kus3@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (robert kusumoto) (10/03/86)
on the //gs: personally, I rather have this that the amiga because of the price of the //gs compared to the amiga (I don't remember the current prices of the amiga but for a complete system of the //gs is running around $1600 for the base cpu, monitor, keyboard, mouse and 1 or more drives (3.25 or 5.5, can't remember) and I can live with that better than what the amiga has to offer me. I don't remember about drive access time, but if the mac emulation mode for the amiga has access times just as slow, i'll take the //gs anyday. //e: the fastest accelerator cards I've ever seen for a //e goes around 3.5-3.6 Mhz which is a bit slower than the 4.77Mhz in the base IBM PC and much slower than most IBM PC compats that run anywhere from 6 to 12 Mhz now. thats all for now Bob
ag0@k.cc.purdue.edu (Colin Jenkins) (10/05/86)
In article <673@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>, kus3@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (robert kusumoto) writes: > //e: the fastest accelerator cards I've ever seen for a //e goes around 3.5-3.6 > Mhz which is a bit slower than the 4.77Mhz in the base IBM PC and much slower > than most IBM PC compats that run anywhere from 6 to 12 Mhz now. > > thats all for now > > Bob According the manuals supplied with my Apple //e, the clock speed in the 6502 corresponds roughly to twice that speed in other microprocessors, i.e. a 6502 running at 3.5 Mhz is roughly equivilent to 7Mhz. This speed difference (as best as I can recall) is attributed to simpler cpu architecture. Enough of that. I have also read InCider's review of the //gs. I am a little dissapointed with the resolution (200 vertical in any mode except //e emulation) and the clock speed. Still it is a step up from the old 8 bit tech- nolgy and I would love to have it in my //e. I haven't seen any consistent or detailed information about upgrades. If anyone has the information I would love to hear it. If I understand correctly I would need a new mother board in my //e. An important question here is just how compatible would such an up- grade be with both the old //e's and the new //gs? Another big dissapointment to me is the mouse/graphics operating system interface to the //gs. Frankly, I hate mice. A Mouse has its place for some applications, but as a primary input device- forget it!! My next question is: Can the operating system take commands from the keyboard, or are we bound to mice until some third party markets an alternative?? Colin Jenkins (No fancy address!)
darrelj@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Darrel VanBuer) (10/06/86)
You have to be very careful in comparing clock speed between dissimilar
processors. Clock speed is sort of like engine RPM (for example, the old
8080 had a 2 MHz clock, but shortest instruction was 4 clocks; early 6502s
as in Apple ][ had a 1 MHz clock, but shortest instruction was 1 clock;
Motorola 68000 timings are all measured in units of TWO clock cycles) -- it
isn't a measure of horsepower between dissimilar designs.
--
Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD
System Development Corp.
2525 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(213)820-4111 x5449
...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,orstcs,sdcsvax,ucla-cs,akgua}
!sdcrdcf!darrelj
VANBUER@USC-ECL.ARPAlel@wuphys.UUCP (10/06/86)
In article <673@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> kus3@sphinx.UUCP (Bob Kusumoto) writes: >on the //gs: personally, I rather have this that the amiga because of the >price of the //gs compared to the amiga (I don't remember the current prices of >the amiga but for a complete system of the //gs is running around $1600 for >the base cpu, monitor, keyboard, mouse and 1 or more drives (3.25 or 5.5, >can't remember) and I can live with that better than what the amiga has to >offer me. I don't remember about drive access time, but if the mac emulation >mode for the amiga has access times just as slow, i'll take the //gs anyday. I don't normally post corrections but this time I just have to. Price of an Amiga System: Amiga computer, 640x400 Analogue RGB monitor, 512K mem, internal and external 880K microfloppy drives, (88 key keyboard and mouse come with the cpu) - $1395 As adveritized in Amiga World (October issue). The computer has no Mac emulation mode but has essentially the same user interface with a command language as well. It has a 7+ MHz 32/16 bit 68000 processor with 3 coprocessor chips to handle DMA, graphics, and sound. The sound on the //GS beats the Amiga but you can't have everything. Oh yes, in version 1.2 of the operating system, the drive access times and read/write times are quite a bit faster than on the Mac. This will be out very soon. For a computations comparison, (perhaps unfair) I can run a life program on the Amiga that does 19.8 generations/second on 388x188 pixels. This makes use of one of the Amiga's special coprocessor chips. The Mac can't even come close. In addition, the Amiga is FULLY multitasking. Oh yes, Apple did a great job when it made the Apple II expandable. Why did they forget this when they made the Mac? I'm VERY glad to see that the new //GS is also expandable. Another thing the //GS has over the Amiga is that for expanding the amiga much more, you need a card cage. Also, the Amiga can only directly address 8 1/2 Meg. (Not a severe restriction) If I have offended anyone, I'm sorry. Please direct any complaints to "VOID complaints();". If anyone has any real questions, please feel free to e-mail me. From a user of Apple II's, Mac's and Amiga's, - Lyle Levine Paths -> ihnp4!wuphys!lel seismo!wucs!wuphys!lel P.S. I still think the Apple II is a great machine.
mike@ntvax.UUCP (10/08/86)
/* Written 2:09 pm Oct 5, 1986 by k.cc.purdue.edu!ag0 in ntvax:net.micro.apple */ In article <673@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>, kus3@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (robert kusumoto) writes: > //e: the fastest accelerator cards I've ever seen for a //e goes around 3.5-3.6 > Mhz which is a bit slower than the 4.77Mhz in the base IBM PC and much slower > than most IBM PC compats that run anywhere from 6 to 12 Mhz now. > > thats all for now > > Bob According the manuals supplied with my Apple //e, the clock speed in the 6502 corresponds roughly to twice that speed in other microprocessors, i.e. a 6502 running at 3.5 Mhz is roughly equivilent to 7Mhz. This speed difference (as best as I can recall) is attributed to simpler cpu architecture. Enough of that. I have also read InCider's review of the //gs. I am a little dissapointed with the resolution (200 vertical in any mode except //e emulation) and the clock speed. Still it is a step up from the old 8 bit tech- nolgy and I would love to have it in my //e. I haven't seen any consistent or detailed information about upgrades. If anyone has the information I would love to hear it. If I understand correctly I would need a new mother board in my //e. An important question here is just how compatible would such an up- grade be with both the old //e's and the new //gs? Another big dissapointment to me is the mouse/graphics operating system interface to the //gs. Frankly, I hate mice. A Mouse has its place for some applications, but as a primary input device- forget it!! My next question is: Can the operating system take commands from the keyboard, or are we bound to mice until some third party markets an alternative?? Colin Jenkins (No fancy address!) /* End of text from ntvax:net.micro.apple */
god3@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Peter Godwin) (10/10/86)
RRumor has it that the user of the //GS will have the option of making selections either via mouse or keyboard... similar to the Option - letter method used on the Mac. In fact, the open (or is it closed, I forget) apple key has been changed to the Option key.. and commands such as "eject" can be entered as option-e or something similar to that. -- Peter Godwin uucp: ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!god3 Univ. of Chicago Comp Ctr mailnet: x9.xpg@UChicago.Mailnet Room 2419, 5824 S. Kimbark Ave bitnet: god3%sphinx@UChicago.Bitnet Chicago, IL 60637 ARPA: x9.xpg%UChicago.Mailnet@MIT-Multics.ARPA
ee161abt@sdcc18.ucsd.EDU (Grobbins) (10/12/86)
In article <693@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> god3@sphinx.UUCP (Peter Godwin) writes: >Rumor has it that the user of the //GS will have the option >of making selections either via mouse or keyboard... similar to >the Option - letter method used on the Mac. In fact, the open >(or is it closed, I forget) apple key has been changed to the >Option key.. and commands such as "eject" can be entered as option-e >or something similar to that. The open-apple key is now the same as the command key on Mac/Apple II keyboards. The Closed apple key has been replaced by the Option key. Pull-down menus should support Open-apple key equivalents the same way Mac programs support command-key equivalents. Individual programs may also provide an arrow-key way to look at & select from the menus (totally obliviating the need for the mouse.) Also, note that the IIgs has a completely new kind of mouse from Apple, which is not compatible with the previous Mac/Lisa mice and which, significantly, plugs into the keyboard (the Front-Desk Bus) rather than into a special Mouse port. Hopefully, third-party developers will provide keyboards & mice to replace the ones on the IIgs that have such godawful feel. (Apple should be ashamed of itself for releasing such poorly designed data entry peripherals, but deserves applause for providing the bus for them.) Grobbins.
sk644@uiucuxf.CSO.UIUC.EDU (10/14/86)
Don't be silly. There are very important differences that you are
ignoring when you talk about processor speed. Processor speed (when
measured in Mhz) is relative!!! A 4 Mhz Z-80 (CP/M processor) is
as fast as a 1 Mhz 6502. Those 3.5 Mhz Apple-turbocards speed up the
Apple to about 1.5-2x faster than a PC....the speed at which a processor
operates is only useful information when you are talking about the
same family of microprocessors.
Benjy Mouse
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
UUCP : {ihnp4, convex, pur-ee}!uiucdcs!uiucuxf!sk644
Internet: uiucuxf!sk644@a.cs.uiuc.edu
FIDO : Net 11,Node 102, Benjy Mouse
UBBS : 217-359-4450, 300/1200/2400, 24 hoursrra202@uiucuxa.CSO.UIUC.EDU (10/14/86)
Written in responce 2 to this note.
Don't be silly. There are very important differences that you are
ignoring when you talk about processor speed. Processor speed (when
measured in Mhz) is relative!!! A 4 Mhz Z-80 (CP/M processor) is
as fast as a 1 Mhz 6502. Those 3.5 Mhz Apple-turbocards speed up the
Apple to about 1.5-2x faster than a PC....the speed at which a processor
operates is only useful information when you are talking about the
same family of microprocessors.
(my text now)
I don't think a 6502 has a 4-1 advantage over a Z80. A 6502 has an
advantage because it does a full read in a cycle, unlike a Z80
which puts the address on the bus in one cycle and reads the data
in the next. But that's only a two to one advantage. And all the
benchmarks I read seem to say about a 2x advantage, which is what you
would think from my remarks.
I run a 6502 at 2Mhz in my Commodo 128. It seem to be about 20% slower
than an IBM PC.daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/14/86)
> I don't think a 6502 has a 4-1 advantage over a Z80. A 6502 has an > advantage because it does a full read in a cycle, unlike a Z80 > which puts the address on the bus in one cycle and reads the data > in the next. But that's only a two to one advantage. And all the > benchmarks I read seem to say about a 2x advantage, which is what you > would think from my remarks. > > I run a 6502 at 2Mhz in my Commodo 128. It seem to be about 20% slower > than an IBM PC. Its between 3x and 4x from a purely hardware point of view. When the Z-80 fetches an op-code, it takes 3 clock cycles, all other memory or I/O cycles take 4 of these clock ticks. The Z-80 makes up for this disadvantage by offering better software architecture for many things; it has multiple registers and 16 bit operations, which can allow it to use more internally based operations, which is fewer memory accesses, and thus achieve faster overall performance. A Z-80 limited to the same instructions that a 6502 has would be 3x-4x slower. -- ============================================================================ 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)
> > Written in responce 2 to this note. > > Don't be silly. There are very important differences that you are > ignoring when you talk about processor speed. Processor speed (when > measured in Mhz) is relative!!! A 4 Mhz Z-80 (CP/M processor) is > as fast as a 1 Mhz 6502. Those 3.5 Mhz Apple-turbocards speed up the > Apple to about 1.5-2x faster than a PC....the speed at which a processor > operates is only useful information when you are talking about the > same family of microprocessors. > > (my text now) > > I don't think a 6502 has a 4-1 advantage over a Z80. A 6502 has an > advantage because it does a full read in a cycle, unlike a Z80 > which puts the address on the bus in one cycle and reads the data > in the next. But that's only a two to one advantage. And all the > benchmarks I read seem to say about a 2x advantage, which is what you > would think from my remarks. > > I run a 6502 at 2Mhz in my Commodo 128. It seem to be about 20% slower > than an IBM PC. The difference in the speed per clock cycle in the 6502 vs the 8088 is or other processors is due to the hardwired architecture of the 6502 vs the microcoded architecture of the others. Hardwiring eliminates a decoding step in the processor but is more difficult to design and debug, hence the more complex processors are usually microcoded. I don't know if the Z-80 is a microcoded processor or not, so this may not be the only factor in that case. Rick Fincher ranger@ecsvax