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Re: RFC : SOME IDEAS FOR THE APPLE II FPGA'ers
Jorge Chamorro Bieling wrote:
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
I understand you perfectly. I'm just *still* wondering what it is
that you think Apple II users are impatient waiting for...
I don't know what Apple II users are impatient waiting for. The thread
is a "Request For Comments" about some design ideas about an
hipothetical accelerator design. I'd like very much to hear other ideas.
I've asked about half a dozen times in this thread, and no one has
offered anything real that they would like to run faster than, say,
20MHz.
You wrote last month a basic program in csa2.programmer to draw circles.
I guess drawing circles is not of much use for you.
But you even took care to correct them for aspect ratio !
Drawing circles in AppleSoft Basic is useless !
Why did you do it ?
Because someone needed such a routine, and it seemed like fun
to find the simplest/fastest way to do it. (And, BTW, this is
the *first* concrete mention of something where some additional
CPU power would actually help satisfy the OP's objective. And
20MHz or so would do the job nicely..)
Because you were thinking about *the best way to do it*.
This is the same.
What is the best way to accelerate an Apple II ?
If you had to do it, what would you do ?
What would the others do ?
Can we discuss about it ?
You can do anything for fun...
Even if the processor is *infinitely* fast, the system will still have
to run animations at a visible speed (tied to the refresh rate), accept
keystrokes at human speed, and access real disks at standard speed.
See what I mean?
Yes, but "utility" does not matter.
If it did, I would not be writing here now and my Apple II would be in
the trash long time ago.
I'm just trying to figure out what's the best way to accelerate it.
And all I'm trying to do is get some clarification about what
"best" means in this context. You see, I think that it's an
ill-defined question, so convergence to an answer is unlikely.
But it's always fun to discuss, so think of me as a devil's advocate.
You ask "what can we do?" and "how can we do it?" and I ask "why would
we do it?". In short, what's the *problem* you're trying to solve?
Useless is OK with me (this is for fun, after all), but what is the
metric for "warmer" and "colder"?
-michael
Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it is seriously underused."