ward@hao.UUCP (Mike Ward) (01/15/85)
<>
I am helping to design upgrades for the macintosh. The lowest
level upgrade is for 1M byte. That hopefully will cost only
about $1000 or less. The 1 meg board will go inside of the mac,
and the mac will look no different from the outside. However,
it will have 1 meg of memory plus the memory that the mac already
had (1.5 meg total if you had a 512K mac) that runs twice as
fast as the regular mac ram because it is DMA. We have designed
boards going up to 8 meg. We have implemented our design up
to the 4 meg level. Here is what we are planning to do: You
can buy the 1 meg upgrade, and it will be internal with a connector
that is invisible from the outside of the mac (like the interrupt
and reset switches) on the bottom right vents. If you connect
the card-cage that we are designing to the connector, you can
add several additional things... more memory, a color board we
have designed, a speedup board, and some others... The card
cage has a case like the mac's, and it fits snugly under the
mac, adding 5 inches to the mac's height, and no inches to it's
footprint.
The question: Is this what you guys in netland really want?
Do you have any questions or suggestions?
Please let me know, because we are really doing this to make
the macintosh a REALLY serious machine. Since our product will
be compatible with the hyper drive, and any other hard drives,
the mac can become sort of like a mini-computer. Imagine 8 Meg
of ram and a 192 meg hard drive...
Dave Kliman
70 Glen Cove Drive
Glen Head, NY 11545
(516) 671-1301
to be found somewhere near sjuvax!drexel!dave
presby!drexel!dave
--
Michael Ward, NCAR/SCD
UUCP: {hplabs,nbires,brl-bmd,seismo,menlo70,stcvax}!hao!ward
ARPA: hplabs!hao!ward@Berkeley
BELL: 303-497-1252
USPS: POB 3000, Boulder, CO 80307tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (01/16/85)
Those sound like very worthwhile upgrades. What I would really like to see more than anything else is virtual memory, though. You could put a memory management chip on the memory expansion boards, or replace the 68000 with a line to a board containing a 68000 with memory management. Probably the former would be preferable. This would enable the Mac to run 4.2bsd, although the porting effort would be significant. If it could be done under $2000, you would have a guaranteed market here at C-MU, since all students will soon be required to obtain a cheap 4.2bsd workstation (which one is under discussion) to hook up to the VICE network in early 1986. -=- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!" "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains." Liber AL, II:9.
mark@rtech.ARPA (Mark Wittenberg) (01/18/85)
> <> > > I am helping to design upgrades for the macintosh. The lowest > level upgrade is for 1M byte. That hopefully will cost only > about $1000 or less. The 1 meg board will go inside of the mac, > and the mac will look no different from the outside. However, > it will have 1 meg of memory plus the memory that the mac already > had (1.5 meg total if you had a 512K mac) that runs twice as > fast as the regular mac ram because it is DMA. We have designed > boards going up to 8 meg. We have implemented our design up > to the 4 meg level. Here is what we are planning to do: You > can buy the 1 meg upgrade, and it will be internal with a connector > that is invisible from the outside of the mac (like the interrupt > and reset switches) on the bottom right vents. If you connect > the card-cage that we are designing to the connector, you can > add several additional things... more memory, a color board we > have designed, a speedup board, and some others... The card > cage has a case like the mac's, and it fits snugly under the > mac, adding 5 inches to the mac's height, and no inches to it's > footprint. > > ... > > > Dave Kliman > 70 Glen Cove Drive > Glen Head, NY 11545 > (516) 671-1301 > to be found somewhere near sjuvax!drexel!dave > presby!drexel!dave > Well, I'm sure interested! (sorry this didn't go through mail, I don't know how to get to drexel; please don't flame, we just got our routine software yesterday and haven't yet installed it.) Mark Wittenberg Relational Technology mtxinu!rtech!mark zehntel!rtech!mark
wagle@iuvax.UUCP (01/22/85)
8+ Meg main memory has me drooling. Do you have a better interface for the hard disk? Already existing hard disks for the Mac have been reported to be fairly slow. If you could get a good/reasonable timesharing BSD 4.2 workstation out of the Mac, you have a customer. I assume that your 5 inch high box has plugs in the back so you can plug in a reasonable number of devices (ala APPLE ][, IBM XT, etc)?