Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!think!nike!ll-xn!adelie!axiom!linus!philabs!mcnc!ecsvax!ranger From: ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) Newsgroups: net.micro.apple Subject: Apple //gs Message-ID: <2073@ecsvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 29-Sep-86 10:59:15 EDT Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2073 Posted: Mon Sep 29 10:59:15 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 3-Oct-86 08:29:49 EDT Distribution: net Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service Lines: 129 The Apple //gs was officially unveiled Staurday, Sept 27th to the public. The machine has most of the rumored features we have been hearing about for the past few months. The speed is a little disappoi- pointing (2.8 mhz) considering that 4 and 6 mhz versions of the 65816 areare available. I predict that some hardware manufacturer will have an accelerator board for the //gs on the market within a year. The graphics of the machine are probably what people are most interested in. It has the older modes plus two new modes: 640 X 200 and 320 X 200. The rumors about 768 X 512 were just rumors I guess. The 200 vertical resolution is a little disappointing too. Engineers at Apple pushed for 400 vertical resolution but were overruled because of the expense of RGB monitors that can display such graphics without flickering. One thing I noticed about the motherboard was that the graphics chip was one one of the few socketed chips on the board, looks like Apple is planning for future expansion in the graphics area. The 320 X 200 has 16 color tables of 16 colors available (total 256) but only one color table can be used be used per scan line, limiting any given line to 16 colors. This is a limitation but still allows for subtle shading of objects. The 640 X 200 mode has the same 16 tables but they are limited to 4 colors each for a total of 64 colors. The graphics chip is an Apple chip r rather than an off the shelf variety, so what its exact features are I don't know yet. Deluxe Paint from Electronic Arts will be available soon for the machine, with all of the features of the Amiga version plus the ability to do 3-D drawings and rotations. If the 3-D object manipulations are built into the graphics chip, it will have some powerful capabilities. File formats for the //gs are standardized so that any software can use another's images. The link modules of compiled languages are to be standardized too. This will let you link together C, Pascal Modula II or Basic programs if the compiler makers follow Apple's standards. The sound is one of the more impressive features of the machine. The demo that Apple sent out with the machine has animated color graphics and a very high quality soundtrack running simultaneously. Speech is natural sounding and comes in several voices. The motherboard of the machine is the same size as the //e motherboard. there is even a place on the board for a connector for the //e keyboard. The upgrade for the //e will consist of a board swap. Just plug in your keyboard and go. The backplane will be swapped too because the //gs has 2 serial ports (just like the Macs) that are Appletalk compatible, a di disk drive port, joystick port, RGB video port, Composite video port and an Apple desktop bus port. The apple desktop bus is where the keyboard plugs in on the //gs, you then plug the mouse into the keyboard. If you upgrade a //e you can either use your old keyboard and plug a mouse into the desktop bus port or you can get the detached keyboard. If you alhave a //e mouse already, you can use it instead of the new one which seems to be simpler and cheaper than the old mouse and is shaped differently. 3.5 inch disk drives will plug into the drive port as will the unidisk type of 5.25 inch drives. You must use you controller card for Disk II type drives. The new 3.5 inch drives look like the old //e 3.5 inch dri drives, except for the color and the eject hole which is now in the mid middle of the eject button instead of below it. You can daisy chain several of these drives together. There are very few chips on the new motherboard. There are several square VLSI surface mount chips with 20 pins per side. The graphics ch chip is also a VLSI chip like this but it is in a socket instead of surface mounted, as I said earlier. There are the familiar 7 slots along the back of the board, the 16 pin //+ type game connector, the familiar speaker and connector, places for the //e keyboard and keypad (no connectors on the //gs just the holes for them), the RF modulator connector and a rather small memory board connector. There is no con- nector for Aux slot type boards. The memory slot is the only new slot. It has only about 40 pins which surprised me. It seems rather small. This machine had the Apple 1 megabyte memory card in it. The card has an angled front so it will fit under the cover of a IIe but the angle isn't needed for the //gs square box. The power supply of the //gs sits on brackets over the motherboard, so the machine is not as wide as a //e. It isn't as long either since the keyboard is separate, so it has the appearance of a very small system. There is no fan and the motherboard motherboard juts out from under the squrae box about an inch, so there is is a little lip on the front of the box that matches up nicely with the keyboard. The keyboard has a separate numeric keypad and looks like the //c keyboard but feels much better. The keyboard is very light, pit probably weighs less than a pound. The mouse can be plugged into either the left or right side of the keyboard. The keyboard is similar to the //c or //e keyboard but it has the open apple key and the option key on the left. The option key replaces the closed apple key and the open apple key has a cloverleaf on it like the Macintosh. The reset key is a large key at the top left-center that has only a left arrow on it. The cursor keys are the same familiar left, right, up, down keys. The keypad has a separate enter and clear key as well as the four math keys. The //gs has a control panel in it similar to the Mac. You get to it by typing Control-open apple-Escape. It lets you set the time on the built in clock, adjust the volume and pitch of the speaker, afdjust the sensitivity of the mouse and keyboard, set screen colors for text, back- ground and border, turn on or off a keyboard buffer, change system clock speeds between 1mhz and 2.8mhz, and set the size of a ram disk. New programs will let you jump into the control panel anytime, some //e soft ware won't let you jump into it at all. Apple has a comprehensive of hardware and software that works with the //gs. They also list things that won't work, things that work only at the 1mhz clock rate and things that work, but won't let you jump into th the control panel. The slots, as I said, are the same //+, //e slots. They won't be needed for most things. Unlike the //e, the //gs has a lot of stuff built in. The ports in the back of the machine are mapped into the slots. The two serial ports are slots 1 and 2, the mouse is 4, the 5.25 inch disk drives are 5 and the 3.5 inch disks are 6. You can select which slot to boot from or you can disconnect a port from the slot and put your own board in. The serial ports are just like the Mac's, same cables and all all. Since they use the Zilog chip used in the Mac, they are not //c and Super Serial compatible. So communications software will have to be rewritten for this machine. You can stick in your existing serial card and software and communicate to your hearts content, however. Some software won't print from the serial port because it directly addresses the hardware for particular printer cards. Whew! well that's a quick and dirty description of the new machine. Some features look great, some are ho hum, but all in all I think this machine is going to be a big winner. Lots of hardware and software developers have already released products or are working on them. Applied engineering already has two memory boards for the thing. Several manuals are listed in the back of the users manual. These should be available from Addison Wesley very soon. Of particular i interest are the Hardware Overview for Programmers, Toolbox ROM manuals volume I and II, the Tech  Reference Manual and last but decidedly not least a C Programming Language Reference Manual! Anybody else have anthing to add or corrections? Rick Fincher ranger@ecsvax Rick@ncsuvm