Path: news1.icaen!news.uiowa.edu!uunet!in3.uu.net!136.142.185.26!newsfeed.pitt.edu!newsflash.concordia.ca!not-for-mail From: spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Which GS memory card? Date: 11 Dec 1996 16:36 -0500 Organization: Concordia University Lines: 58 Sender: spec@vax2.concordia.ca (vax2.concordia.ca) Distribution: world Message-ID: <11DEC199616363496@vax2.concordia.ca> References: <584t7j$c8g@netnews.upenn.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: vax2.concordia.ca NNTP-Posting-User: SPEC News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.50AXP In article bellm@mail.med.upenn.edu (Marcus G Bell) writes... >I don't see this in the FAQ. Perhaps I'll add a section on memory boards in my Apple IIgs FAQ then, at least once I have the bulk of it written. :) >Which IIGS memory card is the better one, the Sirius from Alltech >or the Sequential board I'm not sure if one would qualify as better than the other, from a technical and functional stand point, both are well designed and excellent boards from what I know. However, the availability of chips used by one board (or lack of) does create a gap terms of choice: The Sequential RAM GS Plus (formely made by CV-Technologies and known as the CV-RAM) draws very little power and is quite compact in size. So much so, it is approximately the size of a 3.5" floppy disk. It comes with 4MB soldered in and has sockets to double that to 8MB. There was a claim it was DMA compatibly up to 8MB, _if_ you you owned a RamFAST SCSI, but I'd question if that's true. At least two owners of the card I've spoken with said they experienced data corruption trying to use DMA past the GS's limit. The real problem with the card however, are the type of memory chips it requires. You need pairs of 1MBx4 DRAMs, the same type used by the RamFAST SCSI for cache. Last I heard, these chips are no longer manufactured and are quite rare. The Alltech Sirius board in comparison is a larger board (full sized?) and comes with no memory built-in, although Alltech will often sell it with some pre-installed. It too expands to a full 8 megabytes, although this time using common 1MB SIMM's, such as those used in older Macintosh and PC's. Alltech claims it too is DMA compatible up to 8MB, and it may just be so, considering the person who designed it. :) It still a recent board, so I've not heard from many people about how well it works or whether it does DMA correctly. >Also, just to be sure, can I add one of these boards to a ROM 01 >machine with a 1 meg apple card already installed, to get 5+ megs >(assuming I get a 4 meg board)? No, both boards occuppy the one Memory Expansion slot (all IIgs memory boards must) and do not offer any sort of piggyback connector. Perhaps your thinking of the original CV-Technologies memory board, it had a socket so you could piggyback your old Apple card on to the new board and utilitize it's memory too. Unless you find one of these, or similar board, your have to lose your old card and it's memory. I have three such boards floating around myself, don't think it doesn't annoy me that 3MB of RAM are going to waste. ;-) One thing to note, 4MB is the limit for DMA in a ROM 01 (it is 5MB in the ROM 3, as it has a full megabyte of 'Fast RAM' soldered to board). In otherwords, both Apple IIgs's can only DMA the first 4096K it finds in the Memory Expansion slot. To DMA beyond this requires special hardware tricks, as mentioned with the above to memory boards. Mitchell Spector spec@vax2.concordia.ca