Re: Accelerator / VGA Graphics card

[Sheldon Simms <sheldonsimms@yahoo.com>]

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 19:56:06 -0400, Bill Garber wrote:

> 
> No offense my man, but you put those chips anywhere near an Apple II, even
> a IIgs, and that would be the worse case of injustice that you could ever
> impose.
> The Apple IIgs could not even dream of using 1/10 of the power that chipset
> holds. Just the 478 pin configuration alone should have told you that it
> would not be possible. It's too much power for what you propose.

Are you talking about processor "speed" (as I think you are) or electrical
power requirements?

Assuming the former, I don't understand your objection. The faster the
CPU, the faster the emulation. I don't see why a 30-60Mhz(**) Apple II
would be objectionable.

The design requirement for the processor is not speed in any case, it's
low-power operation (don't want to blow the Apple II's power supply) and
a maximally integrated hardware solution (to minimize the hardware
design effort). This combination seems to fit the bill quite well,
although there are admittedly other factors to consider (like cost,
availability of documentation, developer support, etc.) The fact that
the Pentium M operates at core frequencies of 900Mhz and up is
incidental.

-Sheldon


(**) This is just a rough guess, but I think it's reasonable given
  - The probability that the card would use one of the slower
    Pentium M models, in order to save power and cost.
  - The fact that all aspects of the CPU/memory system emulation are
    done in software (although use of supervisor mode in the Pentium
    should help out with the Apple II memory mapping)
  - The fact that the all video modes would also be generated in
    software.