Re: Problems in Modernizing the IIgs, con't

[pubpc1@library.ucla.edu]

B.J. Major wrote that
Lewin Edwards wrote:
>>>hoping to choose an example about which I knew nothing in order to
>>>perform a little smoke-and-mirrors magic, you've been unlucky.
>>
>>I'm insulted that you would even think that.  The very reason I
>
>Oh, I am *so* sorry; I stand chastened and rebuked. Since we're getting
>so emotional, I may as well add that I believe there is a strong
>possibility that this so-called conversation never took place, and that
>it was simply invented to bolster an exceedingly weak flat-earth point
>of view.

More insults.  WHO is elevating this to the level of personal
insults?

I am not the type of person that makes up personas.

>>To say it made no sense to develop the '816 beyond is current
>>state is like saying there was no sense to develop the original
>>68K into an '040.  The Pentium was derived from an 8080, so it
>
>Compare units sold. Where was the 65C816 used on a commercial scale? Only
>two places that I know of, and both of them were places that used the
>65C816 PURELY to leverage a large existing 6502 code base. (Nintendo
>chose it for the Super Famicom because NES devtools and developers were
>trained around the 6502 used in the Famicom, and Apple chose it because
>of the large number of 6502 developers). To my knowledge, only one
>company ever manufactured the 65C816.

Right.  Why don't you mosy down to Yahoo, do a web search for
Western Design Center, and look at their web page?

The 65xxx has and continues to be very prominant in use as an
embedded microcontroller.  Before you start acusing me of
changing the subject again, let me remind you that I raised the
issue of WDC persuing the microcontroller market after Apple
repeatedly abandoned them (to the point of an argument between
Apple and the founder of WDC at one AppleFest).

>The 8080 was second-sourced from National Semiconductor and also SGS, I
>believe. It was used in a FRIGHTENINGLY large number of CP/M machines,
>single-board computers and other applications - orders of magnitude more
>than the 65C816 (and the Z-80, which is a cunning 8080 knock-off and
>enhancement, was even more popular). The 8080 "earned" its future
>development path from unit sales.

Excuse me, Lewin, you are not arguing logically.  The 8080 and
the Z80 may have been use in lots of CP/M machines, but there
almost all the non-CP/M, pre-IBM PC computers used the 6502 or
65C02 chips, remember?  You are comparing Apples to oranges.
You can't compare a 65C02 derivative with the sales of the
_original_ 8080!  Logically, the comparison should be between
the 8080 and the 6502.  Both did well in sales so both had a
future.  Many manufactures made 6502 chips (Rockwell, GTE, the
65C02 from WDC, original chip from MOS, etc.)

>At the time Apple chose the 6502, it was an incredibly popular MPU used
>in many general-purpose and embedded applications. So the 6502 was a
>wise choice.

Right.  Compare the 8080 to the 6502.  Another reason was that
the chip was cheap.  Wozniak built the computer in his garage,
after all.

>The 65C816 was a *bad* choice. Nobody else was using it. Apple
>would have had to finance any future development of that semi range
>entirely on their own. Dumb. Much smarter to choose a popular MPU which
>other people were using, high volumes used by others bringing price
>down for Apple.

This is balony.  Lewin, before you acuse me of all the seven sins
again, remember that at the begining of the cycle of every great
CPU, one company has to stand firm and lead the pack.  With the
8088, it was the IBM PC.  With the 6502, Steve Wozniak putting
it in the Apple II actually led to it becoming popular _in
personal computers_ with Commodore, Atari, and others following
suit.  The 65C816 was a derivative chip and Apple adopted it
and thus became the leader of this pack.  Whether other computer
manufacturers would follow depended very much on how Apple
treated the GS and Western Design Center's own development
effort was also driven by what it perceived as Apple's interest
in the future of this computer line.  For a fact, Video Technology
(Laser) was developing a GS clone, but canceled the project
because of Apple's neglect of the GS.  Commodore also had plans
for an C128 derivative computer that would have used the chip,
but quickly reconsidered after watching Apple's moves.

That's why few computer systems use the '816.  Apple did not
_lead_ as the leader in the field of '816 computers.

>>could be done.  There are many factors in a CPU chip besides the
>>data bus.  The 65C816 already has 24-bit addressing and in this
>
>The 68K had linear addressing

Well excuse me, but if I remember correctly (and as I stated),
the 80286 used the segmented memory scheme as the '816, both
chips having 24-bit addressing.  The 80286 later evolved beyond
that.  The '816 could have also (and still can with the backing)
by following a similar path.

>upwardly 32-bit compatible

According to the CPU Encyclopedia, the 68000 was derived from
the 8-bit 6800.  32-bit would have come later (and still can
with the right backing, though admittedly the boat is probably
missed after Apple's deliberate neglect and slaughter of the
GS).

>and a vastly superior instruction set.

Hmm.  The Pentium has more instructions than the PowerPC,
correct?  Is that not the definition of CISC vs. RISC?

Which one is more powerful?

Lots of "powerful" instructions do not necessarily translate
into a powerful chip.  A 32-bit derivative of the 65C816
would have been much superior.  The 65C816 as is is faster
in many cases when clocked the same.

>>feasable!  The GS outsold the entire Mac line during its first
>>year.  The only reason sales dropped later was that Apple
>>deliberately cut advertising and marketing.
>
>Whatever you say, the 65C816 is essentially an 8-bit MPU with 16-bit
>extensions, and by the late 1980s the entire world had moved to native
>16-bit CPUs. As I said before, and you conveniently ignored, the
>question

No I did not.  I clearly answered it with one word: Pentium.
If Intel could do it, so could Western Design Center.  The
difference is that Intel had backing from IBM and those
that followed IBM.  Apple did not support the GS, so clone
makers did not support the 65C816, and as a result WDC
had much less R&D in their chip than Intel.  Technically,
it could be done.  The Pentium proves it.

>is one of what everyone else in the world is doing, and keeping
>in step with current technology trends.

When the GS was introduced, the '816 was not "out of trend."
You seem to be ignoring the fact that Apple's neglect of
the GS lead to the '816 not being developed further.

>Face it, the Apple II pre-GS was very successful, and Apple wanted to
>continue the success, but the GS was a false start along that trail.

*Cough*, "_Apple wanted to continue the success_" is a false
statement.  Read my other post where I dug up a quote from
an InCider interview with Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of
Apple.  _He_ says that Apple kept wanting to kill the II and
he felt too many resources were going into the Mac and that
the II deserved continued success (and predicted it could
match the Mac in development had Apple had the right people,
Apple II supporters, in management).

>>It would have been SMART for Apple to continue developing the
>>65xxx series.  They already had a "full house" of customer base.
>>Most of us deserted Apple after it deserted us.  Look at what
>>bad shape Apple is in today.
>
>Oh, rot - pure and simple. There is what can only be described as a
>lunatic fringe of rabid Apple-haters living on usenet, who feel
>betrayed and abandoned because Apple discontinued the II line.

You bet.  And I'm not an Apple hater.  I'll gladly use their
Rhapsody Intel if it is as good as I hear it is.  That does
not mean I will just sit back and ignore the fact that had
Apple supported the GS rather than the Mac, it would be in a
better financial position now.

>I'm sure there is a
>similar lunatic fringe that mourns the fact that DEC has discontinued
>the PDP-11 line, and argues bitterly that the LSI-11 is the MPU for
>the future.

I am not familiar with the differences between these two.
One question: is one compatible with the other?  That's
the key because there is no arguing that the '816 is better
than the 65C02 or the '040 is better than the 68000.

>>>The Mac 512K and upwards have a vertical retrace interrupt service
>>>which could similarly be used to implement a fully preemptively
>>>multitasking OS, if someone could be bothered.
>>
>>Then why did "someone" never implement preemtive multitasking in
>>MacOS?
>
>Why bother? Apple never did it because presumably nobody important
>enough ever asked for it.

Now that's denial.  MacWorld and MacUser _constantly_ pointed
this out as the Macs weakness.  Apple tried _serveral_ times
to correct it, including several botched OS upgrade projects.
I've tried Zmodeming on a Mac SE with another program active
before and the computer getting mucked up.

Thank God when Rhapsody comes out (here's a question for you:
why is Apple not going to let Rhapsody Intel run Mac software?)

>It wasn't until the mid-1990s that people have started
>to regard it as an important feature- though even now, 9/10 of computer
>users still use their machines modally and wouldn't notice the
>difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 as far as multitasking
>goes.

And dogs and cats grow on trees.


>>>In artificial tests of non-real-programming-task instruction mixes only.
>>
>>BS!  An GS accelerated to 7MHz will beat out a 7MHz black and
>
>BS yourself. You haven't measured it. I'm not talking a loop to see
>which MPU can execute more NOPs per second, I'm talking about real
>functional benchmarks. As I said earlier, you are letting your personal
>hatred of the 68k and Macintosh and basically everything other than
>the Apple II blind you to simple facts.

I like the PC, the Amiga, and many MacOS clone machines like
the Umax line.  However, as a matter of principle I don't
support the Apple Macintosh line of hardware by Apple.  I
simply do not agree with that company's treatment of its customer
base.  That's not unreasonable, as your friend B.J. says she
will not have any Microsoft product on her machines.

If you want real functional comparisons, a GS at 9MHz (and
that's with a caching accelerator, meaning that if the GS
were designed by Apple to run at 9MHz, it would be much
faster) beats out a Mac LC for tasks like word processing
(spell checking, scrolling, find and replace) and page layout
(resize page to fit).  This is with the GS running AppleWorks
GS, a known kludge, and the Mac LC running an early '80's
version of Microsoft Works (later versions run even slower
on the LC).  Note: the early version of MSWorks had a feature
set similar to or inferior to AWGS.

>>There were no color 68000 Macs.  The 68000 A500 beats out any
>>68000 Mac in graphics and it does so in color (more data moved)
>>while the Mac does so in 1-bit b&w (which should give it the
>
>Okay then, let's compare the A500 with 1Mb RAM to the Atari 1040STe
>(blitterless), which is a very close comparison because the technical
>specifications are almost identical, except that the Amiga has
>coprocessors and the STe doesn't. The STe's graphics performance is quite
>close to the A500's for most operations. Put them side by side and you
>would be hard put to tell the difference between an ST game and an
>Amiga game.

What's the speed of the 1040STe's processor?

Turning the question on its head, why then (if the blitter is not
the reason) does the black and white Mac fall so short of the
A500 in moving graphics?

>>>The reason that the blitter in Agnus
>>>makes animation tasks smoother and faster on the Amiga is because this
>>>device is essentially a custom MPU optimized for graphics operations.
>>
>>Great, isn't that the point?
>
>No, the point was your so-called quote above which said that this
>"didn't slow down the computer"

That quote appeared nowhere.  Perhaps you mistake this quote for
it: "offload work from the CPU."

I take that to mean the blitter moves the graphics rather than
the 68k.  The blitter moves them faster than the 68k can.
Since the blitter does the work, it offloads work from the CPU.
Comprende?

>>CPU and a 20MHz motherboard.  Here's what he said:
>
>I read what he said, and there's no need to requote all this stuff;
>saying it again won't make it so, and this:

I only requoted it because you did not address the points.

>>Based on my conversation with him, I'd say Apple would have
>>had a winner using the following timetable:
>
>is still a commercial fantasy. Face it, big companies beat small ones,
>big selling products beat small selling products, and the 68k and
>PowerPC are big selling products made by a big company.

If that were true (big companies always beat small companies),
is there any hope for Apple?  MacOS vs. the Goliath Microsoft
monopoly?  I hope so.  As much as I am turned off by what
Apple did to the GS (and what it is doing to MacOS clones),
I happen to like the Apple Interface and the fact that there
is an alternative to Microsoft a bit more popular and usable
than OS/2.  NeXT is one of the best OS I used on the PC, but
thanks to Jobs' marketing, it went down the tubes.  I hope
Rhapsody Intel is a good successor.

I _really_ do not want to see Windows and Explorer and
Microsoft Office as the only viable software left in the 21st
century.

>>You did not quote the full text above.  The point made was that
>>there is a market for an appliance computer.  Think about this:
>
>It's a very limited market, and the actual assigned cost of manufacture
>of an embedded WP system retailing for $400 would be no more than
>$150-200 at MOST. The cost of a monitor alone is slightly more than
>half that.

I'll tell you something, word processing with AWGS is a hell of
a lot more fun than using the built in software of those word
processors.

>>have computers.  The Macintosh has failed as "the computer for
>>the rest of us."
>
>If that is true, then there *is* no "computer for the rest of us",
>because there sure as hell isn't anything else which comes close to
>filling that niche. Don't tell me that the Apple II series as shipped is
>easy to set up (for a *novice* user), because I might rupture something
>laughing. User interface paradigms have come a long way. Sure, you could
>upgrade GS/OS, but again we're talking added cost, and why *bother* when
>there are off-the-shelf products like MacOS which fulfil the
>requirements?

Lewin, don't you get it?  Yes, the GS was hard to set up _because_
Apple crippled it?  They shipped it with 256K, which was not
enough to boot up its native OS!

A low cost GS box with a fast processor, bundled with most of
the key apps (I'm sure the companies that made GS software
will be willing to license them for cheap) in an ink-jet
printer body would be easy to set up and a great appliance
computer.

Also, the GS as is can be sold in China, for example, without
fear that the Chinese will ship it back to the US for less
money.  Apple has the technology already and the GS with
the simple addition of a hard drive will be cheap to make
and sell and not a threat to US Mac sales.  The Chinese
want to buy, maybe Apple can still catch up with Jiang before
he leaves the country.

The money from Chinese sales could go back into the development
of the GS, realizing an upgraded GS.

>>the PC.  Similarly, capable PC systems under $K no longer exist.
>
>Really? You might be tickled to learn that the retail price of a 133MHz
>6x86-based PC with 14" SVGA color monitor, mouse, 16Mb RAM, minitower
>case, 12x CD-ROM, 1.7Gb hard disk, 104-key keyboard and 3.5" FDD is about
>AUD$1200-AUD$1300 here if you shop for cheap clones. That's
>USD$840-USD$910. I read in Be developer news just a few weeks ago an
>aside about buying a Pentium PC for a little under USD$600.

I've seen them sell for that price _without_ the monitor.
With the monitor pushes them over the $K mark.

>>circuits can be designed as such.  Without the power drain of
>>something like an Intel or 68K chip in there, the device could
>
>You actually have energy consumption figures for the low-power version
>of the MC68000?

Search for them on the web, if you don't believe me.

-Scott G.