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

["Ranando King" <rk@magictouchcorp.com>]

Excuse the snip 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.


"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.

> >About Emulation:
> >
> >Those of you with IIgs machines end up emulating older II machines any
time
> >you try to boot a P8 or DOS disk. You find yourselves emulating older
II's
> >when your system has to switch to 1.02 Mhz to perform some timing
critical
> >operation like disk access or whatever. It's all hardware emulation. So
who
> >really cares? You love your IIgs machines anyway.
>
> Agreed, though the "emulation" involved is much more direct than
> running 6502 code on a non-6502-like processor.

Designing a "65832" processor would require it to have a 6502 core. That's
why I wouldn't say that the code would be running emulated. The processor
will be able to process 6502 code natively. Much like the 65816, new
instructions will simply be added to the instruction set.

> I believe that the //e was the last machine for which it could be
> truthfully said that all the documentation needed to completely
> understand and program it weighed less than the computer itself.

Agreed. That's why I'm looking at the //e as the design point to advance
from instead of the IIgs. The poor IIgs, while a better machine in it's own
right, was just under-documented and under-supported in my opinion. It
shouldn't be too difficult to put in a IIgs mode, but that's not going to be
an initial design concern.

> BTW, compatibility is not the same thing as emulation.  When a
> new machine is designed to _incorporate_ the logic of an older
> version, that is "backward compatibility".  When a new machine
> is designed so that software must simulate the logic of an older,
> dissimilar machine, that is "emulation".
>
> The line occasionally becomes gray.  For example, the slow
> memory banks on the IIgs can really be regarded as an emulation
> of //e memory, since there is software copying between banks,
> and the _real_ memory is the fast memory.
>
> But the HGR and DHGR graphic modes of the IIgs, for example,
> are _real_ Apple II graphic modes, not some simulation of them,
> possessing all their features and warts.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

R.