Re: MacGS?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:

>David Empson <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>:> Actually the Duet card never saw the light of day because Apple came out
>:> with the Mac Classic, which cost less than the card would have cost and
>:> had better performance.
>
>: Are you sure it was the Classic which triggered this?  The price may
>: have been an issue, but the machine specs (speed and RAM) for the
>: Classic are almost exactly the same as the Mac Plus and SE.
>
>: If the Duet was going to have worse performance than the Classic, then
>: it would be worse than every Mac ever made.
>
>: The LC, on the other hand, would be a better bet - twice the clock
>: frequency of the Classic, with a better processor (020) to boot.
>
>Well performance is more than clock speed. I remember the talk saying that
>there would be a funky scrolling screen setup. Recall that even a Classic
>has higher vertical resolution than a IIgs. That alone would make the card
>undesirable to my thinking.

That's not what I read at all.  I read that the card has its own video which
uses the AppleColor RGB monitor in 640x400 interlaced mode.  The
IIGS video connects to the Duet card via a cable.  The video cable from
the Duet would connect to the AppleColor RGB monitor.

This gave you greater horizontal resolution than the Classic (as the IIGS
always had) but the interlaced display also allowed the card to display
the full vertical resolution of the Classic.

This is similar to how the PCT combines video, except the PCT card is
just a switcher for two video sources while the Duet actually mixes them.

>When this was in the Apple II press, the price estimates I saw were around
>$1400. You could get a Classic for $900 at that time. And what I read said
>you could expect Classic style performance from the card. Hence there would
>be little to no market for such a thing.

The ones I saw said it would sell for $300 to $500 dollars.  Circtech
canned the project because Apple didn't support the IIGS.  Didn't
advertise it aggressively, etc.

Interestingly, folks in the Amiga world picked up on the idea and
came up with something very similar not long after.