Re: Super GS Project (Update for Accelerator)--a summary of the best ideas

[wbdesnoy@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

Frank Carney (frankc@srv.net) wrote:
: This sounds interesting, but I see two problems with patent
: infringement: Apple's ADB ports and the Ensoniq chips (though this may
: not be a problem anymore).  

: I believe a peripheral card would be a good alternative to a whole new
: machine. It would be a whole lot easier to design an emulator type card
: than a whole new machine.  Though, the cost for prototyping a PCI card
: is still high.  That is one reason I am sticking with older stuff, it is
: cheap to get your hands on it. I was just looking through computer
: shopper and they has 486/66 pulls for $8 a piece!  In builing a computer
: board you can afford to burn a few up.  I doubt that is true for the new
: Transmeta chip or even FPGAs.

Why couldn't this expansion card fit into the Apple II, instead of PCI slots?
Would this not allow us to gradually shift functions from the IIgs's processor
to the newer and faster board?  Some of this could be accomplished by
redesigning the toolbox calls so that they execute on the new board, and send
I/O back to the IIgs mainboard (so that we can use the existing audio/ADB/
floppy drives/expansion cards) then, once that works, move the entire execution
of the program to that new processor?  I/O would be something of a bottle-neck,
but as time went on a SCSI bus and video could be added to the card, in an
incremental approach.

The way I see it:
There are two problems with the PCI card option: the first is that it requires
a fairly recent IBM PC/Mac to complement it, meaning that some IIe/IIgs users
will be left without this upgrade option (and these are the people who can't
use existing emulators -- at a respectable speed -- in the first place); the
second problem is that we would probably loose support for ADB, 3.5" floppies
(what's the purpose of PC style drives if they can not read existing disks)
perhaps even the Apple II expansion slots.  In otherwords, we are left with a
glorified emulator yet again.

Anyway, that's just my opinion on an incremental approach to upgrading our
old machines.

--
Stopped (SIGTTOU)         byron.
$

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