Re: Status of Apple IIGS Ethernet Card?

[dlyons@Apple.COM (David A Lyons)]

In article <1dfecfINNeen@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu> jamesb@ecst.csuchico.edu (James L. Brookes) writes:
>[...]
>Honestly though, I don't see how the Ethertalk card could be that complex.
>I'm not trying to dog you, I can understand if you have limited time to devote
>to such a product.  I just don't see it as being "more complex than a IIe".

Maybe this will help justify Mark's statement:

  * The Ethernet card has a 65816 (the IIe has a 65C02).

  * The card has 128K of ROM (well, there's plenty of breathing room,
    plus several similar copies of the part of the firmware that runs
    on the host computer's processor, but still way more than the 16K
    of ROM that a IIe has).

  * The card spends its life coordinating asynchronous tasks; a IIe
    does its own thing and doesn't have to synchronize with anything.

BTW, someone asserted that the card handles "a couple of the lower level
AppleTalk protocols."  More than that--it does all the protocols that the
IIgs does.