Re: Apple IIGS and speech generation for handicaped

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

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

>Mitchell Spector wrote:
>>    Granted hardrives and memory are no longer expensive (e.g. 300 MB
>>SCSI hardrive mechanisms for $25; 1 MB SIMMs for $1/ea) -- the same
>>is not true with the Apple II-specific peripherials required to make
>>use of them. SCSI controllers and memory cards are still quite costly,
>>at least when you compare costs with the PC world.
>
>Not true.  Consider that you have to buy an IDE controller or
>an SCSI controller for the PC in the first place.

    Wrong. Virtually all PC's sold today include either enhanced IDE
or SCSI built-in to the motherboard. Even my old 486 motherboard had
a pair of EIDE pin connectors on the board.

>The Ramfast is comparable to the prices for PC caching controllers.

    Nope. I could purchase something comparable to the RamFAST for a
tiny fraction of its cost--or for the same cost, I could get something
many times more powerful and with a lot more cache and speed.

>Same goes with the Sirius card.  You can get it with no memory
>and populated with the $1/meg SIMMs that PC users are giving
>away and get 8MB.

    You still have to purchase the bare card and that costs you
something, most likely the same cost as 32 MB of SIMM memory.

>Besides, how cheap DO you want the hardware?  Apple II developers
>have to make _some_ profit.  Have you ever looked at the mods
>for the Volkswagen Beetle in the J. Whitney mail order catalogs?
>Things like power windows, engines, and the like costs more than
>the car is worth, but people still buy them because it is cool
>to have a decked out classic.  :)

    The remaining Apple II hardware developers (Sequential Systems,
Alltech and //SHH Systems) do have to charge more because of the
unusually small size of the market, but sometimes it defies logic.
Take for example the Second Sight for US$150. For the same cost
I could purchase an entire 386/486, color VGA monitor _with_ a
functional video card that has software support and does something
productive (or anything at all for that matter).

>As for Second Sight, it is a video card.  Too bad we didn't get
>the one based on the Amiga's chip-set instead, what was it called
>again -- Turborez?  That one would have been nice.

    Yep, the RezTek TurboRez. It didn't borrow anything from the
Amiga, it used some custom chipsets to do scaling, multiplane
scrolling, rotation and blittering among other things. Basically
it would have given the GS animation features very much like the
SuperNintendo (including better color depth and resolution).

    Today though, it wouldn't even begin to compare to PC boards
like the Diamond 3Dfx or Vodoo II (those completely blow away
things like the Playstation and Nintendo 64!). Even something as
simple as a 3Dfx Christmas screen-saver made my jaw drop. :-)

>I'd recommend Sirius and Focus wholeheartedly, but Second
>Sight could use some bug-fixing!

    It's doubtful we'll ever see bug fixes for the Second Sight,
and that is only part of the problem. The card is much to slow
to do anything useful and to top things off, it uses an absolutely
rock-bottom quality VGA chipset (I'll bet it is blurry and lacks 
good contrast/brightness too compared to other cards, based on the
output from Oak cards I've seen).

    If anything, the Second Sight could use major price slashing
and Sequential Systems being more realistic about the card's
description and capabilities (from what I hear, it won't even
do 24-bit color, despite advertising claims that it does).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca