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Re: What if we designed and built a "32bit" Apple II?
Michael J. Mahon wrote:
Roy wrote:
<snip>
The IIe I use most has a Transwarp, Phasor, RAMWorks III with RGB card
(now if I can only get a CGA monitor to connect to it....) SCSI card and
external harddrive, mouse card and mouse, Unidisk 5.25" and the Unidisk
3.5" cards and drives. Oh! Also a workstation card. I have an AE
powersupply and a system saver hanging off the side.
That IIe is "all it can be", and I don't think of it as mutilated. To
me, it's exactly what Woz designed it to be: an expandable, and expanded
computer.
I agree. You and I, and Woz, have very similar ideas about
what an Apple II is, and is made to be able to become. My main
//e is similarly "loaded", but it will still boot the DOS 3.3 master
and run Little Brick Out. ;-) And when it's in this mode, most of
its capabilities are still available to software.
"Mutiliated" is what happens when someone changes the memory
map, the soft switches, the video interface, or the processor in such
a way that practically no Apple II software can or will use it.
Well, that isn't something I'd be interested in. I have no desire to put
a P3 motherboard inside a IIe case and call it an Apple II.
Of course, mounting a IIgs motherboard in a IIe case... ;-)
Practically no "plug-in" Apple II extensions did violence to
the Apple II itself.
BTW, Adding another processor architecture, like a Z80 card or a
6809 card is a special breed of extension which _does_ introduce
a non-Apple II worldview, but only as an alternative. You're never
more than a reboot away from the Applesoft prompt. ;-)
What I would like to see, and am confident I won't see, is a really fast
65816 turbo card for the IIe, it could then run in 6502 mode at a really
high speed, or allow for some other OS (Linux65?), but always be a
reboot from being a standard II.
Of course, I also like to run my PCPI card sometimes too. ;-)
Roy
-michael
Check out parallel computing for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
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