Thread 12153897

IIgs was my first computer, I loved that thing. I got it when it was brand new. Mom even sprang for the 8MB RAM card but I couldn't talk her into the SCSI HDD + adapter card (which together cost as much as the computer + RAM) but I did manage to get her to buy a 5 1/4" drive to go with the 3 1/2" unit "so I could use my school disks."

I pirated extensively, my middle school science teacher who was in the Army before that, he was a big software pirate as was my English teacher who had a kid in my class. I still have a huge number of mostly working disks, including some which I drilled a hole into to "make" them DSHD or to convert freebie disks which had the write protect hole covered permanently. And it's mostly SHIT. I played Tower of Myraglen a few times, it's not randomized so it eventually becomes a bit old. Dragon Wars was a lot deeper and the IIgs version is GREAT compared to the rest. Full Metal Planete is great. There are only about two dozen games which are best on the IIgs though. Even though it was very powerful hardware for the day with perhaps the best sound chip put into an '80s computer, again which was sorely under-utilized. Same chip was the heart of many successful synthesizers going even into the 1990s.

What could have saved the IIgs? Free full 16-bit dev kit with each computer? Pushing CD-ROM more and earlier (IIgs had full CD-ROM support)? IIgs could, in every technical way, have run Myst all the way back in 1986. In many ways, excepting the 16-bit nature, it was superior to early Macs. It also has the finest most conformant IEEE floating point library implementation of all time, done by Kahan himself, a point which goes often unnoticed. It was never used by any serious programs however. He invented IEEE floating point as well as writing the code in the HP 12C calculator which to this day is considered the benchmark for accuracy so much that MS Excel copies its behavior.

>>12153897 (OP)
>What could have saved the IIgs?

Making it more dev friendly by:

>Scrapping that 65816 CPU and jamming in a Z80 running at a blistering 3.5 MHz
>Replace the Ensoniq sound chip with a single beeper
>Ditch the 256-color graphics and go for attribute clash
>Replace the 3½” and 5¼” drives with cassette tape loading
>Drop mouse control for keyboard only inputs
>Ultimately ditch the whole Apple IIgs brand and call it the ZX Spectrum

And viola, your computer becomes a fondly remembered cornerstone of game development.

>>12153897 (OP)
Didn't Apple intentionally cannibalize IIGS in favor of Macintosh due to Steve Jobs's corporate politics? The original Macintosh got a massive marketing campaign, heralding it as the next generation computer everyone should have, while anything related to the ][ brand got scraps, despite IIGS being vastly superior to 128K Mac in most aspects.

>>12153949
>Scrapping that 65816 CPU
CPU was downrated because they were the first customer and would buy them at "faster than 6802" assuming full compatibility, and wanted to get to market ASAP. 65816 was going to 8MHz in many examples and 16MHz in some select bins, but Steve had gotted into a plane crash and was in hospital with amnesia and the other Steve was busy making Mac the future of Apple in his absence. It was purely because of internal sabotage that the IIgs didn't ship with at least an 8MHz 65816.

I know you're mostly joking but the 816 was a beast for the time.

>>12153972
Yes. There was even a 32-bit IIgs that was in development with full backwards compatibility with the 65816 and 6502, the "Mark Twain." It would have run a unified Toolbox which would allow Mac developers to port their software to this platform with a simple recompile. It advanced to the working prototype pre-production stage before being canceled by the Pepsi guy.

BTW OP here, I still have my IIgs and two others all in great working shape. I have upgraded mine with a CFFA and I got an Apple2pi but haven't integrated it yet. I have it talking with Appletalk to a Mac OS 9 machine which can talk to Appletalk over IP to a 10.4 machine which allows me to use Appletalk from my OpenBSD machine here with netatalk so I can just cp a file to my IIgs or vice versa.

>>12153897 (OP)
>>12154015
>>12154000
>chatgpt slop posted by a fucking idiot
yeah, this website is absolutely dead. you see, the giveaway is the capitalization and sentence structure. i know you failed school at year 4 to become a child prostitute and think everyone is a fucking idiot except yourself but the rest of us are doing far better in life than you. please kill yourself as soon as possible, spamming loser retard.

>>12153972
More or less. The Mac was being pushed despite the Apple // line keeping the company going.

>>12153897 (OP)
The Apple II had an extroaordinarily slow CPU clock spped it was very unsuited to games and that meant there was not much to port to the Apple IIgs

>>12154813
nta I don't think that's chatgpt but you may very well be a cuntgpt

>>12153949
Cut them some slack, after the blitzkrieg the zedex wasn't so bad.

>>12154000
You have no clue what you are talking about. The 65816 was an unreliable piece of crap at higher clock speeds and the IIGS specs weren't finalized until after Steve Jobs had already left Apple. If they could have released the IIGS with 8MHz 65816 in 1986 they would have done it, by the time those chips were readily available the market had moved on and there was no point in making an upgraded model.

>>12156432
The Apple II’s CPU was weak compared to its later competition, but it was fine when it was released, and it was strong enough to have thousands of games published for it. I don’t really understand your logic here. The IIgs was already compatible with Apple II games, you can slow the CPU down to match the experience of playing them on a proper II. I figure the main problem with making IIgs games is that its audience was small compared to the greater Apple II customer base, so you’d just be shrinking your audience making games that are only compatible with a IIgs.

>>12156676
>The 65816 was an unreliable piece of crap at higher clock speeds
Hearsay.

>If they could have released the IIGS with 8MHz 65816 in 1986 they would have done it
Wrong, Steve wanted Mac and Steve was in hospital. Steve sabotaged Steve because the Mac was to be the future of the company.

>>12156780
Steve left a year before the IIGS came out and had been stripped of all authority the last few months before he left.
>hearsay
Its well known that the 65816 had extreme production problems in its early years. Stop talking out of your ass.

>>12153897 (OP)
Very comfy looking computer

>>12153897 (OP)
>What could have saved the IIgs?
The Mac not being Steve Jobs's baby.

It's a shame too, those IIgses were some really interesting machines.

>>12156875
Keyboard was very nice to type on.

>>12153897 (OP)
>Why did the Apple IIgs have such a small number of great games?
Expensive a fuck, talented individuals like Carmack couldn't afford it.

>>12157146
Carmack and Romero actually met while making a program for the IIgs.

>>12156794
>Its well known that the 65816 had extreme production problems in its early years.
It's literally an Internet myth.