ra@world.std.com (Chetty Ramanathan) (12/06/90)
>I was curious if anyone out there has performed a II -> IIfx upgrade, and if >they think it was worth it. I upgraded from a IIx to a IIfx. In terms of speed some of my the applications appear to execute just a tad faster. However, the upgrade caused me a significant amount of problems. To begin with, my 4 external scsi devices failed to cooperate inspite of my using the heavy duty black terminator to terminate the scsi chain (BTW the black terminator is supplied by Apple with the IIfx). The modem/printer ports on the IIfx appear to be incompatible with almost all midi interfaces. To get the midi interfaces to work you need a CDEV called IIfx serial switch that sets the compatibility. I put in 16Mb of memory. The IIfx recognizes all 16Mb but will use only 8Mb. My "authorized Apple dealer" supplied me a utility - "Maxima" to fix the problem. It didn't work either. During a conversation with the developers of maxima, they claimed that the System will take 1mb for every card installed in the mac. This sure sound bizzare. All my music software stopped working. In particular Mark of Unicorn's Performer and Composer, and Opcode's Editor/Librarian. The guys at at Mark of Unicorn sent me a IIfx update after a couple of weeks, and that fixed the problem Well to answer your question, "is it worth the upgrade", in my opinion - NO. -- -ra ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C.Ramanathan, Software Tool & Die | ra@world.std.com 1330 Beacon St, Brookline, MA 02146,(617)739-0202 |{xylogics,uunet}world!ra
demarsee@gamera.cns.syr.EDU (Darryl E. Marsee) (12/07/90)
> I was curious if anyone out there has performed a II -> IIfx upgrade, and if > they think it was worth it. The biggest loss I can see is the fact that my > current 120ns SIMMs become worthless, but I was wondering if there were any > other gotchas/drawbacks/etc. to worry about. I'd also like to hear enthusiastic > replies along the lines of "do it at all costs," if any. Yep, I've done it, and it was more than worth it. Your 120ns SIMMs (assuming they're 1M) really don't become worthless, since you can probably find someone with a 1, 2, or 2.5M Plus or SE that would be more than happy to take them off your hands and upgrade their machines. About the only real gotcha I found was that the IIfx requires different SCSI termination, so you need to find out if any of your external SCSI devices have built-in termination and, if any do, have it taken out. A word of advice I'd give is that if you plan on running A/UX on the FX, that you buy 4 4MB SIMMs for it instead of 4 or 8 1MB SIMMs if you can afford it (which, if you can afford A/UX, is probably true). Go for it. Regards, | No matter how bad life gets, you can rest assured ----------------------------| it can indeed get much worse, and often does. Darryl Marsee |-------------------------------------------------- Syracuse University | Women and cats do as they damn well please, and demarsee@gamera.cns.syr.edu | men and dogs just might as well get used to it.