New Maths coprocessor card & FPE

[scd@bbs.ausom.oz.au (Stephen Davidson)]

G'day All,

<Stuff about  a new Maths processor card cut>

>There are two ways in which the card can be used:
>
>1. The program specifically looks for the card and communicates
>directly with it.  This is supported by ORCA/C and ORCA/Pascal
>programs - you can use some compiler directives and a different
>version
>of the library to make direct calls to the FPE card (or compatible).
>I think that this requires the card to be present.

Yep, Orca stuff does this vert well and its quite fast in operation.

>2. The FPE card was originally supplied with a program which patched
>the SANE toolset so that calls to SANE were re-routed to the floating
>point coprocessor (some glue code copied the arguments into the
>coprocessor, invoked the appropriate command, and copied the results
>back).
>
>The latter method is entirely transparent to existing software -
>applications call SANE, as normal, to do their floating point
>calculations, and the call gets handled by the coprocessor.

This is the way I've got it set up on my IIGS. The FPE is in slot3
so I don't have to assign the slot to "Your card".

>The disadvantage of this method is that it is slower than direct
>access
>to the card (you have the overhead of a toolbox call, plus the glue
>code copying the parameters around the place).  It is still very much
>faster than the original SANE routines, though.

The results aren't exactly the same as with SANE true, but they
aren't much off either!!

Believe me, the FPE is MUCH !! faster than with SANE, even if
you only use the SANE INIT patch method. If you program
directly for use with ORCA, its faster again!!

>I've never seen one of these cards in operation, so I can't give
>benchmarks, but there must have been some kind of review in one of the
>magazines a few years ago.

I find its great!! Only small problem that I've found is with HyperCard
and when you go to compact a stack, the temp stack is written but
the computer freezes. Doesn't happen when the INIT is disabled.
I'm not sure if its soley the FPE INIT, or a combination of INIT
problems. Haven't bothred to find out.

Otherwise, its excellent!!

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

Regards,
Davo esq.

Viva la IIGS, The power ][ be the best!!
-- 
Stephen C. "Davo esq" Davidson                 _--_|\
Apple Users Society of Melbourne (AUSOM)      /      \
email: scd@ausom.oz.au                        \_.--.*/ <--- I'm here.
Apple IIGS SIG Leader of AUSOM  II Infinitum        v    Viva la IIGS