Applefestive
Chan Wilson
]>[Gassee] also demontrated a hands-off
]>mouse - one of those headsets that you wear on your head and use a
]>blow switch as the mouse button. This has been around for a couple
]>years, though. [...]
]
]Ah, but Video Keyboard hasn't been around: it lets you use the mouse
]instead of the keyboard in any GS application that supports NDAs.
]
Hmm.. Good point. I wish they had that for the mac- there are times it
would be nice to toss the keyboard away for limited periods of time. :-)
]>Someone from Western Digital (I'm pretty sure it was Bill Mench (sp?)
]>asked him why Apple hasn't had more commitment towards faster 65816's.
]
]It was indeed Bill Mensch, and the name of his company is Western Design
]Center.
Does anybody know the truth behind the claims he made that he has
lots of 6-10mhz 65816 chips? And is this true?
]The newsletter you mentioned is called "II Technical". (I read most of
]one issue, and there's certainly some interesting stuff in there, not
]counting a couple of gratuitous insults thrown at Apple.)
Well, I saw the 'special Applefest edition' of The Road Apple, and my
general conclusion was that it was a 'paper flame.' Not much
intellectual content, lots of bitching and moaning.
]>Also, GS/OS 3.0 seems to have a few
]>random bugs, although this could be caused by my hard drive. (Old
]>datamac, SASI interface).
]
]"Random" bugs? Please be more specific.
Well, okay, they aren't quite random- I've been able to reproduce it. After
munging the installation process a couple of times, I got smart and used the
Installer (;-]) to install it onto the hard disk. So I double click on the
prodos icon when it's finished, and GS/OS loads just fine. "Fine and Dandy," I
say, and proceed to rename Prodos to Start.GS.OS so I boot into Prodos 8 on
startup. I accomplish this, and hit reset to verify that it works, and do a
-Start.GS.OS to bounce into GS/OS. I power down, power back up, and try to
enter GS/OS the same way. The thermometer fills up, and the machine is hung.
So, I hit reset, and try again. This time, it loads fine. I have to run
Start.GS.OS twice in order to get into GS/OS. When viewing the loading
proceedures (hitting esc as it loads) the first time it says "--In Pause
Mode! Hit Space to continue--" or somesuch similar. Space bar doesn't help,
though...
]
] --Dave Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc. | DAL Systems
--Chan Wilson
"The vision of the future-- here, and now..." -- Sigue Sigue Sputnik
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David Lyons
[...]
>]"Random" bugs? Please be more specific.
>Well, okay, they aren't quite random- I've been able to reproduce it.
>--Chan Wilson
Since Apple never claimed you could get GS/OS going in any way other than a
real boot, I have trouble counting this as a bug.
--
--Dave Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc. | DAL Systems
AppleLink--Apple Edition: DAVE.LYONS | P.O. Box 875
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My opinions are my own, not Apple's.
Stupid
>Well, okay, they aren't quite random- I've been able to reproduce it.
>[Renamed ProDOS to Start.GS.OS, and then] I have to run
>Start.GS.OS twice in order to get into GS/OS.
Could the problem be that it is called 'Start.GS.OS'? I use essentially
the same setup with the gs/os boot file called Boot16, and it works fine.
- John
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David Lyons
>[Chan Wilson] wrote:
>>Well, okay, they aren't quite random- I've been able to reproduce it.
>>[Renamed ProDOS to Start.GS.OS, and then] I have to run
>>Start.GS.OS twice in order to get into GS/OS.
>
>Could the problem be that it is called 'Start.GS.OS'? I use essentially
>the same setup with the gs/os boot file called Boot16, and it works fine.
>
>- John
I don't think the name of the file is causing the problem (the one originally
called ProDOS in the root directory). If it works fine for you, you're "lucky"
in some way (maybe it happens to work with your harware--but we don't promise
the next version will).
Brian Willoughby
>]>asked him why Apple hasn't had more commitment towards faster 65816's.
>]
>]It was indeed Bill Mensch, and the name of his company is Western Design
>]Center.
>
>Does anybody know the truth behind the claims he made that he has
>lots of 6-10mhz 65816 chips? And is this true?
>
I placed a phone order to Western Design Center on July 14. At the time,
65C816's were not to be had, I was told that they sell out of every batch
they get. I can't remember if a 10 MHz '816 existed at that time, but a
10 MHz W65C802 was so hot off the presses that the lady didn't even have
pricing information on them. Lucky me, she just charged me 8 MHz prices,
which was $24.84 for the cheaper plastic chip packaging. I needed to
fill a $50 minimum order anyway.
I don't know, is three months enough time for manufacturing to ramp up?
I have a shadow of doubt that they have 'lots' now, since Apple and AE
aren't the only companies buying them.
Michael Steele mentioned that AE claims chips stamped 12 MHz are only
running at 10 or 8 MHz, but my 10 MHz '802 arrived with a little sticker
on it identifying it as 10 MHz. It seems that the LAST step in their
production is changing the numbers stamped on the chip. If AE is having
trouble with 12 MHz chips only running at 8, then their circuitry must
rely on extra critical timing. WDC publishes all of the timing
measurements at each processor speed, and I'm confident that their 12 MHz
chips match their timing specs (although I have no way of verifying
this). That doesn't guarantee that a 12 MHz '816 will work in every
circuit clocked at 12 MHz. There might be something about the chips that
are used in interfacing to the processor which aren't cooperating.
While I'm on that subject (and hopefully have the attention of interested
hardware folks), would anyone care to hazard a guess as to whether or not
I can get this hot little 10 MHz '802 running a little faster than the
current 3.58 MHz that my TransWarp (II Plus) is doing? My first thoughts
were that the 3.58 MHz speed used implies that the CPU must still be
easily synched up to the 1 MHz clock for video and Apple II bus
transfers. If you recall the ancient II circuitry, the 3.58 MHz signal
on the Apple bus is derived from the same clock that the 1 MHz clock is.
That means that the edges of the 3.58 MHz clock always line up with the
1 MHz clock, and I assume that that fact makes it easier to switch back
and forth between clocks as the TransWarp does fast RAM accesses
interspersed with slow Apple I/O. My next logical assumption was that
the 7.16 MHz signal would also satisfy this criteria, and double my speed
(although I probably would still lust after a full 10 MHz). I talked to
Matthew Stier about this idea for a short while, and he said I should
give it a try. Matthew said that there is probably a clock divider
anyway, but I still haven't checked out the circuit.
I would have asked AE these questions, but as I've been told their
TransWarp engineer (what, only one?) is out on assignment. I found this
out when trying to determine how I could access ALL 256K on the
TransWarp. 128K is available in the standard, published Apple //e
interface (even on my Plus!), and another 12K is used to shadow the old
Apple bus-speed ROM chips in fast RAM, but the remaining 116K is just
sitting there unused. I *have* found a few 'secret' unpublished
softswitches for the TransWarp - do any of you programmers out there want
to share discoveries? Since I have both Integer and Applesoft Basic in
ROM (through a switch added to my keyboard), I was happy to find out what
soft-switches to select to re-load the shadowed ROM without powering
down. Have any of you hackers figured out how to make that extra 116K
into a RAM disk? Seems that AE is not providing the information
or documentation for full utilization of the hardware I paid for :-)
Brian Willoughby
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John Stephen III
Bill Mensch has been able to produce SOME 10MHz '816s been he has never been
able to produce them in quantity. Our TransWarp GS board is capable of
running at 10MHz+ speeds and, as many TWGS owners know, we have a hard time
just getting chips that'll run at 7MHz! We've had some samples of 10MHz
parts and we demonstrated a TWGS running at 10MHz at the Boston Applefest.
Even these parts, which WDC rated as 10MHz, would not really run as specified.
The power supply voltage needed to be boosted to 5.5v and small amounts of
heat would caused them to crash. The problem with the faster chips is not
in the timing between the TWGS and processor -- the problem is that certain
instruction combinations will not work at the rated speed (this is true all
the way down to the 6MHz (or whatever) parts that really are available) and
the TWGS board "watches" for these combinations and slows down for them. In
short (in long?), faster parts are in the future but we have not seen them.
I wish Mr. Mensch the best of luck in producing them as well (I'd certainly
like to have my //gs running at 10-20MHz!). One other interesting note -
another company (I forget the name) is working on their own 816 which they
are estimating will run in the 15-20MHz range. Should be interesting...
John Stephen
"These opinions are my own, my employer doesn't endorse them, blah blah blah"
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Lynda Botez
John Stephen writes:
>One other interesting note - another company (I forgot the name) is working
>on their own 816 which they are estimating will run in the 15-20 mhz range.
>Should be interesting...
Sure should be interesting. I heard the same thing... I think I remember
hearing that this company will be working with Zip Technologies. Anyone care
to elaborate?
Also, in regard to the faster chips on the TWGS; it's true, when the chip
runs at 9 or 10 mhz, some things crash... it would be advantageous to be able
to set it to run at 7 mhz OR 10 mhz.
Lynda
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