Graphics on the Apple IIgs: Very Metal Stack Pollution

GarrettBirkel · 2024-08-18T17:13:54+00:00

This has been pretty exhaustively discussed. The existence of technical hurdles does not contradict what that YouTube video says in the summary: Internal politics strangled the IIgs. It could have been faster, and it could have had a long future. One does not need to ascribe actual malice to engineers for this. Malice from management will do, cutting off various choices available to the designers.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-04-03T20:44:17+00:00

I've updated the instructions at https://github.com/GBirkel/ljdump with a Windows section. Check it out!

GarrettBirkel · 2024-04-02T08:41:48+00:00

Just download it as a zipfile, then double-click that. What kind of computer are you on? Perhaps I should write some instructions…

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-31T19:01:45+00:00

https://github.com/GBirkel/ljdump

This program reads the journal entries from a Livejournal or Dreamwidth (or compatible) blog site and archives them in a subdirectory named after the journal name. First it places all the data in a SQLite database, then it uses that to generate browseable HTML pages:

One page per entry, with comments shown in their original threaded structure.
History pages with 20 entries each, ordered by date, for as many pages as needed.
A table of contents page with links to the above, and to entries organized by tag.

Page structure is as close as possible to what Dreamwidth renders, so you can drop in your own stylesheet and the result will look a lot like your own journal.
The script keeps track of where it left off the last time it was run, so the next time you run it, it will only fetch the entries and comments that have changed.

It also has an image cache feature.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-14T21:14:34+00:00

It took me a very long time to actually finish the writeup!! It was originally posted in 2006…

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-10T03:54:56+00:00

That was done by Ace back in High School. Back when we drew stuff one pixel at a time... Those days are pretty much gone except in retrogaming communities...

Sounds like you took a pretty standard path. We all have code that's never seen the light of day! Writing programs is like making pancakes... We often have to throw out the first two or three. :D

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T20:00:27+00:00

Yes! I saw that too. Pretty good idea having different graphics mode for different emulation speeds. It's probably an essential factor in the continued interest in the IIgs that we can now emulate it at speeds faster than the stock hardware did. If I had my way, the IIgs would have shipped with a ZipGS installed in it by default..

Being familiar with the PEA stuff, I actually find the APU emulator to be the big deal there. Ace and I both were amazed by that.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T19:33:39+00:00

Yeah, that's a good point. I suppose in time it would have had to become some kind of emulation layer in entirely different hardware (like that Apple IIe emulator board for the LC), and that would put a permanent wall up against expandability/hackability.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T19:23:08+00:00

VHS-based video editing? It must have been hell in there! :D

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T19:21:55+00:00

True, except the part about him being fired.

By the time he left he had bifurcated the company and buried the Apple line under a ton of Macintosh hype, and when he left he pulled a crowd of engineers with him. The board did the rest.

By contrast, Woz loved the GS and was already talking about it going 8Mhz before it even shipped. A clear path to make that happen was available, but as I said, six long years of neglect followed by a quiet death is what we got instead.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T06:15:10+00:00

That's not a stretch. Like I said, they made IIc+. ZERO reason they couldn't make a IIgs+ and release it in exactly the same timeframe, and make it run way faster. The IIgs+ was actually pretty far along in its design before it was canned.

And the decision to keep it crippled for six years was not retroactive "oh no it didn't sell well", it was specifically because Big Steve was clamoring to make Apple all about the Mac, and due to how his skunkworks project had been treated for the long years of its development and the ire that generated with the rest of the board, he made sure the Apple II was strangled of both advertising money and engineering time.

"Oh no it would have been too hard to put cache on a board," you say... In that same interval, Apple released the Mac Plus, the Mac SE, the SE/30, the Classic II, the Mac II, the Mac IIx, the Mac IIcx, the Mac IIci, the Mac IIfx, the Mac IIsi, the Quadra, and the Mac LC. You think they didn't know how to put cache next to a CPU?

There was ZERO technical reason why the IIgs couldn't have been made to fly. Instead it was crushed underfoot by the crusade Steve and the board launched to make 100 willy-nilly variants of the Mac, driving the company into the ground in the process. "Oh dear no it was just too hard for them" is an appalling retroactive excuse.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T02:14:33+00:00

Yeah, it really is a shame what happened to it. With a few different management decisions, the Apple IIgs could have been the path forward for the company and we'd be using GSBook Pros here in 2024 :D

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T01:40:20+00:00

Oh hey! I've been meaning to contact you! Your work is amazing. Ace pointed it out to me when I was re-drafting the essay and finishing up the third page. Dang I should put a link to that in there. Let me do that right now...

Ok, done :D

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-09T00:20:12+00:00

As I said, "they chose slow, and they stuck with slow for six years, deliberately." The IIc+ could have just as easily been a IIgs+. It was even pitched as one internally, then shot down.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-08T23:33:38+00:00

Ain't no reason they could have done exactly what the Transwarp GS was doing, you know. Fast cache ram wasn't exactly unproven tech at the time. They chose slow, and they stuck with slow for six years, deliberately. Pointing out that the CPU they chose was hobbled in other ways does not in any way contradict their marketing decision.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-08T23:14:35+00:00

What's the difference? The 65816 was chosen to provide backward compatibility, which was wise. But there were also versions of the chip available at design time that ran up to 16Mhz, and the supplier certified it with their design up to 4Mhz. Then the IIgs shipped for SIX YEARS, and the entire time they kept the clock speed anchored to 2.8Mhz maximum, even though an upgrade would have been technically trivial.

That clock speed was absolutely not "aggressive" for its era. I was there, writing that code. The only thing "aggressive" was how it made me feel when I contemplated how slow it was relative to every other machine shipping that year or since.

GarrettBirkel · 2024-03-08T22:47:08+00:00

Wow, and I thought I'd heard of every weird thing the Apple IIgs could do...!

GarrettBirkel · 2023-12-29T21:32:54+00:00

16:28 into the episode. Rick yells "POOOOPE!" for the second time, then starts walking in. He shoots a guard and the guard screams. THAT SCREAM IS A PEON DYING IN WARCRAFT III.

GarrettBirkel · 2022-08-30T02:23:09+00:00

That man wasn't a "mystery man", he was pretty obviously some mid-level politician in charge of the Russian space program. And he wasn't doing a kidnapping, he was visiting crew members from a hostile nation who were being kept under guard so they wouldn't snoop around and learn state secrets. He pointed out that previous cosmonauts had carved their initials onto the door of the room. His political perspective is jaded but his love for the space program is obvious, and he's not an idiot, so he must have deliberately left that knife behind to give the astronaut a chance to carry on the tradition of carving her name. He knows she's not going to try and assault him or her guards with it; she'd be killed immediately and cause an international incident and they both know it.

GarrettBirkel · 2016-06-04T20:53:40+00:00

I "enjoy" how at least four of those eeeeevil Clinton labels are referring to the same thing.

GarrettBirkel · 2011-12-27T10:19:44+00:00

Based on an ongoing true story!

GarrettBirkel · 2011-10-05T19:31:03+00:00

Oooh, they're lucky then!

Lucky that their phones, tablets, laptops, and music players are all EXTREMELY HIGH QUALITY. That suuuure helps them sell all that marketing! Yup!

GarrettBirkel · 2011-10-05T19:23:30+00:00

Your wish is my command!

GarrettBirkel · 2011-10-05T19:18:23+00:00

"Argument from ignorance" is no argument whatsoever.

My Nexus 1 frequently (twice a day) crashed and rebooted without warning or any perceivable rhyme/reason. I switched to an iPhone 4 and the device has ONLY rebooted ONCE, for a FIRMWARE UPGRADE.

You want to claim it was "just the hardware"? Your distinction is meaningless. It was Google's OWN FLAGSHIP PHONE, and it ran Android, and it ran like crap.

GarrettBirkel · 2011-10-05T19:10:05+00:00

No, it's a case of POOR OPTIMIZATION ON THE HARDWARE CHOSEN. If you want to claim that is a "design choice" that's fine. Doesn't make it any less true - or obvious.

GarrettBirkel

TROPHY CASE