Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!fozzard
From: fozzard@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Richard Fozzard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: SE accelerator comments?
Summary: Dove Marathon
Message-ID: <7997@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 8 Apr 89 05:43:59 GMT
References: <810008@hpsad.HP.COM>
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: fozzard@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Richard Fozzard)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 45

Erik Kilk writes:
>I'm interested in comments about the various SE accelerators out there.
>Especially the Radius 16 Mhz 68020 of which I received an ad recently.

I am using the Dove Marathon 020 in my SE.

It was cheap ($550 street), easy to install, and uses SE motherboard memory.
It also claims 4x speedup. This is bogus until you can afford 4Megs to add
to the accelerator board itself (I finally did and it's finally really 4x
for CPU only tasks - I have seen this on Word scrolls, Canvas and Illustrator
zooms/resizes, etc - remember disk access is another problem). I presume
this is because you need a true 32 bit data path for the full speedup.

I have had minor problems with system upgrades and because I am using a 3rd
party hard drive (Warp 9) but the tech support from Dove is good. Other than
the inability to initialize floppies, I have found very few programs (and I
use a LOT) that cant run on the 68020. These are usually old and still will
run if I boot the 68000 (try that on a Mac II!). My problem with the floppies
may be related to my hard drive (I know this sounds weird but I wont bore you
with the details).

Overall, I've been very pleased - and thoroughly spoiled. It's hard to use
unaccelerated machines now. But I do have a couple of recommendations:

	1. Before buying an accelerator, 1st get more memory and a fast,big
	hard drive - these make a much bigger difference in performance. I
	have tried the Quantum 80 - it'll knock your socks off. Wish I had
	bought it instead.

	2. The Radius uses only the SE memory - a 16 bit data path. They
	claim to get around it with a 32k cache, but this seems small in an
	era of megabyte programs, but maybe it's enough.

	3. Two things seem especially nice about the Radius over the Dove:
	Radius offers a version of SANE that uses the 68881 to speed up
	all numerical calculations (how important this is, I've no idea).
	Radius also lets you add their big screen video boards later. Dove
	promises this, but to date I know of no products.



========================================================================
Richard Fozzard
University of Colorado				"Serendipity empowers"
fozzard@boulder.colorado.edu