Macintosh IIci VS IIsi

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Found the red herring!

I rediscovered the article that identified Cache on the IIsi MoBo. I can't be certain, I don't have the component view of the IIsi's MoBo, the DevNote appears to be borked, or it's not there.


Dollars to doughnuts on my best guess: based upon the block diagram, I think the author is/was looking at the Video Buffering setup for Bank A and interpreting those components as L2 Cache.

The other guess is that those chips ARE Bank A . . . whatever, I'm not looking at the IIsi tonight! g'nite!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[uniserver]

I now have a second IIci thanks to insaneboy, this one is in good shape just a bad cache card, must of suffered an ESD, its no good...

Anyways using this IIci /wo the cache card feels just like a IIsi. I just wanted to throw that tidbit out there.

 

[bbraun]

Just a random thought on the IIsi. Since most of us have amounts of memory that would have seemed crazy at the time these machines were introduced, the 1MB of onboard RAM isn't particularly significant. It also has the performance penalty of shared RBV access. The RBV interleaves memory access on Bank A on both the IIsi and the IIci. Losing bank A on a IIci would be unfortunate, but losing the soldered 1MB bank A of the IIsi probably wouldn't be missed.

I'm aware that there's a tool out there that makes a 1MB RAM disk to consume the 1MB of onboard RAM to make sure none of your regularly accessed RAM overlaps with RBV access. But I was toying with the idea of just making that 1MB disappear in ROM. It would still be used by RBV, but just to remove it from use by the memory manager.

 

[uniserver]

that is a good idea!,

Also what i do is set my disk cache to 1024, and that from what they said on wikipedia. It said the disk cache will eat up that 1mb ram so video doesn't use it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_IIsi

"David Pogue's book Macworld Macintosh Secrets observed that one could speed up video considerably if one set the disk cache size large enough to force the computer to draw video RAM from faster RAM installed in the SIMM banks."

 

[James1095]

my mom was talking about in the middle 80's spending 400 bucks on a 4 head VHS player.
no wonder why the 80's and 90's were roaring

These days its like depression ally. Everyones broke.

Prices on electronics in general have been sliding down a steep slope for decades, owing to automated mass production and ever-increasing integration packing more and more functionality onto smaller and smaller wafers of silicon. Back in the 1950s a typical B&W TV would set you back several months earnings from a good family wage job. There was a reason only the extravagantly rich had more than one. My dad's first electronic calculator was over $400 in the 70s, just a few years later you could buy a similarly capable unit for under $30, and by the 80s they were given away as free promotional items.

Everyone may be broke, but look in the dumpiest trailer parks in the poorest areas of the nation and you'll still see a few satellite dishes, flatscreen TVs, DVD and blueray players, mobile phones, video game systems, laptops, etc.