Re: Expanding Focus Capacity (was Re: Please Help w/purchase.)

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

In article pubpc1@library.ucla.edu writes...

>Mitchell Spector wrote,
>>     Except that the Macintosh Plus has a higher vertical resolution
>> (the GS cannot do true WYSIWYG at 640x200) and has had more recent
>> System Software support than the GS. Otherwise, I agree fully--the
>> GS is more of a functional machine (once upgraded) than a Mac Plus,
>> especially in terms of multimedia applications and games.
>
>It is WYSIWYG in that you can see what's going on the GUI.

    Yes, exactly. The whole point behind WYSIWYG is just that--What
You SEE Is What You Get. You can see *exactly* what your document
will look like printed out, _on the screen_, without having to go
through the process of waiting for the printer or wasting paper
and ink/toner either, just to see each minor change.

    WYSIWYG is also important if you don't have a printer connected,
which is the case with some people who have their documents printed
by a commercial printing service (or do their project at home, yet
do their printing at work/school).

>True, it is not perfect because of the resolution, but no
>worse than what was happening with the Mac Plus.  It had
>less horizontal resolution than the GS

    The vertical resolution on the GS makes this almost moot.
You have an aspect ratio problem with 640x200, the width is
is about 3.5 times greater than the height--this gives you a
distorted and stretched image! Notice how TrueType fonts on
the GS screen are much taller and more narrow than they come
on the actual printed page?

    The Macintosh Plus used 512x384, which is more balanced
than the GS's 640x200. This at least offered true WYSIWYG,
or pretty close to it. We're looking at 4:3 vs 5:12.

>and no color depth, or grayscales for that matter. If you were
>looking ata grayscale image, the GS is much more WYSIWYG than
>the dithered Mac Plus screen.

    Well we're talking about the 640 mode, so you have only
4 colors to work with (just 2 colors if you want black and
white). You have to use the 320x200 mode to have any real
greyscales, which has a good aspect ratio, but then your
resolution is too low for 80 columns of readable text.

    While the Macintosh Plus may be superior for producing
true WYSIWYG for page layout, graphic design and fonts in
a word processing document--it comes no where near the GS
for overall look of graphics obviously. You have can have
256 color screens, choosen from a 12-bit palette. The Mac
of that time was just showing pixels either on or off (on
that tiny 9" B&W screen).

>> >My system is a 13.75MHz Zip accelerated GS (faster than my
>> >25Mhz '486 PC in most tasks...you can't compare MHz accross
>>
>>     Your comparing a 486SX-25 laptop, I think if you compared
>> the same GS to an old 486DX-33 desktop machine the same might
>> not be true. ;-)
>
>I'm talking about my own 486, which I previously acknowledged
>was somewhere between the performance of an i486 and i386
>(it is a Texas Instrument 486SLC-25 chip).

    This is the first time you've actually mentioned what your
"486" chipset consisted of. Let me clear up some facts here:
The 486SLC in reality is no more than a 386SX, with two minor
exceptions--it has some 486 instruction sets and contains 16K
of L1 cache. On the down side though, it only has a 16-bit
data bus and a 24-bit address range (it is limited to 16 MB).
It is not even a true 32-bit processor.

    Let's also remember your running this chip in a laptop,
which means there is probably no L2 (external) cache and
that your going to have less of a bus speed that a desktop
machine. The speed at which graphics are drawn will take a
*major* hit here, compared with the same chip inside a real
desktop machine. So -- "My GS is faster than my 486" is
now a statement you can no longer make, claiming that is
as false a statement as claiming it were a Pentium! You,
my friend, have a 386SX laptop there. :-) (At least now
you know why you got such a bargain on it. ;)

>Still, you have to remember that this was 1991-1993 PC technology.
>The GS was introduced in 1986.  That 1986 technology could keep
>up with 1991-1993 technology is quite impressive.  :)

    It is kind of moot arguing it further since you actually
are comparing a low-end 386 (the SX series, to my knowledge,
worked like a pair of 286's working in parallel) to the GS.
Of course it is also moot when you consider 1986 technology
was the IIgs running at 2.6 MHz (the fastest 65C816 at the
time was no more than 4 MHz or so). Even when the TransWarp
GS was introduced by the end of 1988, the 65C816 was only
up to about 6 or 7 MHz. It was not until the 90's that they
were able to push the chip to relatively high speeds (and
that was in accelerator boards, not the actual GS).

    To tell you the truth, I _cannot_ truely say the speed
of an accelerated Apple IIgs is impressive. In terms of raw
speed it is pretty weak--go compare anything math intensive
on a 16 MHz Apple IIgs with just about any 386 (i.e. compile
a program, decompress a ZIP/LHA archive, decode a JPEG). It
is no surprise that the 386 will come out leaps and bounds
ahead. An Apple IIgs in any form, is a slow computer. It is
*quite* capable once upgraded, but you cannot compare it with
486's and the like. Especially when it is still dropping back
to 2.6 MHz at times, underneath those caching accelerators.

>> >Did I mention the GS produces near flawless sound and music?
>>
>>     Compared to today's standards? Having only 8-bit sound
>> resolution at not much higher than 26 kHz (due to the low
>> pass filter) doesn't make "near flawless" digital sound.
>
>First of all, that 26kHz low pass filter does not degrade
>the signal.  It simply filters noise.  As was pointed out
>earlier, you can only really capture frequencies of 1/2
>the sampling rate.  Sampling at 44kHz will mean you are
>capturing a maximum frequency of 22kHz.  When the Ensoniq
>is sampling at 52kHz, that's when the filter limit comes
>in.  That filter is just clipping noise.

    The Ensoniq 5503 itself can sample and playback at much
higher rates than 26 kHz, but the low pass filter in the GS
that the Ensoniq's output _has_ to travel through before it
gets to your speakers is only about 26 kHz. The chip may be
processing a 44.1 kHz digitized sound, but what comes out
is much less.

>Second, the sound, to my ears and through my audio
>equipment, sounds near flawless.  It may be just me, but
>it sounds good.  I do hear a very slight difference
>compared to 16-bit sound coming from a CD player.  If
>the CD player is flawless sound, the GS is near-flawless.

    Trust me, it is definitely just you. Musical sound
recordings (such as the very large ones you've uploaded
to Ground) sound pretty fuzzy compared to the original
pieces played off a CD player--or played through my PC
as MPEG-3 encoded audio files. There is more than just
a subtle difference between digitized playback on the
GS and an audio compact disc.

    Have you had your hearing tested ever? (I don't mean
that as an insult, you may have damaged it listening to
excessively loud noise over a long period, or maybe you
can't hear certain high or low frequencies? Actually I
know after people reach a certain age range, they no
longer hear the 15 kHz squeal produced by NTSC monitors
and TV's).

>> >Alltech Electronics (http://www.allelec.com/).  Get a GS
>> >system from them, then grab a 40MB Focus drive.  Replace
>> >the 40MB drive yourself with an 800MB IDE 2.5" mechanism
>> >from Computer Shopper sources.
>>
>>     On a bit of tangent here, how much is the 2.5" 800 MB
>> Quantum Go Drive in Computer Shopper? In several posts I
>> noticed you mentioning that it costs "literally pennies",
>> which to me would mean a couple of dollars. Is that the
>> actual case?
>
>Look up "Dirt Cheap Drives" in the index.  A couple of
>months ago, this Nevada based outfit was selling 800MB
>Quantum Go-Drive refurbs for $59.

    Well that's a bit more than "literally pennies". :-)
Still, sounds like it would make a good deal if you
already own a Focus HardCard and require huge amounts
of storage (well, huge if your using it with a IIgs,
otherwise 800 MB is fairly small in a PC :).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca