Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Web page for TCP/IP for the Apple IIgs

[taubert@ux7.cso.uiuc.edu (Derek Anthon Taubert)]

sbehrens@contech.demon.co.uk (Soenke Behrens) writes:
>Not quite endless, no. Anything that uses DMA can very likely not be made
>to work. I assume certain restrictions re IRQs would also apply. Anything
>that uses a memory range would fail, I would presume. 16-bit cards won't
>work. What you could get to work are cards that are 8-bit and use I/O
>addresses, possibly also an IRQ.

DMA is a problem, but IRQs are fully supported.  The full address range for
MEM and IO spaces are also supported.

Of course, you can't use any BIOS code (like for VGA cards) either, but you
could always convert the linux driver.  :)

>Anyway, even with the restrictions applying, that leaves things like Ether
>cards, 2Mb/s floppy controller cards, 16C550 cards, some very old SCSI
>cards, some GAL programmers and Eprom blowers. Out of these, I think only
>Ether and maybe 16C550 actually make sense: SCSI is done by the RF and
>Apple HS, and floppy controller is done by BlueDisk. You can only have one
>of these beasts, so you might as well use it wisely :).

On the other hand, it is possible to break the 1MHz barrier with this, so
you might actually be able to get better performance out of one of those older
SCSI cards than the RF.  This is purely speculative, of course.

Also, ISA slots can be easily extended since they don't have per slot decoding
lines like the apple.  Just plug in a 1-5 adapter (or buffered extension if you
really want to get fancy) and away you go...

Derek Taubert                    |
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