Re: Accelerating Laser, but which one?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

obsbedia2@aol.com (Obsbedia2) wrote:

>Am I on the right track?
>
>I'm looking at installing some sort of large capacity drive on a portable
Laser
>and souping it up with a 8x ZipChip.  From what I've gathered, I should be
>shopping for the original Laser and not the EX or EX/2 models because they're
>already set at 4MHz speed themselves, so they can't be accelerated any
>further by adding an 8X ZipChip.

Yes.  The ZipChip expects the socket it sits in to provide a
65C02 with a clocking signal that clocks that CPU at 1Mhz.
The ZipChip has some internal stuff that boost the speed
to 8Mhz, but that external clocking signal is important
because it keeps everything running including the caching
scheme.  The EX and EX/2 clock the CPU at 3.6Mhz.
Even in "1Mhz mode" the EX and EX/2 cannot provide a
true 1Mhz clock because the 3.6Mhz clock is simply
divided to provide 0.9Mhz.

Unlike the EX and EX/2, the plain Laser 128 runs at a
true 1Mhz, so the ZipChip will work in it.  There appears
to be two distinct plain 128 models.  You want the one
with the case that's the same design as the EX and
EX/2.  There is an older plain 128 that has a different
(less sleek) case.  Avoid that one because it lacks a
UDC disk port.