Apple IIe transwarp or Zip chip clones?

[Cyril Thibout]

Hi

It seems APPle IIe accelerators are impossible to find now. isn't there some new boards that mimics these old accelerators?

since we now have new soundcard (mockingboards), CF and USB boards, why couldn't we find accelerator boards?

thanks

cyril

[Howard Poe]

I think it would be possible to clone the Titan Accelerator IIe or the first generation AE Transwarp without too much trouble, they look to be discrete logic cards for the most part (I haven't checked the chips on my AE Transwarp to be sure, this is just an impression).

Maybe someone should consider cloning those?

[mdj]

On Monday, 14 January 2013 08:58:58 UTC+10, Howard Poe wrote:

> I think it would be possible to clone the Titan Accelerator IIe or the first generation AE Transwarp without too much trouble, they look to be discrete logic cards for the most part (I haven't checked the chips on my AE Transwarp to be sure, this is just an impression).
>
>
>
> Maybe someone should consider cloning those?

I've never seen a Titan card, but the Transwarp has a number of PALs on it that would need to be reverse engineered.

I imagine the Carte Blanche could easily replicate the functionality of the Zip Chip, but it's question of will; those who have a desire to have such accelerators already have them, and have little need to replicate it.

Matt

[waynej...@gmail.com]

The card is a simple 2 layer board. If the PALs can be copied then it wouldn’t be hard to duplicate. Maybe not cheaply enough for the market though. There’s a couple of switch blocks, 30 socketed chips of which 5 are PALs and I think 45 assorted resistors, caps etc.
A blank board should be cheap enough. Packaged with the PALs, it’d be a relatively inexpensive way for someone who can solder to get a transwarp

[chau...@googlemail.com]

I am now looking for several months for a ZipChip 8000 on ebay (is there any other source for it?). In the past two years I got aware of two actions: one in Germany and one in the US. Both Chips were sold for over $200 (as far as I remember).

We all know there is a market for Apple II devices (i.e. CFFA 2000/3000, TranswarpGS clone). I guess there would be also a market for a ZipChip (ar an other accelerator) clone.

Just a question: Could a ZipChip clone based on the Carte Blanche exceed significantly the 8Mhz of the ZipChip?

[Alex Freed]

On 1/14/2013 2:04 AM, chau...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
> Just a question: Could a ZipChip clone based on the Carte Blanche exceed significantly the 8Mhz of the ZipChip?
>

You bet. I did run the soft 6502 at 25 MHz. There is also enough fast
memory on the CB to shadow the whole A2 memory space. The problem is
that to write data back to the main on-board memory or the memory space
on the slot cards it will still take slowing down to 1 MHz.

Of course the CB has more than enough gates to clone the whole A2 with
all the peripherals: video and "disk" from MMC/SD is already done. But
then it will be just a faster second computer rather than an
accelerator. Kind of like running an emulator on a modern PC.

-Alex.

[Steven Hirsch]

That's only slightly beyond what the original Transwarp did. It had its own
128k of memory and basically duplicated everything but the I/O.

[Sean Fahey]

On Monday, January 14, 2013 4:55:43 PM UTC-6, Steven Hirsch wrote:

> That's only slightly beyond what the original Transwarp did. It had its own
> 128k of memory and basically duplicated everything but the I/O.

How was the other 128K of the TW used?

[mdj]

On Tuesday, 15 January 2013 07:29:29 UTC+10, Alex Freed wrote:

> You bet. I did run the soft 6502 at 25 MHz. There is also enough fast
>
> memory on the CB to shadow the whole A2 memory space. The problem is
>
> that to write data back to the main on-board memory or the memory space
>
> on the slot cards it will still take slowing down to 1 MHz.

The Zip Chip does this (or appears to) by queueing memory writes to a FIFO. The FIFO can presumably write a byte to the bus on every cycle. Since the Zip is aware of the MMU configuration at any point in time, it's able to (presumably) pause itself when the memory configuration changes and flush the write queue.

Slowing down is therefore only necessary on a cache miss, MMU state change, or when an IO range marked as 'slow' is hit. I expect the 'slowdown' is reset by a 50-100ms timer.

You could do this on a Carte Blanche, which would effectively be a Transwarp II functional clone. It would be very interesting to know at what speed the memory bandwidth became a limiting factor. Certainly more than the 8-10 Mhz of the Zip/Rocket chips. Probably less than 25 :-)

Matt

[chau...@googlemail.com]

- Could this also be done on the Carte Blanche Atto (which would also allow to boost the //c)?
- Could also a clock be implemented (like the thunderclock or AE Time Master)?
- Could it also be something like the CFFA 3000, of cause with microSD cards instead of Compact Flash (which was the best device for apple ii in the last 10 years)?

Sorry, just started dreaming ... :-)

[Steven Hirsch]

Not following the question - sorry.

[D Finnigan]

The Transwarp IIe has 256 KB of memory, but everything I've read only
remarks about the first 128K of RAM used for the main and aux 64K RAM banks.

What about the other 128K of RAM in the Transwarp? Is it wasted?


--
]DF$
Apple II Book: http://macgui.com/newa2guide/
Apple II Archive: http://macgui.com/vault/
Apple II Web & Blog hosting: http://a2hq.com/

[waynej...@gmail.com]

It also copies the computers ROM to the cards RAM. But other than that I believe he rest is wasted

[mdj]

On Wednesday, 16 January 2013 05:28:59 UTC+10, waynej...@gmail.com wrote:
> It also copies the computers ROM to the cards RAM. But other than that I believe he rest is wasted

If it's installed in a //e with a RamWorks card, the last 64k bank is used to cache the currently active RamWorks bank.

[STYNX]

There was a (new) Accelerator for the A2(e) on eBay once. It was called the Ultrawarp. It was a 8mhz Accelerator developed by a A2-fan in Germany. He said he could get 10+ mhz out of the card in the future. Prices and such are not known. The card on eBay was sold for around $300-$400 (if i remember correctly). The Card would support a Ramworks of up to 2Mb!

I think there is more to come!

[waynej...@gmail.com]

From the chips, it looks like he's had it made or been playing with it for 15 or more years. So maybe it'll come out next week or maybe never.
If some people really want an Apple II accelerator but can't find one then the options are limited.
They could try and contact this guy and ask if they can get one or help getting it going. Maybe it's finished and he's just too busy to do production.
They could try cloning the transwarp or another accellerator.
Or or course design their own

[gid...@sasktel.net]

Just thought I would put it out there.

Applewin on a Dual Core 2.21 Ghz PC runs the emulator at 132 Mhz.

Rob

[BLuRry]

Jace can overclock at the CPU level (by tweaking the CPU cycles per clock setting) or the overall emulator speed (by changing the overall clock speed or by using the "max" speed setting). I haven't done a flat out speed test but I verified it was fast enough. Of course, at max speed it goes a lot faster when there is no video or sound occurring.

-B

[STYNX]

> They could try and contact this guy and ask if they can get one or help getting it going. Maybe it's finished and he's just too busy to do production.

Already did ;-) and got a reply ... as i said there are more things to come.

And if Conrad gets his TWGS Clone running and Michael his Ultrawarp ... that would be NICE!

And if i can get Joachim to ... but that's to early to talk about right now ;-)

2013 might be a really fun year for me.

[Cyril Thibout]

hi

what is the status of the ultrawarp project please?

[STYNX]

Im currently testing a Prototype for Michael Mengel (Father/Developer of the Ultrawarp).

The prototype-version is 1.91a:
It seems to have problems with the RamFast, but no other incompatibilities so far.
Currently the card reaches 16.6670Mhz without any problems and might go beyond that.
(its seems to be faster than a 12.5mhz TWGS)
The card can take a 65C816 CPU instead of the 65C02.
There are 128k Fastmem on the board.*
The Applesoft (Basic) is not accelerated.*
----
*will be archived/expanded in a following version.
....

The design is still at Prototype status.

[roughana]

On Tuesday, April 2, 2013 8:52:06 AM UTC+11, STYNX wrote:
> Im currently testing a Prototype for Michael Mengel (Father/Developer of the Ultrawarp).

What's the status of this project?
I see that the RAMFast issues was fixed.

Thanks,
Andrew