Re: Nostalgia - Apple ][ europlus

[philip@labtam.OZ.AU (Philip Stephens)]

Philip Mumford writes:

>Reading this newsgroup for the 1st time made me feel quite
>nostalgic. I learned to program in the early 1980s on an Apple ][
>Europlus which my Dad used to borrow from the school where he taught.

  Ah, the Europlus!  My high school had one of those too when I was
in Year 7 and 8.

>Why do people keep on posting stuff about PCs here though?

  We are all hoping it's a temporary invasion.  It's a case of some
idiot crossposting to every computer newsgroup he or she could think
of, and nobody is bothering to remove our group from the list when
they reply.

  It's all very stupid...how can ANYONE make such a fuss about an OS
is beyond me.

>P.S. I don't know very much about the GS - I vaguely remember it having 
>some strange CPU which was based on the 6502 and being quite excited about
>the graphics and sound. Exactly how powerful is it? I wrote a few games on
>the ][, does the GS play a mean game of defender etc?!!!

  Wow, you've obviously being out of the loop for quite some time!

  The GS is powered by the 65816 CPU, which is a 16-bit version of the
6502.  The 65816 can either run in emulation mode (behaving like a 65C02),
or it can run in native mode whereby all instructions work with 16-bit
values rather than 8-bit.  The accumulator and index registers can
individually be toggled between 8-bit and 16-bit operation.  The 65816
also adds a couple of new instructions and addressing modes. 

  How powerful is it?  Well, in 16-bit mode programs can run as much as
twice as fast at the same clock rate (this assumes they are written to
process information in 16-bits, I don't mean 8-bit programs run twice as
fast).  A stock GS only runs at 2.8 Mhz, although you can add an
accelerator card and get it up to 7-14 Mhz.

  The GS can emulate an Apple //e almost perfectly, or can run in native
mode whereby you have access to a Macintosh-like OS and toolbox.  The
built-in video includes a "super hires" mode that gives you a 320x200 or
640x200 screen.  You only get 16 colours per line, although each line
can choose from one of 16 colour pallettes.  Each colour can be chosen
from one of 4096.

  Just recently a new video card came out called the Second Sight which
gives the GS true VGA modes up to 1024x768, with either 8, 16 or 24-bit
colour.

  Sound-wise the GS is extremely well equipped.  It's only 8-bit sound,
but you can have up to 15 voices at once, with wavetable-based
instruments.  You need a stereo sound card, though, to actually get
stereo output.