Ivory III in Quadras?

[Palter@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Gary M. Palter)]

    Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1991 23:46 EST
    From: futrell@corwin.CCS.Northeastern.EDU (robert futrelle)

    Putting and Ivory III in the new Mac Quadra 700 would be 
    interesting because it has built-in ethernet so there
    would be no slot needed for that.  It also has a bunch
    of VRAM for video, so no card needed there either.
    My impression is that Symbolics has the Ivory working
    in a Quadra 900.  

It's not yet fully functional.  We are still working on the software
changes needed to get a MacIvory to run in the Quadra series.
I can not comment on how or when the updated software will be made
available to customers as we haven't yet made any decision on that
issue.
		      
		      The 700 would be a slick package and
    I'm waiting to here whether we'll be seeing an Ivory
    board working in that.  

Installing a MacIvory model 3 in a Quadra 700 may be prohibited by
mechanical and/or power problems.  While I don't expect any such
problems, until we actually test it, I can't say that it will work.  We
will be getting access to a Quadra 700 shortly to check out these
issues.

			    I realize that the 700 and 900
    aren't much faster than an FX, 

That depends upon whom you ask.  One magazine claims the Quadra is 1.2x
a IIfx which, indeed, isn't much but another magazine claims they're 5x!
Apple has been claiming 2x to 3x.

				   but they're certainly 
    faster than the CX and CI and rumor says they'll be
    significant upgrades to 700 and 900 in the Spring.
    If Symbolics will support disks that use the SCSI 2 bus
    then we can get some faster paging too. 

The MacIvory relies on its Macintosh host to perform all I/O.
Therefore, the MacIvory can only use those devices and busses support by
the Macintosh.  At this time, there is no model Macintosh, including the
Quadras, which support the SCSI-2 bus.  In fact, the Macintosh still
does not fully support the original SCSI bus standard.  (E.g., the
Macintosh doesn't implement disconnect/reconnect which is necessary to
allow asynchronous SCSI operations.)

It's true that the SCSI implementation in the Quadras provide
signigicant performance enhancements over previous Macintosh models.  So
far, however, in our preliminary testing, we've only seen around 25%.
In addition, we are testing some third party SCSI accelerators as well
in an attempt to improve performance of MacIvories in older Macintoshes.

					    (did I spell SCSI
    right?).  

Yes.

	      Our biggest performance challenge is CLIM and
    since we'd like to deliver on plain macs, it would be
    quite a development package to have both machines sitting
    there!  700 will go to 20MB RAM with regular SIMMs and
    to much more with bigger SIMMs, so that won't be a problem
    on the Mac side.  

The largest SIMM that can be used in a Quadra is a 16MB SIMM which
yields an absolute maximum of 68MB in the 700 and 256MB in the 900.
There are several companies today selling 16MB SIMMs.

		      But I ramble.....

    bob futrelle

       Prof. Robert P. Futrelle
       Biological Knowledge Laboratory
       College of Computer Science  161CN
       Northeastern University
       360 Huntington Ave.
       Boston, MA 02115

       (617)-437-2076
       Internet: futrelle@corwin.ccs.northeastern.edu