Re: Modern A2 successor

["Arkain" <rwking@no.usa.spam.net>]

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> 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, 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).

The official Apple seal isn't what made the A2 great, especially since Apple
rode the A2 into the ground trying to build the over-rated, under-powered
Mac. Sure it had more speed and higher resolution graphics, but b&w? Where
did the slots go? A 9" monitor??? Are you kidding? How do I program this
thing? Why can't I boot my old A2 software? Where's the tech manuals? These
are the reason that Apple wasn't/isn't as big as it should have been, they
didn't keep with the tradition that the A2 series had laid out. not to
mention them pulling the plug on a system that was still paying the bills in
it's purchases alone.

> Even continuity is going to be hard to
> come by, seeing as how long its been since the 'last a2'. Time continuity
> anyway. Hardware continuity is about all we can hope for, as I see it.

Full continuity is still a viable option. It just has to be noted that this
is a revival of the system. That's what must be done to make the new system
work.

<snipped>
>     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.
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.

I don't want PCI, VLB, ISA, or even AGP slots in the new system. These bus
protocols are horribly convoluted. The old Apple Bus was simple but
effective. I would propose a new bus like you've suggested, by extending the
old one. Only thing is that I'd go all the way to 64bit to leave room for
future expansion.

>     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.
>
> John

You know, I just thought about an in-ROM emulation of a 65xxx series
processor. This would have to be done on a risc chip though. I wonder if we
could get a risc chip microcoded to natively run some extension of the 65xxx
instruction set? Running multiple 65xxx chips is not to good of an idea,
these chips wouldn't know how to work together and probably couldn't produce
the power required to make the system seem "modern enough".

Arkain