Re: ROM 1 vs ROM 3???

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article smentzer@ecom.net (Steven W. Mentzer) writes...

>Both machines have advantages and disadvantages. The "newer rom toolbox
>routines" argument falls VERY short, considering that the Rom03 was released
>circa GS/OS 5.0.2, and 6.0.1 changed a slew of toolsets. Therefore, the
>toolbox routines are "patched", and the original rom routines are not used
>(nearly erasing the slight speed difference between a rom01 and rom03 too!)

    That's not entirely accurate. If you do a side by side comparison of
System 6.0.1 running on a ROM 01 and ROM 3, the ROM 3 is still noticably
faster--if you scroll through a window of icons or text, or move quickly
through pull down menus and perform other GUI related tasks. There are
still important toolsets (QuickDraw II?) being read from the machine's
built-in ROM firmware rather than RAM, and ROM reads occur at a full
2.8 MHz (that's 0.3 MHz faster than RAM reads, and noticably faster).

    If you boot pre-System 5.0 disks, then there is a *vast* difference
in speed since the ROM 01 uses the old, slow versions of QuickDraw and
other toolsets, while the ROM 3 ignores them and uses System 5 tools.
As an example, try booting the System 3.x disk and playing with the
original IIgs Finder on both a ROM 01 and ROM 3. Of course, you also
get faster booting time when when booting a System 3, 4, 5 or 6 disk.
Not too mention the 3.5 drive firmware was rewritten and is quite a
bit faster when you boot 8-bit software, so even in that sense it
still remains faster.

>The Rom3 has more base memory (1MB vs 256k), which is nice, and several
>motherboard improvements were made.

    Yep, I was pleased they virtually eliminated that annoying buzzing
coming from the sound circuitry. The old motherboard sounds like it is 
producing off-key musical scales when you scroll up and down menu options. 
Also having a removable clock battery is nice, or will be quite soon. It's 
also neat I'm able to run my Zip GS accelerator at 15 MHz on my ROM 3, 
which probably wouldn't run faster than 10 MHz or so inside my ROM 01
(plus if I ever come across a VOC card, I won't have to shuffle the
Zip GS to another slot).

>Several old titles (such as dungeon master, some FTA demos) would not run on a
>ROM03 without patches because they used undocumented toolbox/firmware calls
>that got "zapped" in the rom03 release. That is mostly irrelevant these days,
>as most "relavent" software was patched by the authors.

    The only relavent and useful piece of software that never got
patched was Beatbox, although it is mostly a cosmetic problem with
shadowing of the mouse cursor not working properly (screen isn't
redrawn as you move through menus).

>Mostly, I prefer a Rom03 just because it is *newer*.

    Yep, my IIgs box sitting on my desk that I'm typing on now
is "only" 8 years old. :-) (my oldest Apple II just turned 20
years old recently, so it's relatively new in comparison). It's
kind of neat in a way to own an Apple II manufactured the same
decade as my Pentium, heh.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca