mmunz@pro-beagle.cts.com (Mark Munz) (02/02/90)
In-Reply-To: message from RXBROWN@UALR.BITNET > I think maybe we GS users and Apple should really consider >weather or not we want to be strapped into the // c^%AQibility(sp?). >I think it has hurt the GS a bit. > [ Deleted some stuff ] > >The reason I think this way is because I think it hurt the GS >from the start (compatibility (sp?)), and now we are supposed >to get a new machine so, that will give us more support. What truly hurt the Apple IIGS computer is: 1) the 65816 (at 2.8 Mhz) can't handle all the complex graphics. Heck, the 68000 at 7Mhz can't!! A 68030 Mac SE/30 seems to be a good minimum CPU system for handling such graphicly intense environments. 2) The GS resolution sucks. I've heard developers beg for 640x400 since day one. Again, be sure to see item #1. I would like to applaud the System 5.0 authors who have have pushed some of the 65816 limits -- and I usually only complain!! The IIGS is a great computer, but it would be really nice to see some Text-based programs utilizing the POWER of the 65816. Imagine what your CPU could do if it wasn't bogged down with doing graphics all the time!! ROSE 16 is a great example of how incredibly fast a text-based 65816 program CAN run. And it SCREAMS at 7Mhz!! Mark Munz
billy@pro-colony.cts.com (Billy Long) (02/03/90)
In-Reply-To: message from RXBROWN@UALR.BITNET
I could EASILY do without compatibility with the rest of the // line. The only
8-bit program I use is AppleWorks, but I've almost completely switched to
AppleWorks GS now, so I don't use that much anymore. I am, however, using an
8-bit communications program right now! I have a 16-bit one, but the screen
updating is much too slow. If they're gonna drop // compatibility, they'd
better keep some kind of text screen or increase the speed dramatically!
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>>> pro-colony 214/370-7056 24 hours <<<danr@pro-tcc.cts.com (Dan Roberts) (02/03/90)
In-Reply-To: message from mmunz@pro-beagle.cts.com
Mark,
I am amazed at Folks (the person you addressed in the post I am responding
to. Who declare a machine such as the MAC SE "Pretty Useless" sinply because a
more impressive macine comes out. I still find my Apple //c (Completely
unenhanced out of the box machine) useful. In fact I find my old TRS-80 Model
100 useful. We should not be blinded by the flash. Did the older machine
suddenly stop running its software when the new one came out. BTW Most of the
computing I do is on an Apple IIGS (souped up) because it is much more useful
then the other machines that I have access to but that does not make the
others useless.
Dan
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Daniel Roberts Proline: danr@pro-tcc
50 East Mound Street CI$: 71271,1437
Columbus OH 43215 INET: danr@pro-tcc.cts.com
UUCP: crash!pnet01!pro-tcc!danrnicholaA@batman.moravian.EDU (Andy Nicholas) (02/04/90)
In article <15474.chatter.infoapple@pro-beagle>, mmunz@pro-beagle.cts.com (Mark Munz) writes: > What truly hurt the Apple IIGS computer is: > > 1) the 65816 (at 2.8 Mhz) can't handle all the complex graphics. > Heck, the 68000 at 7Mhz can't!! A 68030 Mac SE/30 seems to > be a good minimum CPU system for handling such graphicly > intense environments. That is just so much poppy-cock. A 2.8 Mhz can handle the GS's current graphic capability just fine; the problem lies within the environment which does all the drawing: QuickDraw II. When apple first wrote Quickdraw II, they didn't do the best job they could have done (or we would have started with System 5.0, wouldn't we?). If they >had< done their very best, though, we probably wouldn't have had an operating system for 3 years... Also, it matters that many people write code which is just so much drivel and usually very inefficient when doing graphics routines. Many people/companies like to write stuff with high level languages which are portable, but on the IIGS this ends up meaning that your code will be slow. If you invest the time need to learn assembler on the IIGS, then the code which you write is inherently worth less because it's not easily portable to anything other than a 65xxx series machine. > I would like to applaud the System 5.0 authors who have have > pushed some of the 65816 limits -- and I usually only complain!! System 5.0 doesn't push the 65816 to its limit. hardly. Look at any game which scrolls a large section of screen around (like Alien Mind or Rastan) and you'll see something which pushes the envelope. The only program I know of off the top of my head which -REALLY- pushes the machine right to the edge is the opening screen to John's _Tomahawk/GS_. I remember him telling me that the opening screen is doing delta decompression (john's own ace before ace was ace) while he is cycling all the pallettes to show a 3200 color picture and updating the DOC. He said he calulated that he was using 97% of the total system cpu time. I'm not sure if he was using scan-loine interrupts or not in that one or if he was polling the mega II video registers to check when to switch pallettes. The spiel we got at this past may's applefest from the guys at apple was that they just special-cased the routines which did the most-used object drawing on the IIGS to speedup Quickdraw II. Things like _PaintRect were made much faster while routines like _PPToPort were left for future system disks to improve. Try moving a window around sometime. The background screen redraw is the same speed as system 4.0... so there is much more work that could be done to speedup quickdraw II on a standard 2.8 Mhz IIGS. Another for-instance comes from Jim Mensch at this past Kansas City 'Fest: Jim was standing around talking about Quickdraw II and how to increase its speedup and he said that the routines (I can't quite remember) for drawing rects were something like 10X faster than system 4.0, but that he had just written some stuff to get them to go 14X faster. So, yes, there is more than can be done to speedup Quickdraw II. Part of the problem that I forsee apple facing if they try to radically speedup Quickdraw II is memory: if they special case a lot of quickdraw II's routines the special-casing is going to eat up a lot of memory. And, who wants to buy a 2 meg machine just to run one application? Sure, it might be as fast as a Mac II graphics-wise, but it's hard to justify putting 2 meg in a machine for that purpose increasing the cost to the end-user. andy -- Yeah!
brianw@microsoft.UUCP (Brian WILLOUGHBY) (02/13/90)
In an article RXBROWN@UALR.BITNET ("MR.FANTASTIC") writes: > > I think maybe we GS users and Apple should really consider weather or not >we want to be strapped into the // compatibility(sp?). I think it has hurt >the GS a bit. Because most software developers, it seemed like they said, >"Well we have a // version and the GS user can run it." Note I did say a bit, >I DON'T WANT TO HEAR THE LACK OF SUPPORT ISSUE, I have heard it before. The >reason I think this way is because I think it hurt the GS from the start >(compatibility (sp?)), and now we are supposed to get a new machine so, that >will give us more support. Those software developers must have been lazy if they didn't want to take advantage of the extra capabilities of the GS in a newer release of their software. I don't think that you are going to motivate any of these lazy companies by TAKING AWAY Apple ][ compatibility from the GS. In fact, I don't think that Apple could have done anything different that would have actually FORCED these developers to write for the GS if they didn't want to. For a moment, consider that there were two possibilities for the GS at it's introduction: A brand new machine that is A) compatible with an 8 bit machine but capable of running new 16 bit software, or B) not compatible with any machine and only capable of running software that hasn't been developed yet. If Apple had chosen B), there wouldn't have been ANY GS development, because nobody would invest in (i.e. purchase) a machine that ran no software. I certainly wouldn't purchase a machine that only had a few programs available for it (at the time of introduction), and if no one else bought the machine, then there wouldn't be any kind of market to interest software developers at all. Do you remember how long it took the 1984 Mac to catch up to (and eventually pass, sigh) the amount of software available for the ][? Totally new platforms take a significant amount of time (and promotion from the company) to take off. It took Apple a long time to get GS/OS out. And before that, all the GS Operating Systems were 16 bit extensions of 8 bit ProDOS. I don't think the GS would have ever made it without the 8 bit compatibility. > I am not saying drop the //, I love it, I still have my //c, eventhough I >don't use it much, but I think that the GS with its enhanced graphics and >sound should not be made to run // software. It's not like someone is forcing every GS to run // software. It would actually be more work now to REMOVE the compatibility. >Robert Brown Brian Willoughby UUCP: ...!{tikal, sun, uunet, elwood}!microsoft!brianw InterNet: microsoft!brianw@uunet.UU.NET or: microsoft!brianw@Sun.COM Bitnet brianw@microsoft.UUCP
bchurch@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Bob Church) (02/17/90)
> > > I am not saying drop the //, I love it, I still have my //c, eventhough I > >don't use it much, but I think that the GS with its enhanced graphics and > >sound should not be made to run // software. > > It's not like someone is forcing every GS to run // software. It would > actually be more work now to REMOVE the compatibility. > > >Robert Brown > > Brian Willoughby I agree. I think that there are actually two compatibility arguments going on at the same time causing a great deal of confusion. GS authors would probably do best if they wrote for the GS; period. On the other hand, leaving the ability to run 8 bit apple software in the GS is just not that difficult. Why not have the best of both worlds? ******************************************************************** * * * bob church bchurch@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu * * * * If economics isn't an "exact" science why do computers crash * * so much more often than the stock market? * * bc * ********************************************************************