Re: What if we designed and built a "32bit" Apple II?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Ranando King replied:

>Excuse the snip

No excuse needed--that's entirely appropriate.  ;-)

> on things involving the marketability of the project since
>that was never the intent in the first place. If there only ever ends up
>being 1 of these in the entire world, it'll be the one sitting on one of my
>desks. I could'nt care less if it never becomes marketable.

Ah--then, as I have said before, more power to you!

I do note that such posts in the past tend to result in flurries
of pointless dreaming.  Perhaps it would be better to wait until
you have something working...

>"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message
>20040908211440.13199.00000294@mb-m28.aol.com">news:20040908211440.13199.00000294@mb-m28.aol.com...
>> Ranando King wrote:
>>
><snipped>
>> I encourage anyone to have fun playing with their favorite technologies.
>> If something you would personally find rewarding is implementing a
>> 32-bit extension of the 6502/65816, go for it!
>>
>> Don't count on enough new "design wins" for such a processor to
>> make it a viable market, though.  There are simply too many better
>> alternatives, from almost every perspective except personal fun.
>>
>
>That's kinda the point.... personal fun. And if anyone wants to have fun
>with me, they can join in at their leasure.

Great.

>It stands to reason that the machine will be a mixture of emulation and
>backward compatibility as well. The goal is to have as little emulation
>involved as possible. But since doing things inexpensively is a concern,
>there will likely be some unavoidable emulation somewhere in the system.

This sounds appropriate.

>> You say:
>>
>> >considering how amazingly some of the projects for
>> >new cards in the II series have worked out, it might not be so unfeasable
>to
>> >think that such a dream as mine may come to pass inside of 2-3 years...
>> >assuming we can all work together on this.
>>
>> The cards you describe are the work of one or two people (a very
>> compact team) doing a very limited design job aimed at working
>> in a large population of already-installed machines.  The total time
>> to design and develop these projects has been in the one year or
>> less range.
>>
>> You are talking about requiring a multi-year, multi-person sustained
>> effort for success.  Do you see why I doubt it?
>
>Multi-year? Yes. Multi-person? Not necessarily. If people want to help me do
>this, then all the better. If not, then I'll work alone. Either way, it
>doesn't matter to me.

Perhaps your original post, and your "What if we designed and built
a "32bit" Apple II?" led me to believe that you were trying to recruit
a team...

It would certainly take a team to create any useful amount of software
to exploit an evolved platform, beyond a simple demonstration.

>> It is apparent that there are (at least) two different schools of thought
>> in the nominal "Apple II" community.  One believes that the Apple II
>> line is complete and is to be celebrated and enjoyed largely as it is,
>> with the occasional creation of a new software or hardware capability.
>>
>> In my own case, I revel in the opportunity to do something that
>> hasn't been done before, with _no_ special hardware extensions.  (Of
>> course, I also enjoy my 8MHz Zip Chip to speed up assemblies, but
>> I would never release software that required acceleration, since that
>> would decimate the pool of possibly interested users.  ;-)
>>
>> The other school of thought is that the Apple II needs to be modernized
>> to remain interesting, with much larger memory and faster processing,
>> and that emulation as a means to this end is an inferior approach.
>> A frequent component of this train of thought is that we should "just do
>> what Apple failed to do" in extending the Apple II line.
>>
>> It's clear that I'm in the first camp, preferring to enjoy lilies as they
>> are rather than gilding them with 1/4" of gold.  ;-)
>
>I'm from the 3rd school of thought in the "Apple II" community. I may be the
>only member of this school. Who knows. :)
>This 3rd school believes that the Apple II series marked the pinnacle of the
>computing experience, inviting all those who dared to dream a method of
>fulfilling those dreams without needless undue complexity. In this view, the
>II series doesn't need to be "modernized" but rather modern equipment needs
>to be *simplified* to offer the same ease of use to anyone who still dares
>to dream.

I certainly empathize with your enthusiasm for the unique combination
of accessibility and power that is the Apple II.

I think where we part company is in your thinking that it needs to be
re-implemented in "modern" technology, but not through emulation,
in order to have modern hardware with a simple interface.

I find the original hardware to be durable and useful for the "real"
experience, and emulation to be effective as a means for hosting
the Apple II experience on modern hardware.  I'm glad we have
both, and see little future for unique hardware support for the
Apple II, except for the few person(s) who might create it.

If you are one of those few who will pursue your hardware dream
and realize it, hooray for you!  Most of us will take other paths.

Enjoy your design and implementation!

-michael

Check out parallel computing for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/