Re: FS: APPLE IIGS

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

In article philip@utstat.toronto.edu (Philip McDunnough) writes...

>In article <33514416.5CE0@mindspring.com>, jjailall@mindspring.com wrote:
>>I doubt you could give that away. School are now dumping those. You can
>>pick a IIGS (literally) for 2 dollars. Old LC are selling for 250
>>dollars. I don't see a bargain. If I don't like a pc and command lines,
>>why would i get the IIGS. It was good back in the day, but now....
>>
>>Robert
>>mailto:jjailall@mindspring.com
>
>The sound alone would be worth it. Few systems, even the Mac, match the
>Ensoniq which is built into every GS.

    Things have changed in the past 5 years or so. Add-on cards for the
IBM PC (i.e. Roland SCC-1, Ensoniq Soundscape, AudioTrix Pro, Yamaha XG,
Gravis UltraSound, AWE-32, etc) have not only caught up with the IIgs,
but have surpassed it by huge leaps. In fact there are even a few unique
PC motherboards that have advanced wavetable synthesis built-in on the
motherboard.

    As for the Mac, those are a different story and the IIgs still remains
on top as far as sound goes (excluding 16-bit digital audio of course). :)
It's surprising Apple stuck an Ensoniq synthesizer in the IIgs back in '86
(giving it sound capabilities YEARS ahead of anything else) yet refused to
do the same for the Macintosh, even until this day. Perhaps it has to do
with that lawsuit with Apple Records, and the reason the GS was phased out?

>In any case there's much to be said for the GS, especially when compared to
>the LC or (gasp) a PC.

    Agreed on both, although PC's have changed enough in recent years where
they're at least worth taking a look at. I utterely detest the time period
in which PC's were soley MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, AdLib/SoundBlaster, MCGA 
running on slow 386's (not that far back, around 1991-92). They're still 
far from being perfect, but now have alot of what the GS could have had 
and make them interesting in that way.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca