Re: Advice on GS upgrades

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Toby Creek <creek@aur.alcatel.com> wrote:

>I recently bought a IIgs ROM 01 with 512k, a 3.5, a 5.25, 
>monitor and ImageWriter II to replace the hole in my life
>left by my LOADED //e that I sold nearly ten years ago.
>
>I never had any idea that all this stuff was available for
>these machines.  I'd like to upgrade this thing so that
>it'll do more, so I'm seeking advice. 
>
>First off, I am cheap.  I got that whole thing for $10, and
>I don't want to put $500 into it.  Here's some of the things
>that I am considering.

You won't have to.  About $100 or so should do it...

>SCSI card - I like the RAMFast, but not the price.  
>I'm thinking about the CMS card that Alltech carries, or
>the Apple High Speed card.  I don't really need a whole 
>bunch of speed or device support: I'm only connecting a 
>hard disk. Everything else I hope to do via Appletalk 
>with an Ethernet converter running to my Sun box with 
>netatalk.  Is DMA defeatable, so that I can run 8MB without
>doing the RAMdisk hack?

You can turn off DMA on an Apple High Speed SCSI.  The
Ramfast can handle 8MB with DMA, but only the revision D
units.

However in your case since you want to accomplish a
reasonable upgrade in with the least possible cost, I say
go for the Focus hard drive unit...it costs $59 drive from
http://www.allelec.com/ Alltech Electronics.

>Memory board - The Sirius board looks cool, and I could 
>populate it from 0MB easily.  Any downsides to this board
>(besides the 4MB DMA limit with Rom 01)?  The Sequential
>board looks OK too, but I have the RAM for the Sirius,
>so I could get into it cheaper.  Does anyone take the
>IIgs expansion board in trade?  I have one complete with
>box and shrink wrapped manuals.

If you mean the 1MB expansion board from Apple, that card
is useless...I don't know where you are going to sell it.

The Sirius is a good choice if you go with the Focus since
you've got the memory to populate it with and since Focus
does not use DMA (Alltech claims that it can go as fast as
the Apple High Speed SCSI card without the use of DMA).

>Accelerator - Anybody have one?

Good luck!

>Fan - Where is the fan header on the GS mainboard?  I have tons
>of muffin fans that I could use for this purpose.

It is maked "Fan" on the motherboard.  Yes, it supplies 12v...you
mount the fan on the side of the power supply.

For software, try Alltech, the FTP sites like the ground and liquify
ftp servers, and get a copy of Wolfenstein 3D for the Apple IIGS.
It is free...