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Re: IIgs ROM 01 & Z80+



On 10/04/2010 11:20 PM, Michael J. Mahon wrote:
A TransWarp as in Apple 2e? I seriously doubt that will work. The Z80
card shares motherboard memory with the system CPU by stopping the 6502
(ISTR this is via INH\, but that may not be correct). At any rate, the
IIe TransWarp does exactly the same thing on a permanent basis so they
are not going to coexist very well.

I think it uses the /RDY line to halt the 6502. That's one reason that
it won't work with a Zip Chip.

Thanks for keeping me honest. I'm not really a hardware guy and don't keep this stuff in my forebrain :-).

Tony mentioned the need to run at 1Mhz. in another posting. That's a
hard requirement for proper functioning of a SoftCard style coprocessor.
It truly was a bit of a hardware hack. I have three or four SoftCards
and perhaps a half dozen AE Z80+ cards. Some will work in some systems.
None of them will work in all of my systems. One more reason to keep on
the lookout for an Applicard if you're serious about Apple CP/M. Never
found a box that an Applicard wouldn't work in and it coexists with any
and all accelerators on both IIe and IIgs - at high speed settings, too.

All the "Softcard-derived" Z80 cards used a syncopated 3.5MHz clock,
which was regarded even at the time as a major hack. Like some other
cards, it has tight bus timing margins, and so running it on a system
other than one it was tested in during design is actually running a
reliability test. ;-)