Beige G3, IDE and Apple's ridiculous implememtations . . .

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Certainly some of the numbers will be HDD dependent, but we should be able to get at least some notion of how the different storage mediums compare. A lot of people have the SCSI2SD V5, and while that is SD-card dependent, it gives a someone more consistent test drive.

The experts would need to chime in, but I would think that any paired drives having identical seek times and RPM that are fast enough to swamp the I/O buses of the systems would be a good solution.

As far as a 40MHz Quadra 630 goes, no way! You can't have a $1,200 40MHz Quadra announced the very same day they ended production of the $4,700 Quadra 840AV with plans of pushing lobotomized offspring into the retail channel at Performa price points.

Talk about getting IIvEXED! The 840AV was produced for just one single year. Shift two resistors and install a 40MHz full 040 into a Performa to hack yourself an 840AV rival? UNTHINKABLE!!!! :lol:

edit: with TV Tuner! ;D

 

[Themk]

:lol: 840AV users really did get IIvx-ed! Apple's new 630-architecture could do almost all of what the 840av could do (I think the biggest problem with the 630 is no NuBus, extended LC PDS + comm slot is nice, but no substitute for real NuBus). As you mentioned, with your TV tuner, and AV card, you even got all of the AV functions of the now dead 840AV. Most of the 33MHz CPUs shipped with the units will run happily at 40MHz, the biggest problem is most were shipped in the lobotomized LC/Performa variants with their LC040 CPUs. I would expect the 630 with its full 040 running at 40MHz to be as fast as the 840AV, in what could arguably be called a better case. Only thing you miss on the 630 architecture is the DSPs. 630 also has a decent RAM ceiling (136MB), so it competes with the 840AV right there too.
 
EDIT:
Wow, they really did get IIvx-ed. Being the last 68040 desktop design Apple did, it was a good design, even if fanb0ys complained about lack of SCSI. It's largest downfall was the fact that so many 630 systems ended up as Performas (that and where is my NuBus slot????**). What a waste of an amazing architecture on a lowly LC040 box! (But good news for the technical users that bought them, they just got themselves 840AV power at a steep discount) .
 

** Come on, even the 610 could have a NuBus slot with an adaptor!
 

The experts would need to chime in, but I would think that any paired drives having identical seek times and RPM that are fast enough to swamp the I/O buses of the systems would be a good solution.

Seems reasonable, that should work fine. I think we will start to see bus limits before we see HDD limits.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Seems reasonable, that should work fine. I think we will start to see bus limits before we see HDD limits.

Yep, swamp the bus' limits and the throughput level measures the bus' capacity.

The TV tuner was nice, the AV features were fun to mess around with (read: PATHETIC!) on a casual basis only. No comparison to the 840AV's capabilities as I understand it. I think the MPEG Media System had a DSP, dunno about that, but it definitely had a specialized MPEG video decoder to play Video CDs. Could the 840AV play V-CDs?

Just pulled out the box (re-discovered something more interesting that the MPEG kit inside!) and the features description says it's a "C-Cube CL450 MPEG Video Decoder," likely faster than a general purpose DSP.

 

[NJRoadfan]

One could say the 630 platform was so good, it was worthy of being used with a PPC 603e..... [ ]

As for the DB-25 SCSI port, even Adaptec used it on a few of their ISA cards and it was the defacto standard on Apple II SCSI cards (both Apple and 3rd party).

 

[Themk]

Didn't realize it had MPEG decoder chip, that is cool. I will have to take a closer look at the AV card. Didn't realize the AV features weren't on the same level as the 840av. Oh well, 40MHz full 040 is the most important feature and something both of them have

Just pulled out the box (re-discovered something more interesting that the MPEG kit inside!)

What was that thing you re-discovered?

 

[Themk]

Speaking of Apple's rediculous implementations, why is the memory controller on the same IC as ATA and SCSI in the 630?! Still it works fine. BTW: the RAM SIMM slot is on the other side of the logic board.

 

[Gorgonops]

Speaking of Apple's rediculous implementations, why is the memory controller on the same IC as ATA and SCSI in the 630?! Still it works fine.

Why not? If you're cooking up an ASIC anyway you might as well cram as much into it as the transistor counts will allow.

(I'll grant that, sure, there is an argument for separating "northbridge" and "southbridge" functions, as Intel's chipsets used to, if you're planning to use the the same CPU/RAM architecture in a wide range of systems that might have radically different peripheral requirements, but by the time the 630 came out the future of Motorola 68k-based systems was obviously limited to just one more generation of low-end bargain-basement boxes so they might as well just toss it all into one box for minimal chip count...

But, of course, 1990's Apple being 1990's Apple they ended up reusing the architecture anyway on the 6200 series, which required cooking up *another* ASIC to essentially transform the PPC 603's bus into a 68040's, which is just plain goofy and obviously a worse solution than if they'd made a peripheral ASIC and two separate northbridges...

)

 

[Themk]

Yeah, the 630 isn't a bad architecture. It certinally works just fine, so as you said, the engineers tossed it into an IC that had more transistors to spare.

The real ridiculous implementation has nothing to do with the decent 630, its all about the 5200/6200. Those were terrible, and I wouldn't mind calling the entire logic board "a ridiculous implementation".