Accelerator / VGA Graphics card

[Sheldon Simms <sheldonsimms@yahoo.com>]

We've talked about this before, and I feel like it is probably futile
to bring it up again, but I was looking around the Intel website last
night and got to thinking again...

If such a card were to be made, I think it would be important to
control feature creep. In other words, it should accelerate Apple II
programs, it should provide a standard graphics output, and (as a
side effect) it would provide 8Mb or more RAM to Apple II programs.
The card would perform no other function. No SATA, No USB, No NIC,
and so on. This restriction is made to prevent the card from trying
to be a PC-on-a-card, and to make it as simple as possible (given
the primary requirements).

The card would include a low-power modern CPU, graphics adapter,
and memory. A 65816 emulation program would run on the CPU and
emulate a 65816 at speeds of more than 20Mhz (i.e. - faster than
any real 65816). The emulation program would also emulate all
Apple II & IIgs video modes, in the same way an emulation program
would do it, and provide the video output to a VGA connector on
the back of the card.

Now the reason that I decided to post about this again is that
it seems to me that Intel has pretty much the perfect solution(*)
for this card: The Pentium M and 855GM northbridge.

These two chips combine everything necessary. The Pentium M is
a low power P6 processor, and the 855GM has a DDR memory
controller, and a graphics controller. As far as I can tell, these
two chips would be the only parts needed apart from the various
analog components and whatever logic is required to interface the
Pentium M with the Apple II bus.

Intel provides a design guide at

http://developer.intel.com/design/mobile/desguide/252616.htm

That covers most aspects of designing a board with these chips.
The design guide also includes design guidelines for the matching
southbridge (ICH4-M), but that would be left off of the proposed
card.

If there were some interested person(s) in the Apple II community
capable of laying out this board, it could become a reality. After
reading the design guide I almost feel like I could do it myself,
but since I'm not an electrical engineer and have never designed
or laid out an actual computer, I suspect that is not actually the
case :-). I could write the software, however.

Would it be possible to get a group of people together to do this
project? We could call it the "comp.sys.apple2 card".

-Sheldon

(*) An alternative would be a Transmeta Efficeon together with
a third-party graphics controller, but this would likely require
more design effort.