Re: IIgs Battery Solutions / IIe Power Supply / TurboASB

["PZ" <skierpaul@yahoo.com>]

>I also see I was wrong, that the Turbo ASB extends a SSC's speed to
>230,400bps, not 115,200 like I had once thought.  Although possible, I don't
>think there is any software that supports it and a IIe would probably need
>an accelerator to be fast enough to deal with it.  The new SSC baud rates
>with the Turbo ASB are 38.4K, 57.6K,115.2K and 230.4K.

This is also why the Xtal is socketed and not soldered.  Not everybody
may require those exact frequency intervals - it'll work for the
majority though.  You can also make the Turbo ASB work with ultra slow
baud rates if you wish.

>Thanks again for the info!  By the way, may I ask what exactly was your roll
>with the Turbo ASB?

Ron and I came up with the idea on the phone while discussing hardware
handshaking cables for Lightning Systems BBS (which ran on a IIe).  I
think the conversation rolled on to hardware data compression (ie. MNP5
/ v42bis) and overall throughput on the modem-computer interface.  We
wanted to find a way to overcome the 19.2k limitation of the SSC
considering GS based bbs's were capable of locking their ports at
57,600.
(I was a hardcore IIe user at the time and wasn't happy with this
bottleneck either).  I knew that the 6551 was capable of operating at
somewhere in the range of 1.4mbps, and mentioned it to Ron.  He then
took a closer look at the SSC and came up with the daughter board idea.
 At some point we ran through a number of frequency ratio's and he came
up with the one that was actually implemented.  (I was pushing for a
different set, but cant remember which ones and why.)

>Hopefully I can get in touch with Ron and we can re-offer the Turbo ASB to the Apple II >community.

The Turbo ASB has always been for sale, there just wasn't much demand.
Ron still has some of the original batch available.

>Although possible, I don't think there is any software that supports it and a IIe would >probably need an accelerator to be fast enough to deal with it.

Thats correct, 1mhz is not enough for 230k.  I wanted to do some tests
at 230k, but unfortunately I only have one 10mhz rocket chip, 115k
worked fine.  I needed another system or peripheral that can handle
that rate to connect to.  As far as software... other than ACOS/Metal
SSC drivers, ProTerm 3.1 specifically suports the Turbo ASB and I
believe PMPfax does as well.  I'm not sure if there is SSC version of
the driver in Spectrum on the GS.

- Paul