AD1@TAUNOS.BITNET (06/06/88)
In article 88052716140BUFS John Stephen III writes: >In response to some of the question posted recently: > >1)Why is Apple buying 12MHZ 65816's? > > - There is no such thing as a 12MHZ 65816 so I don't know why (or even HOW) >Apple is buying them. Okay. Incider,January 88,p.17 (Apple Bits): "Western Design Center of Mesa,Arizona,makes the 65816 chips for the Apple IIgs.Nobody but Apple buys them,and Apple reportedly has ordered some newer,faster ones." >Vaporware,January 88,by murphy Sewall,from the January 1988 APPLE PULP: >Accelerated IIgs. >Western Design Center of Mesa,Arizona reports that Apple >has been buying quantities of the 12-MHz version of the >65816 (so far the only machine it's used in is the IIgs). >Could the rumored IIgs accelerator board (see last January's >Vaporware column) finally be on the way? -Incider January ^ /\ I found that one on a shelved downloads disk.It answers my own question about what the 12Mhz chips are intended for (according to 'rumors'). AD1@TAUNOS BTW,What enhancements is the GS+ rumored to have over the GS??? * * *
SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (06/11/88)
>In article 88052716140BUFS John Stephen III writes: > >> - There is no such thing as a 12MHZ 65816 so I don't know why (or even HOW) >>Apple is buying them. > >>Vaporware,January 88,by murphy Sewall,from the January 1988 APPLE PULP: >>Accelerated IIgs. > > Western Design Center of Mesa,Arizona reports that Apple > has been buying quantities of the 12-MHz version of the > 65816 (so far the only machine it's used in is the IIgs). > Could the rumored IIgs accelerator board (see last January's > Vaporware column) finally be on the way? -Incider January That's why its called "Vaporware" folks. I got that 12MHz speed within weeks of the IIgs release from one of the original IIgs beta-testers. Who knows WHAT speeds Western Design PLANNED to make at that time? Western certainly has BIG ideas - see "The future of the Apple II" by Tom Weishaar on the front page of the June '88 Open Apple *WOW!* If you don't subscribe <shame on you :-) > you'll get a pithy summary that won't do Tom justice in next month's column. I had an interesting conversation with an Apple developer and beta tester last night. He says, yup Apple IS buying the faster 65816s, BUT how well do you swim? It seems that ALL (that's 100% folks) of Apple's current production is scheduled to be shipped to FRANCE! competitive considerations "across the pond" are said to differ from here, and a faster IIgs is deemed "necessary" in the French market (implication: us American wimps will continue to buy even without improvments). Another interesting assertion: Apple apparently misestimated the continuing demand for the //e (mainly from school systems who don't find the IIgs premium relative to educational software worth it). It looks like there will be NO MORE new //e's in inventory after July in spite of Apple's promise to educators to continue marketing the machine into the next school year. Restarting //e production would be prohivitively expensive. Gee, some schools may be "forced" to accept IIgs's at //e prices (?). --------------------- Disclaimer: The "look and feel" of this message is exclusively MINE! (subject to change without notice; void where prohibited) ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu Murphy A. Sewall BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin. UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL University of Connecticut
jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") (06/12/88)
>"Western Design Center of Mesa,Arizona,makes the 65816 chips for the Apple >IIgs.Nobody but Apple buys them,and Apple reportedly has ordered some >newer,faster ones." Well, not quite. According to "Programming the 65816" by Lechty and others, the 65816 is also used a great deal by the Defense Dept. and related organizations. >BTW,What enhancements is the GS+ rumored to have over the GS??? to have fun with this one, check out some old ARPA postings generally under the title, "][gs+ Info", most notoriously one by Greg Provost (gregp@pro-carolina.cts.com) posted 11 May. To summarize (deep breath, don't get too excited...) 4 new Super Hires modes with 640X400, 4 color max between 5.6 and 7.6 Mhz 128K sound RAM built in SCSI port 256K ROM with most tools built in 512K fast RAM and 128K slow RAM (effectively 768K) standard device-independent Smart-Port and Prodos16 a new Prodos 16 that is compatible with Macintosh HFS and much more mouth-watering hope-its-really-true stuff. Capt. Albatross jm7e+@andrew.cmu.edu ============ disclaimer: These opinions are mine and will remain so until more intelligent or insightful or informed people are kind enough to show me the error of my ways. Remember: A mind is a terrible thing to baste.
wack@udel.EDU (Andrew Wack) (06/15/88)
Well after watching all the rumours fly by about the IIgs+ and now finally
having time to respond, I thought I'd put in my two cents on why I think
the Greg Provost posts are just somebody's dreams.
The idea of a faster gs is something I am greatly interested in. In
fact my interest is so great that I have been working on an accelerator
board for it for about the last 3 months. When I started the project the
very first problem I found was memory speed. In fact I quickly realized that
the only solution would be to implement a cache memory (a-la the zip chip or
main frame computers). And this is where the biggest flaw (that I found)
shows up in the Greg Provost IIgs+ postings. He states that the machine
runs at 7.6Mhz, and then goes on to say that 90ns DRAMS should be used
for the memory although 120ns may work. A quick check of the data sheet
for the 65816 show that at 7.6Mhz the memory access time should be about 76ns
(this was extrapolated from the 8Mhz spec) which seems to indicate that
neither rams would be up to the task. In fact you have to slow down 6Mhz
before the memory acces time increases to 87ns!! And no where in the detailed
posting of the IIgs+ features did I see mention of a cache (surely something
as sophisticated as this [for a micro] would be mentions), which leads me
to believe that all of this is idle dreaming.
An 8Mhz IIgs (even 10 or 12, but i haven't been able to get ANY information
from Western Design Center that anything above an 8Mhz part exists) is
certainly possilbe, but not the way its been described in all these dream
postings.
(To all the more hardware inclined: I realize there are many other ways
to deal with slow memory, such as putting in wait states etc, but all of
these decrease throughput to the point that you might as well run slower
(at the speed of the memory) and save youself some money by putting in
the slower processer. I've tried as much as possible to keep this from
turning into a comp.arch posting, so if you want some more technical
info, I'd be happy to reply by email).
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