pff@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Pablo Fernicola) (01/20/90)
I was wondering if it would be cheaper to buy a 1 bit video card and VRAM chips and make the upgrade to 8-bits by myself, instead of buying an 8 bit video card from Apple. Anybody knows the prices for the VRAM chips and what kind they are? Thanks Pablo Fernicola pff@beach.cis.ufl -- pff@beach.cis.ufl.edu - Pablo Fernicola - Machine Intelligence Laboratory - UF IF YOU CARE ENOUGH TO READ SIGNATURES ... I am graduating Spring 1990 and I am looking for a job. MS EE, my graduate work incorporates OO-DBMS/Graphics/Robotics/AI
meuchen@grad2.cis.upenn.edu (Paul Eric Menchen) (01/20/90)
In article <21839@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> pff@beach.cis.ufl.edu () writes: >I was wondering if it would be cheaper to buy a 1 bit video card and >VRAM chips and make the upgrade to 8-bits by myself, instead of >buying an 8 bit video card from Apple. > >Anybody knows the prices for the VRAM chips and what kind they are? ... I doubt that is would be possible to upgrade a 1 bit card to eight bits, and here's why. The Apple card is hardware designed to support eight bit video. All the hardware is there. If you buy it four bit, it comes with special sockets to plug in the extra VRAM chips so you don't even have to solder--just plug them in. I would suspect most of the one bit cards only have the hardware capability for one bit video. Even if you put more memory on the card (if it had space) the hardware wouldn't know how to handle it. There might be a 1 bit card out there that has this capability, but I don't know of any. I do know, however, that the Apple card is designed to handle up to eight bits and some third party eight bit cards are designed to handle 24 bit if you decide to but the extra memory. On a related note, there were a number of posts about the upgrade kit. I just bought the chips to go to 8 bit from Chip Merchant. Total price was $55, $49 for the chips and $6 for shipping to PA from CA. They didn't send any instructions at all, but it was pretty simple to plug in the chips--just align with all the others. Here the number in case you missed it from all the $69 1 meg SIMM posts: Chip Merchant 1-800-426-6375 I have no connection with this company except I am now a happy camper with 256 colors/greys. How could I have lived so long without 'em? Paul Eric Menchen meuchen@grad1.cis.upenn.edu