Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!ccnysci!alexis
From: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple's Pricing, IIx question
Message-ID: <1443@ccnysci.UUCP>
Date: 23 Mar 89 17:54:27 GMT
References: <919@fornax.UUCP> <40260012@hpindda.HP.COM> <925@fornax.UUCP> <1918@cerberus.oakhill.UUCP>
Reply-To: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Organization: City College of New York
Lines: 25

In article <1918@cerberus.oakhill.UUCP> hunter@cerberus.UUCP
(Hunter Scales) writes:
>	Nobody answers his questions.. does the AMMU introduce a wait
>	state or not?

Yes it does. The lack of an MMU-caused wait state is most of the IIx's
speed advantage over the II.

Orchid Technology just introduced a cache board that sells for only $295
which will speed up a Mac II 20-30%, on average, just by eliminating most
of the waits. I just bought one, and I'll let the net know how it is when
I actually get it.

This is one of the things I reamed Apple for when they introduced the II,
two years ago. It was incredibly stupid to not build a cache into the Mac.
Here we see a small third-party company can make a profit retrofitting
a cache onto the Mac for $300. Apple could have done it for pennies, and
they didn't. Purely typical.

When is Apple going to realize that power sells computers? It's time to
stop taking shortcuts in the hardware in order to save a few cents here
and there.

Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.uucp