Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!caip!think!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!ranger From: ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) Newsgroups: net.micro.apple Subject: Re: Apple //gs Message-ID: <2115@ecsvax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 9-Oct-86 12:37:50 EDT Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2115 Posted: Thu Oct 9 12:37:50 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 19:33:04 EDT References: <2073@ecsvax.UUCP> <843@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service Lines: 66 > > > > The speed is a little disappointing (2.8 mhz) considering that 4 and 6 > > mhz versions of the 65816 are available. > > Nope. GTE has just recently started making production quantities of the > 4MHz part available, which is undoubtedly what Apple is using. You might > be able to hand pick a few that'd run at 6MHz, if you had enough 4MHz parts, > but there's no production parts near that speed. Bill Mensch at the Western Design Center said in an interview over a year ago that the minimum speed available was 4mhz and that 6mhz parts would be available soon. How long GTE has been building them, I don't know, so their yields may not be up there yet. > > > One thing I noticed about the motherboard was that the graphics chip was > > one of the few socketed chips on the board, looks like Apple is planning > > for future expansion in the graphics area. > > A more common reason for socketing a chip is some kind of trouble with > that chip that would require production line or field replacement. > > > 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. > > See this month's BYTE for details on the display chip. No 3-D stuff. The > version of DPaint will be like that on the Amiga, but of course only permit > 16 colors in lo-res, 4 colors in med-res, and no hi-res mode. It could have > some 3-D stuff; the next revision of DPaint for the Amiga is rumored to have > some of this capability. 16 colors PER LINE in 320X200 for a total of 256 possible, 4 per line in 640X200 for a total of 64 using the 16 color tables available. The 640X400 mode in the Amiga looks nice in pictures but not on a screen the flickering is just too noticeable, and high persistence phosphors smear animation. The early pre-release versions of the graphics chip had a bug, so that may be why it was socketed, but I didn't see the bug in the demo machine. > > > File formats for the //gs are standardized so that any software can > > use another's images. > > Is this an Apple standard, or DPaint. They could be using the IFF standard > developed by EA and Commodore-Amiga; this would let the IIGS DPaint display > most Amiga images, and vias-versa. This is an Apple standard, but I don't know the details of it. In the past Apple has used straight bit maps, I hope they get a little more sophisti fancy than that but we'll have to wait and see. > > > Anybody else have anthing to add or corrections? > > The rest looked pretty good. The sound chip should be very good; its > currently in a production Ensoniq keyboard-synthesizer. > > > Rick Fincher > > > > ranger@ecsvax > > Rick@ncsuvm > -- > ============================================================================ > Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh > > These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide > that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.