Re: Some IIGS Questions

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article John Lingl <ling1984@kettering.edu> writes...

>PC TRANPORT
>
>It was introduced by applied engineering in the late 1980's

    A bit of trivia: While it was manufactured and sold through
Applied Engineering, a company called The Engineering Department,
made up of former Apple engineers, developed it. The code name
for the PCT was "Little Blue".

>What it did was allow an Apple IIgs to run DOS programs.

    Well the Apple II Plus, IIe and IIGS (the II Plus less so,
as you were required to add an IBM-101 keyboard).

    It also was able to function as an Apple peripherial card
when not running MS-DOS software. You could emulate an Apple II
Memory Expansion Card (up to 768K) or use the PCT as a floppy
drive controller, running MFM PC drives or an Apple 3.5 (800K).

>The processor is a 10Mhz NEC Intel 8088 equivalent.

    Actually the NEC V30 is an 8086 equivalent and this one ran
at 7.16 MHz, not 10. It was of course a fair bit faster than an
8088 or 8086.

>The display for the PC transport was CGA (4 color)

    Also interesting to note, when displayed on an AppleColor RGB,
CGA graphics use scanlines with rounded pixels (as opposed to the
square chunky kind when you use scanline doubling).

    I'm still curious if you could run the TCP/IP stack with
graphical web-browser and other applications someone out there
wrote to run on IBM XT's (8086, 640K and CGA -- that is just 
what the PCT does). I haven't had a chance to download and 
try any of them, but I posted an example a couple of months 
back the URL where it can be downloaded. I'm well aware of 
Marinetti for GS/OS, but it would be interested to try (and 
maybe even nice if you want PPP on an Apple II immediately :).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca