Re: Possibility of open-sourcing GS/OS

[et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black)]

Mark Frischknecht (appleiiguy@gmail.com) writes:
> Michael Black wrote:
>> Ed Eastman (noone@nowhere.net) writes:
>> 
>>>Michael Black wrote:
>>>
>>>>given the Mac Plus, more or less current with
>>>>the IIGS, could only handle 4megs of RAM.
>>>
>>>And there's my point.  The engineers litterally crippled teh IIgs so it 
>>>could not compete against the Mac.
>>>
>> 
>> But the other Michael's point was that back then, few were imagining
>> more memory.  They didn't "cripple' the Mac Plus for the sake of another
>> Macintosh, they just decided that 4megs was fine.  And if they couldn't
>> see the point of more than 4megs in the Mac Plus, then why should they
>> see a point in having more than 4megs in the IIGS?  I've seen lots of 286
>> computers, again basically current with the IIGS, and they didn't load
>> up with more than a small amount of memory.  The Atari ST came with 1meg of
>> RAM, and you had to really work to expand it to more.
>> 
>> If these other computers didn't see the need for 8megs of RAM, then
>> why should it be different for the IIGS?
>> 
>>   Michael
>> 

> But they did cripple the IIgs. The Processor was capable of going at
> least 5-7 Mhz but they decided on 2.6 Mhz??

But are you saying they crippled it, or that they crippled it so
it wouldn't compete with the Mac?  The latter seems to be a fairly
commonly held view, yet as I point out lots of computers from the
era, including the Mac itself, had CPUs that were capable of more
than the computer offered.

Every time a design decision is made, it's the result of various
factors, and impacts on other things.

If they raised the clock speed, it may have required faster memory,
which might have raised the cost of the IIGS to more than was
considered a saleable price at the time.  Or perhaps it would mean
some other issue like they'd have to change the casing to improve
shielding, or increase heat so a fan would have to be added, or increase
current consumption so a bigger power supply would be needed.  Remember,
CPU speed is not the only part of the equation, because that CPU has
to deal with the outside world.  It has to slow down to deal with
the peripherals, and slow down to be compatible with the bus left over
from the Apple II.  No matter how much they improved the CPU clock, it
might be that it didn't really increase overall speed that much, because
it spent so much time dealing with those peripherals.  So again, Apple
then might have decided that the clock speed was an increase that mattered
without making other things much more difficult.

And like I said, ultimately for the time it was a decent computer.  That's
an important consideration.  If a computer is designed for the future,
designed for upgrading of basics like CPU speed, the cost goes up.  But
for those who don't need the extras, be it speed or the ability to use
more RAM, that cost is deterent to buying the computer.  They are selling
a product, and that means fitting a certain price range and providing a
certain level of specs in order to get the most return.

Except maybe for the original Mac (the 128K) computers generally are
not criticised for their limitations.  Nobody said the "IBM PC" was
crippled because it didn't include a hard drive, didn't say it was crippled
because it could only handle 640K of RAM. It was only with growth that
these things became an issue, only in hindsight do people say "it should
have been done differently".  Few were willing to pay far more at
the time for more capability.  

  Michael