Mark Twain/ROM4 (was Re: //gs ROM versions?)

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <AFA90714966876CA3@surfu37.koeln.netsurf.de>,
Volkmar Friauf <volkmar.friauf@koeln.netsurf.de> wrote:
>I've heard that there also was a IIgs prototype with a ROM 04 (this was
>mentioned on a web page some time ago). Does anyone know what the OM 04
>imprivements woyld have been? 

   [Most of this summarized from Joe Kohn's Shareware Solutions II
newsletter, vol 3, issue 1. See http://www.crl.com/~joko for
subscription info, etc]

   Improvements: builtin HD (1.44MB) 3.5" drive, 40MB SCSI drive (and
equivalent of HS SCSI card), stereo card, 2MB RAM on motherboard + 4
1MB SIMM sockets, fan, and a bunch more neat stuff.

   The major disappointment in the protoype is that the processor was
still 2.5Mhz.  This might have been upped before final production, but
remember, this was the same company (at the time and since then
Macintosh, Inc) that believed that 1Mhz was fine for Apple IIs from
1977-1986, so 7 more years at 2.5Mhz would be more than enough,
despite the fact that the IIc+ ran faster than any stock GS. This
was also the company that completed an Apple II ethernet card and
killed it out of malice.

   This is also from the same company that killed the Apple II to make
the ill-fated III, then resurrected the II with minor changes over the
][+ to make a computer sold for nearly a decade. Apple's "Super II"
motherboard protoytype dated 1981 is nearly identical to the //e that
debuted in 1983, way too long in the pipeline for so *little* an
effective change to programmers and users. [See
http://www.visi.com/~nathan/a2/superii.html for scans, descriptions,
etc of that revision]

   Apple's engineers meant well and did the best they could, despite
being backstabbed by management at almost every step of the
way. Remember, folks, Dilbert is not a comic. It's a documentary. :)

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein