Re: USB input devices?

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Mike Kent <Mkent01@voyager.cris.com> wrote:

> I think the priority for add-on boards should be 1) a 15-20 MHz
> accelerator,

No argument there.  Preferably something like the ZIP but with a LOT
more cache RAM on the card.

> 2) A SCSI-3 card,

Why?  Even SCSI-1 is too fast for the Apple II.  The bus can't go faster
than 1 megabyte per second, and SCSI-1 is 5 megabytes per second.

The only practical use I can think of would be for supporting newer
drives that only have LVD or other weird interfaces.  (It is getting
difficult to buy drives that use the standard 50-pin 8-bit SCSI-1
connector.)

In any case, most of the current drives are so huge that I can't imagine
anyone ever using the whole thing on an Apple II.

> 3) an Ethernet card.

Yep.  10 Mbps (e.g. 10Base-T) is practical, though the Apple II isn't
quite fast enough to keep up with it.  Some buffering RAM would be
needed on the card.  100Base would be pointless.

> 4) A better graphics card.

That doesn't interest me much - too little software support and/or too
much work to add any such support.  Something which supports newer
monitors but retains the current display would be useful (e.g. a line
doubling card that supports the existing video modes), since the IIgs
RGB monitors are dying if not dead already.

> Beyond that OS support is urgently needed: new drivers for all the new
> hardware coming out, a read/write MS-DOS FST w/ support for high-capacity
> devices, and tool patches to support a high-resolution desktop on the
> Second Sight.

I don't think a high resolution desktop display on the Second Sight is
even possible.  QuickDraw II and the rest of the toolbox (and
applications which use it) require a linear buffer in memory for the
screen display, and there is no support for modes with more than 4 bits
per pixel.

The Second Sight presumably provides accesses to its video memory
through a slinky-style I/O window.

The only way you could get a higher resolution display on the IIgs which
supports the toolbox (short of a motherboard redesign) would be a card
in the CPU socket or possibly the memory expansion slot.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand