Aaron wrote:
I've wondered why as well. In the Amiga world, accel makers always hung RAM onto the accelerator card itself, and often times a faster (than what the Amiga had built in) SCSI interface as well. This did wonders for the machine. I wondered myself why Sonnet, when making their 800MHz Crescendo accelerators, didn't hang a RAM interface and a DIMM socket on that great big board. Its not like there isn't room, and although it would make the mobo essentially a PCI backplane, it would make for one HOT PCI powermac in the RAM access department. Sonnet did it for the 7200 accelerator, I always wondered why they never carried that on to higher end cards. Then they could go all Phase5 and implement their own custom connector which hooked up to its own custom Radeon 9200 in a PCI slot or elsewhere. But then they could make an accel/graphics card combo that would embarass Apple's own new G4 offerings, probably pissing Apple off and potentially infringing on the no-clone rules. Essentially it'd be a whole new computer within a computer. Hey, a guy can dream, right;-)Oops! As a PTP user, I forgot that the Powerbase takes a maximum of 160 MB RAM. Seems to be designed similarly to the Motorola StarMax clones in this respect, although they don't take EDO DIMMs of the same voltage.
I'm surprised that none of the companies that make G3/G4 cards for these machines have figured out a way to add more memory. Anybody know why?
- Aaron
Phase5, german maker of Mac and Amiga accelerators and so on, made a card called the Cyberstorm PPC for the Amiga 3/4000 computers. It had a 68040 or 68060 on the same board as a 604 available at various speeds, plus its own RAM controller and four 72 pin SIMM slots, plus a Symbios UW SCSI port. 68K Amiga OS screamed on that card, and its Mac emulation using the 060 side alone was by far faster than any real 68K Mac, faster in some areas even than the first 601 based PowerMacs. There was a PowerMac emulation in the works, but it never worked quite right-much to the consternation of the people who pre-paid for it and never got it. This was somewhere in the earlier CRT iMac era, btw.
if someone would make a 1.4GHz CPU card for these machines, with its own RAM and an option for its own video, I think they'd sell in pretty large numbers. It'd be a great 'poor man's powerMac' and for the price of a mini, you could have a big box PCI Mac.
Bolton
-- Power Computing is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
123Inkjets.com <http://lowendmac.com/ad/123inkjets.html>
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
Power Computing list info: <http://lowendmac.com/power/list.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powercomputing%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
