Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!xanth!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!n8emr!cmhgate!f200.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG!Michael.Burton
From: Michael.Burton@f200.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Burton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Doing like 50
Message-ID: <14584.247749E1@cmhgate.FIDONET.ORG>
Date: 21 May 89 14:49:52 GMT
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   The processing speed of your computer is determined by the interactions 
of many different components of the machine.  The 16MHz speed of your Mac
IIx is determined primarily by the frequency of an oscillator chip that
provides timing signals for the rest of the circuitry on the computer.
    The 50MHz CPU that Motorola has announced is CAPABLE of operating at
oscillator frequencies UP TO 50MHz.  If you simply plug one of those chips 
into your IIx, you will probably get NO speed improvement at all.
   Nor can you speed up your machine simply by plugging in a faster
oscillator, because other electronic components of the computer are
designed to work only with certain frequencies, or can work only at speeds 
UP TO certain frequencies.  You've probably seen companies advertising
accellerator boards for the Mac II, promising to speed the computer up to
33MHz.  Those accellerators occupy rather large circuit boards, and cost
thousands of dollars, primarily because there are so many
interdependencies in that type of circuitry that it's almost necessary to
duplicate the entire Mac IIx motherboard on the accellerator card.
   It would certainly be nice if we could speed our computers up by simply 
replacing one chip.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.  Sorry.


--  
Michael Burton  via cmhGate - Net 226 fido<=>uucp gateway Col, OH
UUCP:  ...!osu-cis!n8emr!cmhgate!200!Michael.Burton