. .:::. .::::::. ..:::::::.. :::::::::: ..:::::::::::::.. :::: :::: Mac IIfx .::: ::::::: :::. ::::. : Product Review :: ::::: :: ::::::. : ::: : :::::::. by Gross Genitalia ::: ::::::: Toxic File #75 ::: :::::: ::::: : :::: Centre of Eternity 615.552.5747 ::::: oxic :::.....:::: hock 750+ files / 40 megs .:::::::. :::::::::: Headquarters of Toxic Shock ::::::::::: :::::::: \TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\ This is a "product review" of the newest of the Macintosh modular monsters, the IIfx. Most of the info and some of the file is taken from the July 1990 "Computer Shopper", intermingled with comments of my own. /TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/ THE 486-BUSTER? Macintosh IIfx: The Mac for the Fast of Us Review by Richard Santalesa Comments and even more review by Gross Genitalia Just as with every other modular Mac, just as with the revolutionary Mac portable, people sat around for months wondering and speculating about Apple's newest high-end Mac. And Apple finally pulled the covers off. It seems that it was well-worth the wait: the IIfx is the fastest Mac to date, with a significant new hardware design as well as clear speed advantages over every other personal computer on the market. I believe the nearest thing that will be competing with the IIfx speed-wise in any near future will be Intel's 80486 processor and the hype and clever electronic techniques to be poured into it, or perhaps the clones that burn the 80386 out with 55 MHz speeds. The IIfx outperforms Apple's previous top gun, the IIci, by 60 to 100 percent in everyday usage, and by nearly a 200-percent margin in processor- intensive operations. The IIfx is somewhere around 900 percent faster than the seemingly-ancient Mac SE. With Apple's traditional concern for high margins, it might have been expected to see an almost Fetus-blowing price tag on the new system, but the IIfx's value is well worth the cost. Some Mac II owners might be pleasantly surprised to find that the IIfx upgrade, available later this year, lists for $2,999 plus the cost of RAM ($400-$1000). With a $599 SuperDrive you'll have a complete IIfx without the variable speed fan. In fact, if Mac performance is your "personal poison", it's recommended that you take a look at the IIfx over the IIci. It seems somewhat disappointing to see the powerful racehorse IIfx to be housed in a case that looks like any other large-footprint Mac. It's easy to mistake it for a II or IIx. Apple can retort by saying that a consistent design in the product line would make economic sense, but it still seems like this powerhorse deserves a more attractive chariot. Not only is the case design similar to the II-line ancestors, but the rear panel shows the two serial ports, two ADB ports, a 25-pin SCSI connector, and a stereo sound port that can provide true CD-audio 44.1KHz digital sound - an improvement over other Macs. The IIfx, like the II or IIx, has six NuBus slots, and can hold two SuperDrive floppies and one 5.25-inch or 3.5-inch hard disk. With the outside similarities aside, what distinguishes the IIfx? With the cover off, the differences become apparent. While the same 230-watt power supply stretches from front to rear of the left side of the case, a much more sophisticated fan takes the place of the older one. The fan has larger blades and spins at varying speeds, depending on how hot things get inside the case, to hold noise down and provide efficient cooling to the internals. Looking down to the motherboard, you'll see seven new Apple-designed chips and smatterings of caches. There are several reasons for no onboard video, one being the potential applications the IIfx will be used for: 24-bit color-intensive work, design, and other CPU/video-hungry work. For such uses, the IIfx coupled with Apple's new 8*24 GC video card with onboard RISC acceleration should be a screamer, and the lack of onboard video isn't much of a concern when speed is an issue. Ironically, a IIci with cache in 8-bit onboard video mode can be faster at scrolling images than a non-8*24 GC-equipped IIfx, and this points the finger at one bottleneck in the Mac: the 10MHz NuBus. A faster NuBus operating at 20MHz clock rate should appear in the future Macs once the NuBus standards committee releases its NuBus 90 specifications. But that's then, and this is now. Apple surprised many people by leapfrogging the 33MHz 68030 in favor of the 40MHz 68030 with 40MHz 68882 FPU (floating-point unit). Like the IIci, the IIfx takes advantage of the 68030's burst mode, resulting in an approximately 40 percent faster transfer of large blocks of data (for programs supporting burst mode). Further on the plus side, the IIfx is the first Mac to boast a fast 32K static-RAM cache between RAM and the CPU as standard equipment - something optional in the IIci. Apple claims that 96 percent of all RAM accesses takes place with zero wait states. This is an improvement compared to the two wait states in the Mac II and IIx. It has been said that only Apple could make a 68030-based computer look slow. However much this may hold true with earlier Macs, the IIfx goes out of its way to knock this claim down. The problem is actually quite simple. In other Macs, the Motorola-made CPU controls EVERYTHING that's happening. Apple engineers have seemed to think they don't need to use coprocessors. Take a look at the maligned Amiga. For all of Commodore's marketing mistakes, the Amiga is, in many ways, a technical tour de force. The Amiga has coprocessor chips sprinkled around the motherboard to remove video, disk, and other operations from the CPU, freeing it for other processing. With these coprocessors the Amiga is enabled, with only 512k of RAM, to perform true pre-emptive multitasking. Apple can only promise this for some distant future release. The IIfx includes three coprocessors to free the 68030; a SCSI DMA controller; a floppy drive/ADB processor; and a serial port I/O processor. According to Apple, the SCSI/DMA controller allows for a maximum data-transfer rate of 3Mb per second, and when multiple SCSI devices are attached, the difference should be particularly noticeable. Another important improvement the DMA controller offers is the concept of "data latches," where data can be simultaneously read from and written to RAM. The two serial processors each contain their own 32K RAM buffer and processor. One directs communications on the modem and printer ports, while the other manages the ADB devices (mouse and keyboard) and floppy drives. Floppy accesses should be substantially faster on the IIfx, as the floppy drive/ADB processor performs track caching for the floppies. Of greater benefit, the serial port I/O processor speeds the IIfx's handling of AppleTalk data packets. Because of AppleTalk timing specs, in other Macs, the CPU effectively goes dormant for up to 20 milliseconds per packet. In the IIfx, the CPU reads a packet from the I/O processor's RAM cache rather than directly from the network. There's no hibernation time here, and look for better network response as a result. Of course, AppleTalk itself runs at AppleTalk's usual pokey speed. Forget about using your 1Mb SIMMs in the IIfx. The 80ns SIMMs used in the IIfx have 64-pin connectors, not the 32-pin connectors found in standard SIMMs. Remember the "data latches"? The extra 32 pins are needed for simultaneous reads and writes to memory via the SCSI/DMA controller. The IIfx also supports 4- and 16-megabyte SIMMs for a total of 128Mb on the motherboard. For those needing it, a parity-checking RAM version of the IIfx is available. In comparison to the nervous IIci, where a strong sneeze seems to crash the system, the IIfx is positively hearty. Running System 6.0.5 (the only system the IIfx will boot with), the reviewers for the article ran a wide variety of software applications and experience few problems. There are still known applications that snag when running on the IIfx. Among these are: Macsbug 6.1; applications not compatible with 32-bit Quickdraw; MIDI applications that directly tap into the serial processor chip; and copy protection schemes that use low-level floppy drive, ADB, or serial port routines. Apple finally coughed up a one-year warranty on hardware. Supposedly, even if your IIfx gives up the ghost overseas, you can repair it wherever you may be and Apple will reimburse your expenses. If you need dick-blistering, uterus-rattling Macintosh speed, there can be no question: the IIfx is for you. There isn't a faster personal computer with such a widespread and useful windowing environment on the market today, objections from DOS aficionados notwithstanding. People who get cheap sex thrills bashing Apple may find it hard to admit that the IIfx is fairly priced for the performance it delivers. That in itself may be as significant as the technological marvel to be found within the IIfx. PRODUCT SUMMARY --------------- Macintosh IIfx Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 (408)996-1010 Suggested list prices (monitors, video cards, and keyboards not included in IIfx totals): $8,689 for Mac IIfx CPU with 4Mb 80ns DRAM, SuperDrive 1.4Mb floppy drive, HyperCard 1.2.5 and System 6.0.5; $9,869 with 4Mb RAM, 80Mb 3.5-inch hard drive, SuperDrive 1.4Mb floppy drive; $10,369 with 4Mb of parity-checking DRAM, 80Mb 3.5-inch hard drive, SuperDrive 1.4Mb floppy drive; and $10,969 with 4Mb RAM, 160Mb hard drive, SuperDrive 1.4Mb floppy drive; Extended Keyboard - $229; 13-inch RGB color monitor - $999. \TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\ It seems somewhat un-Toxic of myself to do something serious and informative. Or does it? Read Bloody Afterbirth's editorial in the Falming Fetus, Issue #1. That explains it all. The general telecommunicating public has completely lost the thirst for knowledge and information for pursuit of schmoozerism. It disgusts me. So if you found this to be a sickening, boring, worthless fucking file, then go fuck yourself and the dog you humped in here on. I wrote this file as a tribute to those elite few who still thirst for knowledge. I loved this article and chose to edit it, add my comments, and present it to you for information on this wonderful, powerful new machines. The schmucks of today really don't deserve such a machine; they'd probably use it to play games on. The true programmers and true hackers would drink up a system like the Macintosh IIfx. *I* don't even find myself worthy of such an awesome machine. Now Fetal Juice could probably work unlimited wonders with a IIfx, and I'm sure he'd appreciate a nice Amiga 3000 on the side... heh heh! The thirst for knowledge is gone. I enjoyed the information present as it kept me up-to-date with Mac technology and the possibilities and potentials for the future. When knowledge and information are presented to me in some form or the other I usually take it in. I feel gifted by it. I hope you do and feel similar. If not, fuck off. Go write and sex n' slaughter, keen-0 krad gnarly file and send it to all your loser friends /TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/TS\TS/ (c)July 1990. Gross Genitalia / Toxic Shock. #75. The information age shall return. The Age of Enlightenment is here. Apply for Toxinship Following at Centre of Eternity, 615*552<5747.