MacIvory questions

[myers@atr-la.atr.co.jp (John K. Myers)]

I am going to be coming into some money around April.  I am interested in buying
a used or new MacIvory package.  I'd like to hear from anyone who might want to sell
a used machine in good condition.  I'd like someone at Symbolics to send me brochures
and American prices on the current full line.  I've been trying to reach saleman
Lou Finelli at Lou@Riverside.scrc.Symbolics.com for a few months and keep getting bounced messages.

Technical questions for Those Who Know (thank you in advance!):
I work now with a MacIvory model 3, which is quite satisfactory.  How do other models compare?

I assume that the MacIvory itself is the hardware board that fits in my Mac, and that the box
on the side is merely a generic disk drive with a Symbolics label.  How fast is the drive?
Is there any special magic hardware or installed tracks involved?  It's nice at 652 Meg, but
now that Alphatronix has announced a 14ms 1Gigabyte optical drive for $5K, I should be able
to do better this year and much better next year if I can install my own drive.
Is this possible or is there magic involved?

If I hang a color monitor with its own Macintosh driver/memory board off the edge of my Mac desktop,
can I access it with the Symbolics?  Can I do color graphics, or do I have to pretend it's B&W?

The Ivory uses its own RAM, right?  This means I can't beef up the Ivory by stuffing more
RAM in the Mac side?

Does the size of the Mac matter any?  E.g., could I run an Ivory inside a IIsi?
How about clock speed--does the Ivory suck off the Mac's clock, or use its own?


I'd like to second the current complements on the keyboard.  This, the editor, and the
entire environment that allows rapid prototyping are enough to justify the cost of an Ivory.
I suggest Symbolics should try to push the keyboard for the Mac market (maybe with an additional
numeric pad on the right and function keys on top)--if it turns out to combat carpal tunnel
syndrome, could be a big boom.

Regards,

John K. Myers
ATR Interpreting Telephone
Hikari-dai 2-2  Seika-cho Soraku-gun Kyoto 619-02

myers@atr-la.atr.co.jp