routines to
>use in the case that no co-processor exists, the Apple II series
>never had that luxury, thus by itself the co-processor is useless
>except for new projects.

Actually, almost ALL IIGS software will take advantage of it.
All GS/OS software makes use of the toolbox and most math
functions are executed through a standardized toolset called
SANE (Standard Apple Numeric Environment).  What these
coprocessor cards (which used Motorolla math coprocessors
commonly used to enhance 68000 based Macs) did was
provide a patch to SANE.  The new SANE would no longer
used routines that only processed through the 65C816.
Instead, floating point operations would be piped to the
Motorolla FPU chip.

Can you imagine how much faster math intensive software
would run?  Combined with an accelerator card, it would be
a speed boost on top of a speed boost.

All the main IIGS compilers also support it including the
Orca series of compilers.  All IIGS math software such as
GS Numerics and GS Symbolix also used the coprocessor.
And any spreadsheet, because of SANE, would also
benefit greatly.

Maybe you are thinking of 8-bit software?  There was also
patches to popular 8-bit titles like AppleWorks.  However,
these were mainly IIGS math coprocessor cards.

Actually, up until two years ago, someone in Germany was
still building them.  Get together 10 people and email him
and he might yet be willing to make another batch.