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From: amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Dove Marathon 030 at $449 -- a good deal?
Message-ID: <4237@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Date: 19 Aug 90 18:18:52 GMT
References: <14668@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Reply-To: amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen)
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Lines: 23

In article <14668@shlump.nac.dec.com> long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) writ
>In article <1990Aug15.144233.6988@ee.rochester.edu>, rajiv@ee.rochester.edu (
>>I know this was discussed a few months ago, but could someone tell me *what*
>>the M... is? I gather it is NOT an accelerator, but why not? Surely a 68030
>>at 16MHz will speed up my lowly 68000/8MHz Plus. What am I missing?
>
>The Marathon is not an accelerator, though some ads say otherwise.
> The '030 itself runs at 16MHz (2x the mother), but has no on-board memory,
>therefore it must access memory through the motherboard (16 bit data path,
>8MHz). This is the bottleneck.
>
   As you pointed out, all of that is true.  However, the effective performance
increase is dramatic.  If somebody has a stopwatch to compare the difference,
it MAY help.  In other words, when you use one of these products (from any one
of a variety of mfg's), you end up with a system that runs tons faster for a
a small increment of $ outlay.  You do, also, end up with a system that is
somewhat ineffecient, (like a drag strip race car at tons of city stop lights)
and not designed like a anybody would make a complete system.  It does however,
in many circumstances pay for itself in the time amd money it saves a person
that can't afford to go out every 15 months, buy the newest system, all new
software versions, etc, just to get some reasonable speed and performance
running pagemaker or excel.
al