Re: More GS ROM suggestions

[pubpc1@library.ucla.edu]

David Empson wrote:
> > I agree.  Also agree than in 1987, this chip was one of the best
> > things going for the GS.  It is interesting how they made the
> > control panel say 19200 max.  Another thing that makes the Mac
> > look better, although I'm not sure this one was deliberate.
> 
> There are at least two reasons for the 19200 limit in the Control Panel.
> 
> 1. An unaccelerated Apple IIgs cannot really cope with higher speeds.

With the Zip off, my GS seems to transfer with a 33.6kbps modem
just fine.  I do have to launch the term program without any
addon baggage, though.

> As this thread is talking about theoretical improvements for the IIgs,
> both of these problems could be solved in an ideal design, as long as
> the system software and all DMA drivers were rewritten to cope with
> multiple DMA bank registers.
> 
> Better still, give us a new slot architecure that supports a much larger
> address space for I/O cards (give a 64K bank to each card!), allows a
> DMA card to specify a 24-bit address directly, and allows cards to be
> accessed at a higher speed than 1 MHz (probably with a "backward
> compatibility" mode for old cards).  This would probably require a
> two-part slot connector like in the IBM AT (the current ISA bus).

What about multiplexing?  My Amiga 500 owning friend claims that
his CPU can extract 32-bit transfers from a 16-bit data bus
through an encoding method called multiplexing.  I'm not sure
what this is, but if it could work for the Amiga, can't it work
for the GS?

This would be besides improving on the 1MHz I/O, which was
your point, of course but it could be an additional improvement.

-Scott G.