Re: Replacement fan for the IIGS

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@orcon.net.nz>]

In <435AF8D2.7000307@hotmail.com> SlickRCBD  wrote:
> Roger Johnstone wrote:
> 
>> I always wondered why the IIGS designers gave it the full seven slots. 
>> It would have made more sense to me to have reduced it to four slots (
>> like the Apple III) and use the control panel to map each physical 
>> slot  to a slot address space. That would have maintained full 
>> compatibilty,  and have left enough room on the motherboard for four 
>> SIMM slots, and  enough room in the case for a built-in 3.5" floppy 
>> drive.  I know someone's going to argue that they need all their 
>> slots and wish  they had more :-P but most users never had more than 
>> one or two cards  installed in a IIGS. 
> 
> Actually, _I_ need more for what I've got, due to the way a ROM 1 GS 
> works. As it stands, I have to choose between AppleTalk and the PC 
> Transporter and printer, since (1) I don't have a card in the printer 
> and I'm not sure if I can use AppleWorks 3.0 or The Print Shop IIGS 
> with  an AppleTalk shared printer.
>
> My situation is this:
> Slot 1: Printer Port, sometimes used for AppleTalk to the Mac.
> Slot 2: SCSI card for the HD
> Slot 3: no card/built in 80 columns (I'm sure everybody is aware of 
> the  slot 3 issues) slot 4: built in mouse port. Set it to "your card" 
> and I lose the mouse.  I think that GS/OS 6.X won't necessarily lose 
> the mouse, but Print Shop  does. Slot 5: 3.5" controler card for the 
> HD drive slot 6: built in firmware for the 5.25" drives slot 7: PC 
> Transporter card. Sometimes gets toggled to Appletalk, see above
>
> There are two reasons the HD is in slot 2 instead of slot 7. Number 
> one  is so that I can boot disks. Especially 5.25" disks. Number two 
> is that  I have to toggle the thing for Appletalk, and I lose the 
> PCT's RAM disk  when I do that. Though I do wonder if there would be 
> an advantage to  putting the SCSI card in slot 5 and the 3.5" card in 
> slot 2 for use with  ProDOS 8. I can't access everything even with 
> version 2.0.3 from System  6. Would being able to have drive 3 and 4 
> on slot five help with the  partitions that don't get mapped, or would 
> I only get to access four  partitions instead of the 6 ProDOS ones?

Hold on though, I only count three cards there. My point was that if 
Apple had allowed you to map each physical slot to a slot address you 
would only need as many slots as you had cards.

For example you could have your SCSI card in slot A and then use the 
control panel to map the card in slot A to the slot 2 address, or you 
could change it to slot 5 without having to even open the IIGS.

The ROM 3 motherboard is better then the original IIGS, in that from GS/
OS you can use both a card and the built-in port at the same time, but 
you'd still have fun trying to fill it with seven active cards without 
losing a lot of functionality somewhere.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
http://roger.geek.nz/
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