gthompso@wheaton.UUCP (Greg M. Thompson) (02/27/88)
I am interested in getting AST Research, Inc.'s addon board for the Mac II and was wondering if anybody out there had heard about how well it really works. The Mac286 sounds great, but is it too good to be true? How much can be done this way, i.e. using either programming environment...etc. Thanks all! Greg Thompson .
PHTH@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Philip Thompson) (02/29/88)
In article <724@wheaton.UUCP>, gthompso@wheaton.UUCP (Greg M. Thompson) writes: >I am interested in getting AST Research, Inc.'s addon board for the Mac II >and was wondering if anybody out there had heard about how well it really >works. The Mac286 sounds great, but is it too good to be true? How much can > . . . > Thanks all! > Greg Thompson The Advanced Technology group at Princeton is testing the Mac386 board and its software. There are some problems with scrolling, and it is overall more like an XT than an AT in speed. I have heard that a new version of the software and perhaps even an upgrade to the hardware are in the offing. Philip Thompson (PHTH@PUCC and A0147 on AppleLink) > > .
dennisg@pwcs.StPaul.GOV (Dennis Grittner) (03/09/88)
In article <724@wheaton.UUCP> gthompso@wheaton.UUCP (Greg M. Thompson) writes: >I am interested in getting AST Research, Inc.'s addon board for the Mac II >and was wondering if anybody out there had heard about how well it really >works. The Mac286 sounds great, but is it too good to be true? How much can >be done this way, i.e. using either programming environment...etc. I've got one here in my II. I can honestly say that it pretty much works. The display is VERY slow ( they say that it will be improved a lot in a month or two with the next release ) and they darned thing will hang up on some occasions, but it mostly works. I wish the I/O was a little more flexible and you didn't have to write a big file out there to act as your DOS filesystem but... One of the nicest things you can do is write a DOS file to the Mac 'device' ( the Mac filesystem ) as drive D. The 'normal' filesystem is drive C ( its a big file to the Mac OS ). This lets you get right at DOS type files that you might have imported via the DOS floppy. Also, you have to hook up only ( currently ) the one type of floppy at a time.... would like to have scsi on the DOS board VERY much.... Haven't done any real benchmarking but it seems to be at about AT speed EXCEPT for the display speed which is really slow ( SLOW ) I'm waiting to see how well the software-only DOS emulation works when it is really available. -- Dennis Grittner City of Saint Paul, Minnesota (612) 298-4402 Room 700, 25 W. 4th St. 55102 "Let's just put Ollie, Ronnie, and the rest in jail!"