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 80307
tim@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.
spector@acf4.UUCP (David HM Spector) (01/16/85)
Dave, How are you going to get around the memory map problem? I.e., the fact that the Macintoshes memory map wraps around the address space every 512K?? Also, how are you going to get the memory manager and the segment manager to handle that much memory? All the other stuff sounds neet, tell me more!!! David HM Spector NYU/acf Systems Group Arpa: Spector@nyu-cmcl1.ARPA UUCP: ...!allegra!cmcl2!cmcl1!spector
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