Re: What GSE-Reactive Really Needs to Make

["Henry" <apl2research@comcast.net>]

I think everyone is hitting it on the head.  The Second Site was probably 
the best option at the time.  Many factors were playing in at the time don't 
forget.  The Apple II market was dieing and quickly.  They probably wanted 
to recoup some of their investment.  Let's not forget how much more 
expensive IC's and production costs were back then too.  There also weren't 
any scandoublers back then either - at least none that I remember.  To just 
say the product was crap and dismiss it I think takes some of the credit 
away of how ground breaking their product really was and some 15 years later 
still is.  I think the real blame lies with Apple as it always has.  Had 
Steve Jobs not made it his goal to kill the Apple II and just let nature 
take it's course then all of us would be much happier today, but let's not 
open that old wound again.  Just imagine how much better the Second Site II 
would have been.  Probably the same difference between the Apple's Rev. C 
and HS SCSI.

Can a VGA scandoubler be incorporated in to an Apple II?  Sure.  Ed has a 
design that might just work for the IIgs, but not for the IIe.  I would 
assume for the IIe one would use the Aux. Mem. slot where as the IIgs one 
might use an Expansion slot.  When the time comes Bill and I will spend time 
researching what would be the best was to incorporate VGA in to an Apple II.

For starters I would assume we would first tackle the RAM Works III.  Once 
we have a working clone doing 3 Megs and RGB, then adding 16 Megs and VGA 
shouldn't be that much harder of a task.  What we learn there will go right 
in to the IIgs.  Of course things will be slightly different on the IIgs. 
We might not have a slot card at all.  It might be an external box with the 
scandoubler in it.  Who knows at this point?

It's all speculation right now.  The only one who has even done any research 
so far is Ed.  VGA will come to the Apple II one day.  Same with USB.  Right 
now we will all have to wait until one of us does something about it. 
Hopefully not too much longer though. ;-)



Henry S. Courbis
www.GSE-Reactive.com
Apple II Series Legacy Hardware - Come take a look at what we have to offer!

<omashiroi@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
1140058915.603772.109290@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com">news:1140058915.603772.109290@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> What we really need GSE-Reactive to make is some sort of VGA output for
> the GS and also some adapter so we can use USB keyboards.
>
> We can now use modern disk drives with the various CFFA cards, now we
> just need to be able to use modern video and input devices. The VGA is
> probably the most important as then we don't have to have dedicated RGB
> monitors for our machines.
>
> -Adam
>