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

[Jonas Bevren <jbevren@yahoo.com>]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, David Empson wrote:

> Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 00:00:30 +1300
> From: David Empson <dempson@actrix.gen.nz>
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
> Subject: Re: All this talk of a new GS...
> 
> Jonas Bevren <jbevren@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, John & Anne Le Febvre wrote:
> > 
> > > IDE & SCSI connector (SCSI II enough?  Or U2W?)
> > 
> > SCSI-II is quite fast. =) If you could use FAST scsi, you could reach
> > 20meg/sec.
> 
> That would be Fast/Wide, or Ultra/Narrow.
> 
> (Standard is 5 MB/sec, Fast is 10 MB/sec, assuming narrow, i.e. 8 bits.)

Right. my error. =)

> > Quite enough for a //gs environment, where 8 megs ram is the max. (am I
> > wrong here?)
> 
> 8 MB is the practical limit for the current motherboard design.  In
> theory, a new design might be able to use as much as 14 MB of RAM by
> extending the fast RAM through banks $80 to $DF.  This would require
> changes to the Memory Manager toolset (and would cause compatibility
> problems with the TransWarp GS for certain, and probably also the Zip
> GS; who cares if we're talking about a faster processor anyway!).

Oooooo. =) I'd love to see something like this.  I agree with the
accelerator compatiblity problems, but since there'll be no need in a
(dreaming here) 200mhz '816 environment, it doesnt matter.

Let's not drop out on this one, it's a quite feasible idea.  The only real
challenge is figuring out how to implement the custom grpahics hardware
employed by the IIgs as well as any copyrights that Wdesignc (the '816
creator) might hold.  They _do_ have a core one could license for PGA/CPLD
units.  If you dont mind tossing bux in for the core and putting it on a
highspeed PLD of sorts, it's not unrealistic to guess at 100mhz+ operation.
<grin>..

For more info on our beloved '816 CPU, check out http://www.wdesignc.com

-Jonas
=)