Good afternoon all,
Well... I've got myself a bit of a quandry this afternoon. I am in the midst of an upgrade / restoration of a IIe Platinum and decided to add an Accelerator. It happened to be a TransWarp card in Slot 1. Now, little did I know that unless you set the switches on the card just so, the external disk drives will not operate correctly. I found out quick.
I decided to pull the TW and put in a ZIP Chip (8 Mhz)instead. This got me the same results. I had to reconfigure the ZIP for 50% (4 Mhz) and set slots 5, 6, and 7 in Normal Speed Mode.
By this time I am asking myself "Just what the hell is an accelerator card good for if it won't accelerate?!?!"
LOL I know it has to do with the crystal and the timing for the IIe.
So now, I am to the point that I am deciding whether or not I should use one at all.
Has anyone else dealt with this problem? Is there a solution? Will Batman and Robin save Commissoner Gordon from the Joker?
An accelerator is used for faster processing speeds. The Apple II bus still has to access some cards at the native 1Mhz speed to work right.
The disk II card is one, and serial cards are another. There are a few others, but your system will fly with an accelerator.
To really appreciate an accelerator, use your system without one for a week or two. Then install one and see the difference.
I guess that I always used my accelerated //e with a controller that could deal with the processor speed differential automatically, cause I never had a problem with it.
That's a bummer that you'll have to reset the thing each time that you boot the computer, or did you make a patched startup disk (patched OS on the disk, I mean)?
Mutant_Pie
Finally!
I sat down last night and re-read the Transwarp Manual, figured out what what the problem was, reset the switches, pulled out the ZIP Chip, reinstalled the card, and lo and behold.... It's ALIVE!!! It's FAST!!! It can leap tall buildings in a single bound!!
The next project: Load Prodos onto my CFFA Card and see what the speed is for booting.
After that: tear down, cleaning, and refurbishing.
Gotham is saved! lol