Re: Modern A2 successor

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

**** **** wrote:

> Roy and/or Janet Miller wrote in message <397E424A.1EECB43E@inetnebr.com>...
> >**** **** wrote:
>
> >Well, from one goofy person to another....
> >
>
> Roy,
>     The mac is still the mac, but there is continuity there, and the
> official seal of Apple. Besides, there are only 2 cpu families there,

The II however, has only had one CPU family. Which was my point, moving to a PPC
chip as the Mac did, or an X86 chip (they are cheaper aren't they?) would not
necessarily mean it wasn't an Apple II.

> and
> even they are similar enough to see it go from one to the next. I can see
> that they are the 'same' even though my Plus has little in common with the
> Cube.
>     If we were to design and make a successor, it wouldn't bare the official
> seal of Apple (in all likelyhood). Even continuity is going to be hard to
> come by, seeing as how long its been since the 'last a2'.

>
>     The same would have to be done for our Power Apple, were it to be built.
> The "open me up and do things with me" feeling is just that, a feeling.

But consider what the II had in `77 - slots, color, sound, built in BASIC, and
open source. S-100, CBM and Radio Shack couldn't begin to compare. The IBM PC
had slots, the PC had BASIC and sound, and could have color (half as good as the
original II), and you could get some of it's internals info, but the IBM was
trying to clone the II "feel". Both were hackers machines, machines that said
open me up and explore, extend me. One of the failures of the IIGS is the
failure to have a built in BASIC that had kept up with the hardware. It was too
much like the Mac in some ways, not enough (power/speed) in others.

> Not
> a bad feeling, don't get me wrong, but certainly not a feeling that is
> impossible with a modern pc or mac. What would you have in the Power Apple
> (for lack of a better name) ? PCI slots? Those are the obvious choice, but
> since we'd be forced to make much of the hardware to go in it, PCI is way
> too advanced, IMHO. Isa is simpler, but pc junk as far as I'm concerned. But
> I wouldn't go with the Apple bus either, well, not exactly. Me, I'd do what
> IBM did with isa, extend it, but still keep the original in the layout. We
> could do a 16bit, or even 32bit AXbus (Apple eXtended bus), but put it in as
> an extra card edge inline with the old one. New more powerful cards are then
> possible, but each slot can be used for most of the old accessories.

One problem with that - the speed of the bus. Am I mistaken in believing that
the II bus was limited to 1 mhz? The 8 bit ISA was 8 mhz as I recall (or was
that the 16 bit AT bus?), just adding 16 or 32 bit extenders, without a faster
bus wouldn't help much. And it would also require the development of new cards
to take advantage of the extended bus. A PCI bus (one, two slots?) would at
least allow the use of existing cards for other markets. Another idea would be
to put SCSI/IDE on the motherboard, and not use a slot. Ditto for memory -
replace the IIGS memory slot with one or two simm sockets.

>
>     CPU's? I could be wrong, but I believe that even the most advanced 6502
> variant wouldn't be acceptable. Nor could I ever accept any radical
> departures from it. I don't know the answer to this one, but I have a vague
> idea of maybe using 2 or even 4 of the 16bit 6502 variants, and trying to
> tie them together in a smp type setup. Sure, on the high end of things, smp
> is very tough and a job for the professionals, but we would be talking
> 6502's, none the less. Surely we could handle this? Also allows you to dream
> about redoing prodos for the machine, as a primary OS. 4 simultanous  prodos
> processes, perhaps even windowed. Now that would be a hoot.

Something like this has been done with the TI 9900 chip. But then, you are now
talking about a new operating system. Not a q&d job, is it?

Roy