barrisi@nymgr.dec.com (06/27/86)
Heard some rumors about the new 16 bit apple.. It seems (not Confirmed) that there "Super HiRes" will be 640x200!!!!!!!! Come Apple u gotta be kidding!! With the AVAILABLE Technology that STINKS... any Comments... Joe Craparotta
dr@ski.UUCP (David Robins) (06/28/86)
> Heard some rumors about the new 16 bit apple.. It seems (not Confirmed) that > there "Super HiRes" will be 640x200!!!!!!!! Come Apple u gotta be kidding!! > With the AVAILABLE Technology that STINKS... any Comments... > > Joe Craparotta If you read my posting from June 17, I copied the following column: >In a computer column in the Sunday, June 15 San Francisco Chronicle: > >" According to James Moran of Compuserve's daily news service, >Online Today, Apple is showing a version of forthcoming Apple //GS to >dealers in Europe. Moran says the machine is being called the Vegas >PC. It supposedly includes 512K of random-access memory expandable to >8 megabytes, RS232 and parallel printer ports, disk and mouse >controllers, and seven expansion slots. The color display features > 768 x 512 resolution with 128 colors available at any one time from a >palette of 4,096 colors." I hope this was accurate information. -- ==================================================================== David Robins, M.D. Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Foundation (previously known as: Smith-Kettlewell Institute of Visual Sciences) 2232 Webster St; San Francisco CA 94115 415/561-1705 (voice) {ihnp4,qantel,dual}!ptsfa!ski!dr The opinions expressed herein do not reflect the opinion of the Institute!
eve@ssc-bee.UUCP (07/02/86)
> >controllers, and seven expansion slots. The color display features > > > 768 x 512 > > resolution with 128 colors available at any one time from a > >palette of 4,096 colors." > Having owned both an Apple ][ and ][e, I am almost afraid to ask what restrictions are there on adjacent horizonal pixels. Other owners are well aware that although the ][e featured 560 x 200 (or something like that), there were such severe restrictions on adjacent pixels that the actual resolution was 190 x 200 (I am sure some helpful soul will supply the exact numbers). So, did Apple do it right this time? Can adjacent pixels have any arbitrary colors? -- Mike Eve Boeing Aerospace, Seattle ...uw-beaver!ssc-vax!ssc-bee!eve
hung@soma.UUCP (Hung Khac Minh Nguyen) (07/06/86)
In article <3894@decwrl.DEC.COM>, barrisi@nymgr.dec.com writes: > Heard some rumors about the new 16 bit apple.. It seems (not Confirmed) that > there "Super HiRes" will be 640x200!!!!!!!! Come Apple u gotta be kidding!! > With the AVAILABLE Technology that STINKS... any Comments... > Joe Craparotta Rumors I've heard, both on the net and elsewhere, says that the new apple graphics is 768 X 512 with 128 colors at any one time from a palette of 4096 colors. Can anyone confirm this ? -- Hung Nguyen uucp: {shell,rice,drillsys}!soma!hung Opinions are mine alone. U.S.mail: Neurology, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030 "Those people who think they know everything are annoying those of us who do."
rbthomas@caip.RUTGERS.EDU (Rbthomas) (07/08/86)
> So, did Apple > do it right this time? Can adjacent pixels have any arbitrary > colors? > > -- > Mike Eve Boeing Aerospace, Seattle > ...uw-beaver!ssc-vax!ssc-bee!eve No matter what they do, it will have to have a compatibility mode that is indistinguishable from the current IIe botch. In order to keep the cost down, the new mode will probably extend the IIe botch, rather than do it 'right' (whatever that means to you personally!) But to compete with the Amiga and the ST520/1040, they will have to have something pretty impressive. I wonder if it can be done. Full backwards compatibility can me *expensive* to maintain. Apple won't get rich just selling upgrades to people who already have II series machines. So they will have to have something that is cost/performance competitive with the Amiga and Atari machines to capture new users. But if it won't make them rich, you can bet they won't do it. Given those constraints, I wonder if it can be done... (Does anybody remember the Apple III? It did a lot of things 'right', and it was a commercial failure.) Rick Thomas
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (07/15/86)
> > No matter what they do, it will have to have a compatibility mode that > is indistinguishable from the current IIe botch. In order to keep the > cost down, the new mode will probably extend the IIe botch, rather than > do it 'right' (whatever that means to you personally!) But to compete > with the Amiga and the ST520/1040, they will have to have something > pretty impressive. I wonder if it can be done. Full backwards > compatibility can me *expensive* to maintain. Apple won't get rich just > selling upgrades to people who already have II series machines. So they > will have to have something that is cost/performance competitive with the > Amiga and Atari machines to capture new users. But if it won't make > them rich, you can bet they won't do it. > > Given those constraints, I wonder if it can be done... > (Does anybody remember the Apple III? It did a lot of things 'right', > and it was a commercial failure.) > > Rick Thomas I'd expect that the compatibility should be simple to maintain -- the current Apple IIwhatever video circuitry is simple enough to occupy only part of a common chip, and any new circuitry could share some of the old logic (video shift registers, etc.) without becoming too crippled. The main thing that I wonder about, however, is the most rumored resolution on the new thing -- some 760x500x7 or so pixels. It might make some sense to address memory on byte boundaries (1 byte == 1 pixel), but of course this would require 256K just for video memory. Though that's only $16-$32 or so in memory chips, so it might be possible. The 65816 processor is weak compared to the competition's 68000 series, so I'd imagine if they didn't go to byte-pixel addressing, they'd have to have some hardware assist to get any kind of video performance out of the thing in the higher resolution mode. Though it sounds like Aplle is back on the right track; I wouldn't expect them to settle for a 640x200 only display at this point. -- /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh "I don't feel safe in this world no more, I don't want to die in a nuclear war, I want to sail away to a distant shore And live like an ape man." -The Kinks These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) (09/29/86)
The Apple //gs was officially unveiled Staurday, Sept 27th to the public. The machine has most of the rumored features we have been hearing about for the past few months. The speed is a little disappoi- pointing (2.8 mhz) considering that 4 and 6 mhz versions of the 65816 areare available. I predict that some hardware manufacturer will have an accelerator board for the //gs on the market within a year. The graphics of the machine are probably what people are most interested in. It has the older modes plus two new modes: 640 X 200 and 320 X 200. The rumors about 768 X 512 were just rumors I guess. The 200 vertical resolution is a little disappointing too. Engineers at Apple pushed for 400 vertical resolution but were overruled because of the expense of RGB monitors that can display such graphics without flickering. One thing I noticed about the motherboard was that the graphics chip was one one of the few socketed chips on the board, looks like Apple is planning for future expansion in the graphics area. The 320 X 200 has 16 color tables of 16 colors available (total 256) but only one color table can be used be used per scan line, limiting any given line to 16 colors. This is a limitation but still allows for subtle shading of objects. The 640 X 200 mode has the same 16 tables but they are limited to 4 colors each for a total of 64 colors. The graphics chip is an Apple chip r rather than an off the shelf variety, so what its exact features are I don't know yet. Deluxe Paint from Electronic Arts will be available soon for the machine, with all of the features of the Amiga version plus the ability to do 3-D drawings and rotations. If the 3-D object manipulations are built into the graphics chip, it will have some powerful capabilities. File formats for the //gs are standardized so that any software can use another's images. The link modules of compiled languages are to be standardized too. This will let you link together C, Pascal Modula II or Basic programs if the compiler makers follow Apple's standards. The sound is one of the more impressive features of the machine. The demo that Apple sent out with the machine has animated color graphics and a very high quality soundtrack running simultaneously. Speech is natural sounding and comes in several voices. The motherboard of the machine is the same size as the //e motherboard. there is even a place on the board for a connector for the //e keyboard. The upgrade for the //e will consist of a board swap. Just plug in your keyboard and go. The backplane will be swapped too because the //gs has 2 serial ports (just like the Macs) that are Appletalk compatible, a di disk drive port, joystick port, RGB video port, Composite video port and an Apple desktop bus port. The apple desktop bus is where the keyboard plugs in on the //gs, you then plug the mouse into the keyboard. If you upgrade a //e you can either use your old keyboard and plug a mouse into the desktop bus port or you can get the detached keyboard. If you alhave a //e mouse already, you can use it instead of the new one which seems to be simpler and cheaper than the old mouse and is shaped differently. 3.5 inch disk drives will plug into the drive port as will the unidisk type of 5.25 inch drives. You must use you controller card for Disk II type drives. The new 3.5 inch drives look like the old //e 3.5 inch dri drives, except for the color and the eject hole which is now in the mid middle of the eject button instead of below it. You can daisy chain several of these drives together. There are very few chips on the new motherboard. There are several square VLSI surface mount chips with 20 pins per side. The graphics ch chip is also a VLSI chip like this but it is in a socket instead of surface mounted, as I said earlier. There are the familiar 7 slots along the back of the board, the 16 pin //+ type game connector, the familiar speaker and connector, places for the //e keyboard and keypad (no connectors on the //gs just the holes for them), the RF modulator connector and a rather small memory board connector. There is no con- nector for Aux slot type boards. The memory slot is the only new slot. It has only about 40 pins which surprised me. It seems rather small. This machine had the Apple 1 megabyte memory card in it. The card has an angled front so it will fit under the cover of a IIe but the angle isn't needed for the //gs square box. The power supply of the //gs sits on brackets over the motherboard, so the machine is not as wide as a //e. It isn't as long either since the keyboard is separate, so it has the appearance of a very small system. There is no fan and the motherboard motherboard juts out from under the squrae box about an inch, so there is is a little lip on the front of the box that matches up nicely with the keyboard. The keyboard has a separate numeric keypad and looks like the //c keyboard but feels much better. The keyboard is very light, pit probably weighs less than a pound. The mouse can be plugged into either the left or right side of the keyboard. The keyboard is similar to the //c or //e keyboard but it has the open apple key and the option key on the left. The option key replaces the closed apple key and the open apple key has a cloverleaf on it like the Macintosh. The reset key is a large key at the top left-center that has only a left arrow on it. The cursor keys are the same familiar left, right, up, down keys. The keypad has a separate enter and clear key as well as the four math keys. The //gs has a control panel in it similar to the Mac. You get to it by typing Control-open apple-Escape. It lets you set the time on the built in clock, adjust the volume and pitch of the speaker, afdjust the sensitivity of the mouse and keyboard, set screen colors for text, back- ground and border, turn on or off a keyboard buffer, change system clock speeds between 1mhz and 2.8mhz, and set the size of a ram disk. New programs will let you jump into the control panel anytime, some //e soft ware won't let you jump into it at all. Apple has a comprehensive of hardware and software that works with the //gs. They also list things that won't work, things that work only at the 1mhz clock rate and things that work, but won't let you jump into th the control panel. The slots, as I said, are the same //+, //e slots. They won't be needed for most things. Unlike the //e, the //gs has a lot of stuff built in. The ports in the back of the machine are mapped into the slots. The two serial ports are slots 1 and 2, the mouse is 4, the 5.25 inch disk drives are 5 and the 3.5 inch disks are 6. You can select which slot to boot from or you can disconnect a port from the slot and put your own board in. The serial ports are just like the Mac's, same cables and all all. Since they use the Zilog chip used in the Mac, they are not //c and Super Serial compatible. So communications software will have to be rewritten for this machine. You can stick in your existing serial card and software and communicate to your hearts content, however. Some software won't print from the serial port because it directly addresses the hardware for particular printer cards. Whew! well that's a quick and dirty description of the new machine. Some features look great, some are ho hum, but all in all I think this machine is going to be a big winner. Lots of hardware and software developers have already released products or are working on them. Applied engineering already has two memory boards for the thing. Several manuals are listed in the back of the users manual. These should be available from Addison Wesley very soon. Of particular i interest are the Hardware Overview for Programmers, Toolbox ROM manuals volume I and II, the Tech Reference Manual and last but decidedly not least a C Programming Language Reference Manual! Anybody else have anthing to add or corrections? Rick Fincher ranger@ecsvax Rick@ncsuvm
daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/06/86)
> > The speed is a little disappointing (2.8 mhz) considering that 4 and 6 > mhz versions of the 65816 are available. Nope. GTE has just recently started making production quantities of the 4MHz part available, which is undoubtedly what Apple is using. You might be able to hand pick a few that'd run at 6MHz, if you had enough 4MHz parts, but there's no production parts near that speed. > One thing I noticed about the motherboard was that the graphics chip was > one of the few socketed chips on the board, looks like Apple is planning > for future expansion in the graphics area. A more common reason for socketing a chip is some kind of trouble with that chip that would require production line or field replacement. > Deluxe Paint from Electronic Arts will be available soon for the machine, > with all of the features of the Amiga version plus the ability to do 3-D > drawings and rotations. If the 3-D object manipulations are built into > the graphics chip, it will have some powerful capabilities. See this month's BYTE for details on the display chip. No 3-D stuff. The version of DPaint will be like that on the Amiga, but of course only permit 16 colors in lo-res, 4 colors in med-res, and no hi-res mode. It could have some 3-D stuff; the next revision of DPaint for the Amiga is rumored to have some of this capability. > File formats for the //gs are standardized so that any software can > use another's images. Is this an Apple standard, or DPaint. They could be using the IFF standard developed by EA and Commodore-Amiga; this would let the IIGS DPaint display most Amiga images, and vias-versa. > Anybody else have anthing to add or corrections? The rest looked pretty good. The sound chip should be very good; its currently in a production Ensoniq keyboard-synthesizer. > Rick Fincher > > ranger@ecsvax > Rick@ncsuvm -- ============================================================================ Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.
ranger@ecsvax.UUCP ("Rick N. Fincher") (10/08/86)
Sure, I can add a few more detailed comments about incompatibilities. Apple has published a whlole catalog of them but I can hit the high spots. Rick
ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) (10/09/86)
> > > > The speed is a little disappointing (2.8 mhz) considering that 4 and 6 > > mhz versions of the 65816 are available. > > Nope. GTE has just recently started making production quantities of the > 4MHz part available, which is undoubtedly what Apple is using. You might > be able to hand pick a few that'd run at 6MHz, if you had enough 4MHz parts, > but there's no production parts near that speed. Bill Mensch at the Western Design Center said in an interview over a year ago that the minimum speed available was 4mhz and that 6mhz parts would be available soon. How long GTE has been building them, I don't know, so their yields may not be up there yet. > > > One thing I noticed about the motherboard was that the graphics chip was > > one of the few socketed chips on the board, looks like Apple is planning > > for future expansion in the graphics area. > > A more common reason for socketing a chip is some kind of trouble with > that chip that would require production line or field replacement. > > > Deluxe Paint from Electronic Arts will be available soon for the machine, > > with all of the features of the Amiga version plus the ability to do 3-D > > drawings and rotations. If the 3-D object manipulations are built into > > the graphics chip, it will have some powerful capabilities. > > See this month's BYTE for details on the display chip. No 3-D stuff. The > version of DPaint will be like that on the Amiga, but of course only permit > 16 colors in lo-res, 4 colors in med-res, and no hi-res mode. It could have > some 3-D stuff; the next revision of DPaint for the Amiga is rumored to have > some of this capability. 16 colors PER LINE in 320X200 for a total of 256 possible, 4 per line in 640X200 for a total of 64 using the 16 color tables available. The 640X400 mode in the Amiga looks nice in pictures but not on a screen the flickering is just too noticeable, and high persistence phosphors smear animation. The early pre-release versions of the graphics chip had a bug, so that may be why it was socketed, but I didn't see the bug in the demo machine. > > > File formats for the //gs are standardized so that any software can > > use another's images. > > Is this an Apple standard, or DPaint. They could be using the IFF standard > developed by EA and Commodore-Amiga; this would let the IIGS DPaint display > most Amiga images, and vias-versa. This is an Apple standard, but I don't know the details of it. In the past Apple has used straight bit maps, I hope they get a little more sophisti fancy than that but we'll have to wait and see. > > > Anybody else have anthing to add or corrections? > > The rest looked pretty good. The sound chip should be very good; its > currently in a production Ensoniq keyboard-synthesizer. > > > Rick Fincher > > > > ranger@ecsvax > > Rick@ncsuvm > -- > ============================================================================ > Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh > > These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide > that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.
daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/13/86)
> > Bill Mensch at the Western Design Center said in an interview over a > year ago that the minimum speed available was 4mhz and that 6mhz parts > would be available soon. How long GTE has been building them, I don't > know, so their yields may not be up there yet. Bill Mensch says alot of things. He also claimed he would deliver a 100MHz Gallium-Arsinide 6502. GTE IS the only house making production 65SC816 chips. You should believe what Mensch says when its real, not when he's hyping it. > 16 colors PER LINE in 320X200 for a total of 256 possible, 4 per line > in 640X200 for a total of 64 using the 16 color tables available. The > 640X400 mode in the Amiga looks nice in pictures but not on a screen > the flickering is just too noticeable, and high persistence phosphors > smear animation. The early pre-release versions of the graphics chip > had a bug, so that may be why it was socketed, but I didn't see the bug > in the demo machine. The socketing may be for replacing bad chips on the line; you wouldn't necessarily ever see one in a production unit. The PER LINE argument you give above is what the Apple's capable of, but according to the folks I've talked with at EA, DPaint isn't supporting per-line reassignments. The Amiga could just as easily change color assigmnets on a per-line basis, via the copper, though Amiga DPaint doesn't support that either. >> > File formats for the //gs are standardized so that any software can >> > use another's images. >> >> Is this an Apple standard, or DPaint. They could be using the IFF standard >> developed by EA and Commodore-Amiga; this would let the IIGS DPaint display >> most Amiga images, and vias-versa. > > This is an Apple standard, but I don't know the details of it. In the > past Apple has used straight bit maps, I hope they get a little more sophisti > fancy than that but we'll have to wait and see. Too bad. While it'd certainly be easy read each-other's graphics via conversion programs, I thought with EA involved we might see an industry first in terms of compatibility. You can expect software from EA relatively fast for the IIGS. Everything they did for the Amiga was at least for the most part coded in C language, so ports to the GS can happen very fast. -- ============================================================================ Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh "Techno-Hippie, heathen, designing evil computers" These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.
ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) (10/16/86)
> > Bill Mensch says alot of things. He also claimed he would deliver a 100MHz > Gallium-Arsinide 6502. GTE IS the only house making production 65SC816 > chips. You should believe what Mensch says when its real, not when he's > hyping it. Yes, I saw the 100mhz 6502 comment.... interesting, but it wouldn't be much good unless you had (cheap) 1ns RAM chips to go with it! > > > 16 colors PER LINE in 320X200 for a total of 256 possible, 4 per line > > in 640X200 for a total of 64 using the 16 color tables available. The > > 640X400 mode in the Amiga looks nice in pictures but not on a screen > > the flickering is just too noticeable, and high persistence phosphors > > smear animation. The early pre-release versions of the graphics chip > > had a bug, so that may be why it was socketed, but I didn't see the bug > > in the demo machine. > > The socketing may be for replacing bad chips on the line; you wouldn't > necessarily ever see one in a production unit. The PER LINE argument you > give above is what the Apple's capable of, but according to the folks I've > talked with at EA, DPaint isn't supporting per-line reassignments. The > Amiga could just as easily change color assigmnets on a per-line basis, > via the copper, though Amiga DPaint doesn't support that either. The demos of Dpaint I have seen were all just graphics I haven't seen a working demo yet, EA is kind of miffed at Apple for taking so long to get their C development system out. The demo I saw of Paintworks Plus from Activision, supported animation, apparantly through changing the color tables on the fly. I've heard the program will let you use different color tables in different parts of the screen but I haven't seen that yet. Anyhow, if the capability is there, someone will event- ually use it. All 16 color tables can be used simultaneously, you only have to do horizontal retrace interrupts to to change color tables on a per line basis for animation. > > >> > File formats for the //gs are standardized so that any software can > >> > use another's images. > >> > >> Is this an Apple standard, or DPaint. They could be using the IFF standard > >> developed by EA and Commodore-Amiga; this would let the IIGS DPaint display > >> most Amiga images, and vias-versa. > > > > This is an Apple standard, but I don't know the details of it. In the > > past Apple has used straight bit maps, I hope they get a little more sophisti > > fancy than that but we'll have to wait and see. > > Too bad. While it'd certainly be easy read each-other's graphics via > conversion programs, I thought with EA involved we might see an industry > first in terms of compatibility. You can expect software from EA > relatively fast for the IIGS. Everything they did for the Amiga was at > least for the most part coded in C language, so ports to the GS can happen > very fast. Yes, hopefully someone will figure out a way to convert back and forth between at least the 640X200 and 320X200 modes of the two machines. EA's development should go quickly, unfortunately they are being held up by slow delivery of Apple's C compiler. Quick ports of most of their stuff should be available soon. Rick > > -- > ============================================================================ > Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh > "Techno-Hippie, heathen, designing evil computers" > > These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide > that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.