Re: expansion on the //c plus?

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <2qcgf4$534@pnet1.pnet.com>, Lon Seidman <lon@pnet1.pnet.com> wrote:
> Phillip "Ty" Young (tyoung@jove.acs.unt.edu) wrote:
> : Hi.  Think I got a //c plus now.  Just have to go and get it.  Hey, what 
> : expansion possibilities are there on that machine?  How much are //c 
> : plus-compatible memory expansion cards?  Are there HD's available for 
> : this machine, with its way-more-cool disk drive electronics?  Thanks.
> 
> There used to be.  Applied Engineering used to offer a complete upgrade 
> for the //c and //c+.  They had a 1 meg expansion board that went in, 
> somwhere:).

Their original one plugged into the MMU and/or IOU sockets on the
motherboard (the IOU and MMU then plugged into the card).  I haven't
actually seen one, so I'm not sure of the exact details.  There was a
Z-RAM card, which included a Z-80 processor, so you could run CP/M
software on the IIc.  There was also a version without the Z-80
(possibly called a C-RAM?)

They probably made a newer version that worked in the "memory
expansion" IIc's memory expansion slot.  I don't know for sure.

> They also had a 16 bit upgrade for it.  It wouldn't run any  IIgs
> software, but it sped the thing up considerably. 

It would make no difference AT ALL to the speed of the IIc, unless you
were running software that could take advantage of it.  One example is
the Merlin assembler.  If you have a 65802 processor in your IIe/IIc,
you can use Merlin 16 instead of Merlin 8; Merlin 16 is about five
times faster at assembling and most other operations.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand