Re: All this talk of a new GS...

[Phoenyx <quazar@dcnet2000.com>]

I think at this point, adhering to as many standards as possible is a
must. Part of the problems the early Apple2 faced
was because there were no standards which left developers in
the position of making their own. In the floppy driven world of the A2,
this wasn't too bad, but when the system became able to
access hard drives, it became more of an issue.

There are still other issues to deal with. Perhaps the biggest
one is the GS rom. Apple may ignore the emulators, but if a
hardware project were developed, they may decide it's time to
examine the copyright issues. Since Apple doesn't care about
any growth on the II series, it might be possible for someone
to aquire the right to use the ROM image. I doubt it would be
feasible to try and write clean roms, but I am not extremely
familiar with the GS rom anyway. Then again, it may be necessary to
create a compatible rom just to make the hardware
work.

Some decisions are fairly simple. For instance, I think the
mini tower case is probably the best. The current ones are
a reasonable size and offer a decent power supply. Of course,
it may force the motherboard design to resemble the PC due to
the slot locations. At least this design offers the end user
the option of selecting which case they want and if this style
were followed they could even use the desktop style case.

Also, it might be better to design this as a kit type of system
where the basic electronics are pre-assembled, motherboard and
such, but it would still require the end user to finish the
product. Then as a service, whoever distributes it could offer
to pre-assemble everything. This may also help in the rom issue
as you aren't actually offering a new computer, but a project
which the user must supply a rom image themselves. In this case
though a method of loading the image will be needed.

Well, just a little more to think about.

Phoenyx