Path: news1.icaen!news.uiowa.edu!ord-feed.news.verio.net!feed.news.verio.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.mathworks.com!portc04.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: GS II booted! Lines: 187 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 05 Oct 1999 04:26:24 GMT References: <37f96dd2.90580798@news.pacifier.com> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Message-ID: <19991005002624.20934.00000861@ng-fo1.aol.com> Xref: news1.icaen comp.sys.apple2:153127 wcbland@pacifier.com (Bill Bland) wrote: >supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote: > >>>I imagine the other card is an accelerator. It's a Transwarp (there's >>>a clue) GS with a smaller card mounted on it marked "Rev TW GS V1.18H" >>It is indeed. You lucked out. This card is often sold in the >>$K+ range and can easily be upgraded to around double First of all, as I wrote in email, let me apologize for the "$K+" above. I meant hundreds+ not thousands+. More embarassing than that, I think I said it three or four times in different threads. ;-| >>the speed (after which its value will increase even more)! >>Cool! If you ever want to speed up this card, just post the >>question on csa2. > >Well, that's an offer too good to refuse. :-) >How do I go about speeding up the card? Yes, I know. I just figured >out how to boot it, an already I want more speed. That's what 'puter's >and cars do to people, I guess. Look at one of the corners of the TWGS card. There is a shiny metal box. This is the oscillator. It is the CPU's clock. It runs at a Mhz rating 4x that of the CPU. The TWGS normally has a 28Mhz oscillator. The CPU can often be overclocked a Mhz or two, so try a 32Mhz oscillator followed by a 36Mhz one. The oscillator is socketted so replacing it is easy. There are two oscillator sizes, full size and half size. The TWGS card uses the half sized ones (which are square rather than rectangular). To get above 9Mhz usually requires a new CPU chip. These cost about $20 from a company called Western Design Center which is in Mesa Arizona. The chip is the 65C816S8PL-14, rated at 14Mhz ( but the design has gone much faster than this due to the fact that WDC only tests them to 14Mhz). The CPU is located near the center of the card in a socket and has the numbers 65C816 printed on it (there may be other numbers and letters too, but 65C816 is on there). For the >9Mhz mod, simply replace the CPU with the 14Mhz part and then plug in a faster oscillator 4x the Mhz you want to clock the CPU. Ok, I found my old DigiKey catalog. Here are the DigiKey part numbers: CTS Clock Oscillators, Half Size 40Mhz CTX175-ND $3.25 50Mhz CTX176-ND $3.25 64Mhz CTX177-ND $4.45 You can order them at the DigiKey web site at this URL: http://www.digikey.com/ An oscillator of a particular Mhz will clock the TWGS CPU at 1/4 of the oscillator Mhz, so the 50Mhz oscillator will make the CPU go at 12.5Mhz, for example. If price is not an issue, I suggest getting one of each and experimenting to see what speed the TWGS tops off at. If not, I suggest getting the 50Mhz and 40Mhz units. 12.5Mhz TWGS (50Mhz oscillator) almost always works, but with a 40Mhz unit, you can fall back on 10Mhz operation if necessary. The 64Mhz oscillator (16Mhz operation) is a bit more iffy, since cache RAM speeds come into play. Grab this oscillator too if you want to experiment, but it may or may not work. Good luck! >>I recommend internal Focus drive from >>http://www.allelec.com/ Alltech Electronics for the > >I checked, and some additional questions arise, if I may. > >Add AppleWorks 3.0 or AppleWorks GS V1.1 (Disks only) for $10.00 > >I'm unfamiliar (other than believing they're like Claris or MS Works) >with these two applications. Is there a substantive difference between >them? AppleWorks 3.0 is an 8-bit IIe program that runs in a text environment. AppleWorks GS V1.1 is a GUI program that runs under the 16-bit GS operating system GS/OS. Given that you have a IIGS with enough memory and a TWGS for a speed boost, I recommend the 16-bit version. It can do more things (like page layout and putting scanned graphics in database records). It in fact resembles an early version of MS Works for Mac very much. AppleWorks GS V1.1, that is. It has a word processor with spell check and thesaurus, a data base, a spreadsheet, a page layout module, a communications module, and a combination paint and draw module. It is a pure GUI based program. To get the most out of it, you'll also want Pointless and Harmonie from http://www.crl.com/~joko Shareware Solutions II. This allows you to use TrueType fonts and print to ink jet and laser printers. Pointless and Harmonie work extremely well with AWGS 1.1. When you get everything set up and install a good library of TrueType fonts, the IIGS can produce output to an ink jet or laser printer identical to word processing and simple page layout on the PC or Mac. I still use my IIGS to do word processing a lot. It is connected to the same ink jet printer as my PC. I move from one 'puter to the other. The output is identical between the two. The PC has more diverse programs, but the IIGS boots much faster. I do not leave my PC on all the time because experience has shown that this kills the hard disk drives faster (even if they go into a lower power mode after a time). Besides, the environment you know. ;-) >Focus Drives are 100% Extended Smartport compatible meaning >partititons are automatically mapped for your ProDOS 8 use (up to >12 depending on system configuration, existing disk controllers, >floppy drives, etc) and all partitions are available for GS/OS. A >DOS 3.3 Emulator (FocusDOS 3.3) is available on request. > >This is way over my head. Do I want a DOS 3.3 Emulator? If you use very old Apple II or II+ software that runs under DOS 3.3 and would like to install them onto the Focus, then yes. But most software you will encounter that's 8-bit is for the IIe that runs under ProDOS which is very hard drive aware so you do not need the DOS 3.3 Emulator for these. And for the native 16-bit GS/OS based IIGS software such as AppleWorks GS, this is of course not needed.* Basically, you won't need it for the majority of stuff. With a TWGS in your IIGS and the amount of memory you have you'll probably want to run mostly IIGS native 16-bit GS/OS based stuff in the first place. Who wants to hear the pathetic 8-bit Apple II beeps when you can hear the power of the 16-bit software that uses the IIGS' 32-channel Ensoniq wavetable synthesis chip's. And who wants to look at old 8-bit lores Pong-like stuff when you can play with 16-bit stuff like 3200 color graphics and games such as Out of this World, Lemmings, and Wolfenstein 3D on the IIGS. * DOS 3.3 is an old OS that supports only 5.25" drives without a hack of some sort. This is what the "DOS 3.3 Emulator" does. It also does not support subdirectories and is very slow. ProDOS is an operating system introduced with the 8-bit IIe and IIc. It supports hard drives and CD-ROMs and other mass storage devices. It supports subdirectories but is limited to 32MB per partition. GS/OS is the Apple IIGS 16-bit operating system. It supports any device with the right driver and it works under a GUI that it is distributed with. It is also file system independent. Using the HFS file system, GS/OS can use partition sizes up to 2GB. The latest distribution is called System 6.0.1, which comes with an application called Finder. The IIGS Finder resembles the Mac Finder a lot. The IIGS works best when used with 16-bit software. When using 8-bit software under an 8-bit OS, it is essentially running a IIe emulation.