Re: GS II booted!

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

wcbland@pacifier.com (Bill Bland) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>>>I imagine the other card is an accelerator. It's a Transwarp (there's
>>>a clue) GS with a smaller card mounted on it marked "Rev TW GS V1.18H"
>>It is indeed.  You lucked out.  This card is often sold in the
>>$K+ range and can easily be upgraded to around double

First of all, as I wrote in email, let me apologize for the
"$K+" above.  I meant hundreds+ not thousands+.
More embarassing than that, I think I said it three or
four times in different threads.  ;-|

>>the speed (after which its value will increase even more)!
>>Cool!  If you ever want to speed up this card, just post the
>>question on csa2.
>
>Well, that's an offer too good to refuse. :-)
>How do I go about speeding up the card? Yes, I know. I just figured
>out how to boot it, an already I want more speed. That's what 'puter's
>and cars do to people, I guess.

Look at one of the corners of the TWGS card.  There
is a shiny metal box.  This is the oscillator.  It is the
CPU's clock.  It runs at a Mhz rating 4x that of the
CPU.  The TWGS normally has a 28Mhz oscillator.
The CPU can often be overclocked a Mhz or two, so
try a 32Mhz oscillator followed by a 36Mhz one.

The oscillator is socketted so replacing it is easy.
There are two oscillator sizes, full size and half size.
The TWGS card uses the half sized ones (which are
square rather than rectangular).

To get above 9Mhz usually requires a new CPU chip.
These cost about $20 from a company called
Western Design Center which is in Mesa Arizona.
The chip is the 65C816S8PL-14, rated at 14Mhz (
but the design has gone much faster than this due
to the fact that WDC only tests them to 14Mhz).

The CPU is located near the center of the card in
a socket and has the numbers 65C816 printed on
it (there may be other numbers and letters too, but
65C816 is on there).

For the >9Mhz mod, simply replace the CPU with
the 14Mhz part and then plug in a faster oscillator
4x the Mhz you want to clock the CPU.

Ok, I found my old DigiKey catalog.  Here are the
DigiKey part numbers:

CTS Clock Oscillators, Half Size

40Mhz     CTX175-ND     $3.25
50Mhz     CTX176-ND     $3.25
64Mhz     CTX177-ND     $4.45

You can order them at the DigiKey web site at this
URL:  http://www.digikey.com/

An oscillator of a particular Mhz will clock the TWGS
CPU at 1/4 of the oscillator Mhz, so the 50Mhz
oscillator will make the CPU go at 12.5Mhz, for
example.

If price is not an issue, I suggest getting one of each
and experimenting to see what speed the TWGS
tops off at.

If not, I suggest getting the 50Mhz and 40Mhz units.
12.5Mhz TWGS (50Mhz oscillator) almost always
works, but with a 40Mhz unit, you can fall back on
10Mhz operation if necessary.

The 64Mhz oscillator (16Mhz operation) is a bit more
iffy, since cache RAM speeds come into play.  Grab
this oscillator too if you want to experiment, but it
may or may not work.

Good luck!

>>I recommend internal Focus drive from
>>http://www.allelec.com/ Alltech Electronics for the
>
>I checked, and some additional questions arise, if I may.
>  
>Add AppleWorks 3.0 or AppleWorks GS V1.1 (Disks only) for $10.00
>
>I'm unfamiliar (other than believing they're like Claris or MS Works)
>with these two applications. Is there a substantive difference between
>them?

AppleWorks 3.0 is an 8-bit IIe program that runs
in a text environment.  AppleWorks GS V1.1 is
a GUI program that runs under the 16-bit GS
operating system GS/OS.  Given that you have
a IIGS with enough memory and a TWGS for a
speed boost, I recommend the 16-bit version.  It
can do more things (like page layout and putting
scanned graphics in database records).

It in fact resembles an early version of MS Works
for Mac very much.  AppleWorks GS V1.1, that
is.  It has a word processor with spell check and
thesaurus, a data base, a spreadsheet, a page
layout module, a communications module, and a
combination paint and draw module.  It is a pure
GUI based program.

To get the most out of it, you'll also want Pointless
and Harmonie from http://www.crl.com/~joko
Shareware Solutions II.  This allows you to use
TrueType fonts and print to ink jet and laser printers.
Pointless and Harmonie work extremely well with
AWGS 1.1.  When you get everything set up and
install a good library of TrueType fonts, the IIGS
can produce output to an ink jet or laser printer
identical to word processing and simple page
layout on the PC or Mac.

I still use my IIGS to do word processing a lot.  It
is connected to the same ink jet printer as my PC.
I move from one 'puter to the other.  The output is
identical between the two.  The PC has more diverse
programs, but the IIGS boots much faster.  I do
not leave my PC on all the time because experience
has shown that this kills the hard disk drives faster
(even if they go into a lower power mode after a
time).  Besides, the environment you know.  ;-)

>Focus Drives are 100% Extended Smartport compatible meaning
>partititons are automatically mapped for your ProDOS 8 use (up to
>12 depending on system configuration, existing disk controllers,
>floppy drives, etc) and all partitions are available for GS/OS. A
>DOS 3.3 Emulator (FocusDOS 3.3) is available on request. 
>
>This is way over my head. Do I want a DOS 3.3 Emulator?

If you use very old Apple II or II+ software that runs
under DOS 3.3 and would like to install them onto
the Focus, then yes.  But most software you will
encounter that's 8-bit is for the IIe that runs under
ProDOS which is very hard drive aware so you do
not need the DOS 3.3 Emulator for these.  And for
the native 16-bit GS/OS based IIGS software such
as AppleWorks GS, this is of course not needed.*

Basically, you won't need it for the majority of stuff.

With a TWGS in your IIGS and the amount of
memory you have you'll probably want to run mostly
IIGS native 16-bit GS/OS based stuff in the first
place.  Who wants to hear the pathetic 8-bit Apple
II beeps when you can hear the power of the 16-bit
software that uses the IIGS' 32-channel Ensoniq
wavetable synthesis chip's.  And who wants to look
at old 8-bit lores Pong-like stuff when you can play
with 16-bit stuff like  3200 color graphics and games
such as Out of this World, Lemmings, and
Wolfenstein 3D on the IIGS.

* DOS 3.3 is an old OS that supports only 5.25"
  drives without a hack of some sort.  This is
  what the "DOS 3.3 Emulator" does.  It also does
  not support subdirectories and is very slow.

  ProDOS is an operating system introduced with
  the 8-bit IIe and IIc.  It supports hard drives and
  CD-ROMs and other mass storage devices.  It
  supports subdirectories but is limited to 32MB
  per partition.

  GS/OS is the Apple IIGS 16-bit operating system.
  It supports any device with the right driver and it
  works under a GUI that it is distributed with.  It
  is also file system independent.  Using the HFS
  file system, GS/OS can use partition sizes up to
  2GB.  The latest distribution is called System
  6.0.1, which comes with an application called
  Finder.  The IIGS Finder resembles the Mac
  Finder a lot.  The IIGS works best when used
  with 16-bit software.  When using 8-bit software
  under an 8-bit OS, it is essentially running a IIe
  emulation.