Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!intercon!news
From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Why 68000?
Message-ID: <1990Feb14.185659.797@intercon.com>
Date: 14 Feb 90 18:56:59 GMT
References: <1990Feb11.154304.19943@smsc.sony.com> <3919@hub.UUCP> <10223@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: @intercon.com
Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Sterling, VA
Lines: 26

In article <10223@hoptoad.uucp>, tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes:
> The reason Apple didn't use their current baseline chip, the 68030, in
> the Portable, is simply that there is no CMOS version of the 030 yet.

Bzzzt!  Thank you for playing :-) :-)...

Actually, the problem is that the 030 is already in CMOS, and *still* draws
2.5 watts, thanks to all of those transistors.  An NMOS version of the 030
would require the kind of mondo heat sink you see on new Intel chips :-),
and would still probably make a nice little space heater.  Another big factor
is RAM.  The faster static RAM is, the more power it draws and the hotter
it runs.  The 030's burst mode isn't nearly as useful for static RAM as it
is for static-column dynamic RAM.  An 030 with a couple megs of fast enough
static RAM (which you need for sleep mode etc.) would fly like the wind,
but it would eat batteries, not to mention keeping your lunch warm at the
same time :-).

That's it!  The officially promised HyperCard Mr. Coffee interface!  They
pipe water past the motherboard to keep it cool...

--
Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation

"Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view."
	--Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Return of the Jedi"