jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") (03/23/88)
This is a wary subject as far as screaming for more, but as Doug Gwyn puts it... >If Apple provided a SCSI port, the IIGS might as well be slotless for >most people. Consider: > Slot 1 usurped by serial printer port > Slot 2 usurped by modem port > Slot 3 usurped by 80-column firmware > Slot 4 usurped by mouse > Slot 5 usurped by 3.5" drives on SmartPort > Slot 6 usurped by 5.25" drives on SmartPort > Slot 7 available, needed for SCSI hard disk >On mine, I have MDIdeas's SuperSonic Digitizer in slot 2, and have to >toggle back and forth via the control panel. All the other slots are >pretty much dedicated to fixed uses. The GS needs more slots or a method of easily switching between slots and ports. What bothers me is the Smartport and the Mouseport. If Smart port is so smart, why can't it handle ALL the disk drives 3.5 and 5.25? And why must Prodos assign only two drives per slot as in DOS 3.3? That's a bit archaic; and it wouldn't be too hard to work out an emulation scheme for 3.3 to work in such an environment to take care of compatibility.... another thing: the mouse uses the Apple Desktop Port. Is ALL info from the mouse coming from slot 4 anyway? or is this only in 8-bit mode? finally, it sometimes gets annoying how little RAM is assigned to the slots. I don't know how to fix this, but it is possible to add a few more pins to each slot in such a way that old cards fit but larger ones could also work. Big Blue does this, and it, well, it works..... Brainstorm a bit.... a GS would be nice with a few more slots, or atleast Slot 3,4, and 5 open for use instead of bogged down with stuff that ought to be on the motherboard "Nothing is Impossible...." Capt. Albatross
laba-4an@web4e.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden) (03/24/88)
In article <kWFdQby00V4EVSw0Uw@andrew.cmu.edu> jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") writes: >Brainstorm a bit.... a GS would be nice with a few more slots, or atleast >Slot 3,4, and 5 open for use instead of bogged down with stuff that ought >to be on the motherboard 90% of the stuff you listed IS on the motherboard. The trick is finding a way to access it, retaining compatibility with older programs. If some bizarre calling sequence were used instead, many older programs would not function properly. I do agree that there should be an easier way to switch between slots and ports. Your question about the mouse being attached to the Desktop Bus is interesting, but I have a feeling that the Apple engineers wired the I/O straight to slot 4 anyway. >"Nothing is Impossible...." -- "...it just takes a little longer to accomplish!"
denbeste@bgsuvax.UUCP (William C. DenBesten) (03/24/88)
In article <kWFdQby00V4EVSw0Uw@andrew.cmu.edu> jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") writes: > Brainstorm a bit.... a GS would be nice with a few more slots, or atleast > Slot 3,4, and 5 open for use instead of bogged down with stuff that ought > to be on the motherboard From article <7932@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, by laba-4an@web4e.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden): > 90% of the stuff you listed IS on the motherboard. The trick is finding a > way to access it, retaining compatibility with older programs. If some > bizarre calling sequence were used instead, many older programs would not > function properly. > I do agree that there should be an easier way to switch between slots and > ports. Your question about the mouse being attached to the Desktop Bus > is interesting, but I have a feeling that the Apple engineers wired the I/O > straight to slot 4 anyway. I think that the only thing in the pseudo-slots is firmware. The mouse firmware calls the ADB routines to get the information and arranges it to look like the results of the old mouse cards. According to the IIgs hardware manual (via my sieve of a memory), the i/o locations of the ADB mouse hardware doesn't conflict with that of the real cards. If you want to write your own drivers, you could still use the mouse (and serial) ports without using the slot space. I suspect that this is not true for the 5.25 drives, however, since dos 3.3 and others directly access the i/o locations, so firmware emulation is not enough. I have not gotton arround to disassembling the pseudo cards, so I can't be sure exactly what is going on, but I believe that this is accurate. Interesting thought... if tell the control panel to use my own card in slot 4 will my ADB mouse still work in the finder? My GS is at home (not work), so I can't try this out. -- William C. DenBesten | denbeste@bgsu.edu Dept of Computer Science | CSNET denbeste%andy.bgsu.edu@relay.cs.net Bowling Green State University | UUCP ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!bgsuvax!denbeste Bowling Green, OH 43403-0214 |
scott@geowhiz.UUCP (Scott Kempf) (03/24/88)
In article <kWFdQby00V4EVSw0Uw@andrew.cmu.edu> jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") writes: > > >The GS needs more slots or a method of easily switching between slots >and ports. What bothers me is the Smartport and the Mouseport. >If Smart port is so smart, why can't it handle ALL the disk >drives 3.5 and 5.25? And why must Prodos assign only two drives >per slot as in DOS 3.3? That's a bit archaic; and it wouldn't be too hard >to work out an emulation scheme for 3.3 to work in such an environment >to take care of compatibility.... This is a limitation of ProDOS 8. The SmartPort can in theory hand up to 127 devices. 5.25 drives are mapped to slot 6 because ProDOS says you can only have 2 drives pre slot. >another thing: the mouse uses the Apple Desktop Port. Is ALL info from the mouse >coming from slot 4 anyway? or is this only in 8-bit mode? The mouse port is just for //e compatibility. 8-bit mode can use the Apple Desktop Bus. //gs mouse programs should run with slot 4 set to "you card". >"Nothing is Impossible...." > > >Capt. Albatross _______________________________________________________________________________ Scott Kempf Blue itself teaches us blue. -Bill Ranson MAIL: 1302 Rutledge St., Madison, WI 53703 PHONE: (608) 255-6205 (home) UUCP: {seismo, topaz, harvard, ihnp4}!uwvax!geowhiz!scott ARPA: geowhiz!scott@spool.wisc.edu PHONE: (608) 262-6154 (work) BITNET: scott%geowhiz.uucp%spool.wisc.edu@wiscvm.bitnet
tgm@xroads.UUCP (Sloan Tash) (04/05/88)
The gs mouse can be accessed directly forom the bus, freeing slot 4. The problem is compatibility. The older programs won't use it, so you'd have to switch if newer programs did. It's a compromise. There should have been a better mehtod (perhaps routing the mouse to psuedo slot 4 in 8 bit mode?), but there was not. Maybe the rumored GS plus will fix this.. tgm crash!xroads!tgm -- \ / C r o s s r o a d s C o m m u n i c a t i o n s \/ (602) 971-2240 /\ (602) 992-5007 300|1200 Baud 24 hrs/day / \ ihnp4!crash!xroads!*
brsmith@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) (04/09/88)
Re: Mouse Card in slot 4 I thought it was possible to use slot 4 for other cards, as long as you used the mouse only as an ADB device. The only problem with this is that older (Apple II) programs wouldn't find the mouse. And I know for a fact that you can use slots 3 & 4 for cards that don't need ROM's regardless of what you have the control panel set to. I had a cheepo modem with proprietary software that just uses the hardware I/O locations, and wasn't affected at all by what the Control Panel said was in those slots. Re: Smartport and 5.25 drives. What we need here is a clever hacker to make a smartport driver for the 5.25" drives. They're already hooked up to the same hardware as the 3.5" drives, it's just that they have their own driver ROM in the slot 6 ROM space. Of course, this means you can't boot slot 6... big loss. You'd have to switch slot 6 back to the ROM's to run DOS3.3 stuff then, but I do that so rarely it wouldn't be much of an inconvenience. Brian Smith [brsmith@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu.arpa]