Re: New Computer..

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

In article astdm@acad2.alaska.edu (Malone) writes...
>
>> I dunno, I never thought of buying non-Apple hardware as much of an
>>alternative myself. I upgraded my IIgs with a ROM 3 logic board a long time
>>ago, and I'm not aware of any way to improve it past that.
>
>This is off the orignal text here but is there a real advantage to upgrading a
>ROM 01 to a ROM 03?  I have a ROM 01 but was under the impression that it
>wasn't any real big deal.  The question is ... what is the advantage to having
>a ROM 03 over a ROM 01?

        Yes, there are advantages "upgrading" to a ROM 3, though generally
these are considered minor enhancements. Apple Computer never offered an
offical ROM 01 to ROM 3 upgrade because these differences were so minute.
I wrote a detailed post of ROM 3 difference about a year back to the net, 
though for now I'll just briefly tell you the main advantages/features...

	The major area of change with the ROM 3 is in the area of RAM and ROM.
The 'FAST-RAM' bank was increased to 1,024K (1Mb; originally 128k) using eight
12ns DRAMs, and ROM was increased to 256k (originally 128k) and came on two
EPROM chips, rather than one. So a stock ROM 3 had 1.125Mb RAM and 256k of ROM.
Other changes to the motherboard included a replacable clock-battery, the VGC
(Video Graphic Controller) chip and Ensoniq DOC 5503 no longer socketed, and
finally a _slight_ revamping of motherboard layout (mainly to make more for
additional RAM/ROM chips).

	Advantages through these changes/features included: A slight increase
in overall speed performance (8% I've heard) over the ROM 01. This came about
from motherboard revamping and addition of (almost all) System 5.0 tools in 
ROM. Anyone who's used both machines will notice disks (both ProDOS 16 and
GS/OS) load up in a shorter amount of time, and windows, pull-down menus,
scrolling, etc are somewhat faster as well. I might be imagining it, but when
I play "Out of This World" on both my stock 2.6 MHz ROM 01 and ROM 3, the
ROM 3 animates the display kind of faster (at full-screen mode, but it's a
*very* slight difference!). I should also point out when I load System 6
on both machines, even then the ROM 3 seems more responsive and faster with
scrolling under the Finder and whatnot. Other advantages are cleaner sound
and graphics, which I assume comes from changing motherboard circuity around
and the Ensoniq being soldered-down. Gone are those annoying "buzzing" sounds
when you move the mouse around or pull down menus displays! (Heh, it used to
sound like off-tune musical scales whenever I would use pull-down menus
when my sound-level was set high! ;-) Digitizing sound is "cleaner" as well,
since there's less noise distortion from the motherboard. As for graphics, 
I've not noticed any improvements, but I've read somewhere that they're 
somewhat "cleaner" as well. Finally, the new ROMs contain lots of useful
enhancements, like built-in EasyAccess and keyboard-mouse, ability to use
slots and ports w/o conflicts and use AppleTalk in slot 1, 2, and 7. There's
some cleaned up portions in the text Control Panel, not too mention a new
"Mouse" selection for setting up ADB and keyboard emulated mouse (I really
like having 5 different mouse-speeds, where the ROM 01 had only 2-speeds!).
There's a feature to save settings of Programmers CDAs (not on my ROM 3
though, *sigh*) and reset RamDisk without doing a cold-boot. Um, a digitized
sound easter-egg in ROM as well... :) A ROM 3 is DMA compatible up to 5megs
RAM, rather than 4megs on a ROM 01, btw. And, to point out a lesser known
fact, it's *MORE* compatible under 8-bit Apple //e emulation (try booting
up Broderbund's "Dazzle Draw: Slide Show" and it works without patching
for example). 

	There's more enhancements I'm sure I've forgotten, though this gives
you a basic idea. I actually perfer the ROM 3 myself, even though there's
still a handful of incompatible software titles out there (mostly hard-coded
type things, like demos though). Owning a ROM 3 is nice, I'd admit, but it's
not like upgrading from a ROM 01 to the never-released ROM 4/IIgs Plus. ;-)

Mitchell Spector
sb_spec@pavo.concordia.ca