Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!newstop!sun!concertina!fiddler
From: fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Low-Cost Macintosh
Message-ID: <131305@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 6 Feb 90 17:57:44 GMT
References: <126900165@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <43100015@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu> <19157@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 26

In article <19157@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>, tga@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Greg Ames) writes:
> In article <131232@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes:
> :In article <43100015@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu>, andrews@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu writes:
> :> 
> :> A low-cost mac should have two memory SIMM sockets to conserve
> :> space and reduce cost.  The machine should ship with two 1-meg
> :> SIMMs, resulting in 2 megabytes of memory, plenty for most users.  
> :
> :Make that 4 sockets, shipping with one 1Mb SIMM in place.
> 
> You'd need to put ship the machines with the SIMM's in pairs or groups of
> fours, as the 68K has a 16-bit external bus and wnats to access memory in
> 16-bit wide chunks.  The 030's (and 020's?) with 32 bit busses could use
> only 8-bit wide memory, due to thier dynamic bus sizing abilities, but
> it's not to efficient.  This is why SIMM's in pluses and SE's must be
> upgraded in pairs, but must be changed in four's on II's and SE/30's

Any reason why a new, low-cost Mac couldn't be designed to take memory
in integer multiples of SIMMs?  Is there some reason that the Plus *had*
to be designed to take them in pairs only?  Or was it just easier to
implement that way?

------------
"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."   Plato, _Phaedrus_