Roger Johnstone wrote:
Actually, _I_ need more for what I've got, due to the way a ROM 1 GS works. As it stands, I have to choose between AppleTalk and the PC Transporter and printer, since (1) I don't have a card in the printer and I'm not sure if I can use AppleWorks 3.0 or The Print Shop IIGS with an AppleTalk shared printer.In <NOGdnYwxf_yH58TeRVn-pw@comcast.com> Michael J. Mahon wrote:Sean Fahey wrote: <snip>You have to understand Apple's thinking at the time: they didn't expect users to fill up all the slots. The main reason the slots existed were for flexibility and backwards compatibility to create marketing leverage. Apple wanted to make it easier for users to migrate and preserve their expensive peripheral investments. Apple really did anticipate all those II Plus and //e users to want to upgrade to the GS. There was also the huuuge peripheral aftermarket to take into account - getting rid of slots would have fundamentally changed the peripheral market and made a lot of people/companies mad. Anyway, back to the point, Apple engineers expected most users to rely on the built-in ports.And they certainly didn't expect card designers to completely ignore the per-slot power consumption specs--which many, and particularly the TransWarp cards, do.I always wondered why the IIGS designers gave it the full seven slots. It would have made more sense to me to have reduced it to four slots ( like the Apple III) and use the control panel to map each physical slot to a slot address space. That would have maintained full compatibilty, and have left enough room on the motherboard for four SIMM slots, and enough room in the case for a built-in 3.5" floppy drive.I know someone's going to argue that they need all their slots and wish they had more :-P but most users never had more than one or two cards installed in a IIGS.
My situation is this: Slot 1: Printer Port, sometimes used for AppleTalk to the Mac. Slot 2: SCSI card for the HDSlot 3: no card/built in 80 columns (I'm sure everybody is aware of the slot 3 issues) slot 4: built in mouse port. Set it to "your card" and I lose the mouse. I think that GS/OS 6.X won't necessarily lose the mouse, but Print Shop does.
Slot 5: 3.5" controler card for the HD drive slot 6: built in firmware for the 5.25" drives slot 7: PC Transporter card. Sometimes gets toggled to Appletalk, see aboveThere are two reasons the HD is in slot 2 instead of slot 7. Number one is so that I can boot disks. Especially 5.25" disks. Number two is that I have to toggle the thing for Appletalk, and I lose the PCT's RAM disk when I do that. Though I do wonder if there would be an advantage to putting the SCSI card in slot 5 and the 3.5" card in slot 2 for use with ProDOS 8. I can't access everything even with version 2.0.3 from System 6. Would being able to have drive 3 and 4 on slot five help with the partitions that don't get mapped, or would I only get to access four partitions instead of the 6 ProDOS ones?