Re: a USB board

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

Tristan Mumford schrieb:
>
> Can't say I've looked at the T5, lifedrive or TX too hard to be honest.

Don't bother. Large but slow storage on the LifeDrive, less features
(no microphone, IIRC no vibration alarm) and altogether greater
"cheapness" in all aspects (bigger, cheaper case) of the T5 and TX.
No USB-cradle and (in some aspects) worse displays.
And the battery life (5h on the T3) isn't much better, too.

Better buy a 1 GB SD-card for the T3 (bigger ones don't work) and
be content ;-)

> My initial goal was to get a T2 because it's compatible with my m500's
> peripherals. But we ended up getting a T2 and a T3 for a total of
> AU$250, which isn't bad at all.
> I'm taking the T3, My partner is having the T2.

Ha ha!

> Mine will get a lot more of a flogging. Serious use and emulators (some
> overlap). There is no way I could turn down a 400MHz palm.

Actually its mostly overkill - but definitely nice to have.
However, for GPS navigation its the right amount of horsepower :o)

I tried a program to slow the CPU down when using standard apps
(to achieve longer battery life), but it resulted in a complete crash.

Now I really don't bother anymore - the machine should save time,
after all ;-)

> I have noticed a fair lack of Apple emulators. Why is that?

What do you mean by lack? Where do you expect/wish one?

> The (apple) architecture was far more open than its competitors

Which can also be a bad thing. Frozen specs are great to work
with. Just look at the hardware the Apple emulators support and
compare this - for example - with the Commodore emulator VICE.

I say this not to be rude or disrespectful, I like AppleWin for
example, but there definitely is room for improvement.

One could argue that some peripherals are just not worth emulating,
because they are too exotic but the spirit of the Apple II is that you
can plug nearly every shit for some reason in it and *use* it (like
I/O, mass storage, sound, speech, video etc.)

What I would like for example is a perfect emulation of the Apple
graphics tablet (I would even buy a PC tablet for this) and better
(and adjustable) composite video emulation.

And other people surely have other wishes - because *their* Apples
had these options at the time.

Compare this with C64 users who usually only had a floppy, some
joysticks, a TV-set and maybe a printer. Complete emulation
possible today  ;-)


> etc. etc. and it had/has a large following.

"has"? What is "large", then? Several hundred? Thousands (world wide)?
How many do actively program/publish something?

> And I remember that recent thread in here on single cycle CPU emulation
> using an ARM based architecture. Combine that with the simplicity of the
> standard apple peripherals and you have an emulator that can spend most of
> its time with the host CPU off. Even more with a ROM image patched with
> breakpints for idling.

AFAIK the older PalmApple is 68k-based.
This is your chance for fame! Be the first! Write an ARM-Apple-emu!

> I guess it's not quite totally OT anymore. 

Curve ball!

bye
Marcus