New motherboard for IIGS case

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Diehard IIGS hardware fans stick to the hardware because
they want the real IIGS unit and access to their Apple
format hard drives and components.  Emulator fans feel
that since there is no new motherboard in the making,
emulation is the way to go.  But what if you combine both?

http://www.friendtech.com/ FriendTech has an interesting
ISA card called the Renaissance AT.  Plug this card into
a PC, even as lowly as an IBM XT, and it instantly will
transform that old computer into a K6-2 550 or K6-III 550
depending on the CPU installed.  The secret?  This card
is really a motherboard in the formfactor of an ISA card.
You actually disconnect the power supply, drive, front
panel LED, input, printer, video, and sound connectors
from the old motherboard and plug them into this card.
The old motherboard will then be nothing but a holder for
the Renaissance AT.

So what does this have to do with the Apple IIGS?  Two
things.  According to the documentation of the
Renaissance AT card, you do not actually need to
mount it in an ISA slot.  In fact, you can mount it
anywhere.  Unlike most PC motherboards, this ISA card
will easily fit in a IIGS case.  Second, a 550Mhz K6-2
(or K6-III) provides a hefty dose of emulation power.
The K6-III is preferable because, especially with an
emulator, the 256k of full speed (550Mhz on a 550Mhz
chip) L2 cache would speed up everything, but the
card itself does have 512k of pipeline-burst cache
on a 100Mhz bus if the K6-2 is used instead.

The Renaissance AT card provides two USB ports for
expansion purposes and here too is a great opportunity
to make this card a new IIGS motherboard because
there are USB to SCSI interfaces available so you
can literally move your IIGS hard drive to this card and
access them through an emulator.

Wait a minute, access a ProDOS/HFS hard drive
through a PC based IIGS emulator?  How, you ask?
Simple.  Step away from Windows for a moment and
look to Linux or BeOS.  Both KEGS (for Linux) and
Bernie (for BeOS) IIGS emulators provide hard access
to storage devices so you can literally plug in your
IIGS SCSI hard drive and go.

USB also lets you use the new Apple keyboards and
mice with your new IIGS so the entire new computer
will maintain the Apple look.  One of those iMac USB
floppy drives will complete the look.  Since KEGS
and Bernie can both format 1.44MB ProDOS and HFS
disks through GS/OS, you can exchange floppies
with high density capable IIGS users.

The card has some other nice features like AGP 3D
accelerated graphics and 3D sound.  It takes
standard PC100 memory.  With 64MB on board and
a 550Mhz processor, you can even emulate a 68k
Mac and run MacOS using the notebook version of
the Gemulator program.  Think of it as the link Apple
never provided.

The beauty of this setup is that you can mount the
ports with the ribbon cables included in the package
in the cutouts at the rear of the IIGS case and wire
the IIGS power supply to power the card.  Because
the Renaissance AT does not have slots of its own,
the IIGS power supply (at least the ROM 3 version)
should be enough for the card.

Where else can you find a motherboard with these
features and this formfactor capable of fitting into
a genuine IIGS case and connecting to genuine
Apple keyboards, mice, and IIGS SCSI hard drives?