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Re: Building the Modern Apple IIGS

Supertimer wrote:

Those of us who are original Apple IIGS users (or were) know that
Apple dropped the ball when it came to the Apple II user base.


	Big time!


There have already been too many debates as to why Apple never made a
successor to the Apple IIGS or why the Macintosh is NOT it but the
fact is, the Apple IIGS was the last of the line.


	True. Sad but true.


For years, many of us upgraded our machines with third party
enhancements.  We saw Mac and PCs come and we saw them go.  Mac LC
came, I was not interested.  I upgraded my IIGS.  Windows 3.1 PCs
came and I upgraded my IIGS.  Finally, the Pentium class PCs showed
up along with Win 95 and 3dfx came out with the Voodoo line of 3D accelerators. I finally moved on. 

	I moved on completely when I found a working GUI under Linux.


I still have my IIGS and the sheer extent it has been upgraded is in
itself a work of art.  I shall keep it as a testimony to what IIGS
users could do in the face of betrayal from Apple.


	A little harsh but I agree.


I always wanted to build the upgrade to the IIGS that Apple never
provided.  I looked into many motherboards but none ever fit.
Besides, not only would it have to fit but it would have to remain
true to the spirit of the Apple IIGS.  IIGS means integrated graphics
and sound.  The IIGS 4096 color palette graphics were decent in its
days and the sound was first among any personal computer in its day.
There would also need to be a power supply that was compatible with
the new motherboard.
Unfortunately you are right. The peripherals are incompatible with the Apple// bus.
I disagree about the hardware having to be integrated. Using drivers to integrate it transparently would be acceptable to me. 


Now there is such a hardware combination.  There is a Shuttle PC kit
that features a motherboard built around the nVidia nForce2 chipset
with a tiny but adequately powerful power supply.  The sound is first
class, nVidia's integrated SoundStorm system derived from the sound hardware in the Xbox. The graphics are decent Geforce2 MX440 class. 
This balance is very true to the spirit of the Apple IIGS.  In
addition, the integrated features of this chipset incorporates everything imaginable. USB 2.0, Firewire, network support, dual channel DDR PC2700 (DDR333) memory support, HyperTransport interconnects, etc. 

	Lots of reasearch. Sounds like an all in one board.


The plan is to take the parts from the Shuttle kit and put them into
the case of an Apple IIGS. The CPU would be an Athlon XP 3000+.
There would be two 512MB DDR333 memory modules, one in each of the
64-bit banks for full 128-bit dual channel bandwidth.  The Shuttle
kit includes a heatpipe so cooling should be no problem in the
crowded IIGS case.  The back panel would need to be modified for the
new port configuration but that should not be too hard. No extra peripheral cards are needed because everything is integrated.
Some points of disagreement here. I don't think we really need to maintain the GS case. In essence we are discussing a next generation (or a larger than next generation leap) Apple//. As long as I can put in a ProDOS floppy (or harddrive) and boot properly into GSOS (or what ever) this will satisfy me. Frankly I am very fond of full tower cases.
The choice of chip I would also like to argue. Although the speed is good it is still running an Intel instruction set. I would have thought something like the Transmeta with its code morphing capability might have been better. This way we could run actual 65XXX code. 


The keyboard will be a genuine Apple USB keyboard.  The monitor will
be a PC 15-inch LCD screen (Apple LCD with ADC adapter is an option
but the PC LCD is preferred due to price).
Again, how married are we to the hardware? I don't object to using it, but I'd also like to be able to use something I can go and buy in a store. 


The operating system will be Windows XP with third party software
that includes various themes with the one active being the MacOS X
lookalike.


	EVIL!!! Ah Denounces Thee!!!!
Forget XP! If you are going to run it as a PC go with some form of *NIX. If you aren't into Linux or BSD, Solaris is free for personal use. Here are two articles I saw recently. 

Less bugs in Linux
http://msnbc-cnet.com.com/2100-1001-985221.html

Windows bugs are cool
http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html
This way the people here who are writing emulators can do something like wine and create a virtual machine. It still doesn't allow for any new "advances" with the machine.
The "advances" could take the form of GS and //e emulation as well as a rewrite of the OS to take advantage of the new hardware. How many of us would jump at the chance to rewrite GSOS if we could enhance it to make it more generic? Check the hardware on boot and make sure the appropriate drivers are available. The user/programmer wouldn't care what hardware they are using as long as the software can run on an actual Apple or the new hardware. 


This project is still in the planning stages but if I am successful,
I will post a step by step guide or upload a PDF document with
illustrations.
Sounds like you will be looking at a two stage process. The first is to stuff PC hardware into a GS case. The second would be to set up a GS emulator. The second is likely easier than the first since there are already emulators out there. 


The hard disk drive will be installed inside the IIGS case but the
DVD/CD-RW combo drive and floppy drive would be USB 2.0 external or
FireWire to sit next to the case to remain true to the spirit of the original Apple IIGS.
Finding external cases for internal drives might prove interesting. In Canada they can be found for $100 and are Mac compatable. PC compatable removable cases are about $30.
Perhaps the possibility of a rack mounted device might be a useful suggestion... This way you can control the hardware yourself. Think about the possibility of having both a Super Drive and a PC drive available at the same time. Maximum compatability. As far as harddrives go... Connect them up with an appropriate cable and use a multi position switch to tell the rack what bus it's using. Have a couple of different ports out the back and let the user decide what the computer sees.
For a personal project it's great. An emulator running on PC hardware in a GS box. Keep notes. Write up an article on how you did it at the end and we'll publish it.
Might I humbly suggest taking it a step further. See if there are 64 bit versions of the 65XXX series. If not, write up some specs. See if they'll work with the Transmeta. Spend a while on a cross-compiler for C. Once the cross-compiler is running you have the source for a couple OSs you can work with immediately at hand. Now the machine is up do date in native mode. Since you have the hardware specs already, you can release them to those who write the emulators. A quick recompile and Voila an up to date killer Apple//.
The advantage to this is you can correct Apples mistakes with the older machines. Your machine would be able to function the way you want. Think of the possibilities. No memory limit. Linearly addressable memory, graphics and sound. No bank switching. Built in acceleration for older emulated programs. Better graphics and sound. As new/better hardware is made available for PCs it can be brought over. If you have a *NIX as an OS it can be made multi-user, multi-tasking, multi-threading, and run what ever theme the user chooses. What's more you get the stability and reliability of a non M$ OS. It'll be one of the few machines running in 64 bits. This sounds better than the machines I have right now. ;-)
Sorry if I've gone on too long or missed the point. It's been another 3:00am night followed by a 7:00am morning. 

				Later
				Mike





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