Subject: Re: More Card Questions From: spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) Date: Tue, Sep 15, 1998 1Ç22` Message-id: <15SEP199804221149@vax2.concordia.ca> In article supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) writes... >"Marlin Bates, IV" wrote: > >>On one of the ROM 3 machines the sockets for the ROMS are BIGGER (i.e. more >>pins) than the other ROM 03 machine. Also, only one of the chip model >>numbers match. The other has a number of 341-0278 and is on a sticker (not >>silk screened). > >Some ROM 3 units are like this. Some ROM 3 units used EPROMs >because in the early days, the ROMs were not perfected. I've read >that there are actually two or more minor ROM 3 versions. Not quite. The non-masked ROMs were never sold to the public, they were a leaked beta revision of the firmware (my guess is these systems used to be demo models at dealers, or perhaps originally given to a few seeded developers before the ROM 3 was officially released). The only other ROM set I heard of was one that replaced the words "Apple IIgs" with the name "Turbo 28", though I can't remember if it differed in any other way. At best guess, Apple was probably taking a shot at making the ROM 3 faster than previous IIgs's (hence "Turbo" in the codename) and it would have ran at 7 MHz (the "28" in the code could have been the rating of the oscillator to controller the clock speed, divided by 4. Logically, if they bought the rights to use the ZipChip in the IIc Plus in 1988, they would have bought the rights to put a ZipGS equivalent in the IIgs in 1989). I guess the deal feel through, or someone at Apple didn't want a faster IIgs competing with the Mac. There was also a version of the ROM 3 that had a minor flaw where the programmer CDA's were also flagged to be active. >>I got a FastRAM SCSI card Rev. D. I know what this one is, question is: >>is it better that an Apple Fast SCSI card (Sandwich II)? > >That's open to debate. Many people think the RamFAST card is >the best SCSI card. It is the fastest and it may be able to DMA >to memory cards that don't normally support DMA. However, in >my view the Apple High Speed SCSI card (Sandwich II) is the better >card. Some SCSI-2 drives require the computer (controller) to have >an SCSI ID number. The RamFAST does not. The Apple High >Speed SCSI does. Thus, for many hard drives, the Apple card works >while the RamFAST fails miserably. It also works better with a >Zip drive sometimes, specifically that there is a driver from the >former Tulin coporation for it that makes the card wait longer when >accessing a Zip drive that's spun down. I think the biggest drawback of the RamFAST is it can only work with 12 partitions at a time, and if you have a hardrive with more, you cannot switch them in and out. This is a limitation with the ROM firmware that *could* be fixed if a ROM v3.01g or 4.0a were released, but Sequential Systems seems to have lost interest in the Apple II market other than selling the products they designed (or took over) in the past. >>Next card in an ROM 3 machine: Labeled "ECHO+" Street Electronics Corp. had >>a speaker attached to it inside the IIgs. Has potentiometers labelled Vol 1 >>and Vol2. The speaker was connecvted to a minispeaker connector labeled >>"Mono", next to that is the same type of port labelled "speaker" I can make >>my guesses but would prefer accuracy. Is in Solt 4 > >This is a speech synthesizer. Apple II units before the IIGS lacked a >sound chip so needed a separate sound card to do speech synthesis >or music. Actually programmers managed to do crude, but recognizable, speech synthesis using just the speaker on a stock Apple II. Not too mention 4-voice music synthesis and digital sound playback. A sound card *was* required if you wanted *quality* music, speech or sound, or quite often just in the background while you played a game. >The Echo+ is a speech synthesis card (no music). Nope, your thinking of the Echo II sound card. The "Plus" version of the Echo referred to the the 2 General Instrument AY-3-8913 chips in addition to the speech chip. It could do music and sound synthesis too, although didn't work as a Mockingboard compatible (try using it under Ultima V for a good laugh). ;) >The sound built into the IIGS (32 channel Ensoniq wavetable synthesis) >is so superior to the Echo+ it is not funny. You can duplicate what the >Echo+ can do with a software package called Talking Tools from Byte >Works. The presense of the card in a IIGS is as strange as the >presense of a Super Serial Card in one, but there are MANY cases of >people who never knew what a IIGS is capable of, so who knows. That was not necessarily the reason. It had more to do with the fact very little software exploited the Ensoniq chip in the IIgs, especially for speech synthesis, so most educators who wanted the computer to "talk" bought an Echo+ (there were plently of 8-bit IIe titles that would work with the Echo+). Super Serial Cards in a IIgs were silly, unless you had 8-bit software titles that were incompatible with the Zilog Z8530 SCC and wanted to talk directly to the 6551 used on the Super Serial Card. That and people not wanting to spend the cash on (back then) expensive serial cables that fit the newer mini-DIN8 port. It cost me $40+ Cdn for a GS/Mac serial modem cable in 1988. :P >Various software worked with the scanner, from OCR (Inwords, now >sold by Joe Kohn) to 3200 color input (Color Quickie, a 3 pass system >with colored filters to capture a color scan with a grayscale head). The Quickie-C option was a big flop from what I heard. Not only did it not work right for 3200 color captures, it didn't even do 16 color captures properly. >>Next card is a complete enigma: it has no identifying marks, is not in a >>slot BUT does have what looks to be some sort of mini stereo plug hole out >>the back of the IIgs it has a power connected to the fan power plug on the >>iigs motherboard AND some sort of ribbon cable attached to "J25" on the >>motherboard (the plug connector near the memory expansion slot) > >It could be either a stereo demultiplexer card or a sound input card. >Try plugging stereo headphones in here. If you hear nothing, plug >a microphone in here. It's a HyperStudio Slotless digitizer, it only does sound input. RWP used to ship it (along with a microphone and single speaker) as a free bonus if you purchased the HyperStudio software package. Not a bad deal in those days. Mitchell Spector spec@vax2.concordia.ca