lchirica@polyslo.UUCP (Laurian Chirica) (04/16/88)
Quote from Info World, April 11, 1988: "Mac II users looking for more fire-power might ask their dealers for the free ROM upgrade required to run A/UX. I am not saying to pay the $4,000 or so to actually buy A/UX; just get the ROM upgrade. It is free, it gets you a brand-new mother board, and makes disk accesses under Finder twice as fast. No wonder Apple has been so quiet about this freebie." Question: Does anyone know anything more about this? My dealer knows nothing. -- Laurian M. Chirica (lchirica@polyslo.UUCP) Computer Science Department California Polytechnic State University (CAL POLY) San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 - (805) 756-1332
mha@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Mark H. Anbinder) (04/17/88)
In article <1895@polyslo.UUCP> lchirica@polyslo.UUCP (Laurian Chirica) writes: >Quote from Info World, April 11, 1988: > >"Mac II users looking for more fire-power might ask their dealers >for the free ROM upgrade required to run A/UX..." >Question: Does anyone know anything more about this? > >Laurian M. Chirica (lchirica@polyslo.UUCP) The ROM upgrade has not yet shipped to dealers. Keep asking your dealer about it, though, as it's NOT likely to be announced to the general public when it does ship. Mark H. Anbinder, Cornell University Department of Media Services MHA@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu NG33 MVR Hall, Cornell Univ. Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-1566
phil@Apple.COM (Phil Ronzone) (04/19/88)
In article <1895@polyslo.UUCP> lchirica@polyslo.UUCP (Laurian Chirica) writes: >Quote from Info World, April 11, 1988: > >"Mac II users looking for more fire-power might ask their dealers >for the free ROM upgrade required to run A/UX. I am not saying to >pay the $4,000 or so to actually buy A/UX; just get the ROM upgrade. >It is free, it gets you a brand-new mother board, and makes disk >accesses under Finder twice as fast. No wonder Apple has been so >quiet about this freebie." >Question: Does anyone know anything more about this? My dealer >knows nothing. >Laurian M. Chirica (lchirica@polyslo.UUCP) From the unofficial rumor-quenching arena -- no, you DON'T have to get any kind of ROM upgrade, OR any upgrade whatsoever to run A/UX. All you need is minimum of 2MB memory and a PMMU plugged into the socket. This is a bizarre rumor -- because I can't think of anything that it could remotely be based on. I mean, if there is a brand-new motherboard out, we here in Apple Software Engineering might like to get a few for testing purposes ... :-) :-) etc. Perhaps there was some kind of a third party announcement that got garbled??? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philip K. Ronzone, A/UX Technical Manager APPLELINK: RONZONE1 Apple Computer, Mail Stop 27AJ, 10500 N. DeAnza Blvd. Cupertino, CA 95014 UUCP: ...!{sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual,unisoft}!apple!phil
ws0n+@andrew.cmu.edu (Walter Ray Smith) (04/20/88)
> *Excerpts from: 18-Apr-88 Re: MAC II ROM Upgrade Phil Ronzone@Apple.COM* > *(1447)* > . . . if there is a brand-new motherboard out, we here in > Apple Software Engineering might like to get a few for testing purposes ... > :-) :-) etc. Perhaps there was some kind of a third party announcement > that got garbled??? Well, there _is_ a new ROM for the Mac II--it makes the Slot Manager use 32-bit mode so you can have more than 1MB of address space on a card. Maybe you_ __should_ get a few for testing purposes... - Walt
rcb@rti.UUCP (Randy Buckland) (04/22/88)
I have found out that this upgrade exists and is primarily to
allow the use of NuBus cards with more than 1MB of memory.
The upgrade appears to be a swap of the logic board for a rev
B logic board. Does anyone out there have any details on
what the differences really are? I have conflicting reports
from the net and different service people here locally
as to what effects this upgrade has.
--
Randy Buckland (919)-541-7103
Research Triangle Institute
rcb@rti.rti.org [128.109.139.2]
{decvax,ihnp4}!mcnc!rti!rcbkateley@Apple.COM (Jim Kateley) (04/22/88)
In article <2196@rti.UUCP> rcb@rti.UUCP (Randy Buckland) writes: >I have found out that this upgrade exists and is primarily to >allow the use of NuBus cards with more than 1MB of memory. > >The upgrade appears to be a swap of the logic board for a rev >B logic board. Does anyone out there have any details on >what the differences really are? I have conflicting reports The MacII logic board upgrade does two (and only two) things: It fixes a ROM bug so you can can have more than 1MB of address space on a NuBus card. It changes a HAL that caused a slight timing problem between NuBus cards that can become bus master. You would need this upgrade if: You have a NuBus card that needs more than 1MB of address space You have NuBus card(s) that can become bus master. You do NOT need this upgrade if: You are running A/UX (If you don't believe me, I have two machines doing it, and I don't know how to tell them the bad news.... :-)) You are using an Apple Video card or Ethertalk interface card (neither of them can become bus master). The only NuBus card I know of (to date) that needs this upgrade is the National Semiconductor RAM board. This board will NOT Make your disk access twice as fast. -- Jim Kateley UUCP: {sun, voder, nsc, mtxinu, dual}!apple!kateley S,P,HnS! DOMAIN: kateley@apple.COM Applelink: kateley1 Disclaimer: What I say, think, or smell does not reflect any policy or stray thought by Apple Computer, Inc.
cheeser@dasys1.UUCP (Les Kay) (04/24/88)
[Take that, you fiend!] In article <8546@apple.Apple.Com> phil@apple.UUCP (Phil Ronzone) writes: |In article <1895@polyslo.UUCP> lchirica@polyslo.UUCP (Laurian Chirica) writes: ||Quote from Info World, April 11, 1988: || ||"Mac II users looking for more fire-power might ask their dealers ||for the free ROM upgrade required to run A/UX. I am not saying to ||pay the $4,000 or so to actually buy A/UX; just get the ROM upgrade. ||It is free, it gets you a brand-new mother board, and makes disk ||accesses under Finder twice as fast. No wonder Apple has been so ||quiet about this freebie." ||Question: Does anyone know anything more about this? My dealer ||knows nothing. ||Laurian M. Chirica (lchirica@polyslo.UUCP) | |From the unofficial rumor-quenching arena -- no, you DON'T have to get |any kind of ROM upgrade, OR any upgrade whatsoever to run A/UX. All you |need is minimum of 2MB memory and a PMMU plugged into the socket. This is |a bizarre rumor -- because I can't think of anything that it could remotely |be based on. I mean, if there is a brand-new motherboard out, we here in |Apple Software Engineering might like to get a few for testing purposes ... |:-) :-) etc. Perhaps there was some kind of a third party announcement |that got garbled??? |-- |Philip K. Ronzone, A/UX Technical Manager APPLELINK: RONZONE1 |Apple Computer, Mail Stop 27AJ, 10500 N. DeAnza Blvd. Cupertino, CA 95014 |UUCP: ...!{sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual,unisoft}!apple!phil Philip, I'll buy that you don't need to upgrade in any way to run A/UX, but what if you want to have more than a meg of ram on a nubus card? You do need a ROM upgrade for that and Apple is apperently getting ready to release this. As for wether this will be free or not is no in my metier. If you can't diseminate information about an, as yet, unannounced product, that is fine, but please do not diseminate misinformation or worse yet disinformation. While not officially announced, it is a fairly well established fact that it will happen and MUST happen unless the Mac II is to be closed to large applications, which, under unix, when running in conjunction with other tasks, can very easily require more than the what, 14 megs the system can handle now. Les Disinformation specialist 8^) <---See, I'm smiling, the above was not a flame, just an irk. -- =============================================================================== Jonathan Bing, Master (cheeser) ...ihnp4!hoptoad!dasys1!cheeser "Pereant, iniquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!" also "Non illegitimus carborundum!" ....crash!pro-charlotte!cheeser
rob@uokmax.UUCP (Robert K. Shull) (04/25/88)
In article <4050@dasys1.UUCP> cheeser@dasys1.UUCP (Les Kay) writes: >other tasks, can very easily require more than the what, 14 megs the system >can handle now. I was under the impression that the 1 meg per slot limit was only under Mac OS, and that everything worked OK under A/UX. National Semiconductor is supposedly shipping their boards for use with A/UX, so I assumed it would work (misrepresentation?) Anybody know if this is true? -- Robert K. Shull University of Oklahoma, Engineering Computer Network ihnp4!occrsh!uokmax!rob CIS 73765,1254 Delphi RKSHULL Opinions contained herein in no way reflect those of the University of Oklahoma.
mls@whutt.UUCP (SIEMON) (04/26/88)
In article <1227@uokmax.UUCP>, rob@uokmax.UUCP (Robert K. Shull) writes: > I was under the impression that the 1 meg per slot limit was only under > Mac OS, and that everything worked OK under A/UX. National Semiconductor is > supposedly shipping their boards for use with A/UX, so I assumed it would > work (misrepresentation?) Anybody know if this is true? Your impression is correct. It is possible, for example, to shove in Nat. Semi. boards fully loaded in each of the nuBus slots and get a godawful lot of memory accessible to the CPU. Of course, that makes little sense, as a general rule! -- Michael L. Siemon contracted to AT&T Bell Laboratories ihnp4!mhuxu!mls standard disclaimer
jackie@Apple.COM (Hernan'Jackie' Macapanpan) (04/26/88)
In article <1227@uokmax.UUCP>, rob@uokmax.UUCP (Robert K. Shull) writes: > I was under the impression that the 1 meg per slot limit was only under > Mac OS, and that everything worked OK under A/UX. National Semiconductor is > supposedly shipping their boards for use with A/UX, so I assumed it would > work (misrepresentation?) Anybody know if this is true? Hello, A/UX in not affected by the '1-Meg-per-slot' limit; just MacOS. Hope this helps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: I works heres, buts theys don'ts knows I's cans types. :-) Whats I's says iss nots necessarilys whats mys employers says. :-( Hernan 'Jackie' Macapanpan amdahl \ Technical Communications/A/UX Hotline pyramid!sun - apple!jackie Apple Computer, Inc. (408) 996-1010 decwrl / ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
phil@Apple.COM (Phil Ronzone) (04/27/88)
In article <1227@uokmax.UUCP> rob@uokmax.UUCP (Robert K. Shull) writes: >.... National Semiconductor is >supposedly shipping their boards for use with A/UX, so I assumed it would >work (misrepresentation?) Anybody know if this is true? Yes, I've have seen the National Semi boards working. I use one myself. I have seen 5 boards in one system (88 megabytes of memory) running. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philip K. Ronzone, A/UX Systems Architect APPLELINK: RONZONE1 Apple Computer, Mail Stop 27AJ, 10500 N. DeAnza Blvd. Cupertino, CA 95014 {sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual,unisoft}!apple!phil
ralphw@IUS3.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU (Ralph Hyre) (04/28/88)
In article <8972@apple.Apple.Com> phil@apple.UUCP (Phil Ronzone) writes: >In article <1227@uokmax.UUCP> rob@uokmax.UUCP (Robert K. Shull) writes: >>.... National Semiconductor is >>supposedly shipping their boards for use with A/UX, so I assumed it would >>work (misrepresentation?) Anybody know if this is true? > >Yes, I've have seen the National Semi boards working. I use one myself. >I have seen 5 boards in one system (88 megabytes of memory) running. Neat! So, has anyone tried porting the BSD ramdisk driver to A/UX? That's one way to sort of get more free space elsewhere, since you could put /tmp and multiple swap areas on multiple boards. (maybe 1 swap/board, since you might be able to fool the swap strategy routines into conserving nubus bandwith like they would disk interface bandwidth in deciding which disk to talk to.) At least A/UX isn't crippled like SunOS in terms of addressable memory (I hear from 3rd party memory vendors that you can physically address 64M in a Sun-3/160, but only 24M is supported by the OS. Quite a shame.) -- - Ralph W. Hyre, Jr. Internet: ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu Phone:(412)268-{2847,3275} CMU-{BUGS,DARK} Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA
breck@aimt.UUCP (Robert Breckinridge Beatie) (04/29/88)
In article <1558@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, ralphw@IUS3.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU (Ralph Hyre) writes: > In article <8972@apple.Apple.Com> phil@apple.UUCP (Phil Ronzone) writes: > >Yes, I've have seen the National Semi boards working. I use one myself. > >I have seen 5 boards in one system (88 megabytes of memory) running. > > Neat! So, has anyone tried porting the BSD ramdisk driver to A/UX? > That's one way to sort of get more free space elsewhere, since you could put > /tmp and multiple swap areas on multiple boards. ... Swap to ram? I like the idea of /tmp (and /usr/tmp for that matter) on a ram disk. And then the system might benefit from having the pipe device be a ram disk. But swap space? You're decreasing your available memory, which causes more swapping. It seems that just keeping that memory available to programs would eliminate swapping almost entirely. Besides, is ram really cheaper per megabyte than disk? It seems really unlikely now that chip prices are going back up. -- Breck Beatie {uunet,ames!coherent}!aimt!breck "Sloppy as hell Little Father. You've embarassed me no end."
phil@Apple.COM (Phil Ronzone) (04/30/88)
In article <1558@pt.cs.cmu.edu> ralphw@IUS3.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU (Ralph Hyre) writes: ... (about the National Semiconductor 16MB RAM board for the Mac II NuBus) ... >Neat! So, has anyone tried porting the BSD ramdisk driver to A/UX? >..... At least A/UX isn't crippled like SunOS in terms of addressable >memory (I hear from 3rd party memory vendors that you can physically address >64M in a Sun-3/160, but only 24M is supported by the OS. Quite a shame.) There is a RAM disk available now from National I believe. However, you can also specify a very large amount of buffers for the buffer cache (NBUF=nnnn using the A/UX kconfig command) and the A/UX kernel will take memory for the buffer cache from slower NuBus memory boards before it allocates from the faster SIMM memory banks. I have 16MB of buffer cache myself. Sometimes, some commands, especially large file copies when moving directories, work unbelievably fast! Instead of a RAM disk, how about 80MB of buffer cache??? Sync might slow your system down a bit though ... :-) -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philip K. Ronzone, A/UX Systems Architect APPLELINK: RONZONE1 Apple Computer, Mail Stop 27AJ, 10500 N. DeAnza Blvd. Cupertino, CA 95014 {amdahl,decwrl,sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual,unisoft}!apple!phil
cheeser@dasys1.UUCP (Les Kay) (05/02/88)
In article <1227@uokmax.UUCP> rob@uokmax.UUCP (Robert K. Shull) writes: >In article <4050@dasys1.UUCP> cheeser@dasys1.UUCP (Les Kay) writes: >>other tasks, can very easily require more than the what, 14 megs the system >>can handle now. >I was under the impression that the 1 meg per slot limit was only under >Mac OS, and that everything worked OK under A/UX. National Semiconductor is >supposedly shipping their boards for use with A/UX, so I assumed it would >work (misrepresentation?) Anybody know if this is true? I stand corrected, yes, under unix, the MAc can utilize more than one meg per card, it is in the native environment that it needs the ROM upgrade to do it. But, I have laread seen a situation arise where the amount of ram without the upgrade roms was not enough in the native mode, so the comment is still valid. You just don't need to upgrade for unix is all. -- =============================================================================== Jonathan Bing, Master (cheeser) ...ihnp4!hoptoad!dasys1!cheeser "Pereant, iniquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!" also "Non illegitimus carborundum!" ....crash!pro-charlotte!cheeser
rbl@nitrex.UUCP ( Dr. Robin Lake ) (05/07/88)
In article <981@aimt.UUCP> breck@aimt.UUCP (Robert Breckinridge Beatie) writes: >In article <1558@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, ralphw@IUS3.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU (Ralph Hyre) writes: >> In article <8972@apple.Apple.Com> phil@apple.UUCP (Phil Ronzone) writes: >> >Yes, I've have seen the National Semi boards working. I use one myself. >> >I have seen 5 boards in one system (88 megabytes of memory) running. >> >> Neat! So, has anyone tried porting the BSD ramdisk driver to A/UX? >> That's one way to sort of get more free space elsewhere, since you could put >> /tmp and multiple swap areas on multiple boards. ... > >Swap to ram? I like the idea of /tmp (and /usr/tmp for that matter) on >a ram disk. And then the system might benefit from having the pipe device >be a ram disk. But swap space? You're decreasing your available memory, >which causes more swapping. It seems that just keeping that memory available >to programs would eliminate swapping almost entirely. > Experiments with UNIX and a solid-state disk [Sugit Kumar's Ph.D. dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, late '70's] showed that the best use of a zero-latency disk with UNIX was for /tmp, /usr/tmp, and commonly- used system programs. The reason that there is less gain with using it for a swap device is that there is only ONE rotational latency, then the whole swap area is written out to a contiguous disk file. On the usual file system files, you can incur a number of rotational latencies per file. Of course, I don't know how the AUX driver and hardware really work, nor what the interleave factor is on the hard disk. These would affect the results Sugit obtained, as he was working with a word-addressable disk. More details upon demand, if any. -- Rob Lake BP America Research and Development decvax!mandrill!nitrex!rbl mandrill.CWRU.EDU!nitrex!rbl